av98m

Warning about the Grado extension cable: It is apparently not shielded and may not be a good idea for some people, depending on your location. When used in my house it picks up radio signals while a cheap shielded canare extension cable remains silent. Beware!

You have to get it from Headroom. Not available locally. Even if someone were to bring it in to sell in Singapore, it won't be any cheaper.

Massive Attack - Singles 90/98 Box Set

"featuring all 11 of the CD singles the CD singles the hit British trip hop trio has released so far. Each CD compiles all of the tracks found on the vinyl & previous CD single formats,.............A total of 63 tracks "

Man, I'm sorry you don't like it. Music is indeed subjective, as I quite enjoy their latest effort.

thanks, yongchris.

 

agree with you.  i try to bring along my integrated amp and i/c + CDs to test out CDP, if allowed - that way at least i know any difference is likely to be due to speaker/speaker cable + room setting or simply my ears.

 

also good idea to bring headphone amp + headphone, then can eliminate room setting as well.

Dude, no need to bother. they do home loans so you can bring it home and set it up in your listening room. So you can compare to your heart's content in the comfort of your own home:P

When you're able to, just go down and listen for yourself. I've found that trying to determine how good or bad a product is from hearsay on the internet is a waste of time. Let your ears be the judge(and not your eyes, the player is really butt ugly inside-out).

Oh forgot to comment on customer service. Both Sky Audio and X Audio(Their shops face each other at Bukit timah Plaza) have impeccable customer service. Worlds apart from the typical Adelphi shops.

I'll just say it sounds much better than it looks. It certainly kicked my modded Rotel 991's ass, I'm sorry to say.

Auditions are available.

I've now officially quit head-fi. Its pretty liberating not to have to wear anything on my head anymore! I was very happy with the sound of my headphone setup, but in the end comfort/ergonomics issues forced me to give it up.

- withdrawn

If you have nothing against Chinese equipment, then maybe you'd like to try headphone amps by Bada. I popped by X-Audio at Bukit Timah Plaza last night and they had a couple of them. One of them also doubles up as an integrated amp for driving speakers(it did a great job of driving a pair of Usher bookshelves). They're around $250 to $300, I believe.

How about just any discman or mp3 player with a RCA to mini cable?

try using it as a source for a hifi setup. you could be pleasantly surprised. tried it today, performance superceded many commercial hifi cd players that i had/owned b4.

 

very highly detailed, layered sound, with distinct separation, tames the brightness of the setup. settings used were volume 25 out of 40 on the imp-550, no equalizer setting. very small cdp output, the volume of the amps used in test was hovering around 75-80% of max vol.

 

was surprised that a little portable cdp with not very much sampling, simple DAC circuitry etc, could sound so much better than real hifi cd players. might be going down to listen to lemon chua's original master A9.8 cdp soon.. was quoted $1.2k at exhibition.. seriously wondering whether it could sound better than the iriver in this operation.

 

speakers were pushed apart experimentally, and excellent imaging occured at 2metres apart from each other, tilted inwards to face listener.

I'll bet lemond chua's face will become as sour as a lemon if you tell him the original does not sound as good as your iriver! Do keep us updated on your listening impressions.

What's the rest of your setup btw.

Your right! I totally forgot about this. Dug it up from some dark corner of my cd cabinet and listened to it again. Good stuff!

Do you like their studio albums?

Shucks....WBTs are made of metal....

But the new WBT plugs and jacks now feature low metal mass designs. Think they might have learnt something?

Review on WBT NextGen

Given the nature of the internet, people who give advice or opinions based on not personal experience or expertise, but 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hand accounts from complete strangers are legion. I'm sure nobody means, to jump on you but some just want to keep newbies who may not be aware of the nature of such advice from being misled. I think it'd be a tragedy if someone decides never to try Grados with tube amps because of something they read, because there are some really good ones out there. And sound being such a subjective thing, its best one listens with one's ears and not with one's eyes. Hope you do not mind.

Well, now that I've been able to listen to the album from start to finish, I must say that this will be a worthwhile buy for fans of the Cowboy Junkies. This album is interesting in the sense that they do several covers in this one, of songs by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon etc. Don't worry, there is some original Michael Timmins material in the album as well. From the song selections, its pretty obvious that this is a war-protest album(but then again, the paintbrush strokes on the front cover forming a rough looking peace sign should have already clued one in). Early 21st Century Blues joins The Trinity Sessions and Lay It Down as my favourite Cowboy Junkies albums.

av98m, 10000uf caps?! those can kill!   

I had a couple of them put into my previous cd player. Nobody died and the bass improved.

As far as the expensive volume pots go, there's actually a good reason for them. The good ones present the full details and soundstage at nearly the minimum volume,even with the gain set as low as 3, without any channel imbalance or noise. I love the Noble and Alps Black Beauty pots. Haven't had the chance to try a stepped attenuator just yet. There's this nice looking TKD one I was looking at but it costs more than 400 dollars! Ack! What this means is that unless you listen at very low volume levels, you can save your money.

I agree. Like Naz, I've also listened to grados with the 3 tube amps in question and they all worked great. There's plenty of guys on head-fi who use tube amps like the Singlepower series with their grados too. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I ended up going back to Borders and asked for an exchange. They played my cd on their players and it worked just fine but I insisted that they exchange another copy of the same album for me. And guess what! My new copy works fine on my Rotel! Bizarre! Were the 1s and 0s arranged slightly differently on my "defective" copy? But it can't have been defective because it could work on a few different cd players and my dvd player, just not on my Rotel.

I'll exchange it for another copy and see what happens. Still find it strange that it'd work on a 99 dollar dvd player but not on my Rotel.

I bought a copy of the cowboy junkie's latest album Early 21st Century Blues from Borders recently. Redbook format, US pressing. The problem is, it refuses to play on my Rotel RCD991! I thought the transport had finally gone kaput, but it could play every other cd I threw into it. Thinking it was a defective copy, I brought it with me to work today intending to go down to Borders to get an exchange or refund. Much to my horror, it plays perfectly fine on my el cheapo DVD player in the office!

Has anyone else bought this album? This is the very first time something like this has happened to me. Could it be some hidden copy protection screwing things up?

Hmm.... I guess I have fallen prey to that "bigger is better" problem again (think firemen hose cables). Curse "high-end" hifi! Brainwashed.

 

Just to avoid accusations of pot calling kettle, I'll admit I have a fetish for big capacitors and big, expensive volume pots. When my amp was being recased I was toying with the idea of using 10,000uf caps in the power supply, but sanity prevailed and the original 4700uf caps stayed.

Just how many things in this world are nearly worth its costs?

The Chinese products are actually pretty good, stuff like the Cayin HA-1A. At least I know they cost the same amt as the RA-1 but they have much more stuff inside.

 

 

Ah...but more parts does not equal better sound all the time. I'm sure TS Lim will agree with that statement, after looking at his products and design philosophy. Expensive parts also do not always sound better in any circuit, like when Firefox pulled out many of the stock Blackgates in my Rotel and put in cheaper Sanyo, Panasonic and Elna caps in the power supply sections which really improved things.

I've spent a lot of time(months) with an RA-1 and a Pimeta(with upgraded parts, alps volume pot etc) and quite frankly, I like the RA-1 a little bit more, esp with Grados, but its also a suprisingly good match with the Senn HD600. I also noticed that hardly anyone had anything bad to say about the RA-1 UNTIL the insides were exposed! Then suddenly it sounds like crap! A case of reverse placebo effect? Check out some of the old head-fi threads on this.

Haha! Makes you wonder whats really underneath all the techflex in the audio cable market.