SoupRKnowva

The magic is really coming through this thing today, I assume tubes needing to break in, but now Im starting to get the hype.

I think there's something impressive about it's lack of impressiveness as well.

An awesome mixture of current favorites and also rediscovering some older jams I hadn’t listened to in a long time. I may not have gone home to see the family, but I’d still call it a successful week

What speakers?

Acoustic Zen Adagio

Just finished reading the entire pi2AES thread, dug out my pi3 w/hifiberry digi Pro running moOde and installed 7" touchscreen to 851N DAC. This is already pretty damn nice for the money. 502DAC (will run this with 7"screen for SW51) and pi2AES with pi4 (will run this on main speaker system) on the way.

I think depth imaging took the biggest leap forward for me via pi2aes i2s vs usb direct from the pi. Congestion in the middle improved quite a bit. Staging improved overall a fair amount too. It’s like my sweet spot got even sweeter

driver section of the line magnetic looks nasty, 12ax7 and chinese 6l6 clone, all cap coupled. 6EM7>300B with interstage transformer on the 845 in the coincident is much better setup

Agreed, I liked the tube compliment more on the Coincident. I don't actually know if the integrated uses interstage transformer coupling. I know the franks do, and the new mono block versions specifiy interstage transformer coupling.

The higher end LM219ia or the 845 premium use better tubes, but that is a lot more money, within striking distance of the new coincident mono blocks and honestly more than I wanted to spend

The holy grail - SET with enough power and bass control (damping factor) to drive average sensitivity speakers to satisfaction (at a sane price). Let me know if you find one!

Im convinced that a 25ish watt 845 amp will do the trick, just gotta find/pick one, im looking at Coincident and Line Magnetic though if anyone has any other recommendations im all ears

One of the few speakers I have heard at RMAF that were very good sounding and somewhat affordable.

Frequency response is spot on, obviously they have an incredible dynamic sound, incredible technicalities. But they’re also super comfortable, even with my Klingon head, for long listening sessions

And for soundstage, sure it’s not as expansive as the hd800 stage. But the hd800 is empty and hollow, this is fleshed out and holographic, much more precise and more 3D.

The Wavelight is really a great match for the Utopia.

I think I actually still prefer the Gungnir DS. I know im weird here, but I was thinking based on Marv's wavedream comments it might be what I wanted, but I guess the wavelight is different enough.

Ill be getting to compare the Wavelight and Wavedream here in a bit with @famish99 though, so that should be enlightening.

I have some material leftover I could give you next time we meet up.

I still stand by my HD800-Jmod.

Jmod alone +EQ would be fine, but that piece of rug liner helps smooth out the sound just that lil'bit more and brings in the diffuse stage a smidge.

That's DHT magic for you

I am delighted that you are so pleased with the Af! Very happy that my old amp has found a good home with a Friend.

Also, I am super envious of you since you just got a Wavelight. Please tell us all about it soon!

Should be a noticeable improvement in technicalities. Synergy will be the question.

The loaner unit made me question my sanity.

Lmk how it is man!

clearly its treating me alright, its been a one more song kinda night all night

From what I've read, the one off EC Ultralinear. Unfortunately you'll have to pry it off the current owner's cold dead fingers.

Something along the lines of the EC Af works well

Solid State

I hooked up the Torpedo 3 -> HD650 black mesh last night. Getting re-acclimated with the sound before the HD560S ships. Probably work my way from HD600 -> HD800. Need to roll tubes for a little more excitement.

Nvidia has good linux drivers, they're just proprietary which linux peeps don't like, I run linux most of the time as well

I've used nvidia as well under linux. Things i didn't like was power management not working properly, the card a gtx980 did not clock down properly and ran full blast doing jack shit because i didn't like screen tearing. Also nowadays i run Fedora and that has a rapid update cycle for the kernel which is with nvidia not ideal. I don't care if it's a binary blob.

Amd has been really good the last few years, plug n play no bs.

I would wait, nvidia is revealing new cards tomorrow and AMD is probably going to respond with leaks or directly. I’m guessing both camps have new cards around the 5700XT price level within a month or two.

We need AMD to give Nvidia some competition at the top end. These creeping prices are getting out of hand. I remember paying about $550 for a 580 lightning back in the day and that was considered the best you could get.

Same @Taverius, only reason im getting a new card is so I can integrate it into the water cooling loop on a new machine I just built. current card doesn't have any blocks available, plus, ive had it for like 3 years at this point, time for an upgrade

How did you get on fixing the pads? I found it very difficult: had to actually stretch the plastic strip wit pliers. Seems the newer parts are a smaller fit.

But yes, new headphone :)

I just pressed them in...not much trouble in my case

Lucky. Maybe yours were truly HD800 stock. I think mine were HD800S, but they sell them for HD800 too.

Reach out to TSAV

Your post prompted me to poke around on the local CL. Check out this bad boy: https://albuquerque.craigslist.org/ele/d/albuquerque-yamaha-2200-power-amplifier/7135059854.html

Going from memory but I think those might be the really expensive (10k?) speakers that Stereophile jizzed over back in the early 90's....or maybe a close relative

They look a lot like a set they sold at The Wiz a bunch of years ago ('90's or so). I wasn't anywhere near as informed as now, but IIRC, they were a little bass light but even sounding. Probably hooked up wrong or underpowered retailed around 1.5K/pair

I know different folks have different charities they like and if you want to donate to a different one I think that would be great too!

I think if any group has a chance of making tangible progress towards ending police brutality, it is probably the ACLU.

Happy Birthday!

I will pass on that one, i went leather

Hell Bent for Leather?

Did it?

Then I suppose Hell must be a bit kinky.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/638771018151755797/706582869471920168/unknown.png

7.5 hours just of driving..oooff

Welcome to Texas bud