Spanky's Stuff

Spanky, nice setup you have there. Are you planning on getting a stand alone DAC when you sell your Mav? I had a pair of Beyer DT 880 250 ohm, wanted 600ohm, but loved them anyway. Wanted to try something different, so I went through a bunch of phones and ended up with a Markl Modded Denon D2k, w/ DIY Balanced Mogami into my LD DAC_1, and MKVII+ headphone amp. Very nice sound. I am a recent audiophile < 2yrs. under my belt, so I am no authority, but I think it sounds superb! I actually bought a nice pair of bookshelf speakers, a first for me. I cannot believe the great sound quality that comes out of these Polk Audio RTi-A3s! They have me wearing my headphones so little now, it's kind of a shame, you know what I mean? At any rate, I got them for a song-on Ebay, Polk has their refurbs for sale, and they are regularly $349-$400+, depending on where you shop, but I got them for $250 shipped! I have bought a few grand worth of surround sound stuff from them, all refurbs, and have yet to be disappointed. These speakers have a very small, say 3/4 inch miscoloration on the seem in the front, but it isn't noticeable unless you stand over them and look down. Anyway, I just liked your stuff, and thought I would tell you. Oh, BTW, do you use all three monitors for gaming, or sims or movies at all? I am just curious about any eyestrain you may experience with the mixture of brands. Thanks, have a great day, Matt

I am planning on purchasing a NFB-12 from Audio-GD. It should be pretty good. I've yet to try a balanced setup, I might think about that more when I upgrade my headphones. I don't think they're quite even "middle-fi" but that's ok, I'm still getting my $150's worth from them

I have about the same experience as you, I purchased my D1 (which was my first DAC) in December 2009 and maybe for a year before that I used a Creative X-Fi with my Beyer's.

When I first got my speakers, I thought the same thing I didn't use my headphones nearly as much but now I'm actually using them about 50/50 because they produce a little more intimate detail and a little more bass that I like. Was that eBay store polkdirect? I'll have to keep a watch out for them. Personally, I don't really care about looks, as long as the speakers would be solid and working properly.

Thanks for the nice comments about my stuff. It's actually been a while since I've updated it but not a lot has changed. I don't have my 3 monitors anymore. The Dell in the middle just had too many problems so I recycled it, it wasn't worth repairing. Just before the Dell died, I sold off one of the Acer's so now I'm down to 1 20" Acer and a 15" Planar. I would like to get a nice 1080p LED monitor (TN panel, can't afford a nice IPS) and use the 20" Acer as my secondary. Anyway, when I had the 3 monitors setup, I color calibrated them so they were all really close and hard to tell the differences. I had no eye strain at all. While 3 monitors for gaming was nice, remember that you're talking 3x as much graphics to render and with that means things will get stretched out even if you use widescreen fixers. Ideally, it would be great to have 9 monitors with thin bezels and an epic Eyefinity crossfire setup with high-end cards. That's not in my budget and I don't have the room for it so I'm happy with 1 screen