I'd say best IEM for 'just' over £50 is the Westone UM1. You can order from the states www.headphonesolutions.com and you will pay $109 (£55) plus VAT (£9) plus handling charge (£4) coming in at £68. I'd say the UM1s are worth £15 more than the EX90s...

Quote: Originally Posted by jmmtn4aj How does RAID 5 give you redundancy? Or do you mean redundancy in the case of the other system's failure? RAID 5 stores a portion of each hard disk across the array so that if one drive fails you can simply swap it for another and all will be...

I remove the "the" from all of my artist names (both in the tag and the filename). It works well for me - artists appear in a better order in my opinion that way. Plus I can never remember which artists have "the" in their name or not anyway... Smashing Pumpkins? Prodigy? etc...

some people really doesn't know what a scientific test is do they? Let me explain: you have equipment X and encoders A and B. If X remains constant then your are only evaluating A against B. Hence the test is fair. The part that you are misunderstanding is that this is a NOT a test of...

To: aphex944, Asmo, Barry, Benco, blinx, GameBlaster, goodsound, Karlosak, Maleficio, pheonix991, PsychoZX, Redo, TestSpecimen, Vuti and Whitebread How can you read the first post and then vote YES without showing ABX results? Can you not read?

Quote: Originally Posted by craiglester There's a lot of variables to take into account here. Cherrypicking a song that lame encodes with audible artifacts, is kinda cheating a bit. Plus, what version of lame are you all using? Unless everyone is using the same version, with the...

Quote: Originally Posted by EnOYiN Your setup should do the trick. I still want some ABX test results from the people who voted yes. Kinda lame not to do so when I specifically asked for it. Oh well. This thread is going nowhere... That's because those guys probably aren't...

Hi, I've always fancied a pair of Grado's to sample the rockin' sound that they're famed for as I am a big rock/metal/punk/alternative as well as a mix of other music. However... the MS-1s just do not have the fidelity of the HD600s by a long way. They are good cans - don't get me wrong -...

Quote: Originally Posted by immtbiker I'm a little confused by this statement. Are you saying that you can't hear the difference between SACD/CD/DVD-Audio or are you being sarcastic? If you use a SACD player that outputs in true DSD rather than PCM, you are hear 50 times more...

Quote: Originally Posted by Cid There is too many different opinions in this thread to result in anything remotely useful. ABX results are probably still not going to change other peoples opinions on formats, because at the end of the day it's the person listening who cares and if...

Quote: Originally Posted by Lord Chaos The difference I hear between compressed and uncompressed files isn't so much a matter of identifiable artifacts, as a matter of something missing. All of the music is there to a first approximation: cymbals, bass, voice, instruments... but it's as...

Quote: Originally Posted by Konig 320kbs is really really good enough for me. I doubt you could find any difference between 320CBR and LAME VBR -q0. In fact you could argue that 320CBR is actually a big waste of space as there are almost no songs that require 320kbps all the way...

I'd like to say here that lossless isn't necesarily perceptually better than LAME VBR encoded MP3s. The ONLY way to tell is to actually run an ABX test (in foobar2000 for example). You cannot comment on the quality difference until you have run this test. You may have downloaded FLACs from...

From all of my research, for a smidgen over $100 the Westone UM1's would be the best choice.

Cheers guys, that answers that then!

Hi, Just a question for a friend who is looking to buy a new shuffle... Are the songs always played back in a random order, or can it be set to play sequentially for album listening? Thanks, Rob.

Quote: Originally Posted by HighLife I dont know this for sure, just know that my machine acts slow when i have foobar running with KS. It takes like 2 seconds before it registers a volume change when i slide the volume tab. This is because by default foobar has a 2000ms buffer...

Quote: Originally Posted by syndrome Do you notice a difference in sound when using ASIO then? It may not be noticable (most likely not!) but the 'cleanest' path is using ASIO - see here: http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/t...caudio&m=17331 --rob.

Thank you all for your help. After reading many reviews and many posts I have decided to go for the Westone UM1 IEMs. I have found them for around $109 (£55) which looks like a good deal and should be a good all-purpose canal-phone. I would have preferred the UM2's but cannot justify the...

Another question - out of the headphones listed above, which are the largest/smallest. I hear that the superfi's and shures are quite large compared to the etys? Also if I was to order the ER4P would I end up with a red/blue pair or a black pair? I really don't like the colourful ones!

Quote: Originally Posted by ldj325 Before you give up on the Sennheiser line, you might consider the HD580s (recently $125 on Amazon), invest about $40 in doing the 580>600 mod (very easy). Some say that the mod sounds better than the stock 600. I have the 580s, which are very good...

Ah, no probs - I was looking at the beyer's and the akg's before I got the HD600s but decided to go for the senns because they seemed like better all-rounders overall, with good bass and very clear mids/highs.

Quote: Originally Posted by igor21000 thanks lordgibbness How is this amp compared to the Gilmore Lite? I wouldn't mind paying the extra $$ for the Gilmore, but I still don't know where I could get the Gilmore Lite in Canada, so the Rega Ear has that advantage, as well as the price...

fredman22, I notice you have both the E4c and the ER4P and was wondering how you would compare the two - good and bad points - and the overall winner? Also does anyone else have both - what do you think? True that the IEM could well end up being the most used - esp. if you commute to work...

Quote: Originally Posted by Luke This would be a simple question if all the devices sounded the same, but they don't. First you have to decide what is the minimum SQ you would accept? Chances are, the answer will be: the best device you've ever heard. So, if all the devices were...