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And that way, the pain in the ears could help overwhelm any initial tinges of typing strain or early onset of carpal tunnel, no?

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LOL.. indeed...

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I thought the same thing.. If there is a difference in what he's hearing, it's due to the player or decoder. Different players may sound different playing the same file. A properly decoded flac file will sound identical to the original wav file with the same player. Kind of the definition of a 'lossless' format. It decodes and plays identical bits as the original. It uses the same sort of compression a zip file does - you zip something up, it gets smaller.. you unzip it, and you have exactly what you started with. The reason this is possible is that most types of files (wavs of music definitely included) have large patterns, and are not random. Random noise however, could not be compressed very much without losing information.

-dd3mon

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I didn't think they hurt my ears at all. Have you ever worn earplugs (the foam kind) for a long duration before? Go do that, then tell me about ear pain.

Foam earplug are my favorite kind.

Just be careful not to shove the Ety's really hard into your ears. You have to squeeze and roll the foam ear tips and then insert gently into your ears.

The "tube" inside the foam can jab the inside of your ear if you are not careful. Once the foam expands, you will be Happy Happy Happy.

I will tell you that my absolute favorite use for the Ety's is in an airplane. There is no contest. Heck, I even leave them in when I'm not playing any music.

-Ed

Does Monkey Audio preserve HDCD encoded songs?

-Ed

I think HDCD uses subchannels to increase the bit depth and that when you rip it to wav, those informations are lost, so the answer is no.. if only there were some software HDCD decoders, one would be able to save it as 20/44..

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Media Player does a software HDCD decode but I don't think it will preserve the quality when encoding even with WM9 Lossless.

I have a Muse 2 DAC with HDCD decoding.

I want to have a lossless compression for HDCD so I can be truly CD free.

-Ed

WMP9 does do HDCD decoding. You'll just have to record what's being played back in 24 bit. That's kind of time and labor intensive.

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Heh, I do that every night when I go to bed (8+ hours out of every 24). I guess it's a matter of getting used to them somehow. If I didn't wear earplugs to bed I'd own Etys right now (but the idea of having something in my ears 12-16 hours/day is not very appealing).

Computers make excellent sources. Or rather, computers make excellent transports. An external DAC is essential if you're serious about computer audio.

Right now, I'm running Audiophile 24/96 -> unmodded DI/O (testing out a MENSA DI/O soon, though) -> Gilmore V2 -> Etymotic ER-4S. Sounds absolutely amazing. A super-awesome bonus is that the Audiophile is great for recording, which means I can rip vinyl easily.

dsavitsk's comparison of a $3,000 CD player and a $3,000 computer is absurd. A $3,000 CD player and a $1,500 DAC + $500 DIP (+ $1k for a computer) is a much fairer comparison, and I'd be surprised if they weren't nearly equal.

The ease and convenience of a massive library of uncompressed audio at your fingertips outweighs the benefits of a CD player, IMO.

BTW, Guild: Can you hear differences between burned CDs and original CDs, too? Heh.

Also, Edwood: I do believe that HDCD encoding translates to lossless files. I sent a friend of mine an .ape file from one of my HDCD discs (I forget which one) - and the HDCD light on his DAC lit up when he played it. I would test it yourself to be sure, though.

- Chris

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YAY!
That's just what I wanted to hear.

Now I've got to do something about that pesky Audigy 2 in my PC.

-Ed

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I don't necessarily agree, it depends how good the DAC + analog circuitry on the soundcard sounds. It probably won't sound like a $3,000 CD player, but it may sound as good as a $500-$1000 CD player (particularly when you consider that you can upsample to 24/96 in software).

If you're gonna start talking jitter due to EMI, better pay attention to the clock on the card too (which isn't changed by getting an external DAC -- it's still used and in theory subject to jitter just like the DAC would be).

P.S... there's no reason I can see why an unmodded DI/O would sound better than (say) the Terratec EWX 24/96. Get this... they both use the same DAC! (AKM 4524, if I remember right).

An RME Digi 96/8 PST or PAD should sound better than even a modded DI/O, as far as I'm concerned. Those are pro-level cards with super low jitter everything on them. As good as or better than the stuff used in the recording studio to master the CDs you listen to. Very likely a future upgrade on my part... .

Iron Dreamer tried using my NEC CDR-602 to reclock his card.

Well? Did it work?

-Ed