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The diary entries of a little girl in her 30s! ~ Part 2
Dec 15, 2012 at 11:08 AM Post #3,601 of 21,761
Quote:
ardgedee said:
 
Sorry for dredging up an old post but this line had stuck in my head for a couple days and the reason why coalesced this morning... I wonder if the problems the Quad Float have are due to those tweaks; Their attempting to wring the nth degree of performance out of them means avoiding some of the design compromises that ensured reliability.
 
Similarly, the original Quad ESLs are some of the best speakers ever made, but only within fairly proscribed parameters: That they will only be used at moderate volumes, that there is appropriate space for them that is neither too large nor too small and can accommodate their best positioning, that the room is neither too dry nor too humid, that your preferred music isn't too bassy... Speaker designs that attempt to work around the ESL's shortcomings tend to end up being other things entirely. It's arguable that there might not be a singular optimal speaker design, but instead a range of optimal speaker designs, and Quad happened to discover one of them very early on.
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Interesting enough, I was talking to another head-fier who had quite a bit of experience with the original Floats, and he said the problems with the Float QA I described sounded very similar to the problems the original Floats exhibited from time to time. He described some inherent design flaws with the original models, though to be fair many of those were purposeful and part of Jurg Jecklin's philosophy going in to get their sound a particular way. He described some potential fixes and thinks that these needn't be compromises any longer. Just from chatting up some folks who know a lot more than I do, it seems like they haven't tweaked the original design enough. It's still pretty dated and apparently it's a matter of some simple fixes.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 11:30 AM Post #3,603 of 21,761
Quote:
kiteki said:
This thread moves way too slow.
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I can see you're already taking countermeasures.
tongue.gif

 
Quote:
kiteki said:
Have you seen the movie Demolition Man. =p
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Don't think so... but I keep mixing up Stallone's action flicks. Aren't they all eerily similar in some way?
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 11:39 AM Post #3,604 of 21,761
My Comcast is being all finicky and only this website is consistently loading for some reason :/
 
Looking at reviews without being able to google on the side if making me infuriated with how few people mention the price anywhere in their lofty reviews.  If I ever ran an audio site I think I'd ban people for that.  Especially when they copy and paste all the specs anyways.  Just add the price to the end of that, please.  I like knowing what a product is competing with and whether or not it's a viable purchase for me.
 
 
The Burson Conductor's precise sense of density (if that makes sense) works very well with the TH900's, I'm finding.  It's like being inside on a really nice rainy morning... or something. 
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 11:54 AM Post #3,606 of 21,761
Quote:
driver 8 said:
My Comcast is being all finicky and only this website is consistently loading for some reason :/
 
Looking at reviews without being able to google on the side if making me infuriated with how few people mention the price anywhere in their lofty reviews.  If I ever ran an audio site I think I'd ban people for that.  Especially when they copy and paste all the specs anyways.  Just add the price to the end of that, please.  I like knowing what a product is competing with and whether or not it's a viable purchase for me.
 
 
The Burson Conductor's precise sense of density (if that makes sense) works very well with the TH900's, I'm finding.  It's like being inside on a really nice rainy morning... or something. 
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driver 8, I still  think you have to try the HA-160
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 11:57 AM Post #3,607 of 21,761
I have it (technically, as it's built into the 160D).  I was speaking from experience in the TH900 thread, although that was using the DAC built in as well.  Your DAC -> HA160 -> TH900 probably sounds better.  I still think you could get more out of those cans, though!
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 12:18 PM Post #3,608 of 21,761
muppetface said:
It's kind of bad when most of your passwords are stored in your muscle memory, but you don't actually remember them mentally. The other day I completely forgot one of my passwords, and the more I actually tried to remember it, the more I couldn't. Only when I stopped trying to remember was I able to "remember."
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This is a huge problem for me. I also always forget whether the numbers I'm pressing are supposed to be characters (like !@#$%^&*()) or the actual numbers 1234567890. The shift button makes a huge difference and I usually only know by muscle memory.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 12:31 PM Post #3,609 of 21,761
Quote:
driver 8 said:
I have it (technically, as it's built into the 160D).  I was speaking from experience in the TH900 thread, although that was using the DAC built in as well.  Your DAC -> HA160 -> TH900 probably sounds better.  I still think you could get more out of those cans, though!
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The DAC makes a huge difference. I also had the 160D a few months back, it was a really bad DAC, IMO. It did not filter noise, and the list goes on.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 12:43 PM Post #3,610 of 21,761
So I read some comments about the ORB Jade To Go from a well known (ie. worshiped in some circles) amp designer. Basically said it was badly designed and built because it used two opamps, the second as a buffer. Thoughts?
 
Frankly I don't really put much stock in what this person says for a variety of reasons.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 12:52 PM Post #3,611 of 21,761
Quote:
dukeskd said:
The DAC makes a huge difference. I also had the 160D a few months back, it was a really bad DAC, IMO. It did not filter noise, and the list goes on.
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Noise issues aside, the tonality you hear when you listen to it is mostly the amp, though.  I used its DAC in my desktop rig for a few months before getting my W4S DAC-2 and it sounded completely different through the various amps I tried, albeit not as good as the DAC-2 or this DAC in the Conductor, but different enough to tell me that HA160D's coloration is that HA160 in it.  I mean, I could take it out of the closet and hook it up to either DAC via the RCA input, but I'm pretty sure I'd still want that extra bit of speed and clarity some of my other amps (like the Soloist built into the Conductor.  You should try it!) offer.
 
Of course, if you like that sound, great!  Yadda, yadda we all hear differently, but the TH900 with more analytical (relative to the HA160) amps isn't going to suddenly sound like an HD800 or something, just a cleaner TH900.
 
 
Speaking of cleanly sound, Jesus Christ the ECBA has nice volume control.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 1:03 PM Post #3,612 of 21,761
Quote:
muppetface said:
So I read some comments about the ORB Jade To Go from a well known (ie. worshiped in some circles) amp designer. Basically said it was badly designed and built because it used two opamps, the second as a buffer. Thoughts?
 
Frankly I don't really put much stock in what this person says for a variety of reasons.
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1. I wonder how he knows this
2. If it's who I think it is, I suspect that any amplifier design that is not his own is going to be perceived as suboptimal, and therefore inadequate.
3. If it's who I think it is, it's less that I don't put much stock in what he says, it's that I find his inability to distinguish between factuality and his own informed opinion to diminish the quality of his opinions. Or, in other words, it's hard to care about what he says.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 1:08 PM Post #3,614 of 21,761
Quote:
driver 8 said:
Yeah, swearing by "wire with gain" or whatever it is makes just about everything else garbage. 
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"A straight wire with gain" has long been the ideal of audio design, and it's a noble, unachievable goal.
 
The ideology of one particular approach, or one particular designer's dictates regarding acceptable approaches, is what's at issue.
 
Dec 15, 2012 at 1:14 PM Post #3,615 of 21,761
The way his followers present it, though, makes the very idea of a buffer like that garbage, is what I meant.  Amps that do anything more than the O2 does are basically immoral.
 
Again, that's how I understand his followers.  I've never cared enough to go to the source.
 
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