The diary entries of a little girl who is now 30! ~ Part 2 - Page 366

 

and "Audiophile jewelry"

I'll finish this cup of tea first. I don't need any accidents.

cup of tea... very British of you 

Yeah, I ran out of scones and jam though.

Honestly I don't know what my celeb doppleganger is. I have a pretty unique look. I'm mixed race and I only know one other person who has the same race as me and we look nothing alike. Add to the fact that I'm pretty skinny for a dude and it's tough to find someone with my look.

 

I made a compact RSA -> TRS plug adaptor, so that I don't have to carry two sets of cables for each IEM:

 

 

 

I still have to get around to moulding a body for it -- the body area is still just wrapped in electrical tape -- but it's small and sturdy and the shape works better than I had expected. Since it's what I use to connect the Hiditions to the Leckerton through the litz cable, it gets steady use and I don't want to take it out of commission for the couple days I'd need to mould the epoxy, dry it and shape it.

 

 

The Moon Audio Silver Dragon is 24ga silver wire. The IEM connectors are expensive too because custom-built plugs for obscure connector types just plain cost a lot. It's a pricey cable but I don't think Moon is getting the markup you think they are; the parts are not cheap.

 

Both Moon Audio and Norse use 24ga wire for their headphone cables, including IEMs (I think?) -- that's usually considered kind of heavy, but since they're getting wires made to their specifications, maybe they're getting thinner jacketing? I don't know, but I'm curious.

 

My preferred cable for my Hiditions are a homemade fine-stranded Litz cable similar to the Norse cable (mine uses about half of the strand count Norse uses). I'm really impressed by it, actually, and I'm going to be experimenting with the technique some more.

 

Soldering fine-stranded litz is a nuisance, incidentally. I'm not surprised it hasn't caught on with more cable builders. I had to buy a butane torch just for prepping the wire.

 

 

Yeah, it's really handsome. I'm not sure how well ribbon cables work for short runs with IEMs, though. I intuit that you'd feel the twisting of the wire more here than on full-size headphones.

 

I just found out Moon Audio is a JH Audio reseller. I'm increasingly of the suspicion I've got to pay them a visit -- their shop is not far from my office.

 

I've never heard ALO's amps with IEMs; I've been curious for quite a while now but not enough to pull the trigger on one.

 

I have a few homemade balanced cables for use with the SR-71B.

 

Cable one is a homemade cable made with good-quality Mogami audio wire; using it, the NT 6 Pro sounded kind of dull and mushy. I found myself cranking the volume higher than usual to get a sense of energy out of the music. It's been a while since I've tried this combo so I can't be too specific beyond a vague "meh".

 

Cable two is silver-plated copper with plugs custom-moulded for the 4.A. It's my favorite cable with those headphones, especially with the SR-71B. The plugs don't fit the Hidition, though, so I've never tried that combination.

 

Cable three is made with (effective) 26 ga litz wire (60 strands x 44 ga per line).

  

This is roughly like the Norse cable, although without the OCC copper or cloth jacketing or Norse's fit'n'finish. The NT 6 Pro sounds better with the SR-71B with this than with the copper cable above. With this cable, when I compare the SR-71B to the Leckerton UHA-6S, it's kind of esthetically a wash; the Leckerton is more detailed but more brittle in the upper mids and has a relatively flat, linear sound space, and the SR-71B has an immersive space but sounds a little too smoothed.

 

Once I swapped op-amps in the Leckerton, the OPA629 pretty much brings everything good about the SR-71B -> NT 6 Pro but with none of the downsides; a sound that's both easy-going but incredibly detailed; spacious without exaggeration. (although it's worth restating that I dislike the 4.A with the OPA629, for kind of the same reasons I dislike the NT 6 Pro with the SR-71B through cable two).

 

I should probably do this in chart form, it's getting confusing.

Edited by ardgedee - 2/2/13 at 8:22pm

Join the club MF I've been thinking about it ever since I received my CLAS -db. The ALO RX MKIII b from what I've read is a top tier amp but is known for being noisy with sensitive gear. I think driver8 who owns a RX MKIII commented something about that on this thread. The SR-71b has tons of power behind it but supposedly it's dark sounding, I think ardegee could probably add more info to that. Recently I was chatting up AnakChan on another thread, who also owns a SR-71b by the way, and he told me he had a chance to listen to a friends Intruder amp. Quoting him directly he said "Ray Samuels nailed it with the Intruder".

From aforementioned ani-jazz album.

Guys, I've just paired my CLAS db with my RX MKII and plugged in my EX600 with T500 Comply tips. I've been sitting here the last 30 or 40 minutes or so feeling pretty blown away by what I'm hearing. I've never heard my music like this before it's like I'm almost there. If this little mobile DAC and amp combo can do this I can only imagine what some of the more capable desktop offerings can accomplish with top tier headphones. I'm seriously speechless. Sorry for sounding like such a new toy syndrome fool but I can't help but spout off about it like some giddy school girl.

 

Question for the thread, was anyone else in here as floored as I am when they got their first real DAC?

Edited by DigitalFreak - 2/2/13 at 9:17pm

@idsynch, too bad you dropped out of the world. I myself do loathe th brain-diabetes part of anime, and have always wanted to drop out but in recent seasons, there's been quite a few super awesome anime that came out, showing promise that the industry can still be saved (albeit that it moatly depends on the Japanese, and that left me all sad at the impossibility of it all. Bloody fat ****s living their forever-alone lives). I /could/ show you some great(er) works than just mind-degrading brain-diabetes moe anime. And yea I am very biases against its ilk, you you can't tell yet :-P

@DF, ot's a given that i was 'blown away', in that my onboard laptop soundcard is downright bad. Not my current laptop though, and I can happily use it with all my 'phones except Nami-chan. But even then I'm okay with it since I've taken a liking to low level listening. Easier to detect coming my way when I am watching some more risque anime :-P

From what anime is that based on? It sounds oddly familiar but i can't pinpoint it.

I wasn't, unfortunately, because my first real DAC was a uDAC, which wasn't significantly better than the soundcard I had.  I mean, I did notice a difference, but it was less of one than I had expected.  Some of my DAc experiences since then have been good, though. 

My celeb doppelganger:

John Mayer. Everyone in college used to comment how similar I'd look to him.

jgray -- it is One Summer's Day from Spirited Away