Funny story.
I just walked out of an exam where the answers to a third of the questions were written at the end of the sentences. We have multiple professors who lecture on specific topics. On this test, we had a medicinal chemist, a clinical pharmacist, and another medicinal chemist who specializes in herbal and endogenous compounds. Each lecturer submits his own question set to the course coordinator, who compiles them into the overall exam. The course coordinator forgot to remove the answers from the herbal guy's questions, so I'm guessing everyone in our class aced that portion of the test.
What this means is that I'm in a really good mood right now
(Really) Initial Impressions:
Equipment: hifimediy asyncronous 24/96 DAC -> matrix m-stage. iPod Classic 6th gen -> Tralucent T1. iPhone 4.
All phones using ortofon tips, except the g2, which has tf10 tips.
Starting with the Cardas...Carlsan told me he put about 20 hours of burn on them, and I left them almost at max on my clip+ overnight. My impressions remain the same. It's a dark phone, but it's dark and sweet (to borrow a term from tinyman). It sounds almost like a dynamic driver version of the Stage Diver 3, except I remember the SD3 being a bit more on the dry side. Vocals have a slight fuzz around them in the centerstage, which is interesting because cues at the left/right extremes have good clarity. On Ben Howard's
The Wolves, background vocals are rather subdued/clouded. The paradox is that there's a good bit of detail. Switching to the G2 is like removing foam from your ears. Strangely, I don't find the G2 to have much more detail than the Cardas, but it's just so much clearer, and the bass is a good deal cleaner without the bloat. I definitely hear more mid-bass in the Cardas as well. Did I mention the G2's clarity over the Cardas? The Cardas is also more intimate sounding overall to my ears.