Thanks AnakChan, that was a very enjoyable read. (Like you said: undeniable eyecandy. Writing this during a cold shower.) Shame Tokyo is on the other side of the world from where I live... :-(

Thank you sir. I fully understand: keeping your wife happy is way more important than new headphones! Good luck selling yours too...

  I have a beautiful HE-500 in the classifieds and I'm very interested in trying the HD700. So... :-) Let me know if you're interested. I know I am!   (And thanks for your comparison. That was a very enjoyable read!)

It is not very likely that they pay any royalties from the $2,50 you would pay for an album. And if they lie about that, I would also not believe them on any statement about carefully handling your credit card. My advice: don't go there.   (And in addition: thanks for supporting your favourite...

Big Beyer fanboy here! Definitely interested.

  It's a useless discussion. You hear different things than others. It's like trying to convince a believer that his god does not exist: he'll never be convinced, no matter how much 'evidence' you throw at it.

That's what I did, but I don't have to anymore. In addition: who knows what data is sniffed by the proxy? This is safer.

I asked Qobuz to register me as a citizen of France. That helped, I can now buy everything I want. Still, it's weird that we have to resort to such measures.

I used to buy a lot of music at Qobuz (a French company) and a lot of albums would not be available for me in The Netherlands. In some aspects, the music industry is still deep in the middle ages.

Thanks, Kokomo O! I think I hear the difference myself too, but I've heard so many people say it's impossible that I have started to doubt my own ears... Still: it doesn't keep me from buying the highest possible quality, because that's what I always do: I buy the highest possible quality that I...

To be honest: I'm not really interested in flawed media or harmonic distortions. Also a definition of emotion does not influence if something works for me or not: I'll know emotion when I hear it, and it may just work for me and not for someone else. The intention of the Pono people is to bring...

  I don't think Pono is just a technical gimmick. It's about bringing back life and emotion to music, about experiencing music, about 'feeling' instead of just 'listening to' music. I'll admit: I think a good recording engineer can realise that in 16/44. But you would still need decent...

The Ponoplayer is about playing music, about experiencing sound, about being moved emotionally. That requires a good recording and a good device to reproduce the music. That's what Pono is about. Experiencing music does mean a lot to me, and if Pono is promising that, that's what I want to try...

As it's possible to swap SD cards, I guess it's possible to drag&drop your files.   I took the gamble, I'll give Neil the benefit of the doubt. I hope it's as good as I think it will be. (And if not: look for me in the classifieds section of head-fi. :-)) At least I fully support Neil in his...