Depending on your circumstances, you might be better off buying another pair of headphones to use when it is quiet. Although, for me, the issue comes up in the library: it is quiet, I'm not going to carry 2 headphones, and I want the IEM isolation. The answer? Well. Um. iPod Touch has far less...

I highly recommend the Tivoli speakers. The tuner is good, and the speakers are very good, considering their price. Plus, they don't look revolting... GreatDane's unit, which is of a milder design for compact units, still makes me wince.

I'm rather convinced (owning an M-Audio FW/AP) that every input is upsampled to an internal clock, put on an internal bus, and then downsampled depending on what output is requested. Try listening to the headphone amp on the M-Audio; my guess is that it'll have essentially the same signature...

Two things: some tuners sound great, but they can't pull in far-away stations (like my Parasound); others get the stations, but don't sound great. Some do both. http://fmtunerinfo.com/ Also, older tuners go out of alignment. Heck, new tuners probably go out of alignment during shipping...

This is more of a curiosity than a serious post, and more for posterity than discussion, but I thought some might be interested anyhow. My "new" SAE two A7 integrated amp works rather well as an amplifier for my Super.fi 3's. Most of the time, I listen at very low levels; IEMs are at their...

If you have the two, throw them together and see if you hear anything. If not, you're golden. My problem with external hard drives is when the DAC is between the drives and the computer on the firewire bus. But, unless there's some electrical connection between the two, there shouldn't be a...

A DAC. Seriously, if you can afford $50 on a cable, you can afford something better than your internal sound card's line out. Otherwise, get the cheapest cable you can find that won't break if you look at it funny.

I can see the appeal. It essentially uses the iPod as a remote, which has a very high cool factor to it. But ... can I not get the same sound quality with the digital out of an Airport Express, an even better interface with iTunes, and more storage in a MacBook, for a lower total price? Small...

High speed cards are mostly used in digital photography, where you want to write a ~3 MB image to disk as quickly as possible so you can take another picture. Being able to write 3 images to memory in a second is important for those users, but I doubt playing back music or portable video will...

If you swing and miss, it's a strike, even if the ball doesn't miss you. Seems to me that he was using the bat to protect himself more than to swing, so I think it was a bad call, even though I was rooting for the Sox. Calling it a foul would have allowed everyone to get on with the game...

Well, I can tell you that brewing normal tea, adding sugar, and then bottling it results in floating bits of brown stuff and isn't recommended. Tastes fine, though.

I always really liked minidiscs. Nice size, durable, long battery life; recordable, and at different compression levels too. Problem was getting the music onto the discs--it needs to be done either real time or with Sony's crappy software. If I could burn minidiscs as easily as I can burn CDs...

"No problem" focuses on the recipient: "there's no reason to thank me, it wasn't a problem to do that." "You're welcome" focuses on the giver: "I was happy to do that for you." Many of the times we say "thank you," the act itself was nominal. Consider "please pass the salt": "you're welcome"...

It sounds like you've got only two questions: how much of a safety net do you need to save up for before you quit, and what's the best way between here and there? The first question only you and your girlfriend can answer. The second question could be: lean and mean; trim your budget, make as...

Are you placing resistors before the amplifier or before the speakers? I'm assuming they're between the preamp and amp {or between the amp and speakers}. Andrew's diagram shows the positive signal wire on the top, the negative wire on the bottom. "In" is out of the preamp {or amp}; "out" is...

A circuit needs to be closed to flow at all. Think of a simple flashlight: battery's positive terminal, wire, lightbulb input, filament, lightbulb output wire, battery's negative terminal. Cut the wire anywhere, and the light goes out; that's what the switch does, or why no current flows when...

Two things: changes in frequency response due to changes in impedance are magnified by increased output impedance. This is the same as with loudspeakers. See this article at Transcendent Sound. In my understanding, matching impedances is important for power transmission--eg, power lines--but we...

Quote: Originally Posted by vivi the mage what should I sell my clif design cd700a for? Most would tell you to sell it for money; me, I say sell it for headphones.

Internal ear shape varies widely from person to person. What's comfortable for me may be painful for you, and vice versa. So, really, you need to try them for yourself to see if they work for you. (1) You could buy them and see. On a $100 budget, this can be difficult, but hopefully you have at...

Quote: Originally Posted by justin2net that sounds like a better plan. i searched but i cant seem to find some recent sub 200 dollar cd players with optical/coax output. $30 DVD players will have a S/PDIF out.

Like Chris, I often use a laptop (mine is 12"), and that makes anything else feel huge. I used 12" screens exclusively for a few years; only got my 20" screen because I was comparing a lot of print-sized PDFs. "Need" is relative. If you're convinced you need a 30" screen, well, after that you'll...

One thing to consider is that you may be protecting your DAC by using a separate amp. Assuming you're using line-level outs on your DAC, and not a headphone amp, the DAC was designed to drive a very high impedance input--in the range of 10k to 100k ohms. Lower the impedance, raise the current...

Grouping plus playlist folders with smart playlists. Grouping. I keep many albums in both ALAC and AAC. Lossless files backup the original disc, and listening to them obviously removes as doubt as to source quality. Lossy files are used portably. I also have a fair number of lossy files from...

This website does a good job of explaining how output impedance and input impedance interact to distort frequency response. Basically, you want an output impedance that is very small relative to the input impedance; or, more precisely, small relative to the impedance variation of the driver over...

Quote: Originally Posted by Vicomte It's depressing, really. For all practical purposes, silence is impossible to hear, and therefore nonexistent. You can't hear silence, but then you can't see music. Silence could be the absence of sound waves, or it could be the experience of...