The original HD800 has a funny smell from new. It smells like an exotic tobacco smell to me. I have read various threads over the years on different forums where owners mentioned this. Mine still has that smell since new.

I still have mine but the headphone plug has broken off. I haven't bothered to fix it.

You are not sorry. You are just being confrontational to everyone on Head-Fi because you like to be right even when you are dead wrong. Face up to that fact and start learning something from what others type, instead of dismissing everything that you did not come up with first. Some of us do...

I am not sure what education has got to do with it. Many discoveries and inventions were not the result of any particular education.  As for the remainder of the sentence: it's easy to answer. We wouldn't because it would mean an immense of data that needs to be stored. At the same time, we...

It won't work. The frequency response of the mic would give a gain level that is uneven even over the audio frequency in a 0dB sweep. Only white noise would offer you any sort of assurance. Using the actual audio file would give false results.

That what is lost during the downsampling of the file will not be recovered by upsampling again.

There is no guaranteed way of matching volume levels. Even if you use an automatic volume level control it still won't work. All that one can do is to use a random point in the music to try to make a match. Because of the difference in dynamic range across the audio spectrum, some parts in the...

I am quite happy to read what others have contributed towards the thread, without having to comment on their own conclusion and reasoning. But to drag an outside link into it where the writer cannot be challenged by anyone with an opposing view is attempting to give the external view a higher...

Isn't that what we are debating? We don't really need a link to the views of someone else outside of head-fi. I am sure that there is enough knowledge taking part in this thread to match or even surpass that of the authors of such pieces.

The problem I have with most of this is the fact that the word better is heavily misused in its intended understanding. Let's look at what we really mean when we are talking about being better. You'll first need a DAC that can decode the two types of audio files into an analogue audio sound...

Unfortunately a grown person can't tell the difference between an mp3 file and a 24/192 file in most cases. The high bit rate and high sampling rate files come into their own when you have a wide audio spectrum and wide dynamic range file. But if you are listening to an audio track that has...

The thing is not whether it has happened to someone or not. But when it does happen, you won't be happy. I was in the hifi repair business by the way, and my comments and advice are purely based on the kind of faults that I found with customers' units.   In the case of an amp: the same things...

Take the headphone out of the headphone socket. There are two reasons for that from a technical perspective. 1. Switch ON surge from some headphone amps is not suppressed. That surge can take out headphones. The driver coils can melt at a weak spot, just like how a fuse works. 2. The blades...

Oh, the irony of it all. Vinyl reproduction is only inferior than digital in the area of possibility of having a lower signal to noise ratio. Much of the illnesses you attribute to vinyl is really down to the turntable/arm/cartridge and the phono stage. As far as musicality is concerned, vinyl...

A famous line in a famous movie goes like this; "The truth? You can't handle the truth". But more importantly, when the poster becomes the topic, then there is nothing else to add to that discussion.

The thing is MQA is not high end. The blurb they released clearly describes a system that makes a poorly streamed track sound a lot better if subjected to MQA decoding. It does not say at any stage that you are getting a bit accurate stream of the original audio file. What it does say is that...

I know it is difficult to see the tress through the woods with so many leaves blocking the view. But you'll get the jest after a while. Don't take thing literally, so to speak. As for vinyl: that's the reference source for the analogue description. Digital music strives to be just as nice...

That's assuming that you are describing the recording. But more often than not, it is describing the equipment, and more often than not it would be the DAC.

You are missing something here. The term "analogue" is used in a different context when describing the sound properties from a digital media playback. It's like saying you got a Panasonic hoover. Most of us would know that hoover in this case means a vacuum cleaner. Digital to analogue...

If your wireless connection is OK then there is no technical reason to go wired. I have been using wireless to stream for years now and have had no complaints. NASA and the US army has been using wireless streaming for years as well. So the technology is robust.

The more I read up on this MQA, the more I come to the conclusion that it is very similar to stereo transmission on FM. On FM you have the pilot tone that determines if you got a strong enough signal to decode as stereo, or not. That in turn gives you a wider audio spectrum signal. But the catch...

Some hi-res files are markedly better than their low-res version, but it is so dependent on a range of factors. But I do like 24/96 as my regular format size to use.

That may or may not be an honest reflection of your principles. One has only your word on that. But if it is accepted as a get out clause, you should then refrain from making statements about the ability of the equipment that others own, such as the projection of a good 3D soundstage.

You are quite quick off the mark to condemn the audio system of someone else, without having any experience of it, or even taking serious the efforts of the recording engineers to deliver a pleasant listening experience. You should get hold of a selection of the Chesky Audiophile test discs and...