[jamato8]

   
vinyl rips , bro - vinyl rips.

HDTRACKS is waste of money, imo - especially when being kinda broke and every dollar counts twice as much.

search for vinyl rips , you will throw away all your cds - i know i did.
 
cheers

Wow, so you can find vinyl rips online? I always seem to be back off a few tracks, not up to speed, off the mark. . . lol 

 

[proedros]

 
Sorry for the ignorance - what is a vinyl rip and where do I buy it?

 
you don't buy it , that's the beauty of it  - people (the so called 'rippers') do it for free and for their personal pleasure (and ours as well) and simply share them for free

there are some sites on the net where people share their rips - and most of them rippers have perfected their rip rig so much , it sounds better than the cds

HDtracks ? most of it = waste of money.

cheers.

 

 

[chawya22]

  There should be no problem with going back to 2.1.5. We have never seen a truly bricked DX90 unless hardware related.
 
 
The comments on this FW are being sent to our SW team. I am now going to look for the person who invented SW bugs.

 
 
I am glad many of you are enjoying the sound.

Thanks Paul for monitoring the DX90 threads. I think I fixed my problem by deleting file:///Volumes/DX90microSD/.audio_data/ (DX90microSD is the name I gave my microSD Card) and file:///Volumes/DX90/.album_img/ while the DX90 was connected to my MBP. I think this was a tip from you somewhere in one of the threads. I used a utility to display hidden files. Once they were deleted, I did a complete rescan of the directories and now gapless is so far working as expected. The only existing problem is the player still misses the first gapless play when first turned on but as stated before, this also existed in FW 2.15. I can't comment on any sound changes because I've only owned it for a few weeks but I've always thought the SQ punched way above it's weight class. 

 

[HiFiChris]

 

 
Sorry for the ignorance - what is a vinyl rip and where do I buy it?

 
you don't buy it , that's the beauty of it  - people (the so called 'rippers') do it for free and for their personal pleasure (and ours as well) and simply share them for free

there are some sites on the net where people share their rips - and most of them rippers have perfected their rip rig so much , it sounds better than the cds


 

The major problem about this is that it is not really legal and if it is only available as torrent, chancess are high that you will be caught one day.
The only way to get vinyl rips the legal way would be digitaizing your LPs on your own as you have to own the source (LP) and are only allowed to make a "security copy" for yourself. Sharing this would be a crime.
Even if you had a CD that you converted to flac or whatever, you would (in theory) have to delete your backups once you sell the CD.

 

[Kerouac]

Originally Posted by proedros /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
you don't buy it , that's the beauty of it  - people (the so called 'rippers') do it for free and for their personal pleasure (and ours as well) and simply share them for free

there are some sites on the net where people share their rips - and most of them rippers have perfected their rip rig so much , it sounds better than the cds

Yep, also pretty easy to reach these files from where I live in the EU.
But maybe it's a different story when you live outside EU (and most headfi-ers do) because of strict laws concerning downloads

 
 
* Sorry, if this looks like a double post, but HiFiChris just beat me to it with a few seconds answering it...man you're pretty fast

 

[proedros]

  The major problem about this is that it is not really legal and if it is only available as torrent, chancess are high that you will be caught one day.

 
it's not only available as torrent but as zip files- and i don't know about the 'getting caught' thing - sounds like a fear trap to me and i try not to keep useless fears inside my head/life.
 
just my 2 cents of course - i have been downloading rips since 2009 and to my ears it is as close to sonic perfection as possible , since they have the warmth of the vinyl, the clarity of the cd without the brickwalled/overcompressed 'fail' of most recent recordings.
 
like i said , if you have money to throw away , HDtracks are an option sure - me ? vinyl rips all the way baby

 
cheers

 

[jon parker]

DX90 firmware - 2.1.8
 
After a few hours using different headphones here are some thoughts on the new firmware
 
1, Sennheisser HD600 - HO - lo gain
 
- wider sound stage / better separation of instruments
- bass - more present. taken a more domineering role
- highs & mids - along with the bass these seem a lot more live
 
- over all - what struck me was the audio had a lot more attack, was a lot more lively and was a lot more excited - almost as if some extra effect had been added. It reminded me of the difference between a normal well mastered CD and a CD that had had a touch too much 'excitement' added to it.
(Sometimes when you use this type of effect in the mastering chain it can make the audio sound a lot more full of life which can sound great BUT its a sort of audio trickery and although there is nothing wrong with this it is not the same as well mastered audio with the best possible mics etc etc.)
I love the new sound but at times it did come very close to being too much. It was a close thing!!
Its almost as if the 'Lo Gain' switch is the new 'Mid gain'... The Lo gain switch (off) sounds a bit like how it used to sound with the 1st gain switch. Hope that makes sense!
Whilst I do enjoy it with these headphones it worried me a bit in that the sound signature has taken a huge leap away from neutral and become a lot more coloured. Not in a bad way but from the point of view of some aspects of auodiophilia this may be a slight concern. I wont be going back to a previous firmware though so I must like it over the previous ones
 
2, DUNU Titan 1 - these new half in/IEMs are causing quite a storm here as the quality is exceptional. Listening to the dx90 through these today I found the sound very different than then the HD 600's. perhaps obviously !
 
Anyway I can only say that the audio quality was faultless. Listening to 24/96 HiRes 'Captain Fantastic and the Brown Shirt Cowboy' by 'Elton John' I could not find ANYTHING out of place. The sound was simply perfect. I could honestly find no issues, faults or preferences that I would change.
With these IEM's the synergy & the firmware is just perfect. A rare thing for me to say but there you go
I have had no issues with the workings of the player. It is now much faster - although 2 small things
1, because its so much faster, when I tap on the screen to open a new album its SO fast I have tapped onto a new song half way down the list!!
2, on the info screen it says 'Internal: [space left]  |   [size of card]  --  it should be the other way round! - It should start by saying what the capacity of the card is and THEN how much space you have left on it
 
Great job iBasso
x

 

[jamato8]

   
it's not only available as torrent but as zip files- and i don't know about the 'getting caught' thing - sounds like a fear trap to me and i try not to keep useless fears inside my head/life.
 
just my 2 cents of course - i have been downloading rips since 2009 and to my ears it is as close to sonic perfection as possible , since they have the warmth of the vinyl, the clarity of the cd without the brickwalled/overcompressed 'fail' of most recent recordings.
 
like i said , if you have money to throw away , HDtracks are an option sure - me ? vinyl rips all the way baby

 
cheers

I have a few tracks from HD I enjoy but I have spent a lot of money there and not always been happy. I have gotten a few refunds but who wants to go through that. I once asked them about the quality and they said they just buy the finished product and have no control over it. That is a poor answer as I think they, HD, show be culpable for something they sell since this is their entire business and not just an ancillary part of it. 

 

[proedros]

 
I have a few tracks from HD I enjoy but I have spent a lot of money there and not always been happy. I have gotten a few refunds but who wants to go through that. I once asked them about the quality and they said they just buy the finished product and have no control over it. That is a poor answer as I think they, HD, show be culpable for something they sell since this is their entire business and not just an ancillary part of it. 

 
 
there is a joke in those vinyl rips site - the guys should take their vinyl rips and sell them over at HDtracks

i mean you pay lots of money for something sold at hdtracks that is of worse quality of something done for free at the VR sites.

crazy.

 

[jon parker]

 

  The major problem about this is that it is not really legal and if it is only available as torrent, chancess are high that you will be caught one day.

 
it's not only available as torrent but as zip files- and i don't know about the 'getting caught' thing - sounds like a fear trap to me and i try not to keep useless fears inside my head/life.
 
just my 2 cents of course - i have been downloading rips since 2009 and to my ears it is as close to sonic perfection as possible , since they have the warmth of the vinyl, the clarity of the cd without the brickwalled/overcompressed 'fail' of most recent recordings.
 
like i said , if you have money to throw away , HDtracks are an option sure - me ? vinyl rips all the way baby

 
cheers

 
Agree 100% - Its a personal choice whether to download and listen to vinyl rips. most of us have already bough the CD's in the past so...
Also, do folks remember Windows Vista? A OP that did not work. Some people may have 'replaced' their OP with Windows 7 for 'free' because
they were sold a product that did not work!
When they first started mastering CD's they thought they could simply transfer them over and master them the same way as vinyl - thus there are
many aweful quality CD's out there. Also factoring in this ridiculous brickwalling music destroying mastering they do to audio these days is it any wonder
that people enjoy and may be 'somewhat' justified in downloading vinyl rips. just a thought 
There are people out there who spend a lot of time preparing, cleaning the vinyl and then capturing the audio at high bit depth/sample rate.
The quality is phenomina - the rich warmth of vinyl with full dynamics as would have been played in the studio.
Some of the HDTracks stuff is good BUT it can sound quite clinical, over bright & clean. But then which sounds better depends of course on your personal preferences and gear

 

[walkman666]

I have never heard of folks sharing vinyl rips, and I am certainly going to look into this.  Ah, the benefits of the forum. 
 
Regarding HDtracks, maybe vinyl rips sounds much better, but I feel that the albums I have d/l via HDtracks sound much better than my previous recordings of the same albums, so I do not feel like I am wasting my money. However, if there are free and legal vinyl rips available that sound better, then I will try that out, too.

 

[HiFiChris]

 

  The major problem about this is that it is not really legal and if it is only available as torrent, chancess are high that you will be caught one day.

 
it's not only available as torrent but as zip files- and i don't know about the 'getting caught' thing - sounds like a fear trap to me and i try not to keep useless fears inside my head/life.
 
just my 2 cents of course - i have been downloading rips since 2009 and to my ears it is as close to sonic perfection as possible , since they have the warmth of the vinyl, the clarity of the cd without the brickwalled/overcompressed 'fail' of most recent recordings.
 
like i said , if you have money to throw away , HDtracks are an option sure - me ? vinyl rips all the way baby

 
cheers

It is illegal either way but the possibility of getting caught when it is a torrent file is much higher due to while downloading you are uploading small parts of the same file to the Internet (that's how torrents work - the file is assembled by many small parts (I guess they are named "seeds" in the torrent programme), provided by other users that are downloading/have downloaded the file.
 
I and some acquaintances have got experience with that topic. You can do it 999 times without getting caught but the 1000th time you will. As a lawyer told me, even someone who redirected his IP adress to a foreign country and had good hardware firewall and proxy was caught.

 

[Kerouac]

I have a few tracks from HD I enjoy but I have spent a lot of money there and not always been happy. I have gotten a few refunds but who wants to go through that. I once asked them about the quality and they said they just buy the finished product and have no control over it. That is a poor answer as I think they, HD, show be culpable for something they sell since this is their entire business and not just an ancillary part of it. 

I totally agree with you on this matter.
 
On almost all files I've heard from HD tracks, my ears just can't hear an improvement over the 16bit ''normal'' cd ones. The earlier mentioned Pearl Jam's Ten Redux version is an exception on that untill now.
 
The 24bit Pono files I have are on another (higher) level though, with those (Beck, Red Hot Chili Peppers & Neil Young) I can clearly hear an improvement over the 16bit cd ones.
I'm not here to promote Pono as a brand or something and of course this files can also be played on a X5, DX90 (to stay on-topic) or other dap. Don't know how they pulled it off, must be in the (re)mastering itself I guess...

 

[proedros]

  It is illegal either way but the possibility of getting caught when it is a torrent file is much higher due to while downloading you are uploading small parts of the same file to the Internet (that's how torrents work - the file is assembled by many small parts (I guess they are named "seeds" in the torrent programme), provided by other users that are downloading/have downloaded the file.
 
I and some acquaintances have got experience with that topic. You can do it 999 times without getting caught but the 1000th time you will. As a lawyer told me, even someone who redirected his IP adress to a foreign country and had good hardware firewall and proxy was caught.

 
if you are worried about it , don't do it - we are cool. i 'd rather spend my money on the artists themselves through gigs and merchandise , and not let all the money go to those greedy suits at the record companies.

to my mind , the thing between vinyl rips and HDtracks it is just like the same analogy between alcohol and pot - one is 'legal' and one is not , but the 'legal' one is a way inferior 'high' and i feel like it's wasted money , imo
 
cheers

 

[HiFiChris]

 

  It is illegal either way but the possibility of getting caught when it is a torrent file is much higher due to while downloading you are uploading small parts of the same file to the Internet (that's how torrents work - the file is assembled by many small parts (I guess they are named "seeds" in the torrent programme), provided by other users that are downloading/have downloaded the file.
 
I and some acquaintances have got experience with that topic. You can do it 999 times without getting caught but the 1000th time you will. As a lawyer told me, even someone who redirected his IP adress to a foreign country and had good hardware firewall and proxy was caught.

 
if you are worried about it , don't do it - we are cool. (...)
 

 
I don't do it (anymore) but wanted to put an emphasis on that the provided vinyl rips on the Internet are illegal material because as private person you are only allowed to make a copy of a CD, LP or digital file if you own the original medium. This copy must not be shared.
I don't know if there are some sites that offer legal vinyl rips after all (that would be the case if they had bought the rights from the company that published the album, e.G. Universal Music or Sony BMG).
There are lawyers that have specified in admonishing people who commited a copyright trespass and have got only one or two big clients in the film or music industry.
 
Not everyone my be aware of this so I jist wanted to clarify it to inform people who think it might be legal.