[madwolfa]

Changing topic a bit - I've installed latest Windows 10 Anniversary Update yesterday and I didn't have to install any additional C-Media drivers for my Bimby to work (up to 24/192). Did we finally get the native USB Audio 2.0 support?
 
EDIT: apparently still no UAC2 support, just the C-Media has pushed their driver to the Microsoft repository...

 

[rtaylor76]

.

My hearing isn't what it used to be, so I can't hear into what most people would call "ultrasonic" range any more.  I could get an A2, or a Mjolnir, but I wonder if I'd notice it.

A question I might ask since you upgraded slowly is would you notice if you went back to your old setup? Points to ponder.

As always, your mileage may vary.

And that is all should be said. Mocking is just disrespectful of others. That's is the point I was trying to make, so thank you. Now we can all move on. As Jason will probably say, if we want to discuss snake oil, take it to the Sound Science forum.

Didn't mean to hijack the discussion.

 

[rsnblmn]

  Changing topic a bit - I've installed latest Windows 10 Anniversary Update yesterday and I didn't have to install any additional C-Media drivers for my Bimby to work (up to 24/192). Did we finally get the native USB Audio 2.0 support?
 
EDIT: apparently still no UAC2 support, just the C-Media has pushed their driver to the Microsoft repository...

 
This has actually been my experience on Windows 10 ever since I got my Bifrost.  For whatever reason, on my setup, the driver was always automatically supplied by Windows without any action on my part.
 
Good to hear that the anniversary update didn't *break* it, though...I haven't installed that yet.

 

[FrivolsListener]

.
A question I might ask since you upgraded slowly is would you notice if you went back to your old setup? Points to ponder.
And that is all should be said. Mocking is just disrespectful of others. That's is the point I was trying to make, so thank you. Now we can all move on. As Jason will probably say, if we want to discuss snake oil, take it to the Sound Science forum.

Didn't mean to hijack the discussion.

 
Yes, absolutely.
 
The headphones made a big initial difference.  I was very surprised, and pleased
 
The Gumby took the right source.  My first test was with a few FLACs ripped from two Telarc collections of Bach organ music.  I didn't notice anything spectacular about Gumby with them, and I did think, "did I waste my money?"
 
Then I tried Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.  Not because I'd thought of it as exceptionally good, but because I liked the album and listed to it many times.  I was very, very shocked at the difference.
 
As for the mocking, well... a long, long time ago, there was usenet, and before the Great Renaming, there was a group called net.audio.  A sound engineer/researcher for Bell Labs used to have a periodic anecdotal posting about "The Audio Anecdote of the (Interval)".  He once broke things into 3 groups:
1.  Things that will make a huge difference
2.  Thinks that only the most discriminating listeners will notice
3.  Snake oil.
He made fun of the power cords and the oxygen free copper and the like.  On the other hand, his turntable was on its own foundation and he did make his own speaker wires out of two pairs of 12 ga. wires, twisted pairs, and then twisted those two pairs together.
 
He'd also run his own high end shop, and had plenty of stories about trying to charge reasonable prices and the like that most followers of Schiit would recognize as familiar turf.  Unfortunately, I don't remember his name.
 
But the Gumby, with the right source material, was stunning.  It also showed how bad Youtube videos can sound, even "good sounding ones."
 
So the HD-600s live at work now, with a Fulla, where the ventilation noise from the building washes out any of the Fulla's "warts"  (I like the Fulla -- it has its place in Schiit's lineup, and filled a niche I needed it for.)
 
The Schiit lineup for me is now,
Gumby+Wyrd+Magni (!)
Modi (retired), Modi 2 (retired for the moment)
Two Fullas for portable activities like carrying a laptop into the lab with me. 
Sys (for an amplifier on a bedroom TV).

 

[Vigrith]

  Then I tried Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.  Not because I'd thought of it as exceptionally good, but because I liked the album and listed to it many times.  I was very, very shocked at the difference.

 
I abstain from the debate at hand but I will say I love Brothers in Arms as well - alongside Tom Waits' '73 album Closing Time, they are my go-to when I change anything within my setup. Lovely albums.

 

[rtaylor76]

I use 12/2 Romex as speaker wire. Believe the hype.

 

[earnmyturns]

   
As for the mocking, well... a long, long time ago, there was usenet, and before the Great Renaming, there was a group called net.audio.  A sound engineer/researcher for Bell Labs used to have a periodic anecdotal posting about "The Audio Anecdote of the (Interval)".  He once broke things into 3 groups:
1.  Things that will make a huge difference
2.  Thinks that only the most discriminating listeners will notice
3.  Snake oil.
He made fun of the power cords and the oxygen free copper and the like.  On the other hand, his turntable was on its own foundation and he did make his own speaker wires out of two pairs of 12 ga. wires, twisted pairs, and then twisted those two pairs together.
 
He'd also run his own high end shop, and had plenty of stories about trying to charge reasonable prices and the like that most followers of Schiit would recognize as familiar turf.  Unfortunately, I don't remember his name.

At first, I thought that might have been by James Johnston (jj was his Unix login back in the day), who was a leader in audio coding at the Labs in Murray Hill and I enjoyed chatting with occasionally when I worked there. But I just searched the groups.google.com Usenet archive, and I found the correct author (who I didn't know at the Labs), Dick Pierce, and a digest of his anecdotes. Here's a quote from the start of the digest, to taste their palate-cleansing flavor:

Today's Episode: The Emperor's New Pre-amp
The recent discussion on the net about what's wrong with 741's in
audio  components  reminded  me  of the time when rationality was
secondary in audio, it was all hype and personality that  counted
(what?,  you mean it's still true? people still think skin effect
is really important for speaker cables? ARRRGGGHHH!).

OTOH, our gracious hosts might dispute the last two of his "laws of acoustics" (puts on tinfoil hat):

   Twelfth Law:           All     small     state-of-the-art      audio
          manufacturers  are  really  manifestations of
          Phinias T. Barnum.

     Last Law:

          The audio business is no place for reasonable
          people to make a living

 

[landroni]

 

I still don't understand the mocking of the small things. Isn't this hobby about getting to the finer details? All the small details can add up.
 

There's a big fat line between proper engineering and snake oil merchandise.

Well, there's a big fat line between making a scientific/engineering argument and behaving obnoxiously.

 

[MWSVette]

.
A question I might ask since you upgraded slowly is would you notice if you went back to your old setup? Points to ponder.
And that is all should be said. Mocking is just disrespectful of others. That's is the point I was trying to make, so thank you. Now we can all move on. As Jason will probably say, if we want to discuss snake oil, take it to the Sound Science forum.

Didn't mean to hijack the discussion.

 
I still have my first headphone rig.  A Fiio E17 to a Fiio 09k with a pair of HD598.
 
And while it still works and sounds fine it does not come close to my Bimbi to Lyr to HD800 for instance.
 
So yes there is a difference when you upgrade.

 

[MWSVette]

  ...
 
Then I tried Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.  Not because I'd thought of it as exceptionally good, but because I liked the album and listed to it many times.  I was very, very shocked at the difference.
 
...

 
Very well engineered album.  One of my favorites for demoing new equipment...

 

[aamefford]

Very well engineered album.  One of my favorites for demoing new equipment...

I use this album extensively as well. It was recorded at a fairy low gain, so the added benefit of a bit more volume knob travel. I love the album, and have been listening to it for years, so it is very familiar to me.

 

[ToTo Man]

   
Very well engineered album.  One of my favorites for demoing new equipment...

Add "Love Over Gold" and "On Every Street" to that list too!

 

[abm0]

Bluetooth has a degradation in sound quality though doesn't it? That's why it's recommended to use wifi for wireless streaming between gear I thought.

It does, but you can avoid quite a bit of that degradation by choosing sender and receiver devices that both "speak" aptX, which re-encodes the stream at something like 384 kbps and apparently warrants a statement by CSR that it's "CD-like quality".

 

[45longcolt]

A challenge for Jason and Mike: build a power conditioner (regenerator, strip, whatever) at around $500 retail. They will have to move to bigger facilities (and hire more devious accountants.)
While I enjoyed the post about running silver wire to the neighborhood nuke plant, I'm afraid people will get the idea that power and materials don't matter. Which is wrong. As many have proven to themselves just by listening.
I wish it weren't the case. My life would be simpler, my wallet fuller. But these things do make a difference. Perhaps not a huge difference, or not sufficient to matter to you. And sometimes it's hard to say whether there's an improvement. But you won't know until you audition. To simply dismiss the possibility out of hand is, well, intellectually undisciplined.
Hey Jason, any more hints on the new product? C'mon...

 

[rtaylor76]

Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums recorded in all digital. They used a Sony DASH 24-track machine that has some of the worlds best analog to digital converters.

I've heard of some Nashville guys around town that need to do transfers of analog 2" into ProTools use the old obsolete Sony machines just for the A/D conversion.

At any rate, because the Dire Straits album was one of the first DDD multitrack recordings, much care was taken in the production to try to take as much advantage of the dynamic range as possible. It still serves as example of what is possible in all digital recording. It can also reveal how bad your decoders are.

And to think it was multi tracked at only 24/48 at best.