[RCBinTN]

  Remember when your cassette player would "eat" your cassette. You prayed you could save it. You'd pull it out and it was all wrinkled and unwound in the player. Grab a pencil and start winding it back up. 
 
I say to each their own when it comes to analog vs digital. Personally I use both, often. BUT! I won't ever go back to cassettes for analog. 

 
Yes, I remember that very clearly.  And only the favorite tapes were eaten...the tape player was possessed!!

 

[Armaegis]

"Back in my day" when I was like 8 it took 30 3.5 inch floppies to load cad on a windows 3.1 machine.

I don't even have a single optical drive in the house, not even blueray, let alone a tape player. The girlfriend has one of those ridiculous "record players" though.

They seem to be popular with hipsters and etsy salespeople. I saw hand made record warmers on there once, that's always a good idea.

 
I think I might still have a copy of MS-DOS (6.something?) in the packaging somewhere. Back when you could purchase an OS and it came with a paper manual...

 

[tonykaz]

The Brawl at Big Sound,
 
Phew, it got kinda wild, hasn't quite settled down yet.  It was those guys showing up, from the place that can't be mentioned.
One guy hid behind a pair of shoes. Strange, very strange.  
  And then out of nowhere the punches started in the comments, it escalated. Accusations, back and forth, black eyes aplenty. 
 
I suppose the DAC issue was at the center of it all or at least the catalyst, even I took a punch and was tossed overboard. ( by Tyll himself ) 
 
The whole thing was rather silly because the whole debate was about subjectives. 
 
The only possible "Objective" could've come from Bob Katz as only he had a "Known Standard", which he offered.  
 
In every industry or occupation there exists an established set of Standards.  We base our performance on these Metrics. Sometimes we call these : Traceable Calibration Standards.   
 
Anyway, Big Sound 2015 summarizes with Schiit Yggy being as good or better than any DAC in existence and Sennheiser HD800 consistently in the top 5 headphones which were the HD800,He1000,STAX 009,007, Audeze 3  
 
 Take-away points : Schiit is in every headphone electronics discussion & Sennheiser is a consistent friend of headphones.  
 
My congratulations to the Schiit Team, you've made it thru the worst 5 economic years since the Great Depression. ( great value as Stoddard said to Tyll )
 
Tony in Michigan 

 

[Baldr]

Elsewhere posted but very germain:
 
Back in the early 1970s, before I founded Theta Electronics, the tube audio products company, I had a busy part time biz rebuilding Dynaco Tube Amplifiers. At that time I had converted to the tube based practice for my own system, convinced that tubes sounded better than the solid state gear of that era. In my ramblings, I met John Koval, a man who had designed a modification for the old Qual ESL loudspeakers which made them sound much better. “The mod gets rid of a 5 db bump in the 200-400 Hz region which makes them much flatter” he explained. I told him that I was enchanted with the sound of tube amplifiers and preamplifiers. He explained that as long as the frequency response was the same and the levels were precisely matched, there was no way anyone could tell any amps/preamps apart in blind A/B tests. He had built a custom box that matched levels and randomized any two amplifiers or preamplifiers with a pushbutton to switch between them. Bullschiit, I thought, what about the solid state A/B box and its sonic signature.
 
Intrigued, I built a similar box with passive relays and a passive attenuator. Damn, if he wasn't right. It is really difficult to tell differences in an instantaneous blind A/B test between tube gear that I built versus some commercial gear that I was not particularly fond of. I used to bet John beers that I could tell the difference. Usually, I won at 7 out of 10 picks or so – the best I ever did was 9 out of ten. But it was really hard.
 
This whole deal made me wonder if I was crazy hearing differences between amps. If what John said was true, and many others have said in the passing 40 years or so, there is no point for an audio hobby involving anything other than transducers. What?
 
So I tried something new – I still did the A/B tests, matched levels, but allowed long-term listening to each; at least an hour or two with known recordings. Guess what! Suddenly I knew which was what. I tried it out on John B and Mike and Dave and all my other audio buddies. They called it too – tubes vs a bad solid state preamp. Every friggin' time. My enthusiasm had returned. This taught me that the human ear is an integral, NOT differential device.
 
So much for the blind A/B instantaneous naysayers. All that matters is frequency response, they say. People can't hear anything much above 20KHz in their prime, less later. The ear has a short memory, it is all bias, blah, blah. They should take up a different hobby, say stamp collecting.
 
Thanks to Dr. Heil, the inventor of the Heil AMT speaker who shared this experiment with me over 40 years ago, Consider this: I am 67 years old – my high end extends to just under 15KHz (not bad for and old fart). I can play back two pulses 200 microseconds in length separated by 20 microseconds and clearly hear two pulses. Not unusual until one considers that 20 microseconds corresponds to a square wave of 50KHz. And then, there is the time domain – home of spatial cues which audio measurement traditionalists ignore. I believe that in the quest for the best sound, an open mind is the most important asset. I will even listen to cables, even though I believe in my heart that all technology about cables is well known. Who knows, even an old fart like me could be surprised.
 
Until then, yet another retelling of my old John Koval saga is 40 year old news to me.

 

[Argo Duck]

Probably one of the truest things stated in a few words I've read in a long time.

Along with lots of other great stuff. Like audio memory. Seems highly relevant that audio memory is only a few seconds long - until we remember it's only part of the brain's total memory system.

Elsewhere posted but very germain:

[snip]
This taught me that the human ear is an integral, NOT differential device.

 

[tonykaz]

to : Mr.Baldr,

Just under 15k, phew, that's superb for anyone much less a 1948 Vintage. 
 
You've had quite a career. I must say that you feel like a real person from your writings.  You're Yggy will probably be the "Gold" Standard for the next years, I hope the Spotlight is kind to you.  
 
I'm outa here now, I've completed my explorations of internet Business, I'm going on "Leave" from GM to help Bernie win in 2016.  If still breathing, after all that excitement, I'm heading to Florida for the Ice months and Traverse City for Warm months.
 
Thank you for the Asgard2 000644 ( which I paid for! )
 
I wish you well,
 
Tony in MIchigan

 

[chipwelder]

  So I tried something new – I still did the A/B tests, matched levels, but allowed long-term listening to each; at least an hour or two with known recordings. Guess what! Suddenly I knew which was what. I tried it out on John B and Mike and Dave and all my other audio buddies. They called it too – tubes vs a bad solid state preamp. Every friggin' time. My enthusiasm had returned. This taught me that the human ear is an integral, NOT differential device.
 
.

This is important... is it because the performance pressure goes away, i firmly believe the mind listens differently in different set-ups...

 

[GearMe]

I believe that in the quest for the best sound (anything really), an open mind is the most important asset. I will even listen to (insert here)...Who knows, even an old fart like me could be surprised.

+1...excuse the paraphrasing but this precept is so fundamentally important to leading a rich and well balanced life

Without an open mind, we can miss out / overlook / etc. so many experiences and opportunities!

 

[rkrug20]

I took a Mjolnir2 with Telefunken tubes (http://www.upscaleaudio.com/telefunken-e88cc-6922/) to the Minnesota Audio Society last night where they previewed the AVA ABX Comparator Switchbox (http://www.avahifi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=271&Itemid=238) and it was very interesting. 
 
While matching levels was done by ear semi-quickly, once pre-amps warmed up, good designs sounded similar. That extended to amps too. There was a swap out of the AVA 250 solid state amp with an ICE homebrew and the home-brew sounded very very similar to their 1 kVA mono blocks.

 

[Hardwired]

Originally Posted by Baldr 
 
So I tried something new – I still did the A/B tests, matched levels, but allowed long-term listening to each; at least an hour or two with known recordings. Guess what! Suddenly I knew which was what. I tried it out on John B and Mike and Dave and all my other audio buddies. They called it too – tubes vs a bad solid state preamp. Every friggin' time. My enthusiasm had returned. This taught me that the human ear is an integral, NOT differential device.

 
Outstanding to hear this. This is how I listen to different gear, even to a different set of tubes in the same gear. I don't form an opinion for at least 30 minutes, once my brain has learned to hear the differences in the new stuff. Then switch back and give it 30 minutes to an hour and so on. Sometimes I'll listen to stuff for an entire evening and then switch out the next night. By the end of the evening I realize where the differences lie, if there are any. Once I forgot to change out the tubes and was amazed that 2 different pairs sounded almost exactly the same. Then I discovered the problem and laughed at myself for the almost exactly.
 
And I'm certain I don't hear anything much over 12K (at age 55) so 15K at Methuselah's age is very impressive. 

 

 

[jsiegel14072]

  to : Mr.Baldr,

Just under 15k, phew, that's superb for anyone much less a 1948 Vintage. 
 
You've had quite a career. I must say that you feel like a real person from your writings.  You're Yggy will probably be the "Gold" Standard for the next years, I hope the Spotlight is kind to you.  
 
I'm outa here now, I've completed my explorations of internet Business, I'm going on "Leave" from GM to help Bernie win in 2016.  If still breathing, after all that excitement, I'm heading to Florida for the Ice months and Traverse City for Warm months.
 
Thank you for the Asgard2 000644 ( which I paid for! )
 
I wish you well,
 
Tony in MIchigan

Happy Travels!
The Florida for the ice months sounds like a good plan, Mr. Gore says Global warming has been delayed for MI and NY

 

[Thad-E-Ginathom]

So much for the blind A/B instantaneous naysayers. All that matters is frequency response, they say. People can't hear anything much above 20KHz in their prime, less later. The ear has a short memory, it is all bias, blah, blah. They should take up a different hobby, say stamp collecting.

 
Instantaneous? One of us is misunderstanding here. It isn't speed dating: there is no requirement to listen only to short passages between switching. They can be  a second, a minute or a week or... whatever.
 
Apparently, the alleged naysayers are also known to sometimes say yay.
 
 

 

[kstuart]

  This whole deal made me wonder if I was crazy hearing differences between amps. If what John said was true, and many others have said in the passing 40 years or so, there is no point for an audio hobby involving anything other than transducers. What?

This reminds me of the Bob Carver saga - "Carver caused a stir in the industry in the mid-1980s when he challenged two high-end audio magazines to give him any audio amplifier at any price, and he’d duplicate its sound in one of his lower cost (and usually much more powerful) designs."  see:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Carver#Amplifier_modeling
 
 
 

 

[Jones Bob]

That's where he got the name Sideshow Bob.

 

[Ableza]

As I have said hundreds of times on this and other forums, the most important component in any audio system lies between the listener's ears.  It is all about perception.