The Watercooler -- Impressions, philosophical discussion and general banter. Index on first page. All welcome.
Jun 19, 2022 at 5:45 PM Post #27,406 of 91,368
Father's day challenge...post a pic of you and your dad or you and your kids...

Here is me and my dad circa 2005.

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Did you piss him off? Why did he bury you in the ground?
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 5:46 PM Post #27,407 of 91,368
Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.

I just finished a major paper that will eventually contribute to my master's degree.

The more time I spend anywhere else the more grateful I am for the mature tone of this place and the respectful manner in which people are able to communicate with one another, even when they disagree. Props to this community.
What was the subject? How to pick the perfect IEM / DAP / cable pairing?
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 5:50 PM Post #27,408 of 91,368
I have been spending time in the HP and HP amp/DAC world. Yesterday I picked up a shielded PWA 1950 to commemorate my re-entry into IEM love! I also have a Noble Kublai Kahn and a Jade coming to take me back over the edge.
I heard the Sultan and Kublai Kahn today. I didn’t really like the Sultan. It had decent bass, but the sound seemed a bit fluffy instead of crisp. The Kublai Kahn is a different story. I liked it. It has a bone conduction driver and a Pietzo driver. Reminded me of the UM house sound. Definitely worth a listen. It really did overlap too much with what I already own. Otherwise I would consider it.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 6:11 PM Post #27,409 of 91,368
If you can, see if you can demo it out of the Woo Audio Wes. This is essentially their WA33 made to be an electrostatic amp. It was one of my stars in NY. Enjoy!
I missed it. It’s hard to hear everything in a given show. Believe it or not, I just bought a Stax headphone today. Not the X9000, but one of their older models to see how I like it. Now I need to buy an electrostatic amp, but I am going to take baby steps until I get sucked into the vortex.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 6:45 PM Post #27,410 of 91,368
I missed it. It’s hard to hear everything in a given show. Believe it or not, I just bought a Stax headphone today. Not the X9000, but one of their older models to see how I like it. Now I need to buy an electrostatic amp, but I am going to take baby steps until I get sucked into the vortex.


I know electrostatics can come off audiophile meme-y, but the SR-X9000's are brilliant. My favorite HP set-up.....sold my Susvara, Abyss, etc. when I got them. I've kept a selection of dynamics to play with my favorite tube amps/rock-metal...and a couple Planars for jazz/mixing it up (really a couple solid-state current-forward amps I didn't want to part with after landing them). But the midrange/treble on the X9000's is such an impressive, unique presentation.

There's a surprisingly decent cut of amp's out there to play around with as well. The only reason I don't talk the Stax up more is the price.....with a decent DAC in the mix it's spendy. Maybe not much of a hurdle for the thread regulars here, but for most mortals pretty thin air. But if it's traversable budget ground.....they are flat-out awesome.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 7:50 PM Post #27,411 of 91,368
No, I didn’t. I didn’t expect much difference.
My guess of your impressions aren’t far off 😁 I’d more readily say to others that First Times can be very satisfying, but I’d not recommend Orph to most, in the context of marginal gains utility context with price vs performance.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 8:07 PM Post #27,412 of 91,368
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You guys are so well organized! Mines are somewhere in that rubble.

Organized Chaos.

Sunday dinner at Garda lake in Toscolano Maderno, funny me and my girlfriend are the only Italian at the restaurant 😂
(Forgot to photograph the wine)

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Looks absolutely delicious.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 8:16 PM Post #27,413 of 91,368
Relaxing day. Enjoying some beverages and IEMs.

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PS: We had a pipe leak. That’s why our mattress is in the livingroom. Sometimes it is nice to be a renter…
 
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Jun 19, 2022 at 8:45 PM Post #27,414 of 91,368
Relaxing day. Enjoying some beverages and IEMs.

6C241040-EB71-4288-BA82-2090C9BEB432.jpeg7AEE506D-A1E0-46AF-B99B-DFDA75B82757.jpeg

PS: We had a pipe leak. That’s why our mattress is in the livingroom. Sometimes it is nice to be a renter…
Love 33 acres!

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I have to work tomorrow so 4 cans tonight.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 9:40 PM Post #27,416 of 91,368
I've been eyeing the campfire cables because of how thin they are. It'd be nice if XINHS off of Aliexpress offered something but everything I have found so far is pretty heavy looking based on cables of theirs that I already own.

Be careful about which CFA cable you get. The one for my Andro 2020, which I think is the smoky litz, became brittle after a year or so. It's inflexible now and resists being bent in any different direction. I think the plastic casing hardened.

I love the the cable that comes with the OG Solaris, though. I believe it's the Super Litz cable (see here: https://campfireaudio.com/shop/solaris/)


I just acquired the Cayin RU6 and I am over the moon. It sounds so good with the Andromeda 2020. It has 1ohm of output impedance.

Trying to find the output impedance of the Sony NW-ZX507 to understand that

Congrats on the RU6. It's a pretty awesome dongle, I preferred it over my Lotoo S1 by a significant margin.

I've no idea about the OI of the ZX507. It's weird, Sony provides all sorts of specifications but not that one. I've not heard that particular DAP but I should think it'd work well. My ZX2 is ideal with the Andro, at least for my tastes.

Father's day challenge...post a pic of you and your dad or you and your kids...
Here's me with my dad many moons ago. He passed away four years ago, sadly.

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I now have less hair than he did, and - for shame - my career as a tractor driver never took off.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 10:07 PM Post #27,417 of 91,368
Be careful about which CFA cable you get. The one for my Andro 2020, which I think is the smoky litz, became brittle after a year or so. It's inflexible now and resists being bent in any different direction. I think the plastic casing hardened.

I love the the cable that comes with the OG Solaris, though. I believe it's the Super Litz cable (see here: https://campfireaudio.com/shop/solaris/)

Thanks for the tip, that was one of the ones I was looking at. When I owned some Campfire Cascades it came with a free cable (SXC8 I think) that was unusable because of the microphonics. The standard cloth one was fine though.

I've started to look at Penon's cables as some of their offerings look pretty light. Even so, I think Campfire takes the cake for lightest cables.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 10:10 PM Post #27,418 of 91,368
Yeah, my cable has stiffened up. It’s still usable. It’s a well documented issue. I hope they have solved it by now.
 
Jun 19, 2022 at 10:21 PM Post #27,419 of 91,368
Jun 19, 2022 at 10:27 PM Post #27,420 of 91,368
I apologize in advance for the size of this post and the tertiary role of headphones. I thought it may contain some lessons that may be of use to the good folks here.
“Always cherish the time you have with your sisters” I told my son as my sister was taking her dying breaths at the intensive care unit. “You never know how much time you have with them.” And then minutes later, the doctors told me her time was nearing its end. My sister’s eyes had almost a stone-like quality in their immobility and lifelessness. Her body was held together by a ventilator and IV antibiotic, vasopressor and fluid drips, her spirit having long escaped. Then the breaths became agonal and forced the moment the tube came out of her throat, eventually becoming fitful and eventually ceasing. The sister I had known and loved for years would would no be longer alive, but then again there would no longer be suffering from the malady of multiple sclerosis and how it riddled her body. There were tendon-shortening contactures from lack of stimulation. Osteoporotic fractures to her spine and legs from years of steroid use from years earlier. Decubitus ulcers and infections from her immobility, the latter occurring with such regularity that it led to a cancer of her bladder. In her last moments, I was able to see her face lighten with a calm sense of peace as she passed away.

The sister in the ICU will not be the one that I remember. I prefer to think of her as the adventurous artist and music lover. My first memories of her were of her showing me how to put the needle of the tone arm on the record for the LP of “Snoopy vs the Red Baron” that I got for my birthday. One day, she got sick and had to come home with an eye patch when she lost vision in her eye temporarily - the telltale optic neuritis that foretells a future diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. When my parents were out, I remember her blasting The Who and Pink Floyd on the hi-fi system. Music as therapy. When life gets unbearable, you can always tune in to whatever makes you happy. It was awesome having a sister who was eleven years older because she had all the knowledge of what was great to listen to in the seventies, arguably the most fertile decade in popular music history. She had eclectic taste from what I remember - joining the hard-rock posters on her bedroom was a cheesy smiling Barry Manilow, the antithesis of cool. But she didn’t care. Never let anyone tell you what you have to like, she told me, just find what you like and be happy.


That happy-go-lucky attitude was a godsend to her as she struggled with her illness over the years. She would host parties for her friends when my parents were out of town. She gutted her way through a few semesters of college. Always managed to hold a job, even as the disease robbed her legs of the ability to move. She had to give up on her dream of being an artist as she could no longer make the requisite fine motor movements. Her body wouldn’t allow for what her mind wanted to do, but it did not disrupt her energy. She was a jovial spirit and wouldn’t let her illness define her. Even she stubbornly tried to keep going out to bars to hang out with her friends every week, clinging to normalcy. Sometimes her body gave way when she came home and could no longer make it up the stairs, and she would call me to pick her up off the ground and get her back to bed as not to disturb my sleeping parents. It was those times that I felt best in retrospect. Me being able to pick her up when she needed me, because of all the times she inspired me to never complain about whatever life throws at you. You have others to pick you up.

So then I decided to use music as therapy. I bought a Red Halo, if for no other reason to have something to look forward to during a dark period. The first album I listened to my Versions of Me, by the Brazilian dance pop star Anitta. It was buoyant, full of life. Probably the most perfect pop album I’ve listened to since 1989 by Taylor Swift. And it arrived at just the right time. I would pop it on most every day during elliptical workouts or hikes in the woods. Last week I was in LA to see my son, and as fortune would have it - Anitta performed at the LA Pride festival. Here was my vantage point:
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I was able to attend my first show since the pandemic, and was treated to one of the best shows of my life. I have seen Prince in person. I have seen Beyoncé in person. She is every bit the entertainer as those legends. Her energy was incredible, and the show was therapeutic in that I was able to feel a bit of weight leave my shoulders.

So value the time you have with your siblings. And keep your mind open for musical journeys because they may lead you to a more peaceful place.
 

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