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ArcAngel66

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  1. Are these available anywhere in the US? Or do you know of a dealer that could ship them to the US? I'm dying to get these, but it seems like March/April before US dealers will have them.
  2. I also recommend the Woo Audio Headphone Stand. While it's sort of pricey, it's really high quality. It's solid metal - heavy. You could probably use it as a weapon if somebody broke into your house =P And if you have any Apple items sitting nearby, it matches them perfectly (it also matches the HD800s, which look classy sitting on the stand). If you're looking for a cheap solution - I used a rocketfish (that Best Buy brand) headphone stand for a while. It was like $10 at Best Buy, hidden near some audio stuff. For $10, it looked a lot more expensive than it really was, and it worked.
  3. I tend to agree with the other responses in this thread. I've learned that in most cases these types of tweaks just wind up being a pain in the butt and a waste of money. Your monitors are designed to run off of unfiltered mains. Unless you have a serious problem with noisy mains, I'd personally just let them be. If you really want power conditioning, I would just recommend a well-made power conditioner from a professional audio company like Furman.
  4. Adam Audio A5X The highs on these are really something you have to hear. The soundstage they can create is insanely accurate as well. I'm really looking forward to pairing them with a sub from Adam Audio at some point.
  5. They're actually the exact same product. The only difference is the included power adapter (which we probably all have a bunch of each lying around by now anyways) Source: HRT's website
  6. I have been using the HRT iStreamer for just about a year now. It's truly been one of the best, if not the best, purchases I've made in a long time. Some thoughts: • It is truly digital out, and allows volume control from your iOS device (does this much like the Dragonfly DAC, where the DAC is what actually lowers the volume) • Works perfectly with the Lightning cable (heck, even a 30pin cable with a lightning adapter, or just any iPod cable). It's a no fuss device. Why it is awesome: • Stick it in your car (I have mine between the center console and passenger seat). • It will work with either a 2.1A or a 1.0A car charger (no fuss device). • Add a 2 Male RCA (the iStreamer's outputs are RCA) to 3.5mm male cable, and into your cars aux. I use a $35 wire world cable and its great. • The upgrade in sound is phenomenal. It's asynchronous, and it will sound like you got a new system in your car - night and day vs using the iPhones headphone jack. • It charges your iOS device as well. Which is awesome. 1/2 the time I just use it to charge my phone/iPad. • The thing is built to last. Like all of HRTs products, it's entirely metal on the outside, and there is zero worry about anything happening to it. I even left it in my car the entire time during the summer in Arizona... A stupid thing to do - but the damn thing worked flawlessly even though it would feel so hot at times I would swear that it would be trashed, nope. For in home use? Never used it in my house. But it's an amazing car docking/DAC/charging solution
  7. Rowmote is probably the most popular solution for that. It works well. (:
  8. The Music Streamer II is certainly a better DAC, but a lot of what you'll notice difference-wise depends on your other hardware/speakers/etc. One option is to use a dithered volume control. When I had a low quality Headphone amp, my HRT Music Streamer II+ caused clipping. I use Amarra, so I just turned down the volume on that a tiny bit to normal 2 volt rms. I'm not 100% sure this limits the output of the streamer, but it seemed to fix the problem.
  9. I've loved Pulse News on my iPhone and iPad ever since it first came out several years ago. They literally just launched a web version of Pulse. It's gorgeous, fast, and if you have an iDevice, they all stay in sync with each other. It's completely free. I'd say it's my most used 3rd party App. Oh, and since it's web-based, that's one less thing you would have running in the background (I just bring up the webpage, and a second or two later all my feeds are loaded). It's pulse(dot)me if I'm allowed to link to it (I'm not affiliated whatsoever, just wanted to let you know how to find it).
  10. Amarra does not re-sample music while it's playing. Period. It will attempt to set your DAC to the proper sample rate for the song, so think of it as more of a "sample-rate switcher" and not upsampling/downsampling. This probably explains your issues, as it seems like Amarra is simply unable to switch your DAC for the 192 track. However, if you open up the "Background Manager" from the "Windows" menu bar at the top, you can convert those files to sample rates that will work well with your DAC. Amarra does this on purpose, by the way. I don't want to put words into Sonic Studio's mouth, but I remember reading a reason for it. For the cache loading issue... how fast is your computer, where is Amarra/iTunes getting it's music from, and how much RAM do you have? Try using playlist mode with like, 10 songs. Set it to preload 1-2gb. You "should" see a popup saying it's preloading, and that should go away within a second or two - after that, play a song... Is there still that 30 second delay?
  11. Click on the App Store icon... as in, to open the application. Don't touch anything yet! Just a sec... Okay, at the main screen now? See on the right-hand side of the application's window, a column with stuff in it? Like... Top Paid Apps, Top Free, etc? At the very top, before anything else in that column, see "Quick Links"? You can't click that, it's just a title - not an App you'd search for (although searching in the "Help" section from the menu bar would work just fine). However, there's about two or three links below that. One of them is "Redeem", click away. Redeem away. Maybe try the help menu or google search away before bashing an entire OS because a link on the main screen of the App was hard to find (I will add that it's the same for the iTunes store as well, so you must hate every Mac OS! )
  12. I use Screens for this purpose. It's expensive, $20 for iOS (universal app thankfully). $30 for the Mac version. But it's been so worth it. It's a gorgeous app. And it's the most intuitive and hassle free VNC app. From the opening screen that shows your available devices, to the support for gestures (that you can completely customize), to the way the pointer works - you don't have a "fake" mouse... it's entirely pinch-to-zoom and tap, but the pinching/zooming is so fluid that it works well. It also has a "shortcuts" keyboard that has bigger buttons for common tasks. You can also download a free utility that takes up barely any resources, and it enables you to connect to your devices from anywhere (all the app does is send your IP to their servers when it changes, so that your connecting device knows where to look). Long story short - I had spent plenty of hours, and money, trying different solutions because its $20 price tag seemed steep. But once I finally got it, I haven't even bothered looked at other apps.
  13. ArcAngel66

    PC or Mac?

    iTunes, as long as you do not turn down the volume (the volume in iTunes itself), is a bit perfect player. It sounds pretty good - most people don't complain about the sound quality. It's generally the rather "bloated" aspect of it that people don't like. But J River will almost certainly sound better than it. While I only used J River for about a month before I got a Mac Mini, it sounded far better than iTunes on my PC. I loved how seamless the interface felt, it was updated all the time with improvements, and there were a few popular audiophile plugins available from 3rd party companies (that sounded really nice too). That said, my Mac Mini sounds far better than my PC. But for me, the best part is the fact that the Mac Mini is small, quiet, and OSX is a lot more hassle free for my music server needs. Plus, for $20, it works seamlessly with the Apple remote, and has made headless operation a beautiful experience. Have you tried Amarra? Try the demo! Pure Music (and the others you mentioned) sounded too digital and too harsh to me - but I love Amarra. It may be that some setting isn't just right with your Mac and your DAC - have you tried playing around with the output and audio midi settings?
  14. Paired up with the HRT iStreamer, my iPhone 4S sounds incredibly good. Granted, the iStreamer is one of the devices that has the ability to access the digital audio files from the iPhone (letting them skip the DAC/amp). It's not strictly a serious music device, no. But if you're after that, I would look for a HiFiMan device or something like that. If Sonic Studio could create a small device (something like a little dongle that doesn't require its own power) that could access the digital files like Algorhythm Solo, HRT iStreamer, etc... and then make an App that could process the digital audio before it went to this small device (or an App that could change the little device's processing settings) - I think it would be possible to achieve a really good music device. I'm thinking something along the lines of the iWow 3D. Does that access the digital files like these other devices? I know it has a DAC built into it, and there is an App that will change its processing settings (it's just rather poor quality, I have one). I would love an Amarra quality dongle like that with its own DAC (that little Dragonfly is a nice DAC the size of a USB stick, I'm sure they could do it) Too bad nobody would be willing to fork over the $400 it would cost, aside from enthusiasts like those on this forum.
  15. I've always had this somewhat silly/paranoid question too. In my case it was transferring songs from a Macbook Pro to a Mac Mini through Airdrop. From what I've read, you shouldn't have a single worry regarding just copying the music over to the new Mac. The only time you have to be careful regarding transferring is when the song is going from the Mac to your DAC - because, in this case, timing is a large factor - something that isn't an issue when just adding music to your computer.
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