salwani

Its nice to see a comment about the Stax speakers. I picked up a pair of ESL-F83x on the cheap last year and have been enjoying them tremendously. Like you guys say, its believable.

Chad You could try an ethernet cable direct between the 2 macs. You may, depending on how old the mini is, need an ethernet cross over cable. Or use a firewire cable and target disk mode on one of the computers to mount the disk for quick transferring. Sunil

Chad Try sharing the MBP's screen, then from that window have the MBP connect to the mini (turn on file sharing on the mini) so that you can pull files off the mini, rather than push them onto the MBP. If that doesn't work and you are having issues with the remote app, restart your router too. The remote app had some issues with connections and a router restart usually helped. If all that fails, i'm guessing something is up with the IP addresses or the DHCP server. Good Luck Sunil

Mass market goods are competing on price where everything is lower...R&D costs, tooling, material and labour costs, marketing costs, manufacturer and dealer margins. And quantities are huge.<br /> <br /> High end stuff is competing on quality/craftsmanship. Usually hand assembled in countries with high labour costs and overheads. The scale of production is incomparable - Its obviously going to cost more and companies can command more. <br /> <br /> Would i be surprised that this DAC's material costs are less than $500.....not really. Add in the R&D costs, tooling, labour and overhead for a niche manufacturer in a developed country. Most importantly, add a nice margin for the dealer. I dont think the company will make an island-in-the-bahamas' worth of cash over the product's life cycle.<br /> <br /> There is value to be found in high end. And you will find price gouging in any industry. And its all relative. To me, the Weiss is expensive, but then my $3000 DAC is $3500 too expensive for others. <br />

A friend of mine just bought for less than $1k a Shanling Music Centre. Looks great, has an ipod dock but is limited to 15w/Ch which could be an issue depending on the speaker's efficiency. Add the devilsound DAC and you still have some cash to look at speakers from PSB/B&W's lower ranges.

and +1 on Roger Waters - Amused to Death. Some of Travis kinda fits the mood too.

First, thanks Barry for the effort. This is one interesting topic. I have 2 points to raise a) Is the recorded output truely from the respective players ? A control here could be in the form of a comparism of an altered file (from within the player via EQ/gain, whatever) compared to an unaltered file. b) Since most report subtle / slight changes in using various players, could it be the (in)sensitivity of the playback equipment in playing just the difference between the 2 players ? But if the numbers are not lying, it would be interesting to see what the conclusion is. They do sound inexplicably different / placebo....whatever : i need to know so i can get the imagery of me in a nut house repeatedly mumbling 'but i can hear differences', out of my head. Sunil

Scot With the maggies, did you consider OTL (output transformerless) amps ? There are a few issues with these, heat being one you cannot get around. And they need 8 ohm speakers. You can circumvent this by using autoformers to make the amp see an 8 ohm load. Or get 2 stereo OTLs and monostrap them to more than double its power and make it play nice with 4 ohm speakers. You can do this with Atma-Spheres and Graafs - not sure of other OTLs. I am currently set up with a 20w stereo Graaf OTL (until i find another to go mono), driving 78db Stax electrostatics - the amp clipping is quite easy to do even in my small room. When in the mood to go louder I switch to a SS 50w class A Forte amp which can get the speakers to clip at which point, its all a bit too loud anyway. But the immediacy and presence of the Graaf/OTL with electrostatics is something else.

Scot Over the weekend i listened to a pair of Audio Note An-E Spe and came away impressed. It was an all audio note system and just drew you into the music. Forget about the claimed 18hz (-6db) which is based on corner placement. But these were very good....worth a listen. Also heard the AG Duos ; again, impressive - had to stop listening - didnt want to spoil my ears ! I also found a circa 1989 pair of Stax (!) ELS-F83X. No bass below 40, pathetic sensitivity (78), cant go loud, not very dynamic....couldn't resist and bought them for how they did everything else.

/me double checks if he is at the right website

I am on a speaker hunt too. Along the way, stuff i've heard (all above my budget) and been impressed by were AvantGarde Uno nano Rockport Mira PMC Eb1i - very nice low end I heard Sonus Fabers a long time ago - they made me sit and listen for quite a while I remember. And they look amazing......unlike Audio Note An-Es which i hope to audition one of these weekends

Santiago I'd be looking first at speaker set up. Audio Physics' web site has quite a lot of detail on speaker set up which you can look up. Also try out either Amarra or Pure Vinyl software - both have demos that you can download to try out. Might help improve the soundstaging (especially Pure Vinyl in my experience) - and both are a big step up from vanillaItunes. And if you really want to spend more money, i'd look at new speakers before anything else. Hope that helps ! Enjoy !

for coming back to it with aplomb

I have no issues jumping around in Itunes with PV - with memory play there is a time lag of a second or few. I usually use the remote app on my Ipod Touch and works fine. I dont see anywhere songs being rendered - except the one currently playing at the bar above itunes which is being done on the fly.

I just downloaded this (PV3 only, not the PV2.3 application suite), and had it running in a few seconds. It doesnt need to import the entire library and you dont need to pause after play. No application focus problems either. Which is better than my first experience wherein in order to get it to play, had to increase volume, hit mute, unmute, increase volume again - and repeat until you get sound.....which seems like a mild inconvenience compared to what is going on with you.