gldadis

The room is first, then the speakers. Consider parametric equalization in the digital domain before spending a lot on speakers.

You'll have to live with the Quartets for a while to start to grasp them, but for me the Guarneri really make the best, most musical & cogent, case.

Hsu HB1 Mk II - simply amazing, and they work fine close to walls. Easily driven by receivers or integrateds. I tried them and am enjoying a broad and deep soundstage that's very true to the real thing.

Here's hoping they get the pitch right on Das Rheingold. The current CDs run a little sharp for Rheingold only. It's a magnificent set, though.

Similar experience here, but much more than a few seconds truncated. As much as 88% of the FLAC file not received. Sadly, 2 emails to Passionato support have gone unanswered. What's going on over there? It has been a really excellent service until recently. Details in table pasted below (I hope it makes it through):

Anyone else experiencing issues saving playlists with the recent build of AyreWave? While on an earlier build I was able to save playlists to both internal and external drives, recently, when attempting to save a playlist, even a short one, AyreWave thinks about it for about 3 seconds and then the spinning beach ball of death appears, never to go away, mandating a force quit. I wish I could be more specific about when this started to happen, but unfortunately I can't. My current build is 1.0b (3) which I downloaded from sbooth.org. I have sent the last couple of hangs to Apple, hoping that they would find their way to sbooth. AyreWave an outstanding player, superior even to PM in its timbral accuracy and in its ability to present the musical fabric, depth, and texture truthfully and without desiccation. It's a ton of fun to listen to for extended periods of time. Thanks much! BTW: iMac Core2Duo 2.16 GHz, 3gb RAM, OS X 10.6.5 with the latest updates as provided by Apple.

Count another customer extremely disappointed in HDTracks. After several successful downloads over the past few months, their download service apparently has once again lurched into uselessness. So, after repeated tries, and strictly pro forma responses to inquiries, I've asked for a refund. Other services (e.g., Hyperion, Passionato, Linn) continue to work well. Too bad. Hope they fix their technologies soon.