When
I reached Duesseldorf I was rather exhausted. The night before
I sat over the very first sample of a new entry level headphone
amp and got it running around 2:30 a.m. I had aimed to take more
material with me. I bought some additional CDs before I went to
the meet.
All in all I ran only two setups: One Black
Cube Linear with analog only RCA connectors fed by a heavily
modified 18kg Sony CDP 557 ES and a second setup consisting of
an IBM Thinkpad X40 connected to a Black
Cube Linear USB.
I
was very happy with the performance of both setups. However during
the meet I found myself turning the volume to regions where I
normally fear for my hearing. Knowing the exact gain of the headphone
amps I come to the conclusion that I partly listened to levels
20dB higher than usual I have not been the only who did that.
The surrounding noise level was rather high.
On
the left you see the X40 in its docking station. I will probably
get me a second Thinkpad just to have a digital transport ready
for show demonstrations. On the right side the rear view of the
Black Cube Linear USB
is pictured. When a USB audio stream is present the green LED
indicated this. The unit then priorizes the USB audio data stream.
When there's no USB audio signal present at the USB input then
the analog input is automatically activated
no matter if the computer is switched on or not. The material
on the computer was either CD or uncompressed *.wav
I
got much interest on my products as well as the other exhibitors.
The day went by far to soon. I would have liked to get into some
more discussions with fellow headphone listeners.
