Hi,

I just noticed Bel Canto has started selling direct with a 30 day money back deal. I am not associated, or even own any of their equipment (but the new DAC3 with USB looks interesting...). It seems they still have a dealer network, although not in my city.

Is direct selling a good thing, a bad thing...is it a sign of a company going downhill?? It seems to me that many companies in other industries have pissed off their distributors/dealers, only to fall flat on their face.

Gavin.

Has anyone had a chance to audition the Sophia 2 and compare it with the original Sophia (which I have)? Any observations of audible differences? I probably won't get to make that comparison and "upgrading" to the tune of $4-5,000 without clearcut gains seems costly.

1)I would like some feedback on a couple of issues. I am trying to decide between Dynaudio Audience 72, and the Quad 22L.

Hola,

I really like the thread about what the relative importance of each piece of the audio chain contributes to the over-all sound. It made me want to try and see what people think about in terms of how they ration out their expectations of what a system does or should do - how they would rate the relative importance of performance characteristics.

So how about a thread regarding system balance in terms of aspects of sound, rather than which components are most responsible for that sound?

So first, some words:

Hi,

I think I need some hand holding.

Today, I updated Windows Media Player to 11 Beta and fired up a cd - it sounds alot better than before. Better liquidity and timbre. I'm actually a little impressed.

Then I saw the thread about sound cards.

I checked my computer control panel uunder sound devices, audio. It says I have a SoundMAX Digital Audio whatever. That's the sound card, I take it.

So the question: What am I listening to, Windows Media Player, the SoundMAX thing, or both?