"In a lucid dream, you have a sharper sense of colour and lucidity than with your eyes open. I'm interested in the point where imaginative seeing and outside seeing meet, where it becomes difficult to differentiate between seeing from the inside and seeing from the outside."


Too lazy to add my own comments. Google is your friend. See more here as well. Also, I got the Dark Was the Night compilation today. Definitely not just another charity collection of outtakes and extras, even if it's all abit too polite and well, Obama-esque. No updates for a long time! Too bad. Well, not many ppl follow this blog anyway haha.

It was an accident. I haven't been feeling too great, but I'm not emo. Haha I even had time to think "oh sh-" when I saw the x-acto run up the surface of the ruler. I would have liked to take pics cos it's not everyday you get to see this much blood, but I was abit busy getting to the kitchen b4 I bled all over my bedsheets. Used a whole ice cube while searching for a suitable band-aid lol. Quite interesting actually, I've never had such a deep cut on my fingers before; and seeing ur hands covered w blood is quite freaky compared to say a leg wound. Oh well, it's just a cut. I'll be more worried about an infection. Remember kids it's a bad idea to rush when sharp objects are involved. That includes words.

Picked up the Essence STX after a 6-week long wait. Really handsome packaging, quite refreshing compared to the new-fangled techy designs. Great set of accessories as well.



Special mention must surely go to the lolreport. Allow me to quote, ad verbatim, from its intro:

"4000 years ago, our ancestors were also searching for instruments that play the heavenly music, not just to pay homage to the gods, but also to represent the harmony between man and nature. Throughout the time, they crystallized their knowledge of the materials and the spiritual pursuit into that piece of the Chime of Tiger.
Like our ancestors, the Xonar team also searched for only the best components and used only the finest designs in order to reproduce that purest essence of sound. As the Chime of Tiger totem gold-plated on our EMI shield, Xonar Essence STX was born with the mixture of ancient but never changed spirit and nowadays cutting-edge technologies."
I challenge any marketing department to beat that! There's more but I really can't bear to read on. To be fair, some of the Essence's specs (particularly the Burr-Brown PCM 1792A DAC) are truly top-notch; and the actual contents of the report are impressive, although one questions the need to emphasize to such an extent just how good the card scores on frequency response graphs.


Looking good. Those caps are especially eye-catching, even if they ain't no Blackgates. Note the legendary Chime of Tiger lol. My PC audio haz teh mojo naowz.

It's been almost 2 years since I opened my PC tower casing, sure brought back some memories lol.


I ain't winning any awards for cable-management. And nope I didn't clean the fans while I was at it.


From top to bottom: 磬 (rawr); my beloved and very pretty 6600gt which has survived an OC'd existence far longer than I thought possible; fail Creative X-fi xtrememusic. Guess it didn't appreciate being in the way of all that hot air from the fan and heatsink.


This is simply smart yet glaringly obvious design. Why can't every soundcard manufacturer label the connections vertically instead of horizontally and having them obscured by the casing?

So was the Essence worth the wait; and did it live up to the hype? Well, the ESW10 likes it quite alot. The DAC is incredible, which unfortunately does make sub-192kbps mp3 somewhat irritating to listen to. Sound is so much cleaner...I thought the D3 Python was clean, but it really takes a top-tier DAC to show the disparity between clean and sparkling clean (I'll stop short of flawless for fear of hyperbole). Consequently, little details are easier to pick out, and imaging is better resolved. Dynamic range comes through alot better; and once again one laments the "loudness war" and how so many recordings are mastered "hot" and over-compressed these days.
The Essence's headamp is abit on the warm side, and sure draws out a fair more bass slam. It seems to enhance the ESW10's already-holographic soundstage and imaging, adding a better-defined top-to-bottom depth. I'm not sure about some of the comparisons with the likes of the Gilmore Lite... I've never really heard a high-end desktop amp. I would have liked abit more micro detail in shoegaze and ambient tracks, and maybe a greater spaciousness to the separation, but that's probably nit-picking.
My real complaint is directed at the pretty crap software and drivers. Most games don't even recognize Asus' DSP effects, and they're not really up to the mark in the 1st place. Oh well, most games have crap sound effects anyway.

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so goes the backing track of all the sighs we ever sighed