u/BiyaadiSupremacy

I have one in my car (2025 Fangchengbao Bao-8 flagship) but I have yet to use it lol

Does anyone have one and care to share their experience?

PS: In China

I'm a foreigner living in China in Zhejiang province, close to Hangzhou

I regularly travel/drive around the Yangtze Delta (Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, multiple rural towns/cities, etc). I drive about 55-60 km daily for my commute to work in a rural region.

Generally speaking, I love driving around China. There are some gorgeous roads and scenery across Zhejiang/Jiangsu. And I’m sure there are many more across this vast country that I look forward to exploring.

However, one of the most frustrating things about driving in China is impatient drivers. Particularly around rural/mountainous dual- or single-lane roads.

I’m not even a slow driver, yet there’s always that moron in your rear-view mirror constantly honking and flashing his (usually always a male) headlights, urging you to go much faster. It can be really distracting. Particularly around tight rural roads, where you have a random truck, electric trike, or wildlife spawning out of nowhere. You have to be extra careful on these roads. So it's quite dangerous to have some moron constantly distracting you from behind by taking your attention off the road.

I’ve also experienced this around tight & twisty ramps of underground car parks, which is just utterly moronic. Yesterday I was entering the underground mall in Huzhou. I have a very large and tall car, so I have to be a little cautious around some of these older underground parking lots with tight spaces. But I don't even drive that slow.

Another, slightly less common form of irritation is people’s outright refusal to give way or yield around urban traffic. For example, there’s a minor car crash in front of you, and you’re forced to merge into another lane. And NO one lets you in.

How do you deal with these people?

Always wanted to try a tube amp, so I went and bought a Cayin Ha6a mk2 + a cheeky Fiio Warmer R2R DAC.

I normally use an SMSL D400 Pro DAC + a Cayin IHA-8 Class-A solid-state amp on my PC rig. But this will be my standalone system to just kick back and listen to music in once my shelf + special couch arrives

Initial impressions: Spectacular build quality. It's a heavy piece of kit that feels extreamly substantial in the hand. It's a piece of engineering jewellery.

I've only tried them on the XK-Audio Cadence, which is a 300 ohm 70mm dynamic driver (carbon composite) open-back headphone. I'll try them on the Stellia, iSvarna, HD800S, and a few other stuff i have.

Normally I'm not the one who could easily tell apart source chains. I struggle to spot any difference between an R2R or a Delta Sigma DAC over long listening periods. Not confident if I could tell them apart on A/B testing either. However, in this case, going from the solid-state IHA-8 + delta Sigma DAC combination to an R2R + tubes completely transforms these headphones. I loved the Cadence on the solid-state, but it had a slight lean, analytical hi-fi-like sound. But on the Ha6a Mk2, It's much harder-hitting, especially in the bass, and warmer. While still retaining the excellent resolution and detail.

They're also extreamly powerful. Even on low impedance setting (it doesn't have a gain selector), on LL mode, the volume knob is only a slight smidge over its lowest (mute) setting. They honestly feel more powerful than the solid-state IHA-8, which has over twice the rated power output.

https://preview.redd.it/0rz0brlu4yhh1.png?width=711&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa8663541eec027fc806e455a7fe8d3e12df5a25

https://preview.redd.it/7704645v4yhh1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea9f5ab0e37dfa142af0ed2df8fb68613621fc4d

https://preview.redd.it/a1pfk2wv4yhh1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e807454cdbe23cebea6eedf63e0db53842a5da2

We get a lot of posts about the latest in EV news. But can we step back a bit into EV nostalgia just for fun? So we can appreciate just how far this industry has come over the last 25 or 30 years?

Feel free to post your own nostalgia articles

PS: I had a bunch of Top Gear and Car magazines from the UK that i used to read as a teenager growing up in the UK. I'll see if I can find them. I remember an article (from about 2002) in a car magazine about the new GM Hy-wire. Which was probably my earliest memory of being excited about a new energy vehicle!

Feel free to post your own!

https://preview.redd.it/q3y63iy56jgh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=691f9e9f5a0dba94f81c6c075b3da7e9096932a7

https://preview.redd.it/qpd2dzj66jgh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=1bbcfea1e7c2c93df4e50c85d03d14820201768a

https://preview.redd.it/84qiyf176jgh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=4a5be2f260bb97a590fbe48487f165294d703f27

https://preview.redd.it/fjf0h5i76jgh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=af166e0ec613d2d8715f5cd0db78a690eb1b3b13

I used to read Top Gear magazines as a teenager from the early to late 2000s. As well as, of course, watching the shows on BBC 2 on a Sunday night. There was nothing really like it at the time anywhere.

This page in particular was perhaps the most memorable of that period. Seeing 1000bhp and cars in the same sentence seemed surreal and implausible.

The main reason why this magazine evokes such a strong sense of nostalgia in me is how much the world, as well as my own life, has changed since I was a 14-year-old flicking through these magazines in my bedroom going "whooooaaa". Our family had a 1985 70bhp corolla bc that's all my dad could afford at the time. And the thought of owning a car with even a fraction of the Veyron’s specifications in any parameters seemed like a distant, probably unrealistic pipe dream.

20 years later, you could find fairly run-of-the-mill, boring family cars with over 1000bhp for not a lot of money in a part of the world I currently find myself in. And I can afford one as a salaryman lol

https://preview.redd.it/swpf6wx30jgh1.png?width=1382&format=png&auto=webp&s=929a32e949fbd10f3fdaa6e20d3ceb7022bc58ed