I'm a Murakami fan too but I've heard from several sources that the English editions/translations of his books really don't do them justice.  Any native Japanese readers who can confirm or deny this?

With all due respect this is a question you should be asking your physician or audiologist NOT a bunch of strangers with more opinions than expertise.  Good luck but get informed, professional advice.   

Aside from the people who are perfectly happy with MP3 and low-to-mid end ear buds/IEMs/headphones and never expect to have a more resolving system I can't see why anyone would pick lossy compression for permanent storage.  Given how cheap disk space is these days it strikes me as a fool's...

With vinyl sources low bass has to be mono or it could throw the stylus out of the groove.  Digital sources offer the potential to go lower without summed bass but the decision to have mono low bass may be made for other reasons.  I don't entirely agree with the conclusions of this paper based...

In terms of compensating for the room the more subwoofers the better (see Duke LeJeune's/AudioKinesis swarm subwoofers) provided that they are carefully placed.  As far as the localization issue goes that should not be a problem if the subwoofers are crossed over low enough.  The x-over...

There is a very wide range in the resolving power of different systems and I would argue that there also are significant differences in auditory acuity and processing.  I believe that the differences between 320kbit/s lossy MP3 and good 44.1/16 redbook reproduction (or lossless copies) are...

Do you have a budget in mind?  ATC, PMC, Klein + Hummel, Event, Dynaudio, and Adam all make good powered monitors.  

Quote: I think that captures what I hear in the Grado wood body voicing although I've only spent time with the higher output Reference series and not the low output Statement series.  The voicing definitely tilts toward warm rather than cool. The knocks on the Grados are that they don't...

My take is that if you read that is a very good thing, regardless of what you read or whether you read old school bound paper books or ebooks.  I think we are in some danger of becoming a post-literate society.    

Quote: I don't know what to hope for. I don't want either LPs or CDs (and by that I mean pressed CDs not CD-R on demand) to go away in the near term.  I also don't think the current economic model is working very well for either the musicians or the audience.  The old model was that...

Some artists I like that I think haven't been mentioned yet: Ken Vandermark, especially his School Days and Atomic/School Days projects although the Vandermark 5 and DKV bands are also worth hearing Atomic, young Scandinavians who sound nothing like the ECM Scandinavian musicians Daniel...

Monster is an extremely nasty company but even so faking that they broke is completely unethical.  Sorry, but you can't put up a post of this nature and use "...don't judge me please" as a get out of jail free card.

Kind of a broad subject.  My personal reading tastes are all over the map, ranging from mysteries, sci-fi and fantasy to "serious" fiction like Henry James, Ford Maddox Ford, Joseph Conrad, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and Cormac McCarthy.  I also read quite a bit of non-fiction, mostly...

Quote:     Quote: The lousy vinyl predated the CD era.  It was related to the oil crises of the 1970s.  IME it was quite variable by label.  WEA and A&M pressings tended to be reasonably reliably good while many of the other major labels seemed to have noisy pressings more often...

I'm going to play the old geezer card here as I'm old enough to have been buying recorded music at the dawn of the CD era.  I also worked in both record stores and high end audio shops.   Despite the "Perfect Sound Forever" marketing trumpets both the early CDs and early CD players did not...