The diary entries of a little girl in her 30s! ~ Part 2

tomscy2000 said:

   
Nope, no idea about them, except that they're quite expensive. There are demos a couple of hours away from where I am right now, but I'm not gonna bother going there to try them out. Too out of the way.
 
Here's another brand you might take an interest to: http://www.livezoner41.com/
I tried their LZ4 demo, pretty nice. Warm, rich, technically proficient. No idea about their other models, though.

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james444 said:

   
Here's what little I know / remember about them:
 
- They have a stellar reputation for build quality and customer service on the German HiFi forum
- Stage 2 can be upgraded to higher models
- Stage 3 is rather flat, Stage 4 is "bass enhanced"
- If you're in Europe, you can order demos from here (price = deposit)
 
They had sparked my interest 2 years ago, but after reading this comparison with the FI-BA-SS and talking to firoze, I decided to take a pass.

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Hum thanks guys for the feedback. I read the Fi-Bass comparison and did not feel encouraged by it but still...need more info.

a_recording said:

   
It was a nice review, but I am surprised that you were that positive. While I never had the DT880 and the AD900X side by side, I think the DT880 is toe to toe with the AD1000X (it's definitely cleaner) and the AD1000X was really as step above the AD900X to my ears in terms of imaging. There is something about the diffuse imaging on the AD900X that really bugged me.
 
Nonetheless it's a good quality bargain. I actually just got a review pair of the AD700X which I wanted to compare to the AD700 since its such a stalwart gaming headphone.

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I tried to be positive assuming I did not Burn the AD900x in [I will be doing an ammendment to my review with my new Audio GD Amp and a burn in in a few weeks] 
 
But the AD 900x has a bigger sound stage [less imaging] but a tighter bass [which was good and bad] I tried to be as positive as I could. It is certianly not as refined or balanced as the DT 880 but it's not a bad amp, and with a tube it should shine [Tubes... I don't like with my DT 880] 
 
in addition, I tried to sell the AD900x and well that seemed WRONG so in stead I'm going to sell my no uneeded oDac and Matrix M Stage, and for any member who buys both, they get the AD900x for free [and ofc The combo price for both source and amp is less than what I paid]
 
I feel that is the best way to handle this headphone, as it cost me nothing. So IF I part with it, it will ONLY be given free WITH the purchase of my amp and dac, I want the next owner of this headphone to hear what I heard! To enjoy it as I did, I'd hate to give it to some new member who will then source it with a crappy celluar or on board audio :/ 
 
that said HE 400 is on it's way, Audio GD 10ES2 is on it's way [my DT 880 is balanced btw] so yay [oh Hm 801 on the way] 

muppetface said:

  Not to be a bummer or anything.

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Total bummer.
 

 Dynamite Headdy was a little puppet dude too, and the stages were setup like the sets of a movie or elaborate puppet show production. I was kind of obsessed with this game for a while, so I think I might give Puppeteer a whirl despite Little Big Planet and that style of artistic presentation profoundly disturbing me for some reason.

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I found Little Big Planet disturbing because the art style was cutesy and yet the underlying gameplay was painful and evil, especially every time you had to do anything with explosives. Also there was some weird stuff going on with sentient machines that creeped me out a little.
 

muppetface said:

  Also, this is kind of overdue, but...
 
Here a list of all the new releases from 2013 I've listened to so far.
 
This is more for my own reference---helping me keep track of things---but I figure some folks might find it useful. 

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Wow, I should mine through this list.
 
How do you decide what to listen to next anyway?
 

mshenay said:

   
I tried to be positive assuming I did not Burn the AD900x in [I will be doing an ammendment to my review with my new Audio GD Amp and a burn in in a few weeks] 
 
But the AD 900x has a bigger sound stage [less imaging] but a tighter bass [which was good and bad] I tried to be as positive as I could. It is certianly not as refined or balanced as the DT 880 but it's not a bad amp, and with a tube it should shine [Tubes... I don't like with my DT 880] 
 
in addition, I tried to sell the AD900x and well that seemed WRONG so in stead I'm going to sell my no uneeded oDac and Matrix M Stage, and for any member who buys both, they get the AD900x for free [and ofc The combo price for both source and amp is less than what I paid]
 
I feel that is the best way to handle this headphone, as it cost me nothing. So IF I part with it, it will ONLY be given free WITH the purchase of my amp and dac, I want the next owner of this headphone to hear what I heard! To enjoy it as I did, I'd hate to give it to some new member who will then source it with a crappy celluar or on board audio :/ 
 
that said HE 400 is on it's way, Audio GD 10ES2 is on it's way [my DT 880 is balanced btw] so yay [oh Hm 801 on the way] 

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Haha... did you have a deadline to do the review? Maybe you should have listened a bit more before writing it in full. As for the headphone maybe you should consider trading it for another review unit to do a review with, rather than just giving it away for free.

a_recording said:

   
Total bummer.
 
 
Wow, I should mine through this list.
 
How do you decide what to listen to next anyway?
 
 
Haha... did you have a deadline to do the review? Maybe you should have listened a bit more before writing it in full. As for the headphone maybe you should consider trading it for another review unit to do a review with, rather than just giving it away for free.

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I had only a day, mentioned that in the anime thread, but I will revist it and revise my reviews here at head fi, in addition I thought of trading it for another headphone to do a review with... but I've already got an HE 400 and ShurEY 840 on the way, NOT to mention I have to attempt to review my 10ES2... which I can totally do! As I will review it directly AGAINST my oDac Matrix M Stage combo so me very busy >.> 
 
and I still want to make video reviews for everything on my blog q.q

magick man said:

About the jellyfish aquarium, I talked with a local professional and I was told there's a right way to do it, and those online kits are not it. He's going to put together something for me that he says is 100% guaranteed, and it'll be self-sustaining (jellyfish, coral, snails, and brine shrimp), but isn't huge, likely ~20 gallons.

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Planning to look like an Evil genius?

@Muppet, I think I might have 30 to 40% of albums in common with you this year and I am often not too far off in opinion...not always of course.

Argh, I've been looking for a good quality, but reasonably priced A-B USB cable. I've managed to find a nice Furutech GT-2 for a good price locally, but it's too long for my purposes! It's 1.8m for around $60, which is an awesome price, but ideally I want the 0.6m version (more portable)... but a new 0.6m GT-2 cable is more than $60, and very, very few people actually buy it at that length. I guess most people with portable USB-powered DACs don't bother getting a nicer cable? The Furutech cable isn't exactly "exotic" --- yes, it uses "a-OCC" but I got it mostly for the nice build quality and the scientifically-sound insulation design and USB spec QC that they undergo. Such a strange conundrum.
 
EDIT: Do you guys think it'll be worthwhile getting the cable and cutting it in half, putting my own terminations on to get two "GT-2" cables? haha... I actually have a friend who makes USB data cables for a living that can probably do a good job of soldering and stuff... however, he told me that a big part of the USB cable building process, and whether the USB cable actually passes the 90 ohm spec and impedance matching at the ends, is the way the insulation and dampener is applied at the terminations. But I assume that if he does it with the test equipment at his company, it won't be too big an issue?

tomscy2000 said:

  Argh, I've been looking for a good quality, but reasonably priced A-B USB cable. I've managed to find a nice Furutech GT-2 for a good price locally, but it's too long for my purposes! It's 1.8m for around $60, which is an awesome price, but ideally I want the 0.6m version (more portable)... but a new 0.6m GT-2 cable is more than $60, and very, very few people actually buy it at that length. I guess most people with portable USB-powered DACs don't bother getting a nicer cable? The Furutech cable isn't exactly "exotic" --- yes, it uses "a-OCC" but I got it mostly for the nice build quality and the scientifically-sound insulation design and USB spec QC that they undergo. Such a strange conundrum.
 
EDIT: Do you guys think it'll be worthwhile getting the cable and cutting it in half, putting my own terminations on to get two "GT-2" cables? haha... I actually have a friend who makes USB data cables for a living that can probably do a good job of soldering and stuff... however, he told me that a big part of the USB cable building process, and whether the USB cable actually passes the 90 ohm spec and impedance matching at the ends, is the way the insulation and dampener is applied at the terminations. But I assume that if he does it with the test equipment at his company, it won't be too big an issue?

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MONO PRICE, cheap as dirt built like an oak tree GO NOW

I know about Monoprice; they make very good cables for the price.
Two things: (1) they don't ship to where I live (I have an address in the US, but I won't be back for another 6 months), and (2) even if they did, the shipping would cost way more than the cost of the cable, and I have a rule that shipping should never cost more than the cost of an item, or else it's not worth buying. I'd rather run to my nearest digital plaza, where there are a lot of USB cables, pick out a few hundred, and run USB-spec tests on them.
 
Also, I don't want to get into a discussion on the worth of "audiophile USB cables" here, frankly it doesn't matter for me; anyway, I know it's a touchy subject.
What I do insist on, however, is a nice-looking cable. That's why I was looking at the GT-2.

tomscy2000 said:

  I know about Monoprice; they make very good cables for the price.
Two things: (1) they don't ship to where I live (I have an address in the US, but I won't be back for another 6 months), and (2) even if they did, the shipping would cost way more than the cost of the cable, and I have a rule that shipping should never cost more than the cost of an item, or else it's not worth buying. I'd rather run to my nearest digital plaza, where there are a lot of USB cables, pick out a few hundred, and run USB-spec tests on them.

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ahh ur not in the US... well I see ur point there 

So far I'm really liking the S-EM6. It has a somewhat laid back character, not unlike FitEar's house sound, but with a thinner type of presentation. The midrange in particular is really intoxicating so far. Bass lacks the 1Plus2's sense of oomph, but I'm finding it's tighter, faster, and more articulate than on the TG!334. Treble is smooth and less emphasized than on the 1Plus2 which makes for a less fatiguing type of presentation, but it comes at the expense of some of the 1Plus2's sparkle and more overt sense of detail. Spatially, I'm finding the TG!334 to be wider (left to right) but also flatter. The S-EM6 has more of a sense of depth by comparison, though the 1Plus2 still has the deepest "out-of-head" type of presentation. The S-EM6 does a good job avoiding a "blob effect" that comes from delineating everything too much into left and right channels; the instrumental space is nice and continuous.
 
This kind of signature is appealing to me. It's relaxed without putting too much syrup on my sonic pancakes. It's a clean and accurate sound, but I never feel as though I'm going to cut myself on its edges.
 
Oh yeah, and build quality seems fine so far. Pretty much average as far as CIEMs and universal versions of CIEMs go. Not up to FitEar level, but better than JHA.

I think I've asked this before, but are there any particular blogs or sites you go to for music news, MF?  I think I've only been aware of 1/3 of the albums you have listed up there.  I used to rely on Dusted Magazine and this one forum I go to, but the forum's been a bit dry lately and I swear sometimes Dusted only cares about beep boop ambient music and compilations of South American dance music from the 50's and 60's.  Can't say I care much for either of those things. 

muppetface said:

So far my biggest beef with the game is the way the missions feel. It seems like the game has a very, very specific way it wants you to go about doing the missions themselves (as opposed to the more open ended nature of the overall world), and going through them it feels like a process of trial and error. Hey, look, maybe I'll improvise and... no. Wrong. Try again. Okay, but whoops, I accidentally went this way. Maybe I'll recover and come around this way and... no. Wrong. Try again. It's especially tedious to do certain things just so at times because the controls are a little clunky to me. I've read the physics are greatly improved over the 4th game, so I'd hate to imagine what that felt like. On top of that the game feels overly complex at times, and the controls aren't exactly intuitive, especially the "press down to switch between characters." Or maybe I'm just not used to it yet. Overall though, it kind of coincides with the missions themselves which just don't feel that intuitive to me. There's a definite flow to them, but it's like I can't really keep up with that flow myself. To make this worse, the game has no mission checkpoints that I'm aware of, so I find myself starting over from the very beginning each time. Which is getting old fast.

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The controls I can definitely confirm as feeling better. Seems like they've taken what they've applied in Red Dead and carried that over to V, as the controls and shooting mechanics feel quite similar to that game, which is solid. Vehicles also feel a lot tighter to me. It's not that arcade-y, magnetically on rails **** like you'd find in Saints Row, and it's not aggravatingly loose as IV, so I'm happy there. I was quite happy with those changes, especially given how often you've gotta give chase or lose cops/crooks. Only issue I had was with the tow truck mission which took a bit of "finessing"

And I think there's a tutorial mode you can activate in the pause menu if you're struggling with controls. The game doesn't do the best job of acclimating you to how the game works for sure. As for the missions themselves, they're pretty straight-forward so far for me (I just met up with Lester and foiled a certain keynote event) so I'm curious how far in you are that you're finding things obtuse. Haven't had to restart anything so far aside from the Father/Son mission where you've gotta guide your car to a certain spot to save a certain somebody.

I dunno, this is the one of the more compelling GTA releases I've played so far. I typically end up more captivated by the virtual playground that Rockstar builds than the characters/plot, so it leads to a lot of ****** around on my behalf, and not a whole lot of playing. The story and location feels more lighthearted than the grimdark ordeal of GTA IV. So far, I like Franklin, I think Michael's alright and I'm lookin forward to that nutjob Trevor.

driver 8 said:

  I think I've asked this before, but are there any particular blogs or sites you go to for music news, MF?  I think I've only been aware of 1/3 of the albums you have listed up there.  I used to rely on Dusted Magazine and this one forum I go to, but the forum's been a bit dry lately and I swear sometimes Dusted only cares about beep boop ambient music and compilations of South American dance music from the 50's and 60's.  Can't say I care much for either of those things. 

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I'd say the vast majority of artists on that list are those I already knew about, and really only a handful are new discoveries. Keeping up with artists I'm already familiar with isn't something I'm too on top of, but I'll come across a listing on Amazon and find out they've got new stuff coming out soon, and usually similar artists get clustered together, so when you see artist X has something coming out it usually also shows related artist Y has something too and so on and so forth. It's also easier to keep up with certain record labels; I've got a few favorites for each genre, and every now and then I'll drop by and see what their release schedule looks like. Speaking of which I need to check out Kompakt and Echocord sometime soon.
 
Truth be told, there aren't many music news sites---if any---I frequent anymore. Most of the news I get is from friends or from people who run record stores, both online and B&M. This is primarily how I'll discover new artists, talking with people who are into music and hearing 'bout what they've discovered lately. Going back to the point about associations, often times it'll be a case of "if you like this dude, then you should check out this other dude." Discovering one artist is always like discovering multiple artists, because you can always branch off and keep branching off until you've got like 100 new artists just from connecting the dots. Degrees of separation. There's also this type of exploratory mindset amongst friends. Back when I was on LJ (like circa 2001-2006), I was part of various communities and had LJ buddies who sort of fetishized discovering new music.
 
Then there's the "pick something at random" method which is kind of fun in its own way, but is better suited to old record stores where you can browse physical media.

muppetface said:

 
Then there's the "pick something at random" method which is kind of fun in its own way, but is better suited to old record stores where you can browse physical media.

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The pick at random method is a favorite of mine. If I'm looking to buy a cd at my record store but I don't know what to buy, I'll either pick a release from an artist I'm familiar with that I don't already own, or I'll pick something I've never heard of. Usually I'll pick it if the album art looks interesting or strange to me. Or if the artist/group has a name that piques my interest.