The diary entries of a little girl who is now 30! ~ Part 2 - Page 233

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardgedee 


How many rooms will your next house have?
I hate correcting a Canadian about Canadiana, but that is the complete opposite of my experience. If Quebequois or Parisian French does not flow naturally and natively and you're over the age of five, everybody around you will speak English at you regardless of your fluency. Previously mentioned friend has lived their entire life in Montreal and speaks French (and Joual) fluently, and random clerks will still immediately switch to English regardless, because the accent is still that of an English speaker's.
My limited high school French augmented by occasional guidebooks has fared no better, and much worse. It's only been in the rougher parts of Montreal or in the rural parts of the province where people will speak French no matter what, because they haven't got enough English to converse with.
 

All Montrealers know English but given the choice they would rather converse in French. Trust me when walking down the street or schmoozing in a cafe or a restaurant you'll get a more sociable response if you demonstrate to the native folk in that city that you have at least tried to learn something about their native tongue. Of coarse your friends reception could have been different from mine for the simple reason he lives there while I'm western Canadian. There's always been quite a bit of how should I say it....anglophone vs francophone exasperation due to Quebecers feeling their language and culture was targeted for Anglosizing years ago by the anglophone ruling majority. Here's a little amusing exercise to try out. Next time you're there ask a trusted friend whose a Montrealer why all the business signs that have English words on them are in smaller lettering compared to French wording. I guarantee you your friend will look a little embarrassed when he/she explains it's the law and that the now ousted Parti Du Quebecois bought in provincial legislation to make it illegal to have signs with English that had lettering larger then French lettering. The most amusing part about it, they actually had people running around Quebec City and Montreal with rulers measuring signs to be absolutely sure English lettering wasn't larger then French lettering. Quebecers stopped being amused when they discovered tens of millions was sunk into the little exercise of having a small legion of people run around all day long with rulers and ladders doing nothing except measuring signs lettering.

People on other forums I visit are already getting on their soapboxes and schitting on the new Schiit models.

I laughed myself silly when I saw the above bolded quote. You gotta love being an audio nerd. You'd think the world was coming to an end based on how some people go overboard concerning product releases and the features or lack there of in a new product. Full marks to the mad people for being so over the top and letting it all out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardgedee 


Hah, I've already had that convo. I wouldn't say "little embarrassed", more like "bemused resignation".
Not that the gist isn't hard to figure out: Signage in most of Canada is English first, French second because that's the natural order of convenience for the people there. It makes perfect sense that it would be French first, English second in the part of the country that the Francophones control. What elevates it to the level of domestic comedy is the formalization and process of enforcement.
What was more amusing was walking through Chinatown: Chinese, then French on the big signs; the messages and menus on the windows all Chinese and English.
Joual is a fascinating dialect. The topic of Joual swears alone has been sufficient to fill a couple books.
I think any apparent tension might have to do with persistent cultural and social tension. But I think it's just as much a function of a natural ambient level of grumpiness among the people there.

Yeah I guess you could say "bemused resignation" would be a better fitting term. Please don't think I'm coming across as anti francophone if truth be known I love the added variety that only a French Canadian brings to the Canadian cultural melting pot. I just love how Quebecers bring their own style and finesse to the general scheme of things. I'd also dare say Canada would be a much more boring place without the francophone view of life incorporated into the Canadian face of the country. Thank God the average Quebecer is still around and still proud of who they are.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardgedee 

On that note most of the experiments with IEM wiring that I've been doing lately have been mostly motivated by wanting something with little or no cable microphonics. I'm tired of every brush and tap on my desk being amplified by the same IEMs that are blocking out the world at large.

Quote:

Originally Posted by compoopers 

Oh my god, microphonics and fit are so important in IEMs. I wish I could go back to my past and smack myself for not considering it at first. The current IEMs I have do not stay in while running, they have horrid microphonics, and they stick out so you can't wear them in bed or pretty much any position except sitting up straight. Awful awful. I like the sound of the CKM500s but from a wearing standpoint, blech.

^ This.

Good sound and good design should go hand in hand. Unfortunately, they rarely do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_recording 

This statement really intrigues me as I'm trying to think of products made purely out of spite.

 

I guess these would be products that have very little reason to exist other than to hurt the competition.

That's more or less what I meant. Though Apple's maps have a lot more to do with not being willing to accept Google's terms for licensing its maps, and due to Apple's own missteps in what they launched and when.

Arguably the new Google Maps that just shipped for iOS is Google's spite product: "See what you could've had and avoided all that shame, if you'd only agreed to what we asked?" It bears nearly no resemblance at all to the Maps app that iOS had up until this fall. Apple needed a Maps app, whether or not they made their own: Google has its own native environment to develop for, and wasn't under the same pressure to make anything for Apple's phone.

(As an aside: I'm finding it interesting that Apple's map currently provide better point-to-point directions where I live than Google's map does. Although Google's map still trumps it for comprehensiveness and accuracy in identifying locations, listings, and non-driving directions (transit, walking, bike...). I'll probably be depending on both for the foreseeable future; neither is fully optimal, or maybe it's fair to say that both are equally suboptimal.)

Hey guys. I have a question for you all, since you're all the least BS prone group on this site.

Is the disparity between similarly priced heaphones and iems really that great? I'm seriously considering selling a thing or two and wading into those waters.

Thanks

I don't know how many of you are interested in simple, relatively dark-sounding piano pieces, but a friend of mine just put this up on Bandcamp, and I thought I'd share it. Any feedback after listening would be appreciated.

http://lananda.bandcamp.com/

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgray91 

It seems JMoney is closing up shop for now, and is doing a Christmas charity drive to finish up stock: http://www.head-fi.org/t/638706/the-end-of-jmoney-audio-and-christmas-giveaway#post_8910254

I ordered a set of Beyer pads. I don't have any Beyerdynamics phones, but the pad shape is nearly universal and it should fit a few other headphones I've got. I want to do some experimenting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eke2k6 

Is the disparity between similarly priced heaphones and iems really that great? I'm seriously considering selling a thing or two and wading into those waters.

Depends on the price range you're in, maybe? Like MuppetFace remarked earlier (and which had been on my mind lately for a while): IEMs are innovating more quickly than headphones are. It's a more interesting field to watch.

But it's hard to compare IEMs and headphones on purely dollar-value basis. They're too different in too many ways in order to make the comparison meaningful. Is my HE-6 better or worse than my NT 6 Pro? They cost about the same, but they work too differently and sound too differently to recommend one over the other purely on terms of sound.

I've made handwavy statements that the 4.A is the equal or peer of headphones costing more. I'll stand by that, though I admit it's a qualitative statement that doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. I do prefer its sound to that of some high-end headphones. I think I would probably reach for those headphones before the 4.A for many listening situations.

The headphone-or-IEM is one element in a chain, and there are limits to which they can be considered in isolation. It becomes like arguing whether beach sandals are better than steel-toed boots.