The earpads on my JVC HANC250 are getting ragged, and the replacement earpads offered via the usual suspects (Amazon, eBay, etc.) appear to be of very poor quality. JVC no longer makes replacement earpads for these, if they ever did. Has anybody had success jury rigging replacement earpads...

I have been a Head-Fier since 2006 and own a few custom monitors, and my Westone ES2s are the only ones in the collection that have developed problems. Getting them to fit properly when new was a PITA, and it has been downhill from there. My ES2s are now in for the second repair in the last...

My family and I are staying in an extended stay hotel while we are moving. The hotel has free but unsecured wired and wireless internet access. I checked it out, and sure enough, it's basically like connecting to an insecure, open LAN. I was able to see about fifty guest computers on the...

Already posed this question via email to Westone--nothing heard. Has anyone had any good experiences with DC area audiologists making impressions for customs? I had some Westone ES2s made a while ago, and I think the impressions weren't the best--needed several refits. I am likely a...

and I'm beginning to wonder why I bothered. Which really great applications are either only available for Windows or are much, much better in a Windows environment? It *is* kind of cool seeing Windows running so capably on a Mac.

How is this done? I've been Googling around and looking at link settings and applications in both Friendfeed and Facebook, but haven't found anything that works, yet.

Don't make fun (on second thought, go ahead), but we like a UK TV show called Bargain Hunt. It's a game show, really, in which two pairs of contestants are provided a sum of money with which to buy antiques at a flea market, and then see their value realized at an actual auction. The team who...

Zune's new subscription service looked like a bargain: All-you-can-eat music plus 10 non-DRMed MP3s per month to download, your choice. I opened a Zune account using my live.com email address, installed the interface software, and things went pear-shaped from there: The software prompted me...

I want to purchase a license of PGP Whole Disk Encryption 9.91 for Windows (Vista) and PGP Whole Disk Encryption for OS X 9.91. The only place I have seen it sold is at PGP's own web site for $119 per license. While I am sure it is worth it, I would like to find it cheaper. I've Googled...

I downloaded three 32-bit activation codes for the Windows 7 beta, when it was available. I have two running now, and it has been a very positive experience. I'm getting a Macbook Pro tomorrow, and want to dual-boot it with a 64-bit version of Windows 7, but the download/activation code...

It's out, I just installed it, and I like it a lot thus far. Question: I've had the older versions of Rockbox on my iPod (and H120, and H140, and iRiver H10) for years now. Before installing the new version on all of them, would it be best to "wipe" the old install of Rockbox, or just install...

I was trying to think of something good that might come out of this recent market downturn and "credit crisis" here in the U.S. I could only think of three things: That perhaps it might change our saving behavior (from 15 percent decades ago to a negative savings rate now); that home buyers...

For the next 3 hours or so, this deal is available. I do not favor noise-canceling 'phones, but here's a decent deal if you like them.

Check this out.

I am a recent purchaser of two custom IEMs, the UE11 and ES2, made by Ultimate Ears and Westone, respectively. Both have some fit issues: One of the Westone earpieces extends too far from my ear, and one of the UE11 earpieces does not allow a good seal. The finish on the UE11s was sub-par as...

I need to populate a NAS device with four big SATA drives (storage algorithm will be a proprietary one called "X-Raid", similar to RAID-5). Googling has yielded a number of choices, but I haven't been able to locate a chart of side-by-side comparisons. Decision criterium is almost solely...

Would be interested in hearing any advice or comments from those who purchased custom IEMs (ES2, UE11, etc.) and needed to do some initial back-and-forth with the maker to achieve a good fit. I just got some Westone ES2s and am very happy with the sonic performance, but one of the earpieces...

The UE website shows just two audiologists in DC that are qualified/certified/whatever to make the required impressions. Has anyone had any experience with them? Any DC-area UE11 Head-fiers out there?

I am posting this as a warning to others about Newegg.com: I recently purchased a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) system from Newegg.com (with a mind to setting up an always-on iTunes library for my household wi-fi network). I selected the well-regarded Netgear ReadyNAS for $999.99. When...

Does anybody have an inside line on what new surprises Steve Jobs has for us?

Any Uke players out there? The first step is admitting you have one. It's a Koa wood Flea. I am in the process of procuring a Fluke. (This probably belongs in the Gear-Fi forum--I've asked the mod to move it there.)

I plan to buy my wife a new Macbook as a replacement to an old, slow PC she's been tolerating for years. If memory serves me correctly, there can be some bad times to make a Mac purchase (i.e., before a big release, or before they begin to standardize on an Intel processor). I did some...

What would you do if this was happening on a regular basis? Would be interested to know what you would do. Eventually, I will post what I did. Peace, Bob

Recently I bought a digital tuner to bring in OTA digital stations, and stumbled upon a channel called "The Tube" that played an almost constant stream of videos from the 70s to today. It was very, very entertaining and brought back a lot of memories for us. Now: http://www.thetubetv.com/...

I have ripped my CDs to FLAC files (one big FLAC file per album) with cuesheet using EAC. I am trying to figure out how to batch process all those FLAC files into MP3s using dBpowerAMP. DBpowerAMP will transcode one large MP3 file from one large FLAC file, but that's not what I want. I want...