[turokrocks]

Sony’s Going to Make Less Crap!
http://gizmodo.com/5881541/sonys-new-ceo-knows-whats-best-for-you

 

[ardgedee]

Quote:

Dear Team Diary,
 
I ordered some 4 pin mini-XLR plugs and sockets along with a whole bunch of teflon insulated silver plated copper wire to recable some of my headphones with.
 
[....]
 
Also, given the fact that I found going through the parts catalogs of large electronics suppliers and the websites of manufacturers to find the right parts interesting and even slightly exciting I must be a little odd...

Bingo. That's why I don't have my stuff yet: I keep shopping...
 
I considered doing the same thing as you, but maybe even more extreme: Putting the connector at the yoke, so that I can have runs of arbitrary length. and do silly things like mix'n'match he-man headphone cables with IEM cables.
 
I've eventually decided against for a couple reasons: First, even mini-XLR connectors are on the large side of comfortable to function as yokes (roughly 3 inches / 75 mm overall), and second, with my current listening setups I'd effectively be building cables for no good reason: I'm NOT going to plug IEMs into a he-man amp's speaker taps, and there's extremely little point in connecting the HE-6 to a portable amp. Every other opportunity is effectively already available with the equipment I've got.
 
Other things, though, I keep dragging my feet on. Mostly because I have this lingering suspicion that I can bundle up everything at a good price through Mouser, but that involves navigating Mouser's online catalog, which is an intimidating thing.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

It's the uniqueness of the drivers that interests me with regard to using them as stock. I'm sure the housing is designed to work in conjunction with them, but it doesn't strike me as quite so specialized as the EX1000. Plus the XBA-4 is tuned oddly as it is, so it seems like a decent gamble.

It might be possible but you might not find out until whoever you sent them to opened them up and tried.  If you find anyone willing I'd imagine they wouldn't be able to offer any sort of guarantee so you could be out the pair of XBAs plus the reshell fee for the time they spent trying to make it work.  The "normal" BAs from the big manufacturers are all very similar so if a person can work with one IEM based on them they can work with another.
 
As of now I don't think anyone outside of Sony knows exactly how different the Sony BAs are from the regular Knowles/Sonion BAs.  They could be like the “moving armature”/“single pole armature” drivers used in the E-Q5, E-Q7, and Grado IEMs (Grado OEM here.) or whatever the hell it is that Final Audio uses in their armature-like IEMs.  I don't think anyone has had any of those put in a custom shell.  They could beven be something else entirely.  Sony did say they spent 3 years working on them.
 
One unusual thing about the XBAs is that they don't appear to be using a crossover.  If I interpreted their stuff correctly all the drivers in the multi driver models are the same, wired in parallel with each receiving a full range signal, and each driver has a different physical filter between it and your eardrum.  Depending on how the filters are implemented it could be possible to just pop out the drivers and put them in a new shell if the filters are attached to the drivers or if not they could require careful positioning and placement in a way that the reshelling techs have no experience with.
 
Given that some rather ambitious companies like UM have tuned designs to upgrade existing universals with more drivers its probably worth a call or email to ask if any of these places has bought a pair yet and looked inside to see what's up.

 

[ardgedee]

Quote:

Sony’s Going to Make Less Crap!
http://gizmodo.com/5881541/sonys-new-ceo-knows-whats-best-for-you

That might or might not be good news. Sony is a diversified company and has to cater to the low end as well as the high. And the global market is actually a globe of many markets, some of which still have room for compact cassette recorders, even if others do not.
 
Where they (and companies like Samsung, I think) could improve is streamlining the offerings at each tier. There doesn't seem to be a lot of point to selling ten different headphones just to cover each point in the $125-150 price range. It might be nice to have my exact need catered to, but I don't know what my exact need is until I try all of them, and that's not possible, so I deadlock and choose at random, or don't choose at all, or buy something from somebody else's more limited offerings.

 

[Cakebaker]

Quote:

Sony’s Going to Make Less Crap!
http://gizmodo.com/5881541/sonys-new-ceo-knows-whats-best-for-you

 
I'm wondering if they're going to lighten their retail load and continue to produce as many components as they currently do. The iPhone 4S's camera is using Sony optics, I could see where they might benefit from focusing on more of those and less on all the other junk they make right now.

 

[turokrocks]

Quote:

Quote:

That might or might not be good news. Sony is a diversified company and has to cater to the low end as well as the high. And the global market is actually a globe of many markets, some of which still have room for compact cassette recorders, even if others do not.
 
Where they (and companies like Samsung, I think) could improve is streamlining the offerings at each tier. There doesn't seem to be a lot of point to selling ten different headphones just to cover each point in the $125-150 price range. It might be nice to have my exact need catered to, but I don't know what my exact need is until I try all of them, and that's not possible, so I deadlock and choose at random, or don't choose at all, or buy something from somebody else's more limited offerings.

Did you read how much SONY lost this year!!!! OMG
 

 

[ardgedee]

I don't think I mentioned this yet: I had a dream the other day that I was banned from head-fi for saying "derp" in one of the forums.
 
This upset me and I got in the face of the mod that banned me (since he was, for some reason, in the area and I could do this), which of course made him angry and he threatened to perma-ban me. But I think what I really wanted was an explanation of why saying "derp" would be grounds for banning, and an explanation wasn't forthcoming.
 
And then I woke up and was feverish and headachey for most of the day, but I think this is what instigated the dream rather than the other way around.

 

[MuppetFace]

 

Quote:

Given that some rather ambitious companies like UM have tuned designs to upgrade existing universals with more drivers its probably worth a call or email to ask if any of these places has bought a pair yet and looked inside to see what's up.

 
It's definitely a project to look into when I have some more time to pursue it. Ardgedee's talk of Frankenstein customs has piqued my curiosity, and being the unreasonable person I am, I immediately started to fantasize about putting the components of the XBAs and FAD's BAs into custom shells. Its the unknown and potential challenge that makes it exciting. Even if it's not a complete success, I'd love to have one of the first attempts at an XBA based custom.
 
 

Quote:

I don't think I mentioned this yet: I had a dream the other day that I was banned from head-fi for saying "derp" in one of the forums.
 

 
That's pretty amusing in a way.
 
Hmm. When you dream about head-fi, are the other members there in person or are you sitting at the computer in the dream? If it's the former, I'm curious about how you'd represent everyone in your mind.

 

[ardgedee]

In this dream, I had been banned (via computer, through the Internet) but I inexplicably had access to the relevant mod in person. The dream involved a real head-fi mod; I'm not naming names mostly because I have no RL relationship to the person and I find his conduct online to be reasonable and considered, so there's no point in dragging him down for imaginary reasons.
 
In general, though, I tend not to dream about people I know, virtually or in real life. At least not in dreams I remember this clearly.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Bingo. That's why I don't have my stuff yet: I keep shopping...
 
I considered doing the same thing as you, but maybe even more extreme: Putting the connector at the yoke, so that I can have runs of arbitrary length. and do silly things like mix'n'match he-man headphone cables with IEM cables.
 
I've eventually decided against for a couple reasons: First, even mini-XLR connectors are on the large side of comfortable to function as yokes (roughly 3 inches / 75 mm overall), and second, with my current listening setups I'd effectively be building cables for no good reason: I'm NOT going to plug IEMs into a he-man amp's speaker taps, and there's extremely little point in connecting the HE-6 to a portable amp. Every other opportunity is effectively already available with the equipment I've got.
 
Other things, though, I keep dragging my feet on. Mostly because I have this lingering suspicion that I can bundle up everything at a good price through Mouser, but that involves navigating Mouser's online catalog, which is an intimidating thing.

I really dislike dual entry cables.  They're just too annoying and except for 'stats (CAUTION!  HIGH VOLTAGE!) there's no good reason for it.  I'd be very tempted to mod any dual entry 'phone I held on to for long.  My K601s and T50RPs are already single sided so that's not an issue.  Right now those are the only full size 'phones I have that get much use so I'd just have to add a jack on one side instead of having to find a way to run some wire to the other side as well.  In the future I think I'll add another pair of T50RPs so I'll have one with a bass heavy tuning and another more neutral one which should make this whole cable scheme even more useful.
 
Its hard to search for parts like that at places like Mouser because many of the data fields you'd like to use to search by are woefully incomplete so you end up with a long list of stuff you have to check individually.  I found that it can be easier to just do a basic search for general type of part you're looking for, see what brands/manufacturers they carry, check out that brand's website, find the part you want, and then search for the part number back at Mouser/DigiKey/Newark/Allied/etc.  For example, Mouser carries Rean, Neutrik, and Switchcraft.  I found these parts on Rean's site, then searched the part numbers at Mouser, and got just what I wanted but had missed trying to use the normal search.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

In this dream, I had been banned (via computer, through the Internet) but I inexplicably had access to the relevant mod in person. The dream involved a real head-fi mod; I'm not naming names mostly because I have no RL relationship to the person and I find his conduct online to be reasonable and considered, so there's no point in dragging him down for imaginary reasons.
 
In general, though, I tend not to dream about people I know, virtually or in real life. At least not in dreams I remember this clearly.

In person, Jude is pretty much just like he comes across on Head-Fi TV.

 

[ardgedee]

Quote:

Did you read how much SONY lost this year!!!! OMG

That is another advantage to a streamlined product line. Economies of scale often dictate that it's cheaper to mass-produce 1,000,000 of one thing than 200,000 each of five things. If those five things have so much functional overlap, there has to be good reasons for not consolidating them, such as that the profit margins are high, or the volume sold justify the narrow diversity.
 
This part of why Apple can sell products at a high level of build quality for only slightly more than its competition: the product range is extremely small for a consumer electronics company and there are clear differences between each of them. (Apple also eschews the low end of the market where the profit margins are razor-thin, but that's a different consideration.) I saw a chart the other day comparing Apple's smartphone line with Samsung's: Three models vs. 24. Samsung is not making the money that Apple is, and Apple's markup is not by itself explaining the disparity.
 
Sony's advantage had long been that they made good things at reasonable prices: Neither the best and most expensive, nor the worst and cheapest. It sounds like the new CEO would like to bring them back to that, which is good. It will mean pruning product lines and probably endangering some of the items we considered worthwhile, but if it means the health of the company can be restored and return Sony to making interesting flagship products, this might be a compromise I can be happy about.

 

[ardgedee]

Quote:

Its hard to search for parts like that at places like Mouser because many of the data fields you'd like to use to search by are woefully incomplete so you end up with a long list of stuff you have to check individually.  I found that it can be easier to just do a basic search for general type of part you're looking for, see what brands/manufacturers they carry, check out that brand's website, find the part you want, and then search for the part number back at Mouser/DigiKey/Newark/Allied/etc.  For example, Mouser carries Rean, Neutrik, and Switchcraft.  I found these parts on Rean's site, then searched the part numbers at Mouser, and got just what I wanted but had missed trying to use the normal search.

 
Yes, that's more or less what I've been doing, but I have also let myself get distracted by Lunashops which has some knockoffs at prices that make them interesting to experiment with, and then oh dear I've fallen down a rabbit hole again.
 
I used to prefer single-entry headphone cabling but these days I don't particularly care. Of course, for IEMs there's no choice in the matter.

 

[ardgedee]

Quote:

In person, Jude is pretty much just like he comes across on Head-Fi TV.

 
I've met Jude in person a couple times and have always enjoyed his company.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I used to prefer single-entry headphone cabling but these days I don't particularly care. Of course, for IEMs there's no choice in the matter.

Well designed IEMs end up functioning as single sided if you can wear them over-ear, cinch the keeper behind your head, and clip the cable to your collar.  Its tedious to put on but even from a stationary source you can just unplug the cable, walk away, and pop the earpieces out if you need to.  I wear my SE530s like that 8+ hours every workday and it works out better than most normal headphones.
 
Some can't be worn over-ear with out reversing the left and right channels.  In such cases a small adapter that swaps the channels a second time is called for.  Some can't be worn over-ear at all.  If they also lack a J cable then they get no consideration from me.  It doesn't matter how good it sounds, if it doesn't meet some standard of comfort and convenience then its useless to me.