CarlSeibert

Agreed. At least as far as the acts that most of us probably care about are concerned, gigging has been the main source of income for a long time. Largely because the labels always cheated them out of their royalties anyway. I thought this was interesting because the "360-contract" was supposed to save the big-business music business. But apparently there are signs that they've let greed be their undoing ... again. And what the heck big-ish show can you get tickets to nowadays for 60 bucks? Around here, that'll buy you general admission to an ampitheater in the rainy season. I subscribed to Lefsetz' letter, BTW.

This originally came to me in a memo at work. But it's a public blog, so it seems worth passing on. I don't have a good sense of where this fellow's views fall. Centrist, lunatic fringe, I have no idea. But I think I'll keep an eye on what he has to say just on principle. http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/08/02/the-concert-business/ Here are the first couple grafs:

Yup. No complaints.

I've got to admit the JH13s sounded pretty damn nice at CanJam. But not this year, I'm afraid. I have the same problem. I have oddly shaped ears (on the inside, too ). Taking the effort to wiggle my universal-fit IEMs in to place to get a good seal absolutely ensures an interruption. Big old cans on your head have a bit of scarecrow effect in addition to being easy to shove out of the way for a minute. That's a nice feature of the 840s, BTW. Their head band is padded all the way around so it's reasonably comfy down around your neck.

Update: The 840s have about 100 hours now. The dinosaur sized bass has trimmed down to a speedier, more mammalian sort of beast. Midrange sounds a little faster, too. My portable rig is being a ton of fun with these. I'm liking 'em.

If I remember correctly my father, who designed a bunch of stuff of various sorts of urethanes, often described the deteriorated urethane foam as "hydrolyzed". One way or the other, it sounds like reaction to air, or what passes for it in the places where we live. He did say that the best urethanes would go a very long time before turning to dust or goo, the lesser ones might not wait so long. Sadly, he's not around anymore to ask if there's anything you can do to arrest the process. Keep foam stuff away from ozone or too much moisture - which I suppsoe would mean "out of Florida". -Carl

Happy Birthday Matt!

I've owed the guys on DIYAudio.com pictures of those mets for something like a year. I've come up with dozens of excuses for not shooting them. Photographing speakers is just so freakin' difficult. So, OK, I'm been shamed into it. I'll see if I can drag them out to the garage and get them shot this weekend. -Carl

I'll vote for that. In that vein, I'll add maybe Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat'. Or Cowboy Junkies' 'Horse in the Country'

Depends, I guess, on if they've packaged it for your distro. Personally, I always grab the tarball on the Firefox site and end up with a freestanding installation. Which is great if you do lots of web pages, but a pain if all you want to do is use the damn browser. (Having to re-do links and icons and the like. ) I prefer Opera anyway. In my case, it's just download the RPM and it magically upgrades. Speaking of which, is anybody using the beta of Opera 10? Does it do anything wonderful? -Carl

If you see an LOD plug that looks like this one, you might consider running in the opposite direction. Being the fair-minded guy that I am, I will say that this connector has certain things going for it and if those things are really important to you, you might not brand it a sadistic work of the devil. It's the most compact plug I've seen. The locking barbs work great. And the case itself is relatively easy to assemble. On the other hand... the contacts are staked in place. You can't pull out the ones that you don't want that are in the way. You have have to bend the pins that are adjacent to the ones you want out of the way to make any room to work at all. Then you have to make sure you haven't shorted any. Then, this is the best part - the working parts are contained in a half-shield frame affair that's crimped together. It's solid on the back/bottom. Meaning, you somehow have to find a way to reach around to the bottom row with your soldering iron to get to the pin in the back. That's through the tiny little opening you were able to make by bending pins out of the way. ARRRRGH! What a pain. There's no insertion arrow molded into the top of the case, either. When/if you get this connector attached, it comes out nice and sturdy and compact. But what a hassle! AFAIK, there are no brand names or specific markings on these. All we have to go on is how they look. And there may be one that looks identical that goes together like a breeze. Who knows. Personally, the next time, I'll use a slightly bigger one that has removable pins.

I don't get uneasy about it if the signal goes from one side to the other in a reasonably nice wire, but though the headband springs doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I had Drew do my Black Dragon dual entry. He says that just doing the dual entry, even with the same cable, helps a lot.

So do I, actually.

Depends on your definition of $1,000. My 701s and my WA6SE are getting along nicely.

Wow! If that's what Nate just sold, What in the name of heaven is he listening to now, or next, as the case may be?

Encouraging him could be dangerous. Happy Birthday Tyll!!! -Carl

This was interesting. I had no idea what to expect. The iPod, (a 30GB 5G) did a credible job of driving the cans. The 840s took about 80% of the volume control on the iPod, as opposed to about 45%, with the Tomahawk set on low gain. Tonality was pretty good in a way. The iPod was brighter and the bass was lighter but woolier. Short term that was fine, but in a while it became clear that the effect wasn't like EQ, but was an indistinct glaze in the treble, which is the sort of thing that drives me crazy sooner or later. Bass wasn't as big but it wasn't as tight. Dynamics weren't as good, but weren't "oh my god this is flat as a pancake" either. Overall, it was very listenable. Heaven knows how battery life might be. The difference between the iPod and the amp was sort of in between the "amount" of difference amp vs no amp with my SE 420s and my RE-1s, if I'm recalling correctly. (I didn't listen to either IEM today.) The RE-1s sound thin and anemic without the amp. The 420s work fine but just aren't as refined or dynamic as they could be. This was with the Mogami cable. Of course, YMMV. -Carl

Sure, I'll give 'em a listen straight out of my iPod.

I think that bump will go away. The 840s are in the AKG 701 category of break-in-need. But it happens a lot faster. On my pair, the first hour was ghastly. I mean really pretty ugly. I put them in a picnic cooler and left them there for about 48 hours. At that point, they had gone from plastic-y and mechanical sounding to pretty enjoyable. The bass was vivid and authoritative, but it sounded disconnected from the rest of the spectrum. I let them cook some more and after another day or so, they had a sort of one-note bass quality, but that has faded as they've racked up more time. I don't how if the new cable had a lot to do with the midbass bump fading. I'll have to put the stock cable back on and see. The midrange sounded kind of recessed on some music but now it's really quite nice on just about everything. I'm pretty sure that was the cable. I'm kind of a mid range freak, so that makes me happy. The treble smoothed up and I think that was cable.

I just got a pair of these. I'm not real familiar with everything that's out there in the sub-$200 range, so I can't comment on the "are they the best $200 closed back phones ever" business. But I think they're pretty good. I was looking for not-too-expensive closed back cans for my portable. Basically, they're right at home there. They do everything pretty well. My RSA Tomahawk drives 'em with ease. They're not over bright (My ears. I'm allergic to bright, so I assume that means they're really not bright. But you never know.) They're nicer across the midrange with a Mogami Mini-Quad cable (said cable being a lot less of a pain in the ass then the coiled one that comes with the headphones) than with the stock cable. The sticking point is the bass, which is huge, and seems huge-er with the Mogami cable. Depending on your point of view and ears, that could be a good thing or a bad thing. For me, it depends on the music and context. On hip hop they rock. On small group jazz, I think they're great fun. (I don't know why but somehow live acoustic basses sound bigger and slammier to me than I know they actually are, if that makes any sense.) Basses on the Shures sound more like I think they sound than the way they really sound. So, great for stuff that's all about bass or acoustic jazz, but on pop that might just be a little bass-heavy... not so good. At CanJam, I was very impressed with the middle model Shures, the 440, with earpads from the 840. I remember them being flatter in frequency response than the 840s, but resolution-wise, pretty similar. Kind of like the way the SE-420s are compared to the 530s. I have 420s and prefer them to the 530s, but I went for the 840s for a variety of reasons. Looking for fun listen more than anything else. At the end of the day, I think these are keepers, at least for a while. They kind of have to be, because of massive WAF. (Bonnie's a bit of a basshead.) On the other head, if the 440s behave like these elsewhere, but with a tad less bass, THEY could be the deal of the century. Has anybody else tried either of these 'phones? -Carl

That would qualify.

Exactly what happened with me - minus the contacts part.

My opthamologist was pretty familiar with this territory when I talked to him about it. I'd go that way. It could be anything. In my case, it was a short term thing and some moisturizing drops did the trick. My vote goes for the LCDs, BTW for less flicker. - Carl

Indeed, acting like the schoolyard bully didn't do us much good. Maybe behaving civilly will. Time, as Dan says, will tell.

Obviously, I'm a little prejudiced. But nobody should get kidnapped or killed just for doing their job. If some famous guy can get somebody back without anybody dying in the process I'm all for it. I don't think this was a "negotiation" between states. Any notion of significance that the gesture might have had resides in the minds of Kim, who is batshit bananas, or Washington Post Op Ed columnists, who are.........well, ah, sometimes, yeah.....batshit crazy. I say welcome home to the hostages!