HiWire

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Yes, a 27" iMac isn't an extreme ask. They haven't announced M3 updated MacBook Air, Mac Mini, Studio, or Mac Pro yet either, so it's possible more products are coming down the pipe in a few months. It would make sense to put the new M3 Pro and Max chips in an updated 27" iMac as the performance gains appear to be very impressive in some apps.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

XTC - Skylarking

Black is back. I noticed some interesting stuff... no native AV1 encode (decode only), no Thunderbolt 5 (yet), no Wi-Fi 7. The lower prices are a good sign. Most of the MacBook Pros ars still unaffordable for a lot of people, though. And thank goodness the iMac was updated... very welcome and good for those who were holding out. We'll see in a few days whether the performance claims are verified by reviewers and new owners.

Volume 1 of the Definitive Collection contains issues #1-7, so I'm still optimistic. I picked it up a few months ago and I forgot I hadn't read it yet.

American Flagg

Happy Birthday!

The Cardigans - Life Saint Etienne - Sound of Water

Happy Birthday!

Coney Island Baby (The Simpsons):

Congrats! That's sad to hear about the distribution problem... I bought spare pads for my Sennheiser HD 599 (from Sennheiser directly) for exactly that reason.

A few measurements: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Fschiit-midgard-balanced-headphone-amp-review.48653%2F

Yes, I found that one. It's all turning up OPA828! Cimarron Technology sells it on the BrownDog DIP adapter: https://www.cimarrontechnology.com/product/browndog-970601-so8-to-dip8-adapter The Nitsch DSHA-3FN and Piety got my attention, but they might not be ideal for my Grado HP-2.

Yes, I'll wait a while until the hype settles down and the reviews come in, but I think it's an interesting product from Schiit (who openly admitted their Modius chip amplifier wasn't interesting from an engineering standpoint). I think the Modius had a lukewarm reception and I don't have balanced equipment, so it was a bit academic for me. The only online material left on the Headsave Classic is my Head-Fi thread from 2005. Google probably thinks it's old news like everyone else. I found that Texas Instruments released a successor to the OPA627 opamp in 2018, the OPA828. I might get some of those to try in my Classic. I like Schiit's no-BS approach to making products affordable and interesting. I bought their Fulla v2 a few years ago and it has impressed me with its great sound and build quality. You can't find much else like it that's built in the USA.

I was thinking of upgrading or supplementing my old Headsave Classic amp (3 x Burr-Brown OPA627, hooked up to an Arcam FMJ CD36 or Sony UHP-H1) with something new, not too expensive. I may still get a Chord Mojo 2, but this looks interesting at $219... just announced, with impressions coming out in a few days. The Schiit Midgard has a different discrete design, with a mixed-mode feedback and more power than the Magni+ I was looking at:

Fanatec GT America + IGTC Indianapolis 8 Hour:

Happy Birthday!

Film scoring in GarageBand?!:

This popped up in my feed - interesting gadget (Teenage Engineering TP-7 field recorder) from Sweden:

The Runaways - Cherry Bomb

Happy Birthday!

Don't know about spatial audio... that would require buying new, expensive hardware. Some engineers still struggle with stereo mixing and mastering, so I'm not in a hurry to complicate things. I thought the announcement was very anticlimactic... the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 claims incremental performance improvements and features like ray-traced graphics and AV1 decode. A 10% and 20% increase in performance from the A16 is hardly a quantum leap. Also, they discontinued the iPhone 13 Mini, which made me sad. They may continue the small format phone in the next iPhone SE update.

I thought the Pixies were just ok... still have all their albums.