GPH

That's seriously fucked up.

If you actually took the time to read others post and tried to understand why people are nitpicking on you, we wouldn't have this discussion now. Perhaps you're too used to the royal treatment that you get on Head-fi and defending your opinion is something new for you, but you'll have to get used to it because that's how things work here, it's not a fantasy world where everyone is always happy and enthusiastic about everything. Just to remind you of my grudge with you, here's the statement that I disagreed with and that you still have not addressed:

Can't you just accept the fact that some people don't like the Westone 3?

Word. I'm sure he's as nice in person as anybody I've met at a meet, but his online persona annoys me. I especially dislike the fact that pretty much everything he reviews is mid-fi at best and yet he presents it as high-end gear. The Nuforce Icon example is a good one, in my experience at a meet, this amp didn't even have enough power to drive Stax Gammas well, so I have high doubts it can do miracles with the O2. Also, I remember him making a comment about how he wouldn't come to a meet because the state didn't allow him to carry a weapon. That comment alone made me more cautious about the guy.

Art Blakey And The Messengers - Moanin'

One more time, we're gonna celebrate Oh yeah, all right, don't stop dancing!

I downloaded some "samples" of the new 1970-1975 box to see if it was worth buying. My advice: stay away from this shit. Like for the 1976-1982 box, they killed a lot of the great dynamics and we're left with a forward, overly bright and compressed sound that makes for a very fatiguing listen. For CDs, the original Virigin Charisma pressings are the way to go as far as I'm concerned.

There was a rebate on the Revolution, that's why I picked it. I've read good reviews, but I can always return it to the store in 30 days if I don't like it. Does it play nice with Macs? That's my only worry for now.

Get out of your laziness and come to Montreal. Near metro Mont-Royal, there are about 7 used CD shops in a radius of 1 km.

Unicomp Spacesaver Logitech VX Revolution

I'll continue to hijack this thread with my Triple.fi impressions. Damn it, these were the universal IEMs I was looking for all along. Balanced presentation and "full" sound, very airy and sweet highs and just the right amount of bass to make me tap my foot. No harschness, no sibilance, natural reproduction of vocals. The bass doesn't extend very deep, but it's got a nice round character and doesn't blur with the mids like on the Westone 3. Also, I don't feel much the so-called midrange recession, it reminds me in a way of the HD600 mids, slightly laid back, but the detail is all here. Also, I found a pretty comfortable way to wear them, using the flip-flop mod, Comply tips and slightly rotating the earphones towards the front:

One could argue that's its not a really complex melody and that all rock riffs have been somehow recuperated from other songs, but on the other hand, I find Coldplay very bland and unoriginal so I hope Satriani will kick their ass. You need to listen to some Yyngwie Malmsteen.

Yeah, the mids are definitely not forward, but I'm not sure if I'd called them recessed so far. One thing that I like, the vocals don't have a veil on them like with the Westone 3, they're very smooth and the mids are quite detailed. About the cable, I remember reading that the Westone ES2 cable fits on these, is that right?

So far I've tried biflanges, Complys and modded Shure olive.

I was browsing Head-fi last night and I noticed there was a guy from Montreal selling his Triple.fi 10 Pro. It turns out he works at my university, so what else could I do other then to pick them up considering the price was pretty good. I'm listening to the Triple.fi right now and to my ears they are a lot better than the Westone 3. More refined sound and way better balance across the spectrum. They're supposed to have recessed mids according to some people, but I don't notice that so far. My only complaint is: wtf were the developers thinking when they conceived the design? The phones are too big to enter in the ears like Etys, Shure or Westone, so the fit is not as good and isolation is diminished. I'll see if I can get used to it and maybe find a solution with different tips because I really dig the sound so far.

Continue like this and I'll send you the best of Michel Louvain and a compilation of Helmut Lotti greatest hits for Christmas.

Stabbed in the back by a fellow Quebecer. Nope, keep her in Vegas and we'll be very happy.

I guess you could just try playing notes on piano or a keyboard and if you can identify notes the same way you see colors, that means you have it. You don't really need to know the notes names, just try to see if you can remember the "texture" of the tones. Since I don't have it, I can't provide much more feedback about that.

It's not required at all, my mom doesn't have perfect pitch and she's a professional violinist in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. There are plenty of her colleagues who don't have it either, but they all have incredible relative pitch at least. I remember seeing a website that listed which great composers had relative hearing and which didn't.

True, but if you can't put a name to a note, it also proves that your hearing is not as focused and accurate as it could be, meaning you could do all the things you said even better if you had perfect pitch. At least, that's how I see it, but I might be wrong.

I share pretty much the same point of view, I'm just being annoyed because perfect pitch is something that possibly can't be learned even if you really want to. It's quite frustrating in fact. My relative pitch is pretty good though so I guess I'm not missing much, but I'm still jealous of those with perfect pitch.

I agree with what you're saying, but I'll continue to play the devil's advocate. Let's say we were talking about art instead of headphones. You could probably enjoy a painting even if you didn't know the colors, but a good part of the fun is in the analysis of the painting in question. Why would it be different for music?

Do you have perfect pitch? If not, how can you know it doesn't affect the enjoyment of music?

I think it's an interesting discussion, because what we want as audiophiles is a good reproduction of live sound, but if most of us can't even discern if a pitch is right or not, or if a melody has been transposed, we're already loosing quite a bit of "fidelity".

I'm curious - how many of you here have perfect pitch? For those who don't know, perfect pitch or absolute pitch is the ability to recognize a note that's being played without any reference. I don't have it personally and it's something that's been bugging me for a while... I mean, I listen to music everyday, I've been playing music since a very young age, both alone and in orchestras/harmonies, so I've been surrounded by music for as long as I can remember, but I still can't identify notes by ear. Some people have this ability naturally, others don't and scientifics still don't have solid evidences about the cause of this.