catscratch

Good luck and take care.

Tell that to Simon Posford. Like any genre label that's entirely too broad, ambient has its share of electronic masturbation, and it has its share of brilliant music. And a lot of things that are dubbed ambient really aren't - but that's debating semantics.

Solar Fields - Movements More on the whacked-out spacey side of ambient electronica but well done regardless. (trying to subdue mental images of a whacked-out Kevin Spacey)

Devin Townsend - Terria Devin kicks so much ass that there's probably not enough ass on the earth for him to kick. He's most likely kicking ass somewhere in outer space (even more likely given his drug habits). And this is his best album, so the asskickery in question is of apocalyptic proportions.

Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down Don't know why they call it Doom Metal, seems like fairly standard alt-rock to me with a somewhat more melancholy atmosphere. However what surprises me time and again as I keep digging this one out of the collection is just how good some tracks here are, especially 1 and 2.

I think that it's pretty easy to get wrapped up in good sound when you're new to hi-fi, the novelty of it all is overwhelming and you really don't want to listen to anything else. But when you're used to good sound the novelty factor wears off and it stops being a neccesity, becoming just... good sound, and not much else really. I used to hate listening to anything lo-fi years ago but right now I really don't care; I listen to the crappy stereo in my car and enjoy it fully; I listen to DI.fm with its 96k streams and enjoy that too. Most of my listening isn't with the massive O2 rig at home but with a plain UM3x out of an iAudio 7 on the go. It all falls apart under critical listening obviously but you don't have to listen critically 100% of the time...

Today started yesterday morning and doesn't look like it will end tonight. Damnit. I hate not sleeping. I'm more than useless but there's just so much that needs to be done right now. I'm pretty sure I've passed the LD50 for caffeine 3 cups of coffee ago. Words like "awesominate" and "kickasserize" are inadvertently finding their way into my lexicon. My eyelids feel like someone hung 15 pound dumbells off each one. Back to work cat, back to work

It's ok. Takes a minute to adjust to but I don't see anything wrong with the new setup. The color scheme is easy to read and isn't fatiguing in the long run.

I have a friend that has an Elantra and I'm always surprised at how good the ride is every time I'm in it. It's been pretty reliable too as far as I can remember, but my friend is not the best when it comes to timely mainteneance.

So are the two extra bass drivers in there for bass emphasis? Better bass resolution and control? Better sales through marketing? I'm confused. Is this meant to replace the JH13 as the TOTL custom or compliment it as an extra bassy version? Either way, I've held out on the JH13 this long, and might as well hold out a bit longer until I know what's what. Then, there's also the BHSE fund that needs, um, starting up.

Well Nile is similar to Meshuggah in the sense that they do make polyrhythmic, multilayered complex music, but from a melodic standpoint Nile is similar to Nile, and no one else really. Maybe Melechesh, but Melechesh have nowhere near the talent or sophistication of Nile (but are a cool band in their own right). I think Nile became obsessed with their own technicality, and somewhere along the line they left their inspiration behind. The music became more technical but the brilliance is gone. "In Their Darkened Shrines" was the last good Nile album for me, and by good I mean one of my favorite albums ever, along with the predecessor. You could try Alchemist's Organasm, that has some of the groove aspect and a bit of technicality though it spends more time in almost Pink Floyd like atmospherics. Cynic is definitely a must, and so is Watchtower though it's rather different stylistically.

This. The Fit,Versa, and Yaris only came here in '07 and other than the Yaris they haven't had a chance to drop below $10k. The Yaris can be had just under $9k but frankly I think there are better ways to spend the money. Step it up one size to stuff like an Elantra, Sentra, Corolla, etc, and you'll find much better deals; they're volume cars and depreciation hits them more. Or maybe a Focus but I don't know how reliability is. Not my segment unfortunately so can't give exact advice.

Andy hit the nail on the head there; the crux of the problem is that the chemistry between the presenters is gone in favor of them playing cartoon caricatures of themselves. If they fix that, then things may get back on track. TG has become a ratings machine and everything has been dumbed down to woo over the casual crowd, who'll flock to anything bright and shiny. The problem is that they'll leave the moment something brighter and more shiny comes along, so TG has been trying to be the brightest and the shiniest and thinking all along that what people want to see are silly stunts with cars and three middle-aged blokes falling over. But that wasn't the heart of the show. The show was about three genuinely interesting and entertaining people having fun with cars. TG may have lots its innocence but there's no need to lose the core of the show that made it what it is in the first place. Decline is inevitable, but in the long term it makes sense to try and put out the best product you possibly can for as long as you can rather than trying to milk everything from a wrong assumption about an incidental winning formula. Stand back and let the presenters be themselves. Let them be as funny and witty and ispired as they can obviously still be. I think they know this quite well though, and probably feel much the same that we do. So I'm not giving up yet.

Season 14 has been thoroughly mediocre thus far, contrived dialogue, meaningless films, and no real honesty or inspiration from the presenters. But the Bolivia Special is old classic Top Gear. So, they can still do it, when they're not chasing after ratings and trying to woo over the casual crowd.

I'm with Dusty on this one; the kind of sucky neutral you're referring to isn't neutral in the slightest. It's a coloration that stems from desaturated tone color and insufficient dynamic range. It sucks the life and color out of music yet it is somehow considered accurate by a lot of folks. I think that live sound is the bar for true neutrality and accuracy, and live music has everything that these so-called neutral headphones don't: warmth, fluidity, dynamic range, punch, tonal richness, harmonic accuracy, texture, etc. A headphone that takes away the warmth and impact is every bit as inaccurate as a headphone that boosts the bass or puts in treble spikes in order to appear more detailed. Accuracy is musicality. Emotion is present in the music, and a truly accurate system should not get in the way of that. None of the serious professional rigs I've heard sounded analytical or boring in any way. But then again I only heard a few.

Ditto. At the risk of necessary seppuku I have to admit that I really loved the HE90 when I heard it, colorations and all. It's just so wonderfully euphonic while still being really detailed and fast. The bass had some real weight too even if it was a bit one-note. It's a great headphone for just relaxing and immersing yourself in the music without over-analyzing it. I haven't heard the HD800 or HE60, but in an optimal rig, it's HE90 >>> HD650 > HD600. However I do prefer the HD600 over the HD650 in most rigs; while the HD650 scales higher the HD600 is much better balanced. Still, I am a fan of the Senn sound and like all three quite a bit.

Did anyone catch the Paul Willams / Sergio Martinez fight? Man, what an absolutely brutal showdown. And what absolutely amazing display of skill by Martinez. He did run out of gas in the end but to take on a fighter like Williams, with every single physical disadvantage stacked against him, and put on a show like he did, is a true mark of his quality. I was really impressed by the way he continually made adjustments as the fight went on and kept pulling out new things all the way till the end. As far as Williams, well what more can be said, he is physically the ideal fighter to dominate at this weight and he has a terrific set of fully balanced skills. He's the one of the most avoided fighters in boxing for a good reason. Purposefully not mentioning the outcome - go see it! This fight deserved to have the sort of fanfare that accompanied Pacquiao/Cotto, and I can't wait for the next one. Considering that these two are quite possibly the most avoided fighters in boxing, they don't really have anyone to fight but each other. Besides, this outcome was controversial, and there's bound to be a rematch just for that reason alone. Does Floyd want to prove his quality? Fight Pacquiao, and move up one weight class and fight Martinez. Or Williams. Preferably both.

Spectral - "Diffuse." One of my favorite albums and I simply cannot get over how extraordinary the production is, at least as far as electronic music goes. Shpongle 1 and 2 were good but this is on a completely different level - as dynamic, uncompressed, fluid, organic, layered, and multidimensional as anything I've ever heard. The music is pretty off the wall too, extremely difficult to describe as it completely defies genres and spends its time somewhere between dub, progressive trance, and Goa. It's somewhat similar to Jaia in feel at times especially when it comes to organic fluidity, but the last time I heard this kind of frankly insanely obsessive attention to detail combined with a complete and utter disregard for genre conventions was on some of the early Nile albums (to make a strange cross-genre comparison). Spectral's older stuff was classic Goa but here they were really in new territory, and there hasn't been anything much like it since, either. This came out on Blue Room Released but whereas label-mates Juno Reactor, X-Dream, Raja Ram, etc went on to have illustrious careers after Blue Room folded, Spectral went bust. Too bad, this is as good as anything Blue Room ever put out. I may have ranted about this disk multiple times already. But that's only because it rules so very much.

My 2500 had three previous owners and all of them tried to make the steely treble go away with burn-in. The poor thing was downright crispy by the time I got it but the steely highs remained. Not enough burn-in hours, I think. Maybe 2500 is a reference to how many hours it really needs? And maybe try blue noise if white and pink noise didn't work? What about burn-in blocks? I know we have cable elevating blocks made from a wood with special properties just for the occasion, but did anyone ever try to make headphone elevating blocks for burn-in?

I had a Proline 2500 for a while. It didn't kill me to listen to it but for the price it just had too many flaws. The tone sucked, plasticky and artificial, the highs were steely and the bass was boomy. It was reasonably detailed and pretty dynamic but then again the SR-003 is worlds better for less, and so is the HD600 for that matter. If you don't care about tone and want an artificial "hi-fi-ish" sound then go for it, but otherwise there are just too many better options for the same price. I think a lot of the Ultrasone hate comes not from the headphones themselves but from idiots like Sovshiller and Peter fucking Pinna shilling them all day. If you look at the headphones themselves, there's nothing to get emotional over, one way or another.

Mayweather is content to fight underweight has-beens and market them as world-class fights. Against Manny he'd have his work cut out for him and he'll probably dodge that fight if possible. If not, look for Floyd to be 40-1-0. Heck, if Floyd fights Cotto, Mosley, or Clottey, he'll be 40-1-0. No disrespect to Floyd, he's a top tier fighter, but Manny's becoming something else entirely. Cotto was a machine, and look what happened. But I do have to wonder how much of that is the psychological damage from that loss to Margarito, and yes, I do believe that Margarito's gloves were loaded for that fight. The difference in his punching power between the Cotto fight and the Mosley fight was stark. On a different note, I love Arthur Abraham's style and it will be really interesting to see what happens in the Super Six. I'm down with him taking the whole thing, but we'll see.

Not if the elephant has leet kung-fu blocking skills with his trunk! I actually prefer a bit of tube color in my amps or somewhere in the signal path in general, so it sounds like the WES would be appealing to me. But it's all academic at this point.

I like the HD600 a lot, and it's one of the few dynamics I can say that about. If I were less financially irresponsible I could probably have stopped with the HD600 and would have been happy. But then again the O2 is similar in many ways and better. But then again again, the HD600 is cheap enough that you can just get one to mess around with. A source that's good with the O2 will probably be good with the HD600. Also, run it balanced, you'll speed up the transient response a bit. It won't be fast, but it will be faster than SE at least. For music that requires speed the HD600 just won't do on most rigs, but for everything else it's nice. An amp with some tube color can also liven it up a bit.

It would be worth it just so that you could harass them about the Mk2.