catscratch

If you're getting a KGSS built specifically for the Koss, up the bias voltage to 620V/630V or whatever the Koss needs, I don't remember off the top of my head. Don't know much about smooth Jazz except that a) it's not Jazz and there's no point in getting a system for smooth Jazz specifically since it is just about the worst music out there for actually judging a system, which is why every vendor uses it and every audiophile publication pushes it as hard as possible. If you want to find out what a system is made of, load it up with something demanding. Otherwise, an HD600 with a decent tube amp is all you'll ever need, and even that is probably overkill.

The last ultra-tough RPG I played was Evil Islands, quite a few years ago I might add. That was a blast - seriously hard and required intelligence at every step, and also emphasized stealth elements (every character could stealth regardless of class and had to), but cut out anything that was unnecessarily annoying - autosaves that you couldn't go back from, being needlessly punished for dying, being stuck because you forgot to do something at an earlier point, etc. It basically treated every encounter like a puzzle and then let you sit back and solve it, without ignoring some rudimentary twitch skill and typical RPG tweakery in the process. It was fantastic. But if you left your brain at the door you wouldn't get past the tutorial. I will probably try this, but from the review above it sounds like it will be annoying rather than difficult. There's nothing that I hate more than a game putting in an annoying unnecessary mechanic just to keep a player on his toes. Hopefully this is not what this game is all about.

At times like that, I generally listen to darker, heavier music, especially stuff that makes my brain feel like a sponge that's being wrung out. Cathartic, if you will. Cheery upbeat stuff has no chance to break through the wall of depression, pathetic self-pity, and generally being emo that has a tendency to sprout at times when I feel particularly wretched. But beating the shit out of yourself with music or exercise will make you feel right again. So, general favorites for troubled times: Lots of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, especially Rach 3 Beethoven - Tempest, Moonlight, Pathetique sonatas (wish I could still play them but haven't touched a piano in over 10 years) Bad Brains - Bad Brains Nile - In Their Darkened Shrines, Black Seeds of Vengeance Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse Nevermore - Dreaming Neon Black Astral Projection - Trust in Trance Juno Reactor - Beyond the Infinite Ra - To Sirius (this album is like Trust in Trance's evil twin) As far as music that affects driving - I remember "Joyrider" by Flexitones was a disk full of very upbeat, funky dub that had a speedometer reading 130mph on the cover. That's where the needle stayed every time I put the disk on, if there was room do it (and often when there wasn't). Good thing I don't listen to it on the road anymore.

This would be a logical next step, but having had both the UM2 and ES2, which share the same drivers, I can say that the custom fit makes as big a difference in the sound as the drivers used, if not more so. I wouldn't expect a universal-fit JH13 to be anywhere near the custom. Too bad that I didn't get to hear the universal-fit demo. It is important. There may not be much directly audible information past 15khz or so but overtones and harmonics matter greatly to tone, and if you overlay a tone that's past the range of hearing on top of a tone that you can hear, you will hear a difference. Not being able to reach 20khz definitely hurts your ability to portray tone correctly. We'll suck it up and buy it, and then rave about how awesome it is. Considering how quickly balanced armatures are improving, or at the very least how quickly their implementation is improving, we will probably see newer and better customs come out on a regular basis, and the prospect of how far the technology can go is pretty exciting.

Solid photography. Frightening parade. I remember similar parades in the Red Square once upon a time a little too well.

The 717 is polite and mellow. If you have a source that's polite as well you will have a very laid-back sound. Somewhat like I got out of the 840c. The Opus is nowhere as polite, and the system is more forward and impactful, but has its own problems. I think a forward, dynamic, slightly bright but not edgy source with great attack is what the 717 needs. Of course what the O2 needs is something a lot bigger than the 717, but that's another story.

Quick, somebody attach a turbine to Werner Heisenberg's grave, maybe we can get some free power! Seriously, that's just beautifully demented. Made my day.

Sounds a bit like a plasma tweeter in reverse, minus the plasma or the tweeter. A friend of mine was working on a mic that was pretty similar, though the project was stalled by technology limitations at the time. This seems like it's actually feasible though.

Sample the best Russian Imperial Stouts if you can find them - Dark Lord, The Abyss, Kate the Great, Old Rasputin, Stone Russian Imperial, Sam Smith's Imperial, Founders Russian Imperial, Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and so on. Also sample the very best IPAs, though I know less here than I do in stouts, maybe some more experienced hop-head can chime in. I do think that these are the two styles that American breweries have taken to a peak that's not found anywhere else. Also, try some American-brewed Belgian-style beers. Allagash makes some really good ones as well as some pretty mediocre ones. But Allagash Odyssey is one of my favorites (as is Allagash Four, if it comes out well, it's hit or miss with this one). I also like Ommegang Abbey Ale (more than their Three Philosophers Quad), but that's just the start and nowhere near the end, or the best. See if you can find any Lost Abbey beers there. But yeah, Grawk's list is great. I'd add the following as well: Allagash AleSmith Stone Port Brewing/The Lost Abbey Founders (their stouts rule) Are there any Trappist beers at events like this? I can't help but think that climate change has affected hop quality since there's been a global drop in the quality of most Belgians, but Orval is still good, and Rochefort beers have been hit or miss, but still good at their best.

Hah. One of my friends loves Lukyanyenko and actually knows him personally, and did some illustrations for him. I'm not a fan, tbh. But there are plenty of reasons to learn to read Russian even without him

I don't think it's a lost cause, but it is a trend that's firmly entrenched, and if it is to be reversed, then it will have to happen one little step at a time until there is a trend in the opposite direction. Radio uses its own compression to normalize volume levels, so I well and truly have no idea why this keeps going on at least from a rational, sober perspective. Maybe if you have a shuffled playlist the loudest song will jump out, and yeah there's that whole idea that psychoacoustically the louder material will sound better. But when you restrict dynamics so much and induce so much clipping, the brain gets fatigued listening to it all since it's really like a constant wall of white noise - there's little to no variety and nothing for the pattern-recognition machinery in your brain to work with. IT'S LIKE A GIANT BOLD ALL-CAPS SENTENCE THAT GOES ON AND ON AND ON WITH NO END IN SIGHT AND IT'S STILL GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND YEAH LOUD MUSIC IS EXACTLY LIKE THIS JUST HAMMERING YOU IN THE SKULL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND THERE'S NO VARIETY AND NO CONTRAST AND NO RELIEF AND DON'T YOU JUST WISH THIS SENTENCE WOULD JUST END ALREADY BUT IT'S GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND THERE'S NO END IN SIGHT AND NO VARIETY AND CAT JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY! *stop button* You don't have to be a mastering engineer to notice it. Everybody does, even if they're not aware of what it is that's making them turn off their music. I can't for a moment think that this hasn't contributed in some way to the major labels' financial problems. I also have had a lot of music that I like rendered unlistenable by hot mastering, but I'm still fortunate in that the genres I listen to are largely immune from this - mainly because they're run my small labels that put a premium on sound quality. But some of my favorite metal, like Alchemist - "Trypsis" has been killed by hot mastering and I can't listen to it, even if it is great music. Whole decades and genres of music lost. This sucks. But it won't go on forever.

I also have the option to read Lem in Russian, and that's much closer to the original. Still there are some English translations that are pretty good. The later Lem - Fiasco in particular - is still superb, but the utterly despondent bitterness and hatred of humanity makes them challenging, even if you happen to agree with every word, like I do. Very, very different from the humanist enthusiasm of the early works.

I have a hard time seeing Lem as a hard to read author, unless maybe you're talking about some of the later works like Fiasco. But that's a very different Lem. The early works are some of the most witty and compulsively readable pieces of SF I ever read. Still, translation matters and if you have some horrible gobblygook translation then it's a different story altogether. Gene Wolfe wasn't necessarily difficult but rather demanding of undivided attention. Without the atmosphere and total mental commitment he would have a hard time captivating his audience, I think, but if you can get immersed enough into his utterly alien thought processes then it's one hell of a reading experience. I liked "Book of the New Sun" but "Fifth Head of Cerebrus" was even better. Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide" actually reminded me of Gene Wolfe a lot, and no big surprise there since Swanwick lists Wolfe (and Proust) as one of his major inspirations. Tolkien is pure escapist fiction, but antiquated. Still love the world, though, and always will. Try reading some of the non-Narnia C.S. Lewis, like the Space Trilogy. That's way more dense and demanding, but also absolutely sublime in parts. Now, if only I could get past his rabid religious zealotry and demonization of everything outside his point of view. Proust takes the cake for this one (duh) but I wouldn't have it any other way.

From my friend who works for Doug Sax.

I hear that in the industry the Apogee is nicknamed "the Apology..." I wonder what that says about its reputation?

Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 fighting stick. After smashing yet another pad into pieces in a fit of nerdrage, it's time to get a real stick. I hate sloppy execution. You could get away with a pad in Soul Calibur 4 which had far simpler execution and more lenient timing (and I was just about the only non-noob player that used a pad in SC4), but Street Fighter 4 is another story. The nice thing about this one is that it's modular, and the stick and buttons can be swapped out for better ones, and with just a bit of modding you could get a very serious stick at a low cost.

Abakus - That Much Closer to the Sun Fantastic ambient/dub. A lot like Kuba actually but not quite as free-form impressionistic when it comes to melody. Definitely more concrete melody and not just a bunch of motifs strewn about seemingly with random psychedelic abandon like Kuba (which can be great too). But the feel is similar - especially with the offbeat, driving dubby basslines. Great find, this disk is rare as balls.

You're hearing an underdriven O2 with an amp that doesn't have the guts to drive it properly. It's not that dark even with a 717. Though to be fair, its treble isn't emphasized in any way to begin with and if you listen at lower volumes then yes, it can sound dark. Crank it and it sounds balanced. Basic Fletcher-Munson curves. But if you have an amp that's too weak cranking isn't going to do much except for compressing the dynamic range. The O2 can sound bright to the point of piercing if you have a bright source. You can have two sources that sound only slightly different with most rigs, but on the O2 they will sound nothing alike. The O2 blows the difference between sources wide open and small sonic nuances become massive sonic problems. It's absurd - and at times frustrating - how revealing the O2 really is, even if its tonal balance doesn't make it seem like it at first - at least not in ears that are conditioned to equate brightness with transparency (and mine were a long time ago, now I know better). Let's just say that I understand source swapping binges and DAC obsessions a lot better now that I've lived with the O2 for a good while.

Just what we need, headphones with magnets strong enough to pull your tooth fillings out through your ears. Shouldn't be a problem though, if the treble is anything like previous Beyers they'll drill holes in your ears first. In all fairness though, I am curious to see what this one is all about.

Brand new ESP950 arrived - and there's something weird going on. Set it up, turn it on, and for the first 20 seconds or so everything is fine. Then this severe clipping-type distortion sets in as if the amp is running out of headroom, and progressively gets worse until everything is a distorted mess. In both channels, at all volumes. This is with the E90, AC-fed, Opus 21 as source. Turn the amp off, wait a minute, turn it back on, same story. First 15-20 seconds are fine then distortion sets in. I'm guessing some component in the E90 is burned out somewhere? The headphones themselves seem fine, but I don't have a Stax-to-Koss adapter to try them with the 717. I have no idea what's going on really, but oh well, next week back you go.

Like, for instance, table-top RPG design?

I don't think that speed has anything to do with harshness. The SR-001 is the fastest driver I've ever heard but it's not harsh in any way. Harshness is more due to irregularity in the FR in the treble, with peaks in the 6-8kHz region specifically contributing most to sibilance and harshness. Slow drivers can be quite harsh too - Ultrasones being a great example. A bright, peaky driver tends to shove microdetail into the foreground which gives the illusion of speed, but the best way to judge speed is to load the driver with stuff that has a lot of parallel, textured lines, and see if one line affects the driver's ability to portray another. A bright headphone that sounds artificially fast will still lose detail and definition of each and individual line with very dense and complex music (i.e. orchestral or very fast metal). Whereas a truly fast driver will keep up with anything and different instruments will never start to blur together or lose individual detail and texture. "Transients" are all the things in between the main notes/sounds, i.e. the "transition" between different notes and sounds - the shimmer of a cymbal, the reverberations of a piano string, the echo of an electronic sample when it's fed through a reverb filter, etc. And yes, you do need speed primarily to do transients well, though if you have a messed-up FR you can hurt your ability to portray transients even though the driver is fast (i.e. ER-4S being a great example).

Cheers brah. Raised a pint to you yesterday and I may continue the tradition today. Who knows, maybe I'll drink so much today that it will seem like any other day. Wishing you the same! Rochefort 10 is fantastique, but St Berny 12 has been declining lately, along with the rest of the St Bernardus lineup. But if you can find a properly aged bottle go for it.

It's simply that we've heard this sort of thing before, nearly every single day, for years, time after time. We're sick of it and there is a tremendous body of information out there on all of these expected questions. Ignoring it and asking for personalized attention because you can't decide is just plain lazy. Your situation is unique to you but not unique to us, and there's nothing that we can tell you that we haven't told other people a hundred times over. The forum is made up of its content, and if the content is people asking the same exact questions, day after day, year after year, then what do you have for a forum? All we ask is that people think before they post and treat forum content with respect. And a little bit of unfriendly encouragement will benefit everybody in the long term by keeping the place in the state we want. But whatever. The mods will close/delete this if they don't want it. I don't mind making recommendations personally. To the OP: I don't think the UM3x will do it, it has pretty much the opposite of Ety highs - recessed, little sparkle, but also little harshness. I like the UM3x and probably would recommend it over anything else on the market but not in this case. The ES2 was a good buy 4 years ago when it was new but right now universals have started to close the gap and the ES3x is not too far away pricewise, so I see little point. Even though it is a good headphone. W3 sounds nice when it fits right, but good luck with that. A lot of people can't get a good fit period and then they have to deal with boomy bass, piercing highs, and congested mids. Maybe the TF10 is what you need?

Who cares what your friend thinks. I used to show stuff around, not so much to try and make people envious of my gear but just to show people what really good sound is like. "Listen to this! It's the Omega 2, the best headphone ever made!" Nobody cared. Nobody still does. So I stopped caring too. The less others handle my gear, the better shape it's going to be in. On the other hand, the few people that actually do care about sound but aren't into the hobby serve as a good reality check. If someone's face lights up when they listen to your rig and you can see the amazement you're on the right track. And often untrained ears will pick up things that your golden audiophile ears have been conditioned to miss. My best reality check is a friend who is a recording engineer. His rig makes mine look like a joke, but then I don't have the benefit of a mastering studio that lets you borrow EMM Labs sources and doesn't really care if you return them.