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Speaking of not procedural generation, Prodeus is pretty great. Imagine if id went on making more Doom games instead of going 3d with Quake, or what a more modern sprite/3d hybrid would look like. There's some really stellar sprite work and general art work in Prodeus, and in terms of gameplay I like it quite a bit more than Doom 2016 (never played Eternal) - it's faster and more old school. My #1 pick for lo-fi indie shooters still goes to Dusk, but Prodeus is a firm #2 at at this point. Highly recommended. The boomer shooter market seems to be... booming. (i'll see myself out)

I thought it might have been something like that. Thanks for doing the work to get the site back, I was checking every day for it.

Happy birthday Senor Stax!

Ok brain, riddle me this. When you grab a stainless steel pan straight out of the oven with a bare hand, what happens? What's that? You don't know? Ok, go right ahead. Now that I won't be playing games for a few days, I can reveal that I've been playing Deep Rock Galactic quite a bit with friends (and solo) and for the coop shooter crew it is definitely a game to check out. I haven't really played Killing Floor or Left for Dead or anything like this so I can't compare it to other coop shooters, but the mechanics are solid and definitely feel inspired by some of the old arcady shooters I used to play, and the fully destructible terrain and very impressive procgen keeps the levels varied and interesting. I have a few hundred hours in it already and am looking forward to more, as soon as I can grab a mouse again. And no, I'm not playing Valheim. Maybe later sometime. Much prefer first person over third person games.

Think HD600 but with better detail, much better dynamics, more linear and extended bass, and elctrostat-like imaging, but at the same time slightly artificial tembre and peaky, somewhat piercing highs. I so badly want to like them but they're too fatiguing for me. But for someone less treble sensitive they should be perfect.

Bloody shame. The HD650 is what I use 90% of the time. Would suck for that to go out of production. Did their earphones sell well? I never thought much of their earphone lineup and I wonder if that's more important right now than full size headphones. Were their noise cancelling headphones good? There was little innovation coming out of them over the last 10 years and the only models I was interested it were the older ones. I think a smaller, slimmer headphone division focused on the enthusiast and pro market would make sense, because competing with Apple and Beats in the consumer market is gonna be a long shot. Play to your core strengths, and be realistic about the size of your market. Their core strengths are full size headphones, tuning, driver design, and offering value, and those things scream pro/enthusiast to me and not consumer or even luxury. Focal beat them to the luxury market anyway.

The Socas yokes angle inwards too. I'm not sure how much. The clamp is substantial and a little bit uncomfortable with glasses on, but more comfortable than the stock yokes. They still limit front to back rotation, as the tab that limits it is on the headband and you would have to redesign the headband to remove that. However the tab on the earcups that limits top to bottom rotation fits under the yokes, and the only thing that limits top to bottom rotation is the physical size of the earcup, which is wider than the yokes at its widest point. So you'd have to make much wider yokes to allow for completely free top to bottom rotation. I don't have any issues with fit with these, but there are some occasional issues with excessive clamp.

Best of luck to everybody. The wind wasn't as strong as advertised so fingers crossed it won't be destructive. My snowblower died two winters ago and I never bothered fixing it so... lots of digging today. But at least we had the sense to park one car closer to the end of the drive, so I didn't have to dig as much. Cheating ftw.

About a foot and a half here in jersey. Not the worst since the power stayed on this time. Knock on wood...

Happy Birthday!

No. It's a standard mod sold by Socas3d, I'd email them about it if you want to print it yourself.

No, or at least not yet. Hesitant to try more invasive mods. Haven't even port modded my 007 mk2 yet, though I probably will do that soon.

Happy new year's. 2020 wasn't as rough for me as 2019 was, but not through lack of trying. Here's to hoping 2021 will be better. When in doubt, remember this drunken wisdom: the glass is neither half empty nor half full, it just needs to be topped up!

So I went ahead and modded my L700 mk1. I'm generally pretty skeptical of Lambda mods, but my yoke broke on the left side and I fixed it with duck tape and a coat hanger, and mysteriously my coat hanger solution ended up being far more comfortable than the stock setup. So I got to wondering if there was a way to custom-make a better yoke, and lo and behold, someone else has already done it. These are 3d printed by Socas and they work pretty well. They allow for a wider range of motion for the earcup and they fix the problem of having too much pressure at the top of the earpad and not enough at the bottom. So if you're one of the people who, like me, can't wear the current generation Lambdas properly, this is a solution. You will need a Torx 6 screwdriver to get the screw out that holds the yoke in place, and after that it's an easy swap. This does affect the sonics a bit. In the past I always read accounts of people hearing the L700 as overly warm and a bit congested and wondered what on earth they were hearing, but how... that's kinda how it sounds. The frequency response gets rotated clockwise, the highs are much smoother and more palatable, but the midrange shout and upper mid dip gets even more noticeable. The solution of course is EQ. I'm not gonna post all of my settings since you really need to personalize your own EQ but -5db at 1150hz q1.41 and +2db 3khz q0.5 evens out the mids, then you also need to drop the peaks in the highs - which we all hear in different places - and adjust the lows to taste. I have a MiniDSP ears now and will probably be able to EQ more accurately, but I thought I'd give a heads up to @yaluen and others who are in the same boat that there is a fix, and you don't need to write the current-gen Lambdas off (though I don't know if this works for the L300/500). This thing sounds very smooth and natural now, with great imaging and clarity but a bit lackluster impact in the lows, which I'm sure a more powerful amp than my 717 will fix. Oh, and the Mk2? My opinion of it has turned pretty sharply downwards. I prefer my modded mk1 by a good margin.

There are tons of let's plays all over youtube. CohhCarnage is generally a pretty good bet for long-form let's plays, and he tends to be more positive and mature than most streamers. The state of affairs was pretty predictable given the constant delays and all symptoms of development hell, but I don't really have a horse in this race as I've never been a huge fan of CDPR to begin with. But this game is definitely something I would be interested in, so I'll give it a shot... eventually. And I wouldn't write CDPR off just yet, a rocky launch followed by months or years of patches to eventually become something good seems to be the new normal for ambitious launches, so I think in the long term they'll be fine.

Looks like head tracking and active DSP correction with a mic to measure internal reflections. Plus a bunch of other tech stuff. The standout part to me is that Tyll was right in predicting the direction in which these sorts of headphones were going to go years ago.

First impressions of linear power supply for the GL MkII: Compared to the stock switcher the LPS removes any edge or sibilance from the highs and makes the sound smoother, less grainy, and more effortless. The stock Glite was terrific with the HD650 but was a bit edgy with the Utopia, but with the LPS the Utopia now sounds much smoother. I think the Glite w/LPS and HD650 pairing is a stellar deal. The amp opens up the HD650's soundstage and improves its imaging, getting rid of the 3-blob effect. It also clears up congestion in the lower midrange and tightens up the bass. Just a very synergistic pairing if you like a more solid state presentation. With the Utopia, it's still a reasonably good pairing, but only if you have the LPS. Stock power supply sounds edgy and harsh, but with the LPS and a little bit of EQ to reign in the highs the Utopia sounds very nice. Open, clear, highly resolving, reasonably punchy, and with a good midrange tone. But with my chronic allergy to highs I still need EQ to make it sound natural. Overall I think the Glite with the LPS is worth $800 more than the stock amp is worth $500. The stock amp is great with the HD650 and other warmer cans while the upgraded amp is great period.

That sucks. Hang in there.

Yes, that is still the case. In fact, it's worse in a way, because in the old model the y-forks were made of plastic and you could muscle the earcup past them (though they had a tendency to snap if you did), but becase this one is metal, you can't. However the new design allows for a wider range of motion, and the fit is definitely better than in the old one. I'm guessing someone with a 3d printer can probably make a y-fork that bypasses the tab and allows for full outward articulation. I know SoCas makes Stax mods, maybe they can do it, but I haven't contacted them about it. It'll have to be both taller and wider, since the earcup itself is wider at the inner side than the fork. Edit: Look like they already make something similar. No comments on style...

L700 Mk2 impressions based on less than an hour of ownership: First of all, the fit is very much improved. The Mk1 had an idiotic design where the top of the earcup couldn't swivel outwards far enough, and it ended up putting too much pressure on the top of the earpad while the bottom wouldn't even seal properly on some people. The Mk2 has a different y-fork, yoke, whatever you want to call it, which is bent inwards and lets the earcups swivel more, and as suspected it creates a better fit. There's still a bit too much pressure on the temples but it's tolerable and at least it seals. And hopefully we'll have no more flimsy plastic pieces breaking. So, it's a step in the right direction. Those same words can apply to the sound too. The overall tuning seems warmer, tighter, and more focused. I had to EQ the treble down on the Mk1 to make it tolerable, but the Mk2 so far doesn't need it. It's also less diffuse and overly ethereal, more focused and defined, and the bass doesn't have the big midbass bump anymore and is tighter. About the only complaint I have is that the midrange weirdness from the old version is still there, and vocal tonality just sounds off. But a small dip in the EQ around 1.2khz seems to reduce this, so whatever problem is going on seems to be somewhere around 1-1.5khz. The presence region also sounds a bit recessed, kinda like the SR-007 but not to the same extent. Overall, it's definitely better. Sounds a bit more normal, more like vintage Stax and less like bright, alien modern day Stax - but not totally fixed yet.

I swear that bird must have played a lot of laser tag.

Diabotical is out on the Epic game store. I'm surprised, I would have thought they'd take longer to get it finished, but it's out. If you've ever wanted to get into a Quake-style game, now's the chance, before everybody spends another 20 years practicing. It's also free, though with cosmetic microtransactions (boo!). Game seems very well made. A little derivative, but aside from Quake Champions there really hasn't been much innovation in the genre, and Quake Champions is cheaply made and kinda crap imo, no matter how interesting the core design is. I guess outsourcing the game to a third-rate studio instead of developing in-house at id didn't really work out. Diabotical is most definitely not crap, it's very well made and seems full of smart little touches everywhere. Will it work? Are people gonna play it? Is it the last silent hurrah of an already dead genre? Who knows, but you can't argue with free, so try it out. I think if Epic pushes it, and puts some money into advertising, it might have a chance, the core gameplay is basically Quake and there's little else like it.

Bummer. No problems on mine so far (I've had it over half a year now), and no problems on my Clear either which I had since 2017 and which has been used daily. But I did have an Elex with a failure at the cable connector on the right earcup. I can't blame the headphones too much since there was a lot of strain being put on that connector and eventually it let go. I've gathered that it's a common weak point with them, so if you've got an Elex, don't yank on the cables!

Honestly I just use the HD650 something like 95% of the time. It's like mom's chicken noodle soup, or a pair of old fuzzy slippers, headphone comfort food that won't knock your socks off but is just pleasant and relaxing and nice, without doing much of anything wrong. These days, with so much crap going on in my life and outside of it, that's pretty much all I'm looking for most of the time. And the FR is damn near perfect. Other headphones are the Stax L700, which has some faults but is just so damn musical, the Utopia, which sounds great but is a bit fatiguing so I might ditch it, and the SR-007. The latter won't fit my head properly, I more or less have to hold the earcups in place so it gets next to no use, but damn it sounds great when everything works out. If only Stax updated the ergonomics... On the move I use the Westone UM Pro 50, for similar reasons to the HD650, though I do EQ it a bit. But then again I EQ everything. Might get some RAALs at some point, but have concerns over brightness/fatigue.

Didn't realize they were SonarWorks and you were with them - nice! Would have looked up myself otherwise. Thanks for linking. I sanity check measurements too, by using a test tone generator to listen to the FR by ear. However that method is a bit flawed in that the brain adjusts incredibly quickly to gradual changes in volume, so it's mainly useful for hearing sudden peaks and dips, the rest you have to train yourself to hear. But it's better than nothing and faster too.