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At least the Dre people are honest in that they make headphones that primarily look and feel good and function as a fashion statement, audiophiles squabbling over which $500 placebo effect just feels the warmest is some depressing poo poo.
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Aug 6, 2016 17:00
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I buy the $10 headphones at the checkout line at walmart so I don't have to worry about losing or breaking them.
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Aug 6, 2016 17:10
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$500 is indeed rather ridiculous when you can get studio headphones for less than 200 bucks. If it's used by audio engineers it must be doing something right.
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Aug 6, 2016 17:11
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13Pandora13 posted:If you're not investing in really good ($150+) headphones, https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-II-Precision-Enhanced-Earbuds/dp/B001EZYMF4/ref=sr_1_1?s=aht&srs=2530385011&ie=UTF8&qid=1470498212&sr=1-1 earbuds and headphones are different products but I'll keep my eye out for it. Thank you.
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Aug 6, 2016 17:36
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I've had a good experience with the Philips Strada. I dunno about sound quality and all that, but for comfort and durability this one is pretty great. I have spent a lot of time busting the headbands on a lot of cheap headphones, but this one is made from a springy metal wire instead of telescoping plastic. Its really comfy this way and it doesn't place as much stress on the moving parts. I have big ol stick-out ears, but these don't make my ears hurt or cut off circulation. They're also very lightweight and travel well. The earpieces turn at a ninety degree angle and lay flat if you push them all the way back up. However, if you're looking for over-the-ear style earphones or something that can cancel out a lot of ambient noise, these don't do so well at that. I dunno if these are selling points for you, but that's what I like about them. They strike a balance between being quality enough to last while being cheap enough I won't be super disappointed if they do go bust. I haven't broken my pair yet after nine months of use, which is a good thing because the manufacturers discontinued them and now only dead stock is being sold by third parties.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:12
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Pulling this even further off-topic, I follow this tutorial (with a leather punch) to make any pair of earbuds more (passively) sound-cancelling. I love my Bose headphones, but they're bulky, need power (and can conk out on a long plane trip), and not especially portable, all of which make them less than ideal to use when traveling, which is a big reason I wanted sound-cancelling in the first place. These I can slip into my pocket or purse no problem, and the method works just as well with cheapo checkout-line earbuds as with fancier models.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:40
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Audiophiles are insane people. It drives me insane to hear them brag about their high end systems, only for them to be listening to highly compressed audio sources. At least go with FLAC if you don't want to bother with the headache of vinyl, but don't tell me so much about your setup, only to play a CD ripped MP3 on it. poo poo, I have bad tinnitus and I can tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed music, but people who devote thousands of dollars to sound can't? I guess my hearing damage takes the warmth out of the songs... Rigged Death Trap posted:Modern glues are just as strong as any screw and sometimes superior When my dad was rebuilding out house, he would put a layer of glue onto a board before screwing it in place. I finally asked why he did both, and he told me that the screw was just there to hold the boards together while the glue dried, since the glue was stronger than any screw. Makes sense to me now that I'm older; welding is better than bolting, so with a good enough resin, it should be better than screws as well E: Although, thinking about welds, glue would imply that the two things are never meant to come apart, and thus, never repaired The Door Frame has a new favorite as of 23:15 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 23:08
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Yeah, glue is great for sone things, but I don't use it for anything that even has the slightest chance of having to come apart again. Some of those construction adhesives are brutal.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:48
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Waffleman_ posted:Actually, yeah, if you're a celebrity or an athlete or something, you can license out your own likeness for video games and stuff. It's why the main character in the Minority Report video game looks nothing like Tom Cruise, they couldn't get his likeness.
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Aug 7, 2016 01:56
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JnnyThndrs posted:Yeah, glue is great for sone things, but I don't use it for anything that even has the slightest chance of having to come apart again. Some of those construction adhesives are brutal. When I glue things I might want to take apart, I use something I can chemically attack, like cyanoacrylate with acetone (as long as whatever I’m gluing isn’t also ruined by acetone), or something I can just scrape off, like silicone.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:14
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GWBBQ posted:I'm sure there's an older example, but in the 1973-4 Gilligan's Island cartoon, Ginger had bleached her hair blonde because Tina Louise didn't want to be typecast as the same character. Holy poo poo, did I just realize a naming trend in Bob's Burgers? Or am I insane
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Aug 7, 2016 02:15
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JnnyThndrs posted:Yeah, glue is great for sone things, but I don't use it for anything that even has the slightest chance of having to come apart again. Some of those construction adhesives are brutal. 
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Aug 7, 2016 02:37
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I got my first parcel from Bobcat in a Box.    A postcard sent from Oregon. Kind of lame but still a neat surprise in the mail. I'm curious to see if I'll still receive more packages if I don't pay to renew for a new month, since I've only gotten one thing so far.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:39
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Tired Moritz posted:SO, which headphones are the best for your buck?
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Aug 7, 2016 05:57
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I have a pair of those 50 Cent headphones that I got on clearance. They are shockingly good and probably the best cheap (well, they were like ~50 or 60 bucks) pair of headphones I've ever owned.
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Aug 7, 2016 10:37
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The Door Frame posted:Audiophiles are insane people. It drives me insane to hear them brag about their high end systems, only for them to be listening to highly compressed audio sources. At least go with FLAC if you don't want to bother with the headache of vinyl, but don't tell me so much about your setup, only to play a CD ripped MP3 on it. There's software that lets you double blind test yourself to see if you can tell the difference between different encodings. Spoiler: the difference between very high bitrate compression, eg 320, and FLAC is placebo, even on the best equipment.
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Aug 7, 2016 12:22
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Blue Footed Booby posted:There's software that lets you double blind test yourself to see if you can tell the difference between different encodings. Spoiler: the difference between very high bitrate compression, eg 320, and FLAC is placebo, even on the best equipment. But CD rips used to be 128k, which is what I meant; this happened around the time that the iPod Nano came out. I got sat down to enjoy a lower fidelity version of the songs I had on my iPod, but played through a $10,000 stereo system. There was not even a hint of electrical hum in those speakers though, I will give him that much. He was so drat proud of it all, I didn't have the heart to tell him that he could have saved thousands by changing his iTunes import settings... Although, it is good to know that I made the right choice in formats out of laziness, FLAC was too much of a hassle for me Also, my browser has red squiggles under "iPod" and wants to change it to "iPad" That makes me feel old.
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Aug 7, 2016 14:49
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republicant posted:I got my first parcel from Bobcat in a Box. Oh poo poo, I got one of those too and thought it was junk mail from a printing company. Didn't even occur to me to connect it to Bobcat. ETA: Just added "postcard" and "postcards" to the do not buy list. Karma Monkey has a new favorite as of 15:20 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 15:15
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13Pandora13 posted:If you're not investing in really good ($150+) headphones, https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-II-Precision-Enhanced-Earbuds/dp/B001EZYMF4/ref=sr_1_1?s=aht&srs=2530385011&ie=UTF8&qid=1470498212&sr=1-1 Those are $50 CAD, 
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Aug 7, 2016 15:21
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republicant posted:I got my first parcel from Bobcat in a Box. you know the zip+4 completely negates blacking out your name and address, right?
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Aug 8, 2016 02:14
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The Door Frame posted:.... gently caress.  And yeah, I definitely remember downloading mp3s from kazaa and being horrified at how many people used the god awful default settings. And the tagging.  Edit: VVV System of a Down- Legend of Zelda Parody Blue Footed Booby has a new favorite as of 04:49 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 04:24
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Nirvana - I'm a Loser Baby So Why Don't You Kill Me.mp3
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Aug 8, 2016 04:30
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I still feel bad for every single comedy or parody artist at the time that wasn't Weird Al.
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Aug 8, 2016 06:25
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Karma Monkey posted:Oh poo poo, I got one of those too and thought it was junk mail from a printing company. Didn't even occur to me to connect it to Bobcat. I don't know why you guys are so down on that postcard. Stick it on your fridge and when people ask what it is you can say 'oh that? A robot sent it to me' 
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Aug 8, 2016 06:39
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Xenoletum posted:you know the zip+4 completely negates blacking out your name and address, right? It only narrows things down to about 50 different houses within a half mile from my house and doesn't reveal my name, so I'm not too worried about it.
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Aug 8, 2016 08:57
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Cleretic posted:I still feel bad for every single comedy or parody artist at the time that wasn't Weird Al. Weird Al hated this trend as well, too, because it tarnished his brand of doing clean parodies. It was bad marketing for everyone involved - except maybe Kazaa users who could search "Weird Al" as if it were the name of the genre, before people widely knew that parody songs WERE a genre, and the uploaders who would benefit from the misclicks of people who were fans of Al.
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Aug 8, 2016 09:10
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13Pandora13 posted:If you're not investing in really good ($150+) headphones, https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-II-Precision-Enhanced-Earbuds/dp/B001EZYMF4/ref=sr_1_1?s=aht&srs=2530385011&ie=UTF8&qid=1470498212&sr=1-1  no, the "enhanced bass" on those should actually say "WAAAAAY too much over-boosted bass".Get a set of these instead, they're great: https://www.amazon.com/SoundMAGIC-Noise-Isolating-Earphones-BlackGunmetal/dp/B005HP3OB0 Or a set of Beyerdynamic DT-235s, if you want headphones instead of earbuds. Best bang for the buck headphones ever, hands down. The Door Frame posted:But CD rips used to be 128k, which is what I meant Yeah, like 15-20 years ago  The main issue back then wasn't the low bitrate, it was the utterly lovely MP3 encoders that people used. A 128kbps (or V5 VBR, which averages at ~128kbps) MP3 encoded with a modern encoder such as LAME will actually sound drat good, and be transparent for most people on most music in most situations. Back in the bad old days, utter poo poo encoders like Xing MP3 or BladeEnc were the standard choices, and they sacrificed a lot of quality in their pursuit of faster encoding. To properly emulate the Xing 128kbps experience, you have to encode with LAME at around 48kbps and force a much simpler psychoacoustic model than it usually has. It really was that lovely back then, but since most people were just listening on crappy PC speakers, hardly anyone noticed. Lossy codecs have come a long way since then. Try encoding something using the -2 (negative 2 on a scale of -2 to 9) quality setting with AoTuV Ogg Vorbis. That'll give you an average bitrate of just 32kbps, making the average song fit in around 700KB, and it still sounds better than FM radio!
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Aug 8, 2016 09:24
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KozmoNaut posted:
Ok, this is a little over my head, but I think you're saying that compression of the data isn't a real problem if you have the proper software to compress it, and also the proper software to unpack the data quickly and accurately? And possibly that the awful sound quality of early MP3'S was due to problems with the software that produced and played the files, not the format itself? I never bothered to learn this stuff because it was never relevant to anything I did, except when I would need new video codecs for QuickTime In actual ads, Google has decided that this is the best thing to put in their YouTube App. I tapped it out of reflex the first time I saw it 
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Aug 8, 2016 10:14
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republicant posted:It only narrows things down to about 50 different houses within a half mile from my house and doesn't reveal my name, so I'm not too worried about it. Cue the Terminator going door to door in your neighborhood. "ARE YOU
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Aug 8, 2016 10:23
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The Door Frame posted:Ok, this is a little over my head, but I think you're saying that compression of the data isn't a real problem if you have the proper software to compress it, and also the proper software to unpack the data quickly and accurately? And possibly that the awful sound quality of early MP3'S was due to problems with the software that produced and played the files, not the format itself? I never bothered to learn this stuff because it was never relevant to anything I did, except when I would need new video codecs for QuickTime Yes, that is pretty much the gist of it. The MP3 format itself is a little funny, in that the spec to make a compliant decoder is extremely strict, to ensure that any MP3 will decode to the exact same raw audio data, no matter which decoder you use, within a very small margin of error. There were a few bad decoders, such as the original Winamp one, but apart from rare outliers like that, all MP3 decoders will produce the same result from a given MP3 file. An MP3 decoder is actually surprisingly simple to code, which also helped increase the adoption rate. So the problem wasn't really ever the players, it was the encoders. Compared to the decoder spec, the encoder spec is rather loose and open to interpretation. That's why LAME is lightyears ahead of even the reference encoder made by Fraunhofer, the inventors of the format. The end result files must obviously be compatible with the decoding spec, but there are very few rules as to how you end up at that point. There has been a lot of development in psychoacoustic modeling, to determine when and where to remove "redundant" audio that we cannot hear anyway due to masking by louder sounds and other effects. The reason why Xing and BladeEnc were/are so lovely is that they took the least possible effort to arrive at something that would play back as an MP3. They skimped on the psychoacoustics and just basically hacked and slashed at the audio until it fit the chosen bitrate, a sort of brute-force approach. Newer formats such as Ogg Vorbis and AAC take a similar approach, with a strict decoder spec and a loose encoder spec, for the same reasons as MP3. I'm not sure how the specs are for Opus, but I assume they're similarly asymmetrical.
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Aug 8, 2016 10:44
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KozmoNaut posted:
What I'm saying is that we're in the right thread to discuss how boasting about bass maybe sells headphones, technically more than actually boosting bass, I guess.
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Aug 8, 2016 11:02
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Do not mix with earbuds Instead get headphones that are comfortable to wear
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Aug 8, 2016 11:33
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Flipperwaldt posted:What I'm saying is that we're in the right thread to discuss how boasting about bass maybe sells headphones, technically more than actually boosting bass, I guess. People just generally love BASS BASS BASS, to the point of ridiculousness. Everything should be nicely balanced, having ALL BASS ALL THE TIME just lessens the impact of a good deep bass hit. Then again, most people with big car stereos seem to listen to the same Bassy McBass and His All-Bass Big Bass Band, Exxxtra Bass edition all the time, so I dunno.
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Aug 8, 2016 11:40
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But I thought people were all about that bass bout that bass bout that bass no treble?
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Aug 8, 2016 11:58
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HenryEx posted:Do not mix with earbuds KozmoNaut posted:Bassy McBass and His All-Bass Big Bass Band, Exxxtra Bass edition
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Aug 8, 2016 12:26
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In my apartment building, I'm the guy with the big subs, but no one knows it, because I'm not an rear end in a top hat 
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Aug 8, 2016 12:35
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KozmoNaut posted:People just generally love BASS BASS BASS, to the point of ridiculousness. Everything should be nicely balanced, having ALL BASS ALL THE TIME just lessens the impact of a good deep bass hit. 5 hz boosted so high all you hear is a constant drone.
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Aug 8, 2016 12:36
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That reminds me of some schmuck on Head-fi who insisted that there was plenty of sub-bass in old recordings, "you just have to boost 32Hz by 30-50dB."
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Aug 8, 2016 12:48
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Rigged Death Trap posted:In fact ,objectively, the best earbuds you can get under 20-30 bucks are JVC Gumys/marshmallows. Gumy is absurdly good for something you can dig out of a bin at a discount store. Sony's "under ten bucks" price point earbuds are good for the value, too, if you need something non-noise-cancelling. Sure, that poo poo is about as durable as an ice sculpture, but if you work in a studio where other people are always borrowing your stuff, being able to toss a pair of $6.99 earbuds is way better than starting your shift staring at a broken pair of $250 studio headphones with a Wendy's gift card and an "I'm sorry" note taped to them.
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Aug 8, 2016 15:23
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:... This is so specific it has to have really happened.
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Aug 8, 2016 15:45
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