HiWire

Happy Birthday!

I didn't expect them to be perfect on the first time out. The new Grado does seem to be more committed to changing, which is better than where they were stuck before - the detachable cables are a good change, and I think they should focus on reducing the headphone's weight as well as improving its sonic properties (I think they're overpriced, but all the flagship products are). Since the HP100 SE can use balanced cables, it would be interesting if somebody were to try it with the Schiit Midgard amplifier to test their Halo topology.

Differences between the HP100 SE and HP1000 from Head-Fi: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/grado-signature-hp100-se.974679/post-18494071

And Blonde was never released on CD... it was an iTunes exclusive at launch.

I'd like to try them, too. I don't expect them to beat the Joseph Grado HP-1/2/3, but I'm curious about how Grado engineers a target sound profile for a flagship headphone... and what kind of electronics they use to drive them.

I grabbed Forza Horizon 4 (late to the game as usual) - it is being delisted tomorrow because of expiring car licenses - available on Steam and the Microsoft Store - Forza Horizon 5 has better graphics but people say it isn't as good:

Concerto pour violon en ré mineur op. 47 - Jean Sibelius La Fosse Ô Lyon

Ford Mustang GTD drives under 7 minutes (6:57) on the Nürburgring Nordschleife (the Porsche 911 GT3 did 6:55):

Happy Birthday!

Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs. Actual Middle-Eastern Music

Also inspired by the documentary: Brian Eno - Before and After Science

Dea Matrona from Ireland:

Happy Birthday!

The now-discontinued Sony UBP-X1100ES is supposed to be quite good, too, with a few quirks regarding HDR10+ support (I have the previous non-4K version, the Sony UHP-H1). Worth looking for used in good condition or new old stock - it has SACD playback and analog outputs with excellent sound quality.

Weird Al - Nature Trail to Hell Blue Öyster Cult - Burnin' for You

MacBook Pro (the final announcement for the week) The M4 Max has up to 16 CPU cores (12 performance, 4 efficiency), 16 Neural Engine cores, and 40 GPU cores, 546GB/s memory bandwidth. Up to 128GB of unified memory and 8TB of storage. I guess the MacBook Air will be updated later... they are doubling the base M3 MacBook Air RAM to 16GB at the same price. The usual Apple hyperbole of insane performance and long battery life, at extreme prices. Your mileage may vary.

Apple just announced the updated Mac Mini. This is the first M4 Pro - up to 14 CPU cores (10 performance, 4 efficiency), 16 neural cores, and 20 GPU cores, 273GB/s memory bandwidth. It almost looks like a credible, tiny Mac Studio replacement - the new M4 Pro Mini can be equipped with up to 64GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD. In terms of I/O, the M4 Pro has Thunderbolt 5 ports as well as optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The only thing missing is Wi-Fi 7... for some reason, the Mini still has Wi-Fi 6E. I suspect native AV1 video encode is coming in a future Apple Silicon processor, but decode is sufficient for now, as the codec is not even mainstream yet. The base Mac Mini is a good value. I'm not sure why the M4 iMac is so limited. Perhaps they intend to sell a more powerful iMac with a larger display later.

Maybe. They just announced new M4 iMacs, too. Nothing much to report other than the elimination of USB-A ports and the possibility of a 32GB RAM upgrade and 2TB SSD. The M4 has up to 10 CPU cores (4 performance, 6 efficiency), 16 Neural Engine cores, and 10 GPU cores, 120GB/s memory bandwidth.

Omnipolar speakers from Schmidt Audio in Canada - the Ubiquitous v2.2:

Happy Birthday!

I underestimated the remaster's volume - I do think they turned it up, but there is no trace of clipping or distortion - Hearts got really loud in the end, as it should! And Brian Bromberg covers Earth, Wind and Fire's Shining Star on Wood II.

Yes - 90125 A perennial favorite... either my hearing is getting worse, better, or I've turned the volume up (long overdue haircut?)... it's more compelling than ever. The 2004 expanded and remastered CD.

John Denver sings Black Sabbath's War Pigs (but not really):

Happy Birthday!