HiWire

The Cardigans - Life Saint Etienne - Sound of Water

Happy Birthday!

Coney Island Baby (The Simpsons):

Congrats! That's sad to hear about the distribution problem... I bought spare pads for my Sennheiser HD 599 (from Sennheiser directly) for exactly that reason.

A few measurements: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Fschiit-midgard-balanced-headphone-amp-review.48653%2F

Yes, I found that one. It's all turning up OPA828! Cimarron Technology sells it on the BrownDog DIP adapter: https://www.cimarrontechnology.com/product/browndog-970601-so8-to-dip8-adapter The Nitsch DSHA-3FN and Piety got my attention, but they might not be ideal for my Grado HP-2.

Yes, I'll wait a while until the hype settles down and the reviews come in, but I think it's an interesting product from Schiit (who openly admitted their Modius chip amplifier wasn't interesting from an engineering standpoint). I think the Modius had a lukewarm reception and I don't have balanced equipment, so it was a bit academic for me. The only online material left on the Headsave Classic is my Head-Fi thread from 2005. Google probably thinks it's old news like everyone else. I found that Texas Instruments released a successor to the OPA627 opamp in 2018, the OPA828. I might get some of those to try in my Classic. I like Schiit's no-BS approach to making products affordable and interesting. I bought their Fulla v2 a few years ago and it has impressed me with its great sound and build quality. You can't find much else like it that's built in the USA.

I was thinking of upgrading or supplementing my old Headsave Classic amp (3 x Burr-Brown OPA627, hooked up to an Arcam FMJ CD36 or Sony UHP-H1) with something new, not too expensive. I may still get a Chord Mojo 2, but this looks interesting at $219... just announced, with impressions coming out in a few days. The Schiit Midgard has a different discrete design, with a mixed-mode feedback and more power than the Magni+ I was looking at:

Fanatec GT America + IGTC Indianapolis 8 Hour:

Happy Birthday!

Film scoring in GarageBand?!:

This popped up in my feed - interesting gadget (Teenage Engineering TP-7 field recorder) from Sweden:

The Runaways - Cherry Bomb

Happy Birthday!

Don't know about spatial audio... that would require buying new, expensive hardware. Some engineers still struggle with stereo mixing and mastering, so I'm not in a hurry to complicate things. I thought the announcement was very anticlimactic... the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 claims incremental performance improvements and features like ray-traced graphics and AV1 decode. A 10% and 20% increase in performance from the A16 is hardly a quantum leap. Also, they discontinued the iPhone 13 Mini, which made me sad. They may continue the small format phone in the next iPhone SE update.

I thought the Pixies were just ok... still have all their albums.

The Cardigans - Emmerdale

da fuq? Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit II is quite good on the PS2. It doesn't have that floaty steering of the other versions and it has more tracks and cars, too. Good ole' Uncle Cracker keeps it coming... 🏎️ Looks like those furries need cooling vests and proper ventilation for their, uh, extracurricular activities.

I don't think he's wrong. Linkbaity title and thumbnail, obviously, and it's a broad generalization - there is real indie music out there - we post it here all the time, but discussing it as a commercial phenomenon, yes, the music industry sold "indie sound" as a category for decades.

The death of indie rock:

Happy Birthday!

Great version! I've never heard of Sally Shapiro... turns out it is the name of a Swedish duo, Johan Agebjörn and a reclusive unnamed vocalist. They announced the end of their group in 2016, then secretly worked on more music. I'm going back to check on their synthpop italo-disco albums. Disco Romance

Sally Shapiro - Rent (Pet Shop Boys cover) From Italians Do It Better, Johnny Jewel of the Chromatics' label

Totally not a tank:

Anthony Garcia - Live in Zug, Switzerland: Seagraves Serenade: