episiarch

Yeah, that's the issue. It's disappointing that the review essentially conflates "needs an amp" and "needs a DAC." I'd really expect HeadRoom to have addressed those separately. Unless Jorge thought the SQ was so bad that an amp alone was pointless? But that seems unlikely.

Jorge from HeadRoom reviews iPad as a source.

Got a sitter and went out. Date night! Finally tried the local Mexican place, after living here over a year. Didn't suck! Not award-winning either, but honestly we were just grateful for non-sucky Mexican food. The margaritas didn't suck either. Then went to the Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo. For fellow Americans saying "the whaaaa?" it's basically the orchestras, marching bands and cavalry exhibition teams from assorted services doing their thing, with occasional cameo appearances by war machines. They're popular here, and benefit causes like, in this case, The Royal British Legion. Since it is the Windsor Castle, Royal, Tattoo each night it is attended, and in some theoretical (though not practical) sense presided over, by a Royal. On our night it was HRH the Duchess of Cornwall. As Americans we were oblivious to the fact that HRH the Duchess of Cornwall meant the infamous Camilla (you know, that Camilla) until our nanny/sitter clued us in afterwards. The audience's warmth and adulation could be described as "subdued." The show began with the traditional English martial favourites Theme From Star Wars, Everything's Coming Up Roses, and That's Entertainment. Later God Save the Queen was played twice. Fair enough; I suppose that whole hung Parliament thing has put her through the wringer. Had to smile when the woman in front of us attempted to Shazam the marching band. Didn't work, but can't blame her for trying.

To be fair, they tweeted it too; I just happened to hit FB at the right moment to see it there first. Shauna at Selective Sounds did good impressions for my Westones a couple years ago. San Jose based I believe.

Also you can change your mind about color, artwork etc. up until they have your impressions. Yes, they ask for that at the time of order, but you can shoot them an email later on to make changes.

What grawk said. You place the order and they more or less don't care when your impressions arrive. (My impressions were several weeks behind due to similar sorts of scheduling complications.) Go for it.

SALE ALERT! Just now posted to their Facebook page:

I haven't tried iRip ($20 iPod-to-Mac) myself, but another program I have from the same folks has been a great performer, one of those no-muss no-fuss simply-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin products that's easy to like. So I'd suggest giving iRip a try. There's some kind of free trial period too.

JH16s reviewed (though briefly and unsatisfyingly) on CrunchGear, along with UE5Pro and Ety hf2: Review Round-up: Custom in-ear headphones It is probably easy to guess which comment to the article is mine.

Mostly Sticky Flapjack, occasional Salty Prime Minister. Oops! Wrong site. About half and half Foetus and Yearner. By their personality summaries, I'd be one of the other positions.

Re an earlier post about the relative flexibility of the cable materials: I received my 64" black cable today. Side by side with the clear cable, the black cable is not quite as flexible. In practice, though, both are very supple and there's nothing you could do with the clear cable that you can't do equally easily/comfortably with the black cable. In other words, there's no impediment to choosing purely on appearance.

This used to be a little hard to find back home in California, but I can get it in the supermarket here. And it was something like

Wow, that takes me back. I had one of those - in sand or black, I forget which - and actually it turned out to be fussy to deal with, more than utilitarian and manly. Stiff fabric with tough zippers and very tough velcro made it hard to reach in and grab something one-handed. Well, maybe unless the bag's weighted down with something meaty like a Glock or two. I confess I didn't try that. Mine also had a fairly strong smell of left-in-a-damp-warehouse-too-long. If I were a manlier man I guess I could've pretended that was natural musk. But I'm much too fail for that, so it just made me the funny-smelling dork with the bag he could open only with lots of spastic tugging. (Those of you who know me may be going, "exactly, go with it, man, that's a look that fits you." Thanks. Anyway we finally abandoned the thing in Venice, and smelled much better on the trip home.)

Somewhat off topic, but still: Rebuilt/pimped espresso machine at Intelligentsia, Venice, LA: "We wanted it to look like a tube amp" Cappuccino, Intelligentsia on Vimeo

They're my first full-custom earphones, but I've had, hmm, 4 sets of custom Ety tips before this. (The ACS ones are the best, BTW.)

Notwithstanding the terrible effects the eruption has had on Icelanders and on those who need to get somewhere, the effect here in Windsor - a very few miles from Heathrow and bang under the flight path - has been one of unhead-of daytime silence, and just as warm sunny spring days have come upon us. It's just marvelously peaceful here. I'm doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts, though for the sake of those adversely affected, I hope it's not too long.

Would have gone, if we had a real record store anywhere near here. There's just HMV in our area, sadly.

I actually like the mini-displayport plus dongle solution better than the plain DVI port, just on aesthetic grounds - it puts the big, clunky, and relatively inflexible DVI cable a couple inches away from the nice clean laptop, and the extra bendiness of the mini-displayport portion of the cable makes the whole thing feel more compact as well, just because it's easier to route. YMMV of course.

Oh, looks like 13" got revved a little also . . . still core 2 duo but faster clock, and it has a bumped integrated GPU. They say the GPU bump yields 1.8x the previous 13" on Doom 3, 1.6x on Call of Duty 4.

Annnnd we're back. New MBP's, the 15" and the 17" at least. i5 with an i7 option. No dramatic price changes that I can see. Was wondering if there might be a micro-SIM tray in this generation. Nope. http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Apple Store is down. So hopefully MBP updates are really really imminent.

No, either the JH Audio name stamp or the winged logo (or both, I'd imagine) are free of charge. And optional if you'd rather not have them. They'll let you choose the colors, too.

Reply to Lars: if I had it to do over, I would have gotten the JH Audio name stamp on the faceplate in their default orange instead of in navy. I was afraid the high-contrast orange would have been too much and would have taken over the faceplate, but looking at it now I can see it would have been small and elegant and not gaudy at all. (I had looked long and hard at their Facebook photo album before making my decision, but the reality is different.) I also *might* have gone for the 64" instead of the 48" cable; I'd been away from Shures long enough that I'd forgotten to account for the extra slack taken up by over-the-ear routing. Getting a second cable - a 64" - for desktop use.

Mine arrived today. No pics, since they're ordinary looking (black eye blue trans shell, black trans faceplate - so I can see the works inside if I look, but the eye's not automatically drawn to them). Comfort and fit are perfect. SQ-wise they are clearly showing me things that my other 'phones (principally Etys) are missing. And (as Al has vividly noted) there is remarkable bass presence. I don't have a lot to say beyond that. When I'm giving noobs headphones to audition I always tell them, "the extent of the improvement's not always obvious immediately, but wear these for a month and then put your old ones back on and you'll understand." I'm attempting to force that same discipline on myself.

Doctor Who new series intro episode. It's good. New showrunner Moffat - writer of some of my favorite episodes since the 2005 relaunch - knows what he's doing.