catscratch
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Posts posted by catscratch
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Hah. One of my friends loves Lukyanyenko and actually knows him personally, and did some illustrations for him. I'm not a fan, tbh. But there are plenty of reasons to learn to read Russian even without him
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I don't think it's a lost cause, but it is a trend that's firmly entrenched, and if it is to be reversed, then it will have to happen one little step at a time until there is a trend in the opposite direction.
Radio uses its own compression to normalize volume levels, so I well and truly have no idea why this keeps going on at least from a rational, sober perspective. Maybe if you have a shuffled playlist the loudest song will jump out, and yeah there's that whole idea that psychoacoustically the louder material will sound better. But when you restrict dynamics so much and induce so much clipping, the brain gets fatigued listening to it all since it's really like a constant wall of white noise - there's little to no variety and nothing for the pattern-recognition machinery in your brain to work with.
IT'S LIKE A GIANT BOLD ALL-CAPS SENTENCE THAT GOES ON AND ON AND ON WITH NO END IN SIGHT AND IT'S STILL GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND YEAH LOUD MUSIC IS EXACTLY LIKE THIS JUST HAMMERING YOU IN THE SKULL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND THERE'S NO VARIETY AND NO CONTRAST AND NO RELIEF AND DON'T YOU JUST WISH THIS SENTENCE WOULD JUST END ALREADY BUT IT'S GOING AND GOING AND GOING AND THERE'S NO END IN SIGHT AND NO VARIETY AND CAT JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY! *stop button*
You don't have to be a mastering engineer to notice it. Everybody does, even if they're not aware of what it is that's making them turn off their music. I can't for a moment think that this hasn't contributed in some way to the major labels' financial problems.
I also have had a lot of music that I like rendered unlistenable by hot mastering, but I'm still fortunate in that the genres I listen to are largely immune from this - mainly because they're run my small labels that put a premium on sound quality. But some of my favorite metal, like Alchemist - "Trypsis" has been killed by hot mastering and I can't listen to it, even if it is great music.
Whole decades and genres of music lost. This sucks. But it won't go on forever.
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I also have the option to read Lem in Russian, and that's much closer to the original. Still there are some English translations that are pretty good.
The later Lem - Fiasco in particular - is still superb, but the utterly despondent bitterness and hatred of humanity makes them challenging, even if you happen to agree with every word, like I do. Very, very different from the humanist enthusiasm of the early works.
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I have a hard time seeing Lem as a hard to read author, unless maybe you're talking about some of the later works like Fiasco. But that's a very different Lem. The early works are some of the most witty and compulsively readable pieces of SF I ever read. Still, translation matters and if you have some horrible gobblygook translation then it's a different story altogether.
Gene Wolfe wasn't necessarily difficult but rather demanding of undivided attention. Without the atmosphere and total mental commitment he would have a hard time captivating his audience, I think, but if you can get immersed enough into his utterly alien thought processes then it's one hell of a reading experience. I liked "Book of the New Sun" but "Fifth Head of Cerebrus" was even better. Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide" actually reminded me of Gene Wolfe a lot, and no big surprise there since Swanwick lists Wolfe (and Proust) as one of his major inspirations.
Tolkien is pure escapist fiction, but antiquated. Still love the world, though, and always will. Try reading some of the non-Narnia C.S. Lewis, like the Space Trilogy. That's way more dense and demanding, but also absolutely sublime in parts. Now, if only I could get past his rabid religious zealotry and demonization of everything outside his point of view.
Proust takes the cake for this one (duh) but I wouldn't have it any other way.
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From my friend who works for Doug Sax.
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I hear that in the industry the Apogee is nicknamed "the Apology..." I wonder what that says about its reputation?
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Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 fighting stick. After smashing yet another pad into pieces in a fit of nerdrage, it's time to get a real stick. I hate sloppy execution. You could get away with a pad in Soul Calibur 4 which had far simpler execution and more lenient timing (and I was just about the only non-noob player that used a pad in SC4), but Street Fighter 4 is another story.
The nice thing about this one is that it's modular, and the stick and buttons can be swapped out for better ones, and with just a bit of modding you could get a very serious stick at a low cost.
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Abakus - That Much Closer to the Sun
Fantastic ambient/dub. A lot like Kuba actually but not quite as free-form impressionistic when it comes to melody. Definitely more concrete melody and not just a bunch of motifs strewn about seemingly with random psychedelic abandon like Kuba (which can be great too). But the feel is similar - especially with the offbeat, driving dubby basslines.
Great find, this disk is rare as balls.
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You're hearing an underdriven O2 with an amp that doesn't have the guts to drive it properly. It's not that dark even with a 717. Though to be fair, its treble isn't emphasized in any way to begin with and if you listen at lower volumes then yes, it can sound dark. Crank it and it sounds balanced. Basic Fletcher-Munson curves. But if you have an amp that's too weak cranking isn't going to do much except for compressing the dynamic range.
The O2 can sound bright to the point of piercing if you have a bright source. You can have two sources that sound only slightly different with most rigs, but on the O2 they will sound nothing alike. The O2 blows the difference between sources wide open and small sonic nuances become massive sonic problems. It's absurd - and at times frustrating - how revealing the O2 really is, even if its tonal balance doesn't make it seem like it at first - at least not in ears that are conditioned to equate brightness with transparency (and mine were a long time ago, now I know better).
Let's just say that I understand source swapping binges and DAC obsessions a lot better now that I've lived with the O2 for a good while.
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Just what we need, headphones with magnets strong enough to pull your tooth fillings out through your ears.
Shouldn't be a problem though, if the treble is anything like previous Beyers they'll drill holes in your ears first.
In all fairness though, I am curious to see what this one is all about.
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Brand new ESP950 arrived - and there's something weird going on.
Set it up, turn it on, and for the first 20 seconds or so everything is fine. Then this severe clipping-type distortion sets in as if the amp is running out of headroom, and progressively gets worse until everything is a distorted mess. In both channels, at all volumes. This is with the E90, AC-fed, Opus 21 as source.
Turn the amp off, wait a minute, turn it back on, same story. First 15-20 seconds are fine then distortion sets in.
I'm guessing some component in the E90 is burned out somewhere? The headphones themselves seem fine, but I don't have a Stax-to-Koss adapter to try them with the 717. I have no idea what's going on really, but oh well, next week back you go.
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A type of science heavy in trans fat.
Like, for instance, table-top RPG design?
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I don't think that speed has anything to do with harshness. The SR-001 is the fastest driver I've ever heard but it's not harsh in any way. Harshness is more due to irregularity in the FR in the treble, with peaks in the 6-8kHz region specifically contributing most to sibilance and harshness. Slow drivers can be quite harsh too - Ultrasones being a great example. A bright, peaky driver tends to shove microdetail into the foreground which gives the illusion of speed, but the best way to judge speed is to load the driver with stuff that has a lot of parallel, textured lines, and see if one line affects the driver's ability to portray another. A bright headphone that sounds artificially fast will still lose detail and definition of each and individual line with very dense and complex music (i.e. orchestral or very fast metal). Whereas a truly fast driver will keep up with anything and different instruments will never start to blur together or lose individual detail and texture.
"Transients" are all the things in between the main notes/sounds, i.e. the "transition" between different notes and sounds - the shimmer of a cymbal, the reverberations of a piano string, the echo of an electronic sample when it's fed through a reverb filter, etc. And yes, you do need speed primarily to do transients well, though if you have a messed-up FR you can hurt your ability to portray transients even though the driver is fast (i.e. ER-4S being a great example).
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Cheers brah. Raised a pint to you yesterday and I may continue the tradition today. Who knows, maybe I'll drink so much today that it will seem like any other day. Wishing you the same!
Rochefort 10 is fantastique, but St Berny 12 has been declining lately, along with the rest of the St Bernardus lineup. But if you can find a properly aged bottle go for it.
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It's simply that we've heard this sort of thing before, nearly every single day, for years, time after time. We're sick of it and there is a tremendous body of information out there on all of these expected questions. Ignoring it and asking for personalized attention because you can't decide is just plain lazy. Your situation is unique to you but not unique to us, and there's nothing that we can tell you that we haven't told other people a hundred times over.
The forum is made up of its content, and if the content is people asking the same exact questions, day after day, year after year, then what do you have for a forum? All we ask is that people think before they post and treat forum content with respect. And a little bit of unfriendly encouragement will benefit everybody in the long term by keeping the place in the state we want.
But whatever. The mods will close/delete this if they don't want it. I don't mind making recommendations personally.
To the OP: I don't think the UM3x will do it, it has pretty much the opposite of Ety highs - recessed, little sparkle, but also little harshness. I like the UM3x and probably would recommend it over anything else on the market but not in this case. The ES2 was a good buy 4 years ago when it was new but right now universals have started to close the gap and the ES3x is not too far away pricewise, so I see little point. Even though it is a good headphone. W3 sounds nice when it fits right, but good luck with that. A lot of people can't get a good fit period and then they have to deal with boomy bass, piercing highs, and congested mids. Maybe the TF10 is what you need?
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Who cares what your friend thinks.
I used to show stuff around, not so much to try and make people envious of my gear but just to show people what really good sound is like. "Listen to this! It's the Omega 2, the best headphone ever made!" Nobody cared. Nobody still does. So I stopped caring too. The less others handle my gear, the better shape it's going to be in.
On the other hand, the few people that actually do care about sound but aren't into the hobby serve as a good reality check. If someone's face lights up when they listen to your rig and you can see the amazement you're on the right track. And often untrained ears will pick up things that your golden audiophile ears have been conditioned to miss.
My best reality check is a friend who is a recording engineer. His rig makes mine look like a joke, but then I don't have the benefit of a mastering studio that lets you borrow EMM Labs sources and doesn't really care if you return them.
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What's more transparent than BHSE + O2 Mk1?
The most transparent system that I've ever heard was the speaker system in the Mastering Lab, Ojai. Don't ask me what was in it though (mostly because I don't remember). All I know is that it was dynamic, single ended, with a fully custom-built signal path and of course perfectly tuned acoustics. Actually very similar tonally to the O2 and in many other respects as well. But the clarity was unreal, maybe because I was listening a 24/192 rip of Dark Side of the Moon straight off the original master lacquer, on an amazing custom-built source. But there are only a handful of systems like this around the world.
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Q-tips do take some practice in order to be used correctly. However IMO they are useless for deep cleaning, you will generally only compact the wax and make the problem worse. An ear syringe with some warm water is the best way to go.
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I'm just waiting for ear problems to subside until I can use IEMs again, at least something other than soft foamies. After that it's JH13 city, big time. Would have gotten them a month ago if not for that.
I really hope that it's everything it's cracked up to be, then maybe I can get rid of most of my stash. I do want to mess around with the ESP950 for a while though. Don't know why, but I have an irrational desire to get my hands on a set. The ESP950 is calling me...
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Man, there are too many pieces of music that are perfect. Like all of Bach's Well Tempered Klavier (played a lot of it actually). Or Stravinsky's Petrushka in which I wouldn't change one note. Or nearly everything Rachmaninoff ever wrote, ever.
A few of my favorite non-classical perfect tracks, though:
Shpongle - "Shpongle Falls"
Shpongle - "Divine Moments of Truth"
Shpongle - "Once Upon the Sea of Blissful Awareness"
Shulman - "Retroscape"
Shulman - "Invention"
Maneesh de Moor - "Raindance"
Maneesh de Moor - "Namaste"
Amethystium - "Shadow to Light"
Porcupine Tree - "Radioactive Toy"
Porcupine Tree - "Nine Cats"
Porcupine Tree - "Lightbulb Sun"
Radiohead - "Subterranean Homesick Alien"
Pink Floyd - "Money"
Buddy Guy - "I Smell a Rat"
Bruce Dickinson - "Jerusalem"
King Crimson - "Frame by Frame"
There's too much too list. I could be here all day.
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Yeah Bear does some fun stuff, but since he's with a camera crew there is no psychological element to what he's doing. With Les though you can really see the mental effects of survival, and that makes the show much better and more impactful. Plus he doesn't do anything that anyone in his position couldn't potentially do. Which isn't to say that he isn't entertaining, on the contrary watching him do just about anything is great because of his humor and charisma.
Tell us that we can drink our piss. You don't actually have to do it... freak!I don't think you should drink urine in a survival situation. It usually dehydrates you even more. Plus there are toxins in there which have been removed from your body for a good reason; putting them back into your body can lead to some serious problems. If you're drinking urine chances are you are already dehydrated, which means that water content will be lower and toxin content will be higher. Les made a urine distillation still in one episode to get fresh water without the toxins and that is a pretty cool idea, but the amount of water you'd get from that is pretty small. But better than nothing.
Which is not to say that people haven't done it historically, but often for other reasons than survival. Siberian shamans that used Amanita muscaria for divination purposes drank their own urine. The theory is that muscimol is converted by the body into an active metabolite which is then partially excreted; drinking the urine gets more of the active metabolite back into the body and increases the potency of the mushroom.
Not something I'm keen on doing myself mind you; sounds a little dangerous to me, not to mention disgusting. But people certainly have done some disgusting things in the pursuit of getting high.
And speaking of getting high...
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Anyone else a fan of this show?
I missed it the first time around since I don't watch TV but I'm catching up now. Les Stroud is truly amazing, musician, survival expert, writer, filmmaker, and a remarkable TV personality to boot with endless charisma. He films everything himself, no camera crew, nothing is faked like Man vs. Wild, just genuine survival techniques with a bit of humor thrown in. Les doesn't do anything excessive, and his escapades don't always work and sometimes he has to bail and call in help. Still, I've learned a few nice tricks, and the show is massively entertaining.
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Yeah, it's usually a peak around 7-8kHz where the bulk of the "s" sound is. Peaks around that area generally set off sibilance though it can sound different depending on where the peak is.
The A250 has some sibilance, but mostly it's a general treble emphasis.
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Been liking the A250 a lot lately. Don't know what the hell is wrong with me. The brightness doesn't bother me quite as much. Very nice airy and open sound, clear, great soundstage, good bass, really crisp/sharp attack with extended decay. very dynamic. Maybe this is my mind trying to tell me to get the ESP950? If it is anything like the A250 but minus the colored mids and excessive treble energy I willl probably like it a whole lot.
Don't know how it ranks but it's not going to threaten the O2 any day soon.
Great American Beer Festival Suggestions?
in Food and Drink
Posted
Sample the best Russian Imperial Stouts if you can find them - Dark Lord, The Abyss, Kate the Great, Old Rasputin, Stone Russian Imperial, Sam Smith's Imperial, Founders Russian Imperial, Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and so on. Also sample the very best IPAs, though I know less here than I do in stouts, maybe some more experienced hop-head can chime in. I do think that these are the two styles that American breweries have taken to a peak that's not found anywhere else.
Also, try some American-brewed Belgian-style beers. Allagash makes some really good ones as well as some pretty mediocre ones. But Allagash Odyssey is one of my favorites (as is Allagash Four, if it comes out well, it's hit or miss with this one). I also like Ommegang Abbey Ale (more than their Three Philosophers Quad), but that's just the start and nowhere near the end, or the best. See if you can find any Lost Abbey beers there.
But yeah, Grawk's list is great. I'd add the following as well:
Allagash
AleSmith
Stone
Port Brewing/The Lost Abbey
Founders (their stouts rule)
Are there any Trappist beers at events like this? I can't help but think that climate change has affected hop quality since there's been a global drop in the quality of most Belgians, but Orval is still good, and Rochefort beers have been hit or miss, but still good at their best.