Ooh that does look good. I just did a rudimentary scan of my main stack of CDs and only found David Oistrakh Collection Vol. 6, EMI "The Devil's Trill", and the EMI DVD with Oistrakh, Menuhin, and Rostropovich. Didn't realize my Oistrakh collection was so lacking.
Yup, stock and especially if the cotton is removed and not replaced with anything the bass is kind of blobby and slow and that's because of the resonance from the back plate. Quick fix makes it better, and a good headphone, depending on the condition of the electrets.
In my experience with the RP18 and headphones in general, pads make a huge difference in frequency response. Pads that leak bass and are decently thick work well.
4'33"
Honestly it just sounds like he picked ten songs he liked. Also, every audiophile knows that Norah Jones album was probably mastered by people dumping acorns all over the boards and then letting some squirrels loose. Which is actually only slightly worse than the average mastering engineer.
Depends on the frequency, microwaves operate around 2.4GHz which happens to be quite close to the frequencies used by various wireless devices. You can try finding something that operates at a different frequency band to minimize interference.
Well that dream was short-lived. Based on the last week, my extremely sparse practicing due to spending all my time on engineering, and my conking out and sleeping 14 hours yesterday, there's no way in hell I'm going to both do well in school and prepare for the Tchaik competition. Seems like it's gonna have to be 4 years from now. Time to find a regional or national competition.