AKG K701s - Seven Months Later

Few weeks, seven months, what's the difference, really?

Lots of time to burn these in and get familiar with them, so let's start. These things are outright fantastic. Coming from my HD555s, these are more spacious, more neutral, and have a much wider range. Well produced tracks tend to be surgically picked apart, each instrument being easily identifiable. Poor tracks, on the other hand, are punished. Every single flaw in a poor rip, or a bad recording/master are noticeable. There's been some tracks I can't stand to listen to any longer because they're just poorly produced and full of flaws.

For those looking for a bass heavy headphone, these aren't it. Though I don't find them bass anemic - In fact I find them perfectly balanced - They're not what you'd get from a Sennheiser 5 series, but instead closer in clarity and sound signature to an Etymotic IEM. The big difference between these and the Etymtoics is the sound stage, along with the even more enhanced detail. Some will consider them sterile, but I would just say they're flat and analytical. If that's the sound signature you want, these are perfect.

Negative points? Well, the padding on the headphones isn't great. It's a bit on the hard side, even after seven months of use. It's fine, but you tend to notice it after an extended period of use. The cable is plenty long, but with the K701s, it's non-removable. So when it does get twisted, it's a bit more annoying to untangle. This could have been solved by grabbing the K702s, but the 701s were practically identical and cheaper. Otherwise, my only complaint would be that they ruin a lot of older tracks for me... Oh well, there's no time for bad tracks.

New Etymotic HF2s

After about 5 years of use, my old Etymotic HF2s kicked the bucket. The IEMs were stripped down to bare wire and still working! Of all the things to fail, the cable strain reducer at the 3.5mm connector was the failure point - arguably the best looking part of the old things. Anyway, once they died, I ended up rolling my Apple dual drivers (With foam supertips!) for a good couple months, the entire time wishing I had a new pair of Etys. Bonus time came around, and bonus was good! So the first thing I did was order some new Etys. I was very close to getting the ER4s, but I couldn't stomach the price difference, considering my source (Google Play Music).

Upon receiving the new HF2s, I replaced the stock brain-ticklers with a pair of medium Shure olives (My new favorite tips for these), and I've been in audio nirvana ever since. A lot of people would be turned off by Etymotic's sound signature - Most describe it as cold and lacking in low end resolution. I however find that it's amazingly accurate! The highs are extended, but not harshly bright. The mids are very revealing - Lots of microdetail - with excellent separation even in the busiest of tracks, and the low end hits are very well represented, with a fantastically quick decay. While I can agree that the vibrating bass you'd expect from a dynamic driver isn't there, the quality of the bass, along with the accuracy is unmatched. Listening to anything from dance pop to mellow indie acoustics is an absolute treat. To top it all off, the isolation, even with the Shure olives vs the brain tickler triple flanges is exceptional. Expect the world to melt away with a nice deep insertion.

As always with Etymotic, highly recommended if you're looking for a fantastically analytical and clean sound. Bassheads beware - These will give you quality, but not ear shaking quantity. Etymotic products like the HF lineup will always be a top choice in my books! On a side note, shout out to the Apple IEMs for being what they are. If you're strapped for cash, and can find a pair in the 30-50 dollar range, I found them very similar to the Etymotics, with less microdetail/clarity in the mids, and a bit more thump in the low end. On a tight budget, they're probably the best analytical IEMs out there!

Daft Punk SNL Advertisement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMJwcOiBoZE

Teaser ad for the new Daft Punk album coming out in May. I'm just a little bit excited.

M-Audio AV-30: My Review

Heading back to an apartment, I knew that the Logitech X-530 speaker set I had for years wasn’t going to be cutting it any more. It wasn’t just the extra noise factor from the subwoofer, it was also the extra speakers that just weren’t being used, and the audio quality wasn’t up to par with my headphones.

My search for affordable speakers started in August of 2012. I knew I wanted something that was a lot more flat than what the bass heavy X-530s were, and also something that was a bit more space saving. I didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg, so AudioEngines were out of the question. I had looked at the M-Audio AV series for a while, and after deciding the extra bulk of the AV-40s wasn’t worth the extra cash, and the fact that the AV-30s were available in store, I purchased them in Moncton.

The Hardware:Overview And Opinions

The speakers are a nice solid wood cabinet, with a 3” woofer and a 1” tweeter. On the front of the left speaker (where the amp is housed) is the volume knob, which is illuminated with blue light when the speaker is on for easily identifying power state. Also located on the front is a 3.5mm headphone jack, and 3.5mm line in. The sides and tops are bare, however, the back houses the bass reflex port, the speaker wire terminators for linking the speakers, the power on/off switch, and also the standard ⅛” RCA jacks. On the bottom of each speaker is a thin foam pad that absorbs any vibrations.

Overall the speakers sound great. They’re similar in response to my HD555s, which is what I was looking for in a speaker. The crossover between the woofer and tweeter was engineered great, with little discernable crossover. Lows fade really well into highs. In listening to my daily playlists, which can consist of anything from rock to pop to dance, the speakers performed admirably, and I was pleased with the reproduction of audio in comparison to my headphones. They perform awesomely for games as well, specifically real time strategies where I don’t want to wear headphones for an extended period.  I also like the fact that there is a headphone out and a line in on the front for easy access. The standard ⅛” RCA jacks on the back mean I can connect these to many different pieces of equipment if necessary. The magnetic shielding ensures they don’t interfere with my monitors and other electronics in the room.

One thing I don’t really like about them is the power switch is located in the back. This isn’t a huge deal if you’re just leaving them on, and it’s nice to have a physical switch to turn them off. I believe better positioning may have been combining power with the volume knob, or instead a separate button on the front. Another thing would be that they don’t handle vocals quite as nicely as I’d like them to. I’d like to be able to keep youtube videos at a lower volume while still having the voices clear, however, I find I need to turn the volume up. This is more than likely just the way they set the audio channels on the videos, but I do wish these would handle vocals better without the need to turn them up. EQing may solve this problem, however I haven’t played with it yet. It could also be fixed with proper positioning, but my desk doesn’t currently support it.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for an affordable pair of balanced studio monitors that still pack a decent punch, the AV-30s may satisfy you. Expect them to fill a small to medium room with decent sound, but don’t expect much beyond that. The size makes them semi-portable as well, so it wouldn’t be a huge deal bringing them to a hotel room if travelling.

Things I like: Rdio

Rdio is a multi platform music streaming application, designed to make managing your music collection easier.

I used to have a vast collection of lossless music, taking advantage of the extremely large storage space available to the iPod Classic line. Coupled with my Etymotic ER6i earbuds, I was in audio heaven. Obtaining a smart phone however, made things a bit different. No longer did I want to carry around a second device solely for music, and my smart phone didn't play back ALAC files, and didn't have the storage space for them either. Although I kept my music, I ended up selling the iPod and the Etymotics, and dealing without music on the go for the longest while. I however decided to give it another try, grabbing some new Etymotics, the HF2s, and playing with playlists that would fit on my phone. Re-encoding was a pain, managing playlists was a pain, and dealing with different players was a pain. I'd have to go through my entire collection, pick out which songs I wanted on my device, re-encode them to 192k MP3s, then move them via USB to the device. You can imagine that this could be an extensive undertaking, and most people would have just given up and purchased an iPod and dealt with having another device solely for music.

Mid 2012, after getting tired of the playlist management, I looked at other alternatives. Rdio seemed rather well received, and although I wasn't a fan of spending per month just for my music, it was quickly justified when looking at what I would normally spend on an album, followed by what would have to be done to have that new album loaded onto my device. With the cogs moving in my head, I quickly signed up for the 7 day trial and fell in love. For once, the music on my desktop was all accessible from my phone. Hell, it was accessible from anywhere I wanted it. This was a revelation. Rdio ended up showing me that I really couldn't tell the difference between an ALAC encoded song and one streamed from their service, which as far as I know, is encoded in MP3. Even with my accurate HF2s and Sennheiser HD555s, I really couldn't tell a difference. Adding new songs was as simple as searching for the artist and clicking the plus sign. Making playlists was simple, and there are even some social networking aspects, with the ability to follow other listeners and artists, subscribe to their playlists, and discover new music.

Rdio wasn't without it's bumps however. Initially the Android app was fairly buggy. I ended up getting 2 weeks of free service out of them for a bug which caused the app to stop playback after 3 songs. It's still not a perfect solution, but they're constantly working on it, adding nice features, like collection shuffle, a smoother user interface, and the ability to use the mobile app as a remote control. Overall, it's been pretty bug free for the past little while. The only real disadvantages to the service would be with the data usage for streaming, and the inability to stream with no network connection. Although I don't find it uses ludicrous amounts of battery, it definitely does make use if my 6GB of data from Bell. I stream music for at least half an hour a day, 5 days a week, and with the high quality setting, I can see Rdio using about a gig of data on its own. Coupled with my regular browsing and streaming habits, I can see that 6GB creeping up rather quick. Those of you without good data plans can make use of offline sync however, storing playlists on your device for playback without a network connection. This also mitigates that issue with poor/no signal quality.

Just last month, I removed all of my local music from my computer. I uninstalled iTunes. It feels good. All of my music, plus more than I could ever want, now lives in the cloud, and I'm satisfied again.

Shall we dance?

Woooh! New 23" Acer H233H BMID. Very happy with this monitor. Absolutely blows my Samsung out of the water when it comes to color accuracy and brightness/contrast. The resolution is a touch higher than the Samsung, sitting at 1920x1080, so it's a bit harder on the video card, but everything plays on it great. The best part about upgrading to the 23" though, was keeping the 20" as a second monitor! Yes, I've got it sitting to the left of the 23", and it works well for instant messaging and things I want to monitor while doing more important things on the 23". If I knew how helpful that dual monitors was going to be, I would have gotten a second a loooooooooooooong time ago.

NEW IEMS!
Yep, ordered some in ear monitors. I was torn between 3 entry level phones, the Shure SE115s, Etymotic ER-6is, and the Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3s. I ended up going with the ER-6is, even though they are the oldest. From the reviews I had read they were the most accurate of the 3, although they lacked bass. I really don't know what those reviewers were smoking, but I don't want any of it, because the bass on these things is perfect. Not enough to overpower the highs and mids like my EP-630s, but not so little as to ruin the music listening experience.

All I can say about these buds is... Wow. I never knew what I was really missing in music until now. MP3s are okay, but my lossless collection really shines. I could hear things I never could before. Slight coughs, breathing, people in the background, etc... It's amazing.

Anyway, that was just a quick post to update.

Cheers,
-Jon