Archive for the 'music' Category

Headphones, pt. 1

Published on September 24, 2011 in gadgets, headphones and music. 0 Comments

 

As you know, I really like music, and am probably a bit of an audiophile. I don’t have the money for a full hi-fi setup of audiophile quality, but I try to get the most out of headphones. I might detail my full headphone setup in a later post, but this about my future portable setup.

My current setup is a Cowon J3 with Sennheiser HD 25-1 IIs. But because I carry it in my trouser pocket the cable is under a lot of stress and it breaks every so often. I am now sick of repairing or buying new cables (though I will probably make a blogpost about my next and hopefully last attempt at cable-repair), so I decided to go wireless.

After a favorable video review at Head-fi I decided to give the Sennheiser MM 450 Bluetooth headphones a try, but it affirmed all my fears about Bluetooth headphones. It makes everything played through it sound like an overcompressed MP3. I returned it.

So I searched around for a better wireless technology and stumbled upon Sleek Audio. They produce in-ear monitors and a wireless accessory which uses the proprietary KLEER wireless technology which promises wireless CD quality. I contacted their European dependance about purchasing the SA6R IEMs with the W1 wireless accessory but I was told that they don’t know yet when it will be available. Instead they offered me a bargain for their CT6 custom IEMs.

I decided to take them up on their offer, so I had to have molds made of my ears, that they will then use to make the custom casings. I went to two different companies who produce hearing aids and asked if they could provide said molds. I got a “Yes, but” from both companies; apparently they only produce molds for their contract partners, sending them to Sleek Audio in the Netherlands is not something they want to do. So I looked further, and to my surprise Google told me that the place where I got my glasses, Fielmann, also makes hearing aids. Not only were they very professional and friendly, I was able to take the molds home with me, they didn’t even charge me for anthing. I don’t want to sound like an advertisement, but that is good customer service!

So, here they are, backups molds of my ears. I’ll send them to Sleek Audio today, with a few pages of paper detailing the IEMs I want to order, and I’m looking forward to hearing the results.

Mixtape / Webradio (again)

Published on April 8, 2009 in music. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Looking for alternatives for my dismantled “radio” (well, it was more of a mixtape, really) I found 8tracks. It’s a website for publishing mp3-mixtapes. For that to be legal they need to put some limitations on it, so you won’t see the playlist, you won’t be able to jump to a certain song (though you can skip a limited number of songs), and when you want to listen to it twice the playlist will be shuffled. In short, they do everything to make it impossible for you to hear a given song.

But that’s okay, because it lets them, under US law, be recognized as a “webradio”, which means that it’s completely legal. So I present to you now a mixtape (not CC-licensed) of my favorite powerful metal songs (I won’t say powermetal, because it’s hard to define and the songs would break the definition anyway): http://8tracks.com/unhold/powerful-metal.

Enjoy!

No more radio

Published on April 8, 2009 in blog and music. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Im sorry to announce that the radio has been closed down due to legal uncertainties, even though all songs were released under Creative Commons licenses.

That’s the world we live in, once you think it’s safe and turn your back to copyright, it bites you in the ass.

Cowon D2

Published on January 28, 2009 in gadgets and music. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

My MP3-Player (or rather Portable Media Player, as it plays not only MP3, but also videos, and more importantly FLAC and ogg vorbis) the Cowon D2 has had some problems with playing tracks in the right order.

It worked fine when opening the files via the file browser, but when browsing them via tags the playing order was… well, out of order. It wasn’t random though, on the iAudiophile forums I read something about it being a typically Korean bug, because the track numbers were read from right to left or something.

Anyways, the latest firmware update, 2.59, finally fixed that bug. Or so I thought. All my mp3s are now playing in the correct order, which is really great. The problem is: The FLACs are still playing out of order.

So now I’m converting all my FLACs to mp3s. With LAME and the -V0 setting, which schould produce really good quality mp3s. I probably won’t hear the difference, but it still makes me sad that Cowon didn’t manage to fix that bug once and for all.

So right now I cannot recommend buying a Cowon D2, though it is really an awesome device!

I’ll file this under “lesson learned”: Check the web for bug reports before you buy something.

+1

Published on January 6, 2009 in blog and music. 0 Comments

I just remembered that another of my favourite songs is Creative Commons licensed, so here is yet another update to my radio:

Re: Your Brains by the wonderful Jonathan Coulton.

Radioactive Materials

Published on January 1, 2009 in blog and music. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I spent two nights sifting through CC-licensed music, and I uploaded two more songs to my radio. But I think I will stop this experiment here.

While there is indeed good, free (as in speech) music out there, I still can’t show you the music I really care about1, at least not legally. I could link to Youtube videos with horrible audio quality (and questionable legality), or I could post a playlist and send you to fetch it’s content at a certain Swedish bay.

But I don’t want this blog to be about music anyway; I just think it’s a great idea to let other people listen to a few samples of the music you like, so they might find something they like, discover new bands or even new genres for themselves. So I’d like to recommend a few songs and have people listen to them without any hassle. It’s what people have done with LPs, CDs, and MCs for decades. It’s the best advertisement any musician and their labels could hope for.

But not on the internet – not in the open. It’s too risky. They (the labels mostly, I guess) could sue me and they might even win. So this music sharing remains in a legal grey area; in the underground.

I’m afraid I can’t offer any insightful conclusion to this little rant. The situation is slowly changing – see Nine Inch Nails – but the big music labels will fight for their (hopefully) lost cause for a long time and do much harm to keep their obsolete business model alive. They not only harm their customers, but probably even more so the artists, who are exploited and chained to a merciless and greedy bureaucracy.

1: “Ode an die Freude”, the Presto from Beethoven’s Ninth, is actually one of my favourite pieces of music, ever. I was lucky to find a free recording of it.

Unholde Radio / Opentape: Ode an die Freude

Published on December 31, 2008 in blog and music. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Experimenting with what this blog has to offer, or rather, what I can make it offer, I tried uploading Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode an die Freude” (German for “ode to joy”) onto an opentape installation (actually it’s just an excerpt from the fourth movement of his 9th – and last – symphony).

It seems to have succeeded, but the embedded player won’t load the MP3, probably 15 MB are too much for it. But I couldn’t bring myself to cut it under 11 minutes…

So, if you want to listen to “Ode an die Freude” and, possibly – later – more music, tune in: Unholde Radio.

This MP3 file (and those I might upload later) is actually licensed under a Creatice Commons license, so as long as I don’t charge you for listening to my “Radio” it’s perfectly legal.

That is, if I give credit, of course, so here (and on my credits page) goes:

Excerpt from “Symphony No 9 in D Minor Op. 125: Presto”

Performed by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra

Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven

From the album Beethoven – Opferlied and Symphony Number 9