All Things Audio

Shure has announced a new line of in-ear monitors. As with the old E-line, it targets both professionals and discerning consumers. The SE210, SE310, SE420, and SE530 range from a set of single driver in-ears at around $150 MSRP to triple drivers with an internal crossover at $450 MSRP. No word on how these stack up to the existing E-series yet. Apparently they are being marketed with the Push-To-Hear (PTH) accessory from the E500 available but optional.

I’m always interested in how technology and music interact. DRM is no exception. I’ve posted links in the past about DRM-free MP3s, but Yahoo has a Reuter’s article up about upcoming possibilities in this area for this coming year…

This is hilarious. Everyone should careful about carpal tunnel, repetitive motion syndrome, etc., but especially if you’re a pro that relies on use of your arms, haha.

Another interesting little test from Jake Mandell, the same guy who brought us the tone deaf test… My results for this one:

I’ve had a reasonable amount of music training, and some of those tones I listened for 10+ times before I could decide.

You can read the article from Ars Technica here, but it seems the music industry realizes that consumers want control over their music… whether they’re going to actually cede that or not is another question that remains to be seen.

Apparently Panasonic has a new super-thin speaker, read about it here. Probably most useful in a mobile applications like cellphones or PDAs.

We just got new desktops at work this past week that happen to have the new(ish) SoundMAX audio chipset. It’s excellent quality, and is probably the best built-in audio I’ve ever heard. (I haven’t heard the nForce SurroundStorm chipset, so unfortunately I can’t compare with that well-regarded built-in chipset.) I have a pair of Sony MDR-V600’s that I use for casual listening, and in the past it’s always sounded mediocre at best. Now I wouldn’t say they sound amazing now, and I’m sure that part of it is that with these headphones I’ve been mostly listening off of laptops which tend not to power large headphones very well, but the sound is much crisper and more detailed than it was before. I haven’t bothered to do extensive tests (I’m working when I’m at work :)), but let’s just say it was an obvious enough difference that it surprised me immediately when I started listening.

Haha, watch this… Highly entertaining, somewhat educational, and definitely food for thought. It’s not all as bad as the clip and “counter-culture media” might make it seem, but fluff music has definitely taken over pop lately. Maybe I’ll post some real thoughts on this later.

So I’ve decided to phase out my old site… There’s just no point in managing two sites. This blog is definitely going to be my primary. I’ll be reposting some of my reviews from the old site here as entries for a bit to get everything together in one place. Oh, one thing that I liked about the old site was my ability to use Google Analytics. Anyone happen to know how to get Google Analytics working with Wordpress?

As I mentioned before, I just purchased a pair of DynAudio BM5a’s. I finally got them setup last night as my cables just arrived yesterday. I’ll blog in depth about them soon. Haven’t posted too much in the past few days since we had a gig last night and I’ve been busy prepping… Anyway initial impressions on the speakers are that they are very detailed, smooth, with excellent soundstage. More soon.