Never been one to let the carrier drop

Why is it no one ever puts big enough headphone amplifiers in CD players? It’s like they never consider that we might be driving full-size headphones with them.

Actually, this one isn’t so much not big enough (it does just fine on loud content) as it is not having enough gain for the quiet tracks.

I still remember how bitterly Spisak debated my assertation that these Labtec Elite-820s were good headphones. I have to admit, I’m still a little amazed.. but $10 for 20hz-20khz and something like 40 ohms impedance..

Okay, so I like low impedence phones. Quit smirking. I’m not a DJ, I’m allowed. To me it’s low impedence enough only if you can feel parts of the board / cd player / whatever warming up from the load. Nothing gives you that phat head-spacing bass like a nice 8 ohm pair of headphones. Hard on the battery life, though.

Of course, that was part of why Spisak was doubting my taste. No one goes for *LOW* impedence in headphones.

But you get so many more dBs per volt that way..

I haven’t found any phones.. and in this I include the $200 ones that the local music store sells.. that can match the 820s for precision bass, volume handling (i.e. doesn’t fall apart when driven at 1W), etc.

I think I better order some more pairs of them. [I tend to give them out to friends.. ‘here, check these out’.. ]

Heh heh heh. I just found a 24-pack of them. That might be a little bit of overkill.

Looking at digital cameras.. want to get a SLR, but don’t want to pay for it. Hmm.. What to do. I really like the ‘all-the-controls-are-on-the-lens’ style of my old Canon (35mm SLR) but I haven’t been able to find a digital with that style.

I wish I had some Dire Straits with me.. I’ve been feeling a hankering to listen to some.

I remember the first time I listened to ‘Money For Nothing’ – I got it because of the title track – just a MTV listener type, that’s me – but I remember how amazingly good I found it, starting from track 1. I was chipping paint from the back wall of my parents house, and I set up my stereo, with the two speakers that I’d rebuilt with piezo horns and good foam-surround woofers, driven by a Marantz receiver that I later gave to my dad and a Sony diskman.. and as I blasted away the paint with water, and scraped it with a scraper, I played that album over and over, and was totally floored with how good it was. (Aside from ‘Twisting by the pool’ which has always annoyed me)

I can still hear every song just by thinking about it.. such great stuff. It’s odd.. I think the memory of chipping paint off the house is fixed in my head *because* of the music.

I love the run in tunnel of love.. and brothers in arms, which ends with a line that is true eternally: But it’s written in the star light.. and every line in your palm.. we’re fools to make war on our brothers in arms..

And, of course, Telegraph Road.. a song I will never get tired of.

If I ever make anything a tenth as good as Dire Straits, I’ll be a happy camper.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2003 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.