These arrived today. Havenāt opened them yet. Hoping to use them with an add-on mic as a headset for taking calls from my PC. My current headset is causing me major ear fatigue after a while.
These Philips headphones seem to be gaining traction as of late in the budget quality arena. Will be interesting to hear your impression.
A few years ago, I bought the Avantree Audition bluetooth audio headset. They were $60 at that time. Now theyāre $40. You can use them via Bluetooth or by wire. The cord is detachable. They have impressive sound for the price and I find them very comfortable. My biggest stickler for headsets has been bass representation. Iāve often found it too light or too pronounced and muddy. The Avantree represent it nicely. Thereās very good mid and high articulation as well.
My first quick impression straight out of the box is that for music they lack a little bit of bass, alas, I am somewhat of a basshead, so anything short of AudioTechnica ATH-M50 level bass, I find somewhat lacking, but a little bit of EQ makes them more to my liking. Not sure if they need any break-in time. Iāll give them some play time and recheck.
Most reviews that Iāve read seem to confirm that theyāre a little light on bass. Otherwise, mids and treble are well represented and detailed. As I am going to be using them primarily for phone calls, the slight bass deficiency is no problem for me.
So far they feel very comfortable, but Iāll need to go through longer use sessions to verify.
Glad you found something you like.
The reasons I went with the SHP9500 were:
Open back - I did not want heavy outside noise isolation that typical over-ear headphones provide because I wanted to be able to hear myself talk when on a call.
Breathable ear cushions to help minimize sweat issues after extended use periods.
I finally got a multimeter (https://www.amazon.com/INNOVA-3320-Auto-Ranging-Digital-Multimeter/dp/B000EVYGZA) so I could check the parasitic drain on my Sofirn SF11!
It only measured to be about 0.03mA, meaning I can finally confirm to myself that my Sofirn NiMH batteries definitely arenāt ālow self-dischargeā.
Fortunately, the pile of AmazonBasics batteries I also got in the mail should be a good replacement for them.
I just got some fleece jammies, at least the bottoms. Niceānāsoft, but rather thin, kinda like velour. The sweats I have are thicker āsweatpants materialā, whatever that is, and was expecting something thicker/fuzzier, but these are still nice.
I burdened myself with an unexpected $100 debt. I won an auction for a Spyderco knife. This particular model sold for nearly $200 originally, but I snagged a lightly used one for significantly less. I expected to be surpassed on my low bid but wasnāt. Oh well. At least I can check off the box for āFirst Spyderco knife.ā
Itās a small EDC. 2.75ā blade.
Thanks! I actually resisted Spyderco for a long time, mainly because I didnāt like the āfrog eyeā shape of the blade, the outward curving top to facilitate the thumb assist circular cut. There are a few models where that contour is significantly reduced, resulting in a more ānormalā looking blade, but theyāre generally more expensive. Yeah, Ganzo certainly violated a Spyderco design trademark with some models that look like Spyderco clones with Spydie holes. Ganzo quality is good, sometimes very good, but Spyderco is a class above ā which is why they demand a price premium. I donāt know if itās totally worth it, but some of their designs are so very well done.
My headphones should have been delivered by now, but Iām still waiting ā¦
I have however hooked up the player to my amp after loading some FLAC files onto it, and Iām astounded at how much fuller and more pronounced the music suddenly sounds. I guess my computerās soundcard just doesnāt do lossless music files any justice, and now I donāt want to go back to the old days ā¦ if I had known earlier what a difference a good D/A converter makes, I could have saved from myself from many years of listening to music in subpar quality. It should have been obvious though that a cheap soundchip wonāt pair too well with high quality studio monitors!
Now the bottleneck is probably my Alesis amp which is pretty entry-level, but itās going to take me a while to save up for something to replace it with.
The neoprene cover that comes with the M3K is a nice touch by the way, even though I guess it will probably attract dirt pretty quickly.
Yup, I came to the same realization a few years back. DACs built into cheap computer soundcards are wellā¦ cheap. Pretty much any external DAC is going to be a notable improvement. The biggest difference I noticed with an external DAC was clarity/tightness and quantity of bass/midbass region.
One issue I ran into when using an external USB DAC with my laptop was that the sound would sometimes stutter/break up when there was network activity. The DAC was not playing nice with my built in wifi card. Getting an external USB wifi adapter solved that interference problem.
Like you, I could probably use a better amp in my PC setup. Right now itās just a little Onkyo receiver from an executive mini-system, but I have no space for anything bigger at the moment. Current DAC is Topping D10.
Same here. Twenty years ago when I was working for Dell I had a Sound Blaster Live! which had a digital breakout board, but without any other devices that had a digital I/O, they never got used.
Iām pretty much out of the loop so Iāll be having a closer look at external D/A converters. Seems like a good idea, so I can assign the player exclusively to its mobile duties once my headphones arrive.
I recently got into color pencil drawing. This is the Prismacolor Premier professional color pencils. Real waxy and just beautiful colors. Anyone know about these?
Wow, that looks like a beautiful set! Unfortunately with my budget I have to stick to Faber Castell Polychromos.
When I grew up in Germany my father worked in Switzerland for two years and once brought back a pack of Caran DāAche colour pencils. Since then Iāve still not experienced any other pencils that have the same feel & rich colours. Judging from their price I assume that the Prismacolor pencils are similar quality.
Pretty much any external DAC is going to be a notable improvement. The biggest difference I noticed with an external DAC was clarity/tightness and quantity of bass/midbass region.
