Splash Damage: Grave Spinning as Power Source

Oh dear my, oh dear me.  If people spinning grave could be tapped as a source of power, I’d imagine that Mr Miles Davis’ grave would generate enough to power the entire city of Los Angeles…

Here then, are a set of Monster Turbine In-Ear Speakers.  Admittedly a decent set of cans on their own, they’ve gone and jazzified that up a bit with gold and brass trim, and other things so that there would be legit excuse to charge US$499 (MSRP) along with a modest $100 on-line discount (gees, thanks Monster!).

According to this article, they are OK’d by the Davis family and comes with the endorsement of the estate.  Also, they include some magical Monster Mojo to make older recordings sound lush and full.

Nice to know that the likeness of Mr. Davis will be on a set on a good sounding but overpriced set of Monster products.  Like I said, if this trend continues, we can go ahead and tap the spinning graves of celebs and musicians whose images will grace these products to power the nation.  Huzzah.

On a different note, I’ve migrated most of the materials on Damaged Gears to (http://www.damagedgears.net), which you can visit.  Nothing new there yet, but that will change eventually.

Damage Reviews: MDR-XB40

Damage had a pair of MDR-XB40

Sorry, no new pithy posts about new year resolutions (way too late for that), or HOPE about change.  I’m getting back to what I do best.  Reviewing the heck out of interesting low to mid-range headphones and DAPs. This time, Damage focuses his laser vision on the MDR-XB40 Earbuds, recently released by Sony in some random fashion to appease the bass head audience.

All 10 of you (I kid, for the 11th self-professed basshead).

Wait, do I still have an audience?

Now that I’ve got you all hot and bothered, should you blow your hard earned $60 for these guys?  Read on.

Splash Damage: Hacking your NWZ-A72X/82X

I had wanted to put in a thought about the Sansa Clip/Fuze (apparently, they are the darling DAP of 2008. I should get one before I even think of posting anything about them though). Instead, some splunking around the web resulted in enhancing your NWZ-A72X/82X series though this takes voiding your warranty to some degree. Ready? Good, let’s go, after the jump.  Not your cup of tea, don’t follow the jump.  Instead, read the next post about Spiralfrog.

Splash Damage: Maxell Peanuts

Maxell Peanutz, quite possibly the worst and best buy of 2008

Quite possibly, the worst and best buy of 2008.

Why is this the worst buy?  Well, it sounds like your average $2.99 earbuds.  Muddy and terrible, overbearing bass, 1930s radio quality vocals, and quite possibly nonexistant sounds over… 13 or 14kHz range.  Let’s be generous and say 14 kHz range.  WIthout serious EQ action on your source, you will think to yourself, why oh why did I waste $14.99 (or less than $10.00 if you find them on sale) on this peanut of a headphone?  After all, you can get some seriously good peanuts and a lot of it for the same price (about a year’s worth if you shop around a bit).

But wait a minute…  Are those equipped with double tipped flanges?  And are they compatible with my MDR-EX Style earbuds?

What has been very interesting the last 4 to 5 years is that the eartips on many of these semi-canal earbuds uses the same cushions/flanges/tips as the Sony EXs.  Now, the tips on these guys are slightly (ever so) smaller than the tips on the EX style (and other EX tip using) earbuds.  However, not so much smaller than it makes fitting the double and triple flange tips from the Peanutz impossible, mind you.  Just a little elbow grease goes a long away.

And the new double and triple flanged tips gives you additional isolation and fitting to the EX series.  The double (think small and medium tips glued together for a quick visual) brings extra bass to the party, the visceral, deep, meaningful bass.  There’s a bit of clarity in the mids and the trebles as well, but not as much as you’d suspect.  That’s actually enhanced a bit (not much though) by the triple flanges, which we will get to in a moment.  The enhanced isolation, ever so slight, however, is what most people will be looking for with the users of the EX series and the double flanges.  These Peanutz bring increased isolation and bass to a series of earbuds (mainly the EX-82/5 and 90) which could use a bit of bass boost here and there where its sorely needed.

The triple flanges (think some of those triple flanges pressure relieving earplugs) gives better treble and mid-range performance, though not as much as you think.  The bass, however, sees very little benefit from these tips, though isolation increases ever more so for the triple flanges.  Pair these with the noise cancelling EX style buds and you’ve got yourself a serious contender for a cost effective noist reduction earbuds (see Philips).

And with a small investment of $10 ~ $16, you’ve just given yourself a very nice upgrade.  How nice?  Well, how about entry level In-Ear Monitor level of isolation type upgrade?  Mind you, the EX and EXstyle buds are nowhere near the IEMs in terms of actual monitoring.  But for increasing your enjoyment?  Well, every little bit helps.

Too bad the actual Peanutz are beyond help.  Had the Peanutz sounded actually decent, it would’ve been gravy.

iPod Nano 4G vs. Other DAPs

Well, the rumors of his Steveness death was, indeed, greatly exaggerated.  What wasn’t exaggerated, was, the greatness of the 4G Nano.  On the surface, the 4G Nano is bee’s knees (and just as sharp as one).  On the surface, the Nano is set to be one of the most powerful and feature rich DAP to grace the world.

Not. So. Fast. My. Friends (to borrow the parlance of one sportscaster).

The Zune made some noise the day before, and other DAPs has been making noise as well.  Sadly, since they do not bear the beloved fruity logo, those features for the most part went unnoticed.  Let’s review the new features one by one and see where the New Nano stacks up.

1) Accelerometer.  Allows for use of Coverflow.  For the most part, I have no qualms against Coverflow.  However, it has two weaknesses, both of which I noticed on my Touch and on other’s 3G Nanos:

• Album Art and Tagging.  Let’s face it, it’s heavily reliant upon the coverart being properly tagged along with other tags for it to be a compelling feature.  Without it, it becomes an exercise in fuility when fumbling over to find the right album.
• Clickwheel.  On the Touch, the Coverflow is very neat with the touch screen interface.  I didn’t find the experience to be nearly the same with Clickwheel.  Optimized software may change this.

The 2D interface used by the Zune and the Sony Network Walkman makes navigation a breese using the D-Pad.  Even on a bloated Zune 30 (80 as well), using the D-Pad, one can easily find the album, song, or artist.  The 4G Nano’s new navigational interface (Browse Album/Artist while playing) now puts it on the level field against other DAPS.  It’s about time.

2)  Genius.  Also known as SensME (Sony’s new generation Walkman), Rhapsody Channel, or Zune’s newfangled Social Community/Personal Picks.  All of these are designed to sell songs over the internet.  Genius can be very compelling with a subscription plan.  If there ever was one for iTunes.  All of these “features” (read gimmick) remains to be seen, though the Zune’s Social is probably the most compelling out of the three.

3)  Shake Shake Shake.  Sansa Shake for kids grown up.

4)  Vertical Base.  Goes back to the well tested and well loved format.

The Nano is a solid DAP to be sure, but it lacks the WiFi of the Zune, the Bluetoothiness of the Sonys, and finally catches up with both of them in features and navigation.  Welcome to 2007.  We hardly missed ye.

And if you are reading this, that means you’ve just survived the Large Freaking Hadron Collider.  Congrats.  The world goes on and on and…

Damage Reviews: R.E.M. – Accelerate

Wait.  What’s Damage doing, reviewing albums?  Going back to my previous post, it’s more of the realization that the gears are there for one thing and one thing only-delivery of media to my brains.  May as well start reviewing some of the content that belongs on the DAP as well as the gears themselves. 

Unabashedly, I can say that R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands.  However, they’ve been not the same since 1998, when Bill Berry left the band, and left R.E.M. as a three legged dog.  A three legged dog is one thing, from what I can gather: earnest.  In their earnestness they’ve recorded and released four albums thus far:

Up was a very interesting album, and though nowhere near the level of its predecessors (the very underrated New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the glam filled fun but ultimately vain and hollow Monster, and the everyone’s favorites Automatic for the People and Out of Time) it was enough to give one hope.  That future of R.E.M. in whatever form and shape without Mr. Berry, was bright.

Then came Reveal and the rather dreadful Around the Sun. 

Splash Damage: iPod Shuffle 2G (More Thoughts)

A while back, I had reviewed the iPod Shuffle 2G, and was fairly impressed with the whole deal.  Aside from being dead simple to operate, the overall sound quality and presentation was agreeable.  Sure, it won’t win the best DAP evar prize as awared by whatever committee gives away those prizes these days, but it has made a very compelling case for it to be the best entry level DAP.  This over any other iPods, Sansas, Zens, Nanos, and Touches, which all require at least a bit of (even if minimal) technical knowledge.  The true test of the beginner DAP lies in how well a total beginner (a.k.a. the n00b) handles the Shuffle.