Written by: Worf101

First let me qualify that while I’m a BIG OPPO fan from my time with 931 upconverting DVD, believe me it they’d screwed the pooch on this one I’d tell you. Here are my impressions of the product from 3 days and intensive nights of diddling and fiddling.

Packaging and Swag
Packaged and shipped beautifully. Comes with all the cables and cords you need except 5.1 or 7.1 analog outs. Still, they give more stuff that some other companys do. The ole lady loved the OPPO tote bag. The remote is a clear upgrade of previous OPPO offerings. This thing is nice, just the right size, good button size, backlit with good ergonomics. Only debit is they put the backlight button on the lower right hand side of the unit, it requires a second hand to use it. Small quibbles though.

Initial Setup
Easy, peasey, nice and greasy. The setup routine is caveman simple and quite well done. You’d have to be pretty brain dead not to get some picture or sound out of this unit with this basic set up. Of course due to the variations of gear out there the advance settings will be necessary to “dial-in” to your own specific hook-up. Manual was/is marvelously well written and laid out. Did find a couple of menu items “out of place” in there but a quick check of the page before or after usually yielded the information.

Blue Ray Play-Back Visual
The unit ships with two set up disks, one for audio one for visual. The first Blu-Ray product I ever viewed at home was the visual demo’s on this disk. They looked “spectacular”. Puddin said “it’s like you can reach your hand in there and touch things”. I concurred. The first Blu-Ray movie we watched however “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” really didn’t impress me all that much. Perhaps it’s because it was letter boxed with bars on the top and bottom or I was sitting too far away? I don’t know. I watched a regular DVD the following day though and the upconversion was handled strictly by the OPPO and it was stunning.

Sound? Oh my gawd, while not quite as obvious as the switch from Mono to Stereo but damn close. My Onkyo 905, despite being a couple years old, is HDMI 1.3a so it handles all those fancy smancy audio tracks that Blu-Rays ship with and that Sir TT has painstakingly mastered. The difference between a DTS soundtrack and Blu-Ray was striking and stunning. Everything, music demos to movies was clear, articulate and just plain gorgeous. Wow.

Summary
Puddin’ was upset when I told her I bought a Blu-Ray player, particularly a $500 dollar one. But she thought the big screen was an extravagance now she can’t live without it. I’m sure that as we get more titles and experience with Blu-Ray she’ll feel about it like all the other tech I’ve bought the last couple of years. I’ll have to reserve any praise on Blu-Ray visuals for a bit until I see some more movies, but I’ve no reservations about the OPPO’s sound reproduction. It is mind blowing. No final grade yet but I’ll keep you all apprised.

Da Worfster

This is by far the best looking iPod speakers I have seen to date.  I do have an affinity towards bags, but this beautiful wooden bag with speakers out the side has stolen mine and the wife’s heart.  Only $315 if my dollar to yen conversion is correct.

From artist Yoshihiko Satoh, you can find more about him here.

I almost don’t care what this will sound like, I want one.

product page here - not in English but has more photos

via: BBG

Oh some one has done it now. Taken a classic and cover it in 8-bit it. It is worth checking out if you know what you are in for.

For those that don’t know what 8-bit is and are wondering, I’ll explain.

8-bit takes something modern, analog, or of higher bit value and makes it look or sound like an old Nintendo game.

So imagine Miles Davis as Super Mario Bros. 8-bit has its moments for sure, and there are actually some great 8-bit movies and musicians out there. The trend to make something 8-bit seems to be growing.

This particular “blasphemy” is something to share for sure.

Enjoy~!

link: kindofbloop.com

The Gramophone from Swedish company Aesthesis for $85,000.  Happy savings.

Specification

Designers: John Grieves, Jonas Dolk, Erik Wahlin and Björn Gunnarsson
Finish: Polished stainless steel and coated carbon fibre
Color: High gloss black (Other colors available upon request)
Cabinet principle: Horn and bass reflex
Effective frequency range: 37-20.000 Hz
Impedance: 8 Ohm
Connections: Banana plug
Magnetic shielding: Yes
Dimensions (H x W x D): 121 x 40 x 30 cm
Weight: 20 kg

www.aesthesis.se

via: stylecrave.com

I can’t possibly see how this is going to help my commutes on BART.  Except, who really is going to buy a Sony when iPod still dominates the market.  Can you believe even a technology reporter asked me the other day what phone I had (T-Mobile G1), he had an iPhone. LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, and like EVERYONE ELSE has an iPod.  Anyways, the new Sony S-Series is 5″ thick and packs external speakers.  Because tinny, piercing high frequency noise is just what the personal music experience needs. I thought the reason for headphones was to block out the noise and so we didn’t have to listen to your crunk!  Don’t mean to be a hater, but…

- audioREVIEW

From I4U -

“It’s about time we got an MP3 player with this feature. Sometimes you want to share a song with your friends without sharing your earbuds or headphones with them. Now, thanks to the external speakers on the Sony S-series of Walkman MP3 players, you can. These new S-series players are a little thicker than some at roughly .5”, but that’s to be expected considering the extra hardware they have to pack.

read more of the spec at I4U…

source: 14U

R. Crumb unsuccessfully attempts to flatten a 78 record in the oven

”
Here’s Robert trying to flatten a warped 78 record by heating it in the oven. It’s a difficult process, and one that can easily destroy the record as well. His efforts were unsuccessful this time, and we’re asking you for your help. Robert is looking for this 78 record by DOC HOPKINS — “OLD JOE CLARK” and “21 years”. Released on Paramount 577. He needs a clean copy, Any leads would be appreciated.” - Todd says…

Crumb blog…

source: BoingBoing

Paul Rako, the Technical Editor at EDN has a good blog post on $10 and $140 HDMI cables spurred by the Christian Science Monitor article Why are HDMI cables so expensive?

Just a discerning audiophile having no real experience in home video, not owning a TV myself or feeling the need to ever own one.  I don’t think I would fully trust a reviewer at the CSM. Chris Gaylord, who wrote the article, is the editor of “Innovation” at CMS and if we give him the benefit of the doubt he probably knows stuff.  But does he really know how to tell the difference of high quality hi-def components?  There is so much to know at “Innovation” editor and HDMI cables are so specific.

Well, either way, Paul Rako post is worth the couple min of read time.  You may learn something.

BTW - the quick answer is NO.  There is no difference.  But you’d have to see for yourself.

via: EDN

Over the years I’ve had many of earphones of various prices, fit comfort, and quality. I don’t prefer them to standard full sized headphones, but they do the job while commuting, working out or traveling.  I find that once you get in the $50-$100 price range a set of Grado SR60 or similar headphones to be much more open, give a better tonal balance, and sound stage, even if they tend to lack the sub level lows that earphones can produce.

But with pleasure, I can tell you the $60 for the iM-590 would be money well spent.

The earphone drivers of the iM-590 are 9mm neodymium with a sensitivity of (1KHz, 0.1V):>100dB, with a 12Hz-22KHz range, which puts them inline with most earphones of equal value. The iM-590 are rather revealing though.  I’ll explain more in a bit.

After letting the earphones burn in, per the manufacturer suggestion, for 8-10 hours, I plugged them into my desktop Dell PC at the office. I’m going to make the assumption that most 99.9% of the people who will purchase these earphones are not going to have a pre-amp or headphone amp, so I plugged them straight into the headphone jack on the PC, and heard a troubling amount of noise on the line that was not apparent in less revealing earphones.  I’ve recently been using a $40 pair of Sony MDR-EX76 earphones as my workout earphones and sometimes used them at the office. Those rolled off the highs at a comfortable level which hid the line noise from my PC.  The iM-590 headphones though did not.  And you know what, that was welcoming.  I knew immediately that these did not roll of the highs and would present a good sound stage.  Granted, the line noise was irritating, but it isn’t the headphone’s fault.

So out of the PC and into my iPod.  Ah clean sound at last.  But not truly tested.  The MP3s on my iPod are not even close to being of 320 kbit/s quality but they all sounded better than the day before when using the Sony earphones.  But here is the catch, or rather, something I was not expecting.  Because the iM-590 are so revealing, they made the standard EQ setting of ‘none’ much too bright.  I spent some time finding a good EQ setting on the iPod that would work well with the iM-590.  Alas, Apple is irritating and so many of the EQ settings are completely worthless, especially on a very clear and sensitive set of earphones. Eventually I found the a setting that worked for me, either ‘acoustic or R & B’ depending on the album.

So out of the iPod and into my Van Alstine Omega III for some real listening.  This is where these earbuds sounded best.  Out of a flat and clean pre-amp.  The sound stage is surprising good for earphones.  Sound didn’t appear to be just left, right and center.  But cymbal crashes across my mind and slightly off set toms where actually off set, just like on my floorstanders.

Listening to Miles Davis’s A Tribute to Jack Johnson, John McLaughlin’s guitar echoing around the recording studio, and Miles’s horns sway this way and that way. Solid, full and not piercing. The clean fuzz and power of Michael Henderson’s electric bass had my mind bobbing my and my toes tapping. The music kept it’s airy but powerful presence and I really could tell where the walls in the recorder studio were.  These still aren’t as good as real speakers, or high end phones/earpones, but they present the best sound stage I’ve ever heard in their price range.

Next on the play list was Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. I wanted to know how clean and extended the bass response was. With-in 30 seconds the back or my eyes were rumbling and and fluctuating to the heavy bass intro of Angle. The bass came on clean and didn’t over power the rest of mids or distort the highs. The earphones never cracked or showed massive signs of distortion. Even when I was going through iPod EQ settings and had on ‘bass booster’ the iM-590s managed to produce a clean the low end very well.

The nice thing about isolating earphones and you don’t have to fight outside noise and can keep the volume lower.  This helps to reduce strain on the ear and distortion of the earphones.

As far as comfort in your ear go, the iM-950 were good for me.  There are 4 sizes of ear tips to choose from and the plastic molds fairly easily to the ear for good comfort.

The iM-590 come with 4 ear tips, Shirt clip, airline dual-plug adapter, 2.5mm plug adapter, 2-ft extension cable and carrying case.

The earphone cable is not that cheap plastic stuff either, it is a nice fabric like cord protecting the sensitive parts on the inside.  It is strong and can take some abuse.  The cable never crimped in a way that severed the electrical wires on the inside and the attachable shirt clip was very handy.

So what does this all mean for the average listener who wants a good set of isolating earphones without spending too much hard earned cash?  It means the iM-590 are definitely worth checking out but might not be for everyone.  Because the iM-590 are very revealing I found that my taste for the earphones really varied with what I had them plugged into.  I even tried them on my T-Mobile G1, rocking out to White Zombie’s La Sexorcito at 320k/bits.  And though the fast kicks of drummer Ivan DePrume were clean, solid and had a nice pop, and Sean Yseult bass guitar was audible. The combination of album being mixed without much of a low end, and the headphones not making up for that, no EQ settings on the G1… and I couldn’t take much more.  But that doesn’t mean anything because I found a comfortable EQ setting for the iPod and they sound great for $60 earphones on the Omega III. Give’m a shot.

iMetal iM-590 product page and where to buy.

www.maximoproducts.com

According to CNet’s June 9th blog, Face it: The best stuff is expensive, the best stuff is expensive.  Now on the CNet June 13th blog post of The Top 10 greatest audiophile speakers, as in, the best of the best of audiophile quality speakers, you can get the best of the best Top of the line, 5.1 Home Theater speakers for a mere $600.  Or even better, the most the Best of the Best Floorstander will cost you $3,400/pair.  This really makes me wonder what the hell CNet is thinking.

I’m baffled that CNet blogger Steve Guttenberg can have such contrasting opinions.

Well, just goes to show, it is really up to your ears and your price range for you to selected what is the best of the best for you and your music, not up to pros who obviously stand on their left leg one day and right leg another.

One thing to help you out though are user reviews.  Some are biased, and some are just plain lame, but over all with enough research, something resembling the the image of the truth of the product emerges.

So, help yourself, and help other.  Read and write a review for a product on audioREVIEW.  Where experts may all agree on the advantages or shortcomings of any product they review but, at AudioReview.com, we believe that the average consumer can best summarize all the details a product has to offer… So read what users have to says! And help other users out, put down your own thoughts.