Reminiscing the past... when we spent little

Looking at Altec Lansing's catalogue, I suddenly remembered the days when MX5021 = the best in my mind. After reading lots of good comments on MX5021 I went down to Carrefour Suntec to have a listen, and wow, it was the closest to a fairly accurate sound signature I've ever heard with nice mids and lots of air.

Then before that, I was at Creative warehouse sale looking at Creative's new product, i-Trigue 2200, and was amazed by the clarity and the relatively ok amount of bass (as I thought at that time) for its price. All other 2.1 for the same price had puny satellites that sounded tinnish compared to this, and those that featured the same drivers as 2200 were much more expensive. (T20 wasn't out yet, but Vivid 60 was, and it was crap for the price)
And a short while later I was at Challenger Funan comparing it against VS4121, which didn't have as nice clarity but won a bit overall due to bass. (although recently I've found out that the 2200 can still have sufficient bass provided it is boosted high enough in the source signal)

Then after all this, I picked up a Sony subwoofer cheap at Cash Converters to supplement my i-Trigues, and realized that it has outputs for passive speakers. I placed an old bookshelf from an old Sharp hi-fi to boost the mids and to provide more "air". Soon, I found a pair of JBLs selling cheap and I bought them too. They ran alongside the i-Trigues for a while (with the i-Trigues providing the highs) until I decided that the i-Trigues are adding high-harsh and removed them.

And so, I entered the world of bookshelves, with a system that cost me $45 but can beat the crap out of MX5021

After that, all hell broke loose, and I didn't spend little anymore :p

Also, have you ever realized that, the higher we go in audio, the less improvement we get per upgrade?

More funny phrases off the net: Burn-in

This time we look at the term "Burn-in"

Actual phrases from a Jaben sales forum thread:

"It has already been fully burn in by me, more than 1200 hours."

"1200 hours of burn-in is priceless"

Capacitors only have a rated lifetime of the lower few-thousands in hours, the better ones getting 2000-3000 at their rated voltage. Now that may seem very little for something we use everyday for years, but fortunately for audio we are always using high-quality caps rated at overkill voltages (for our applications) so cap degradation doesn't occur within 5-10 years. Same goes for computers, and for both the only ones that actually die off are the power caps that are rated relatively close to their limit. I say relatively because most of the time the limit is still at least 1.5 times that of the applied voltage.

The Predator has a gigantic capacitor rated at 6.3V. While this should be quite all right for battery usage, USB 5V seems too close to the rated spec. Plus, that capacitor (same as the one in Tomahawk, featured in a previous post) doesn't look high-quality to me. This isn't gonna do it good in the long run.

So, now it's up to you to decide whether this is "burned-in" or "burned-out".

Define original...

Actual phrase from an Echo Loft ad:

"original BMB tweeter marantz made"

If Marantz made the tweeter, then is this originally BMB or Marantz?

If BMB did not produce this tweeter, will the same tweeter by Marantz be fake? Or does this original BMB product even exist?

And of course the most obvious point:

Buy speakers from brands that make their own drivers

Who uses BMB stuff anyway except in karaoke lounges and pubs, they're just Boom-Am-Boom

RSA Tomahawk Portable Headamp

After getting to see a picture of the innards in real life up close, I knew I just had to get the picture off the net.

And get it I did:



Source: http://hobbyroom.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2007-06-05

Erm, that's it? And this thing costs >$500? WTF?