Re: empty feeling

Rowland McDonnell wrote:
Rosemary wrote:

<snip>

With me, every once in
a while (and it's very rare - certainly doesn't happen anything like
as often as once a month), my eyes seem to just refuse to play the
focussing game.

Completely at random, or just when you're tired? Have you ever been told
you have a lazy eye?

<snip>

I have a set of these:

<http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_eng.nsf/root/05343>

which do me just fine.

<grin> Ah - spending more money. Read the reviews. Yes.

? You takin the piss or what mate?

<snip>

but they're wee wall-
mounted thingies cause there's not much space,

Re-assess priorities, that's the ticket. We don't have much space: so
the speakers are used to display plants and photos on top.

No, unless they're in the middle of the room, there is seriously nowhere
on the floor to put these things. Either in front of the telly, in front
of the fireplace or in front of some bookshelves. I don't know how big
your house is, but from what you say it's bigger, or at least better laid
out, than mine. The really annoying thing is that they have to be mounted
quite high on the wall, which makes it sound like someone's playing a
piano that's hung from the ceiling.

I'd love some decent floor-standing speakers. My dad has some ancient
ones which sound nice, but he's hooked them up with bell-wire and stuck
them behind the sofa, which makes me want to rescue the poor things.

<snip>

But why would I bother with an iPod when I've got a nice CD player?

Because you'll get better quality sound with headphones than with any
sanely priced speakers.

I listen mostly through headphones. Mind you, with my headphones,
everyone else is listening to it as well - that's the problem with open-
backed phones.

But to get best results, you need a good
signal source. The headphone output of the average amp isn't great.
But an iPod is an excellent signal source, and you'll get much better
quality from that (probably) than taking the headphone feed from the
average CD player -> amplifier's headphone output

iPods are expensive and pretty pointless for my situation AFAICT. I don't
really listen to much music when I'm out, so there's very little point me
paying money for a nice mp3 player.

And you can get an awful lot of music on an iPod, not just one CD.
And it's easier to select a different thing to play.

I enjoy getting a CD out of the case, looking at the sleeve art, reading
the sleeve notes, etc., and I can put my hand straight on any disc I want
without having to go through menus.

<snip>
So I reckon that `rip yer CD onto computer and shove it onto an iPod'
would give you much higher quality signal than anything but a very
good CD player, and the iPod's output stage is very high quality -
unlike most amp's headphone outputs, which are often not quite all
they might be.

What do you mean by a good CD player? I quite like the one I have, which
I got recently to replace a dead multiplayer, but I couldn't really
afford anything more pricey than - it's just a mid-range player.

On the other hand, if you've got really good gear to listen through
already, the only advantage of an iPod would be that you could get
loads of music on it. Oh, and videos too, and it's got a gorgeous UI,
and... But it's the sound that's the important thing.

You can get HDD marketed as jukeboxes which you can load up with mp3s I
think, or hook up to a wireless network and play things from the
computer.

<snip>

I just use a cheap mp3 player I won with
some very basic phones for listening out of the house, cause with
background noise and stuff going on quality doesn't matter so much to
me.

It matters to me rather a lot. But then again, I don't walk around
with a portable music player.

Neither do I :-) That's why I use a cheap (read: free) one for the rare
occasions when I want to.

<snip>

I've read tests which prove conclusively that if the listener thinks
that the audio gear should sound better, then it does. Most
audiophile bleatings are bullshit.

I'll go with some of that, but there are differences to be heard if you
make a big jump in terms of quality.

I'd rather have a proper stereo amp but I can't really bring
myself to buy one when I've got a perfectly good surround amp sitting
there smiling at me.

There's no particular reason why a multi-channel amplifier shouldn't
have each channel as high quality as that on a stereo amp.

No, but if you buy a stereo amp and a surround amp of the same price, I
bet the stereo amp sounds better than the surround one playing stereo,
cause you've got fewer channels so each one should theoretically be
higher quality.

There was a mention on the radio of an art installation featuring 40
speakers each driven by a different signal source - each of the voices
of this piece:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spem_in_alium>

That's funny; I was listening to a few different recordings of a couple
of pieces - a Beethoven symphony and Carmina Burana - and thinking about
the recording quality, and came to the conclusion that the only way to do
it is to have each instrument recorded separately then played back on
loads of different speakers in the same configuration as the orchestra -
which might get a little expensive.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Apple and EMI
    ... If you snip relevant context there is no point in continuing. ... Being paid for worthless opinions doesn't make those opinions true. ... that you cannot hear a loss of quality caused by mild compression. ... unless you establish it under double blind listening conditions. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: My First D&D Next Playtest report
    ... <snip: 5e for 4rries> ... a nice obvious per-round combat action that gets stuff done. ... abilities to monsters by now. ... That's one of the classic player behaviours from the guide to good ...
    (rec.games.frp.dnd)
  • Re: FamilySearch Wiki Barn Raising for England
    ... Those of us who use the IGI are often gobsmacked (does that cultural ... extractions of PRs and the misleading junk of some member submissions. ... approach may veer towards the member submission end of the quality ...
    (soc.genealogy.britain)
  • Re: Any experience with "The Last One"?
    ... then come home and do their programming in ... Two of them run commercial OSs, ... Not all hobbyist software is good quality, ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: PCIe seems slow
    ... Come hear the latest advances in Software Quality Assurance. ... Folkert Rienstra is the cofounder and chairman of the European ... Agreement Group for assessment and certification of Quality Systems in ...
    (comp.periphs.scsi)