If you’re deploying decent phones onto your head, the tweaky little amplpifier on your iPod is going to be an issue – it will let you down! It has a tiny equalizer and ‘loudness’ feature, but at the other end it will sound tinny and hollow or just nasty and blown out if you turn the gain up on anything with a bassline. I’m using a little intermediary gadget as a headphone amplifier; thank goodness it’s not as massive as a full-sized stereo amplifier with 15 lb magnets. So here’s a rare product placement (though I’m not getting paid), look up the FiiO E5 Headphone Amplifier. It works great. I actually did not originally buy this for headphones, but for my car stereo. That’s another long story, but with the same problem: Trying to plug my iPod into an aux jack without an amplifier, and it still doesn’t help. If I want to listen to something I hate and make it sound even worse I load it in my car with that setup.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Round And Round It Goes
“When I’m alone, in my phones…” Well I can relate to that (thanks St. Etienne) and even say my new headphones are a life saver. Bolted down to a chair in the middle of a bustling software development department, perfectly positioned for the acoustics to amplify the sounds of programming babble and nasal snot sucking, it’s hard to block out the noise and concentrate on my own work. I usually just plug in dangly cheap earbuds, but unless I really crank it I can’t hear much detail from the music, and I get a ton of detail from all the chatter outside of the music. I know the clunky headphones are great for getting deep into the atmosphere, opening up nuances, and blocking out the outside. But I must have geothermal earlobes because they start to bake like a pan of hot fudge brownies after a few minutes. Has anyone invented liquid nitrogen cooled head cans yet? Continue reading