{"id":195,"date":"2011-08-28T21:32:52","date_gmt":"2011-08-28T11:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dj2mn.f8.com.au\/?p=195"},"modified":"2012-05-02T23:59:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T13:59:41","slug":"eargasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dj2mn.f8.com.au\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Eargasm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mixing my submission<\/a> for the Clan Analog Heads Tribute Album revealed a limitation in my setup – I have no monitoring to speak of. It’s great having a studio-in-a-laptop but if you can’t hear what you’re doing what’s the point? Well, there’s hearing and there’s Really Hearing. So\u00a0I got myself a pair of AKG K242 cans. Mixed the track. Sort of forgot about them for a while. Tonight I decided to sit down and have a good listen to a selection of stuff and..<\/p>\n

Oh.<\/p>\n

My.<\/p>\n

God.<\/p>\n

What the fuck have I been doing the last 15 years? It’s like someone took the wool, cotton and muslin from my ears all at once. I thought the iPod\/iPhone earbuds I’ve been using were pretty good. Not the Apple ones mind you. I used to think they were ok until I discovered Sennheiser CX-300 and more recently the aJays – which are very good – but I didn’t realise just how limited buds are compared to full size ‘phones.<\/p>\n

The last time I had an ear-awakening like this was.. hmm.. around ’92 or so. I had my trusty JBL Control 1s mounted either side of my bed (and later with a sub underneath) and lying down with the music washing over me was (still is) a great pleasure. But I was working in a hifi shop and acquired some of that thick speaker cable that hifi mags always promote as being better than the pissy bits of cheap wire I was using at the time. I’m the biggest sceptic when it comes to hifi woo but hooking up the new cable was like opening a door to a whole new world. I’ll never forget listening to Depeche Mode’s Violator album – at that time already a good five years old and well up there in my pop pantheon – as if for the first time. Suddenly the reverb had depth and space I’d never heard before. Lying in bed it was like being in<\/em> a space rather than just listening to an impression of a space. I remain sceptical of speaker-wire marketing woo but that was a pretty clear demonstration to me that having a bit more metal for the signal to pass through really does make a difference.<\/p>\n

So I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, that the massive diameter of the drivers in my AKGs compared to the earbuds I’ve been unknowingly suffering under for the last decade just.. blow my mind. I just wish I’d paid attention and realised this a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Randomly Selected Wanky Audiophile Playlist:<\/p>\n