AMAZON PRIME Deals/Buys/Gift Ideas of the Day : BLUE MoFi HEADPHONES!

My obsessions, like most tech and toy intrigued guys… goes in phases. This particular week audio is dominating my interest.

I’ve spent over a hundred hours determining signal from noise, and great purchases, from fraudulent stacked reviews. Which unfortunately Amazon is full of.  Lots of those 4 and 5 star reviews, are caused by disreputable companies flooding amazon with bogus reviews.

Well kids I’ve done the hard-work and heavy lifting to determine real from fake reviews, and great products from garbage.

Without further ado, this weeks items worth buying.

HEADPHONES:

“In short, the Mo-Fis easily produce the best quality sound of any headphones I’ve used.” —Engadget

From a stateside company called BLUE that has a great reputation in the microphone/podcasting community., comes their first Headphone… THE MOFI.

The real reviews are in on both Amazon and Youtube, and the verdict is… these are game changers. Particularly if you are looking into getting into high quality personal audio, and don’t currently want to spend the money for a dedicated amp or receiver, these MoFi’s allow you to take the sound direct out of your CD or LP or Laptop or Media Player, and for a reasonable cost get a high quality headphone AND Amp in one package.

It is a definite WANT.  Though at $399 its original retail, I felt it was definitely pricey. However even at that price it is not unreasonable given the new ground it is breaking, a kind of all in one entry level rig, for those who want great headphone sound without having to deal with the hassle of selecting a dac/preamp, than a microphone amp, then a pair of speakers.

This one purchase, if you don’t already have a system,  and don’t really want multiple components just to listen to a headphone,  well than it is a VERY reasonable and enticing purchase at its original retail.

But while reasonable, I couldn’t pull the trigger on it at that price. However, Fast forward 6 months later and the MOFI is now on sale for $279 (Blue having released their new models the SADIE(A $399 powered headphone with built in amp, that basically just loses a bit of the weight and the clamping of the MOFI, but sound-wise is similar. From all reports negligibe difference over the MOFIs) and the ELLA (A $700 Planar Headphone with built in amp).

So the arrival of the new models, means we can now get the MOFI for over $120 off, bringing it down to a very doable $279. Now at that price for a combo high quality headphone and amplifier, it is a no-brainer of  a purchase. And if you are willing to purchase used, you can get it even cheaper.

You can price and order it here:

 

Blue Mo-Fi Powered High-Fidelity Headphones with Integrated Audiophile Amplifier

And if you are the type who has to have the latest and greatest, and money is no object, then the $700 ELLAS are waiting for you here:

Blue Ella Planar Magnetic Headphones with Built-In Audiophile Amp

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VOD Streaming Amazon Prime Movie Review – Larry Fessenden’s WENDIGO

 

Written, Directed and Edited by Larry Fessenden, WENDIGO (2001) is a very unusual movie, in that it feels very full of portent, out of control, and uneasy. Most of all uneasy. The title would have you gearing up for something else, but what you ultimately get is something thst is less and more, something subtle, yet forboding.

It will leave you, depending on the type of person you are when you come to it, both enthralled by the story, and leary of following the story to its conclusion.

Go into this 17 year old film ( hard to believe 2001 is almost 17 years ago)  knowing as little as possible, nothing beyond the title, don’t even watch the trailer, and it will reward you with a film that will linger, long after the credits roll.

A recommended film. Grade B+.

 

 

 

Movie Posters of the Day!

This week’s great music and musicians! UNDER CONSTRUCTION

I find myself in a Memphis frame of mind.

Compelled to find, listen and support musicians who are making great music.

I love discovering new artists, and championing these artists  and am happy to fly in the face of conventioning by buying their actual CDs, not MP3 rips or compressed to death digital files, but CDs with full Wav files embedded. Sound as close to being there as you get.

And those who love records, cool, I’m also noistalgic for those pretty sleeves, and beautiful liner notes, and the sound is nice. And its nice records are undergoing a resurgence, rising tides lifting all ships and all that, but let’s put it out there and be real, The record is inherently an inferior medium to the CD.

To the LP acolytes, try and hear what I’msaying.

Quantifiably CDs can record and replay higher highs and lower lows than vinyl. Vinyl is not good at base and not good at highs. The extremes of frequency range that some of us like our music to hit.

For the midrange, sure, Vinyl can pump that out. And maybe at that middle range the so-called warm sound of vinyl, has something noteworthy. Better than CD’s midrange? I haven’t found so, perhaps just different, but even granting records some unmesurable ambience in the midrange, you are still left with a playback medium that sounds worse at the end of the song than the beginning. A medium that falls short at capturing highs and lows, and worst of all a medium, that sounds progressively worse the more you play it. It picks up noise, pops, and overtime loses the recorded performance to simple manual degradation. A record, by the time you hit 20 plays, is not the listening experience you started with. It warps with a little heat, or a little cold.

There is something very frail, and transient, and ephemeral about the record, that is especially noticeable compared to the CD. Comparable to the rather quick degradation over time of a VHS, 2 prime years, compared to DVD’s 25 year lifespan at a minimum.

If you want music in a form that will last, you don’t get it as MP3, a lossy compression scheme, or as a record that you get 25 good quality plays out of, you get it as a full range CD, period. And if you do get a digital file get a lossless flac file, not a butchered mp3. MP3 is perfectly fine to sample music on Spotify, to help you decide what to buy. It ius not in itself a music quality medium.

Now if you understand vinyl’s intrinsic weaknesses and strengths, potentially a very unmanipulated experience being its strength, a warm, limited range medium, perfect for catching the live experience being its strength, and the LPs are mastered and priced for that sort of punchy deliverythe way Jack White’s THIRD MAN RECORDS has been doing it, recording the performance in his studio direct to wax, analog all the way, and you have something close to unmanipulated and pure.  And something distinct from the more full range and long lasting CD format, and something with a value all its own.

Today’s Recommends:

 

 

Tilting at Windmills!

Sometimes it is hard in a world so desperately out of control, where elections are stolen, reason is villified, and humanity and decency are laughed at, not to feel every action would be a futile one. Not to feel like Quixote swinging at windmills. But if we believe that a butterfly may influence whirlwinds, and that dream is father to deed, then in such a world, the attempt, the attempt has value. Maybe that’s why mass media tries so hard to keep us feeling hopeless and powerless, because the thinking otherwise, the attempt… can change the world.

So keep swinging at windmills.

We may just get a few of them to fall. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Currently Listening To & Vegas Petitions

COLD HEARTED by Bryce Fox

ANIMAL by BadFlower

PUERTO CABEZAS, NI by Lewis Del Mar

THE WAY I DO by Bishop Briggs

Try before vou buy by listening to it on Spotify.

Not business as usual.

Vegas on my mind.

And holding people, businesses accountable

The music helps

And it endures

The usual press and talking head platitudes aren’t enough. Start here:

http://act.credoaction.com/sign/las-vegas?sp_ref=340425662.4.183573.o.1.2&referring_akid=.13368633.NXduAC&source=clickcopy_sp

https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/petition-mandalay-bay-resorts-to-cover-all-burial-and-medical-bills-of-the-victims-of-the-shooting

 

Las Vegas 2 Oct 2017

I checked Mother Jones today, and a new American atrocity greeted me.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/mass-shooting-hits-the-las-vegas-strip-deadliest-us-history/

News of the newest worst mass shooting in American History begins to trickle out.

Las Vegas, Nevada

The Route 91 Harvest Festival. A country music festival that I hadn’t heard of till today.

Now it joins the list of American places, such as Kent State, made ingrained in the American memory  for the wrong reasons.

At this time over 50 people thought dead, over 400 thought injured, in no doubt life changing ways, and thousands more in terms of families and friends, with lives marred, and a nation rocked, because one man, whose name does not deserve to be remembered, one person that may have once been a man, decided to fire a gun for 10 minutes they are saying, 600 seconds, into a crowd of people.

600 seconds.

Spraying bullets for 600 seconds.

I’ve been to a range. When firing, 6 seconds is a very long time. For someone to fire for 600 seconds beggars belief. To fire into people, into people, for 600 seconds, …

What a fucking coward?

Not monster, not madman, not mass murderer, not serial killer, what a fucking coward, who found himself for whatever reason unhappy with the trajectory of his life, and too much a coward to be anything more than a loser, in his cowardice wanted others to lose with him.

So from hiding, this morally inept,degenerate, soulless thing, that may have been born a man, cowardly it wants not to lose alone. And it wants to make others lose with it. Such a sad, petty, ineffectual, cowardly thing it takes to do such… harm.

We have to stop enabling cowards to kill men and women and children.

At least 50 dead, over 400 suspected injured. Thousands of lives affected.

Can we talk of gun control now?

How do we keep this from happening?

We make it difficult for someone to purchase enough ammo to kill hundreds of people. We make it difficult to smuggle said ammo and weapons into a hotel room or other building. Maybe we issue rudimentary tests for people purchasing guns and ammo, the same type of personality/psychopath tests we should be issuing to anyone looking to be a police officer or politician.

No one peron, one drone, one fighter pilot, should in 600 seconds be able to affect so many lives.

In the wake of this tragedy, every business that helped facilitate this horror, is culpable and liable, including the gun manufacturers. And no this is not fair, but fairness visited no one in Las Vegas I would argue. But holding businesses liable, those who make guns and sell guns and ammo to people who turn out to be cowardly and callous mass killers, making businesses liable, making the pain of that mass killing, also their pain, if only monetarily, will perhaps spur the gun manufacturers into self regulating and policing, in a way the American government has been unwilling and incapable of doing.

The businesses responsible, the gun manufacturers, the gun dealer, the ammo sellers, the hotel that let weapons of mass murder be brought onto their property and used for 600 seconds,  should cover every funeral, every hospital bill, every amputated limb, or scarred body, every late mortgage or car or rent or tuition payment, every hardship caused… by this causeless act.

How do you stop mass shootings?

You make them cost the companies making the weapons, and then watch the safeguards roll in, to limit such loss of… revenue.

 

Unlike our Resident Trump, I have no warm wishes to offer the victims and their families, who right now can only feel cold creeping horror, or hot boiling rage… all I have is the certainty that we must make this mass murder the burden of  more than the families of the victims, but the burden of the companies that made it possible for one man, for 600 seconds, to affect an entire nation.

Until we do this we are just paving the way for the next… ‘worst mass murder’.

 

America, my America. You have to stop putting profits before lives. Or we will all, sooner or later find ourselves in a coward’s sights.