Etymotic Research Headphones

 

Submitted by Jason

When you buy Bose, you're paying for their advertising budget, which is massive. Any other speaker in the same price range will be superior, since other manufacturers put their money into... the speaker. Notice that the 901 page gives more details about the composition of the cabinet than the drivers? That there's no frequency response graph or even specs? There's a reason for that. The "reflection" "technology" is just added reverb, which does indeed replicate a live concert... held in a gym. Reflections smear the sound, leading to a loss of clarity. That is why recording studios have foam on the walls at the reflection points between the monitors and the engineer's chair. Good concert halls are also designed to control reflections, and sound-absorbing acoustic panels are one of the cheapest and easiest upgrades you can make to your stereo.  (If you want reverb, most stereo receivers these days have a number of "hall" or "concert" settings which will add reverb. But can still be turned off any time you want to hear that jazz singer as though she were sitting right across from you.) It's a little harder to mess up in-ear headphones, but there are still better brands for the money.

Check out the Etymotic line here.

Sound off

 

Submitted by Eric Daniel

In the Army, it seems to be a rite of passage that troops use their first paycheck right out of Basic Training to buy the biggest, most expensive stereo they can find at the PX.  While I won’t say I was immune to the temptation (after all, I was single, had no bills, and was flush with disposable income) I did curb the urge to go right out and get one.  After all, I was on day 120 of a 4 year commitment, so I had plenty of time.  Besides, with three other roommates, who had all succumbed, there was more than enough stereo to go around.

Anyway, long story short, just before I ETSed, I made my stereo purchases, and of all the equipment I bough on the way out, the only items still in use are my Bose 901 speakers.  Though they can be a bit demanding on how they’re set up for optimal sound, properly deployed I think they are some of the best speakers available.

Well, while on deployment, I started thinking how nice it would be to be able to take my mind off the fact that I was trying to sleep in a non-air conditioned brick oven.  As with garrison duty, there were quite a few folk who had purchases stereo equipment and had it shipped in theater.  Well, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to try and go that route; the combination of sand, dust, heat, and wind is pretty destructive to electrical equipment over there, and besides, I wanted something portable.  In addition, I didn’t want anything that had to compete with ambient noise, since I couldn’t turn the war off, I was going to have to go with something that generated sound closer to my ears, namely headphones.  Well, the one thing I didn’t want was a CVC sized unit taking up space on my head, and in my bag, so if I was going to get headphones, they would have to be small, and easy to pack up.

Going back to my experience with Bose, what I settled on were the Bose triport, in-ear headphones.  Simply put, for their size, these little earpieces put out the best sound quality I’ve experienced.  While larger units might produce better range, these are usable anywhere (though granted, I still use cheap, “disposable” headphones when I’m at the gym or what not) and will fit in my pocket.

Check out the Bose in-ear headphones here.

Running on Sunshine

Submitted by Eric Daniel

While having a wall charger for my iPod Shuffle (and the Nano for that matter) gave me the flexibility to charge the units in something other than a computer (which, in turn, needs its own power source) what I was ultimately looking for was a way to sever the power cable link all together.

It wasn’t until someone sent me a reference on solar chargers that I thought about going that route, but once I did, it finally cut my dependency on generated power completely.

The charger I settled on was the Solio Classic universal charger.  The charger itself is a collapsing three bladed affair.  To charge the unit you spread out the three nested solar panels (much like the spreaders on a camo net pole) and set the unit in the sun.  It takes about 8 hours to fully charge the unit, after which you can plug it into your device and transfer the power.  The battery in the Solio will hold its charge for about a year, and in the event you have wall power, you can plug the unit into the wall to charge it in only a couple of hours.  With no moving parts, the Solio is very durable, and has a wide operational temperature range (-4 to 131 degrees F.)  Finally, it is adaptable to charging a variety of mobile phones, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG.

Check out the Solio charger here.

Doing the iPod Shuffle

  
Submitted by Eric Daniel

One day, in January of 1991, while I was sitting in a tent outside the Saudi port city of Jubail waiting for our tanks to arrive, our battalion CSM stopped by, congratulated me, and handed me a box.  Inside the box was a Sony walkman (one of thousands Sony had donated to the troops during the Gulf War.)  While this was all good and well, I had neither tapes to play in it, nor batteries to run it.  Well, I managed to scrounge some batteries for it, and while I waited for tapes to arrive, I whiled away my time listening to the BBC during radio watch.  Unfortunately, as luck would have it, one day, a gust of wind knocked my walkman from it’s perch atop the TC’s .50 mount and it fell to the turret floor, breaking into several pieces (to add insult to injury, I got a box of tapes a week later.) 

Nearly 30 years later, I once again have tunes.  This time, I’m using an iPod Shuffle (and yes, it's pink, the better not to lose it.)  While I have both an iPod Nano (a birthday gift) and the Shuffle, the Shuffle is the one I travel with.  It’s small, easy to use, durable, and lasts a long, long time.  It is also capable of surviving falls from altitude, and is easy to squirrel away.

I initially had reservations about using an iPod product though. While iTunes is great and wonderful, and it does allow me to copy music I already have on CDs into its format to load onto the player, I wasn’t a big fan of the fact that you had to plug it into a computer to charge it.  I could go without updating my song lists if I had to, but there had to be a better way of charging it (generic MP3 players, on the other hand, though less durable and larger, could run off of AA batteries, which are more plentiful now in 2009 than they were in 1991.)

Ask and you shall receive they say, so a little looking around turned up a plug in charger.  Made by Belkin (part #F8Z240),  the charger has collapsible prongs, so it takes up less storage space, and has a rotating head, so that you can shoehorn it into tight spaces.  In addition, the charger is equipped with two USB ports for charging multiple units. Yes, Apple offers a wall charger for their iPods, but it's the same price, lacks the dual ports, swivel head, and the collapsing prongs.  The Belkin charger lists for $29.

Check out the iPod Shuffle here.