Author Topic: The Thread of Extreme Happiness  (Read 26165 times)

Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #60 on: May 18, 2021, 10:33:21 AM »
New set of cans, and they're fucking beautiful:



These are the Meze 99 Classics in Walnut Silver. Easy to drive (they aren't just plugged into my PurplePod for show), nice, smooooooth (yet punchy!) bass with fairly neutral mids and treble, and quite detailed. It's kind of a polar opposite to the brightness of the Grados, and while they sound good for acoustic/live stuff they tend to shine with electronic music and hip-hop. Unlike my Focals, these have a certain warmth to them that I really enjoy. I haven't even felt the need to try these through my amp. I probably will at some point, but as with the Grados I don't think it'll make much of a difference.

As far as the sound stage is concerned: maybe it's because the ATH-M50x negatively affected my perception of closed-back headphones, but the Mezes feel like they have a surprisingly wide sound stage. My Grados are still the clear winner in that department, but I'd say these are probably around as good as my Sundaras.

They're good enough when it comes to sound leakage that I think I could actually use these in the office and on flights without annoying anyone. I had a couple of people take a listen at a moderate volume (probably around 70dB) and I couldn't hear anything even when I stood next to them in a quiet room.

Finally, one thing that I absolutely respect about Meze as a company is that they intentionally designed these headphones to be 100% user-serviceable. Everything is held together with screws, and the fact that they don't use glue is considered a selling point. I wish this sort of thing were more common these days.

On an audio-related side note, I ended up working at the office a couple of days last week and ended up snagging my portable DAC/amp and Shure SE425 IEMs. I actually forgot how good those sound. After getting used to my old SE125s for my IEM needs (namely: using them as a substitute for the Rift S's awful speakers when I still used that HMD), being able to coax some decent sounding bass out of a set of tiny in-ears felt pretty nice.
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Bobbias

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #61 on: May 18, 2021, 10:16:30 PM »
The serviceability is awesome. If there's one thing I really hate about the Grados, it's that they just hot glued them together.
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #62 on: May 19, 2021, 07:00:33 PM »
Yeah. I think I would be a little more accepting of it if they only did that for their cheaper cans as a cost-cutting measure, but it's kind of inexcusable that even the $2000 PS2000e has a fixed cable.

I don't have much good to say about the ATH-M50x at this point, but at least those have detachable cables.
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Bobbias

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #63 on: May 23, 2021, 08:04:10 PM »
Well, at the very least, I have successfully opened my Grados, resoldered a cable, and put them back together without wrecking them. The hot glue still manages to keep the cup in one piece even after separating them with some heat.

But I really do need to recable my pair. One cable is held together with duct tape and a zip tie holding it in the cup. The outer sheath has been split, and there's a bad connection somewhere because my ear on that side has a tendency to stop working now and then -.-... and it's been like that for several years now lol.
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #64 on: June 11, 2021, 09:20:46 AM »
This kind of makes me feel both happy and meh, but I ended up ordering a new prebuilt PC the other day. It makes me happy because I'm finally getting a new GPU without paying scalper's rates, and it makes me feel meh because I had to order a prebuilt PC just to get a goddamned video card.

That said, it's a Falcon Northwest rig, so at least I know I'm in good hands. They don't offer as many choices as their competitors, but I actually consider that to be a good thing in this case. They have a relatively small number of high-end components that they know work exceptionally well together, and they have a reputation for quality going back to when Quake II was literally the hottest new online game. They also won me over by responding to my questions within ten minutes via e-mail.

Fun fact: this is going to be the first primary gaming system I've owned since 1997 with an AMD processor. My last one was my trusty AMD 80486DX2-80. I've had a couple AMD systems since then (like my Presario 2140US craptop and my last StepMania PC) but they weren't my primary systems.

So yeah, pretty excited. Kinda sucks not being able to build it myself, but at least I can rest assured that at the end of the day they'll probably do a better job than I could.
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Bobbias

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #65 on: June 14, 2021, 12:42:26 AM »
Haha, I still have zero cable management in my case... I should really handle that one day... But that involves shutting my PC down.
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #66 on: June 14, 2021, 02:59:44 PM »
On my current built I just used an inordinate amount of zip ties when I built it. Thankfully I haven't had to fiddle with it too much post-build (all I did was upgrade my NVMe and SATA drives, so it was just a matter of using what was already there).

I did find a picture of my late high school build (the PC I would have had from around 2001-2003) last year, and...oof. Talk about a spider web.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I made my first few posts on arch0wl.com with that PC.
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #67 on: July 20, 2021, 04:44:48 PM »
I accepted a job offer today. :o

Edit: Also: I got my new rig today!

Falcon Northwest Talon
Ryzen 5900X @ 3.7GHz (12c24t)
GeForce RTX 3090
32GB DDR4

I never thought I'd buy a pre-built gaming rig, but with the availability of the current gen graphics cards, well...

Gotta say, though, Falcon Northwest deserves their good reputation. This thing is dead silent unless the fans need to kick on, and their cabling job is so tight that if you look in the window the only wires you can see are the ones going into the GPU.

In addition to that, they also have a pretty nice drive mounting system that let me easily slap the SATA drives (2 x SSD and 2 x HDD) from my old system with minimal effort. Just screw the drives into the brackets and plug 'em in. They already ran the cables and everything.

So far it's looking to be about 2-2.5x faster than my old rig (i7-8700K @ 4.5-4.7GHz, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 32GB DDR4) in most synthetic gaming benchmarks, and up to 6-7x faster in compute-heavy workloads. Not bad.

Oh, they also shipped the system with a complimentary coffee mug and a bag of coffee. Sweet.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2021, 10:52:46 PM by Spectere »
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Jupi

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #68 on: August 05, 2021, 02:04:12 AM »
So, it's not a done deal yet, there's at least one more hurdle to jump over - but chances are now extremely high that I'm going to be allowed to build my house!  :D :D :D

I should know within a week or two what the final word is.
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #69 on: August 05, 2021, 08:59:35 AM »
So, it's not a done deal yet, there's at least one more hurdle to jump over - but chances are now extremely high that I'm going to be allowed to build my house!  :D :D :D

Woo! ;D ;D ;D

Keep us posted!
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #70 on: August 05, 2021, 04:27:06 PM »
Almost finished with the last day at my current job. :o
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Jupi

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #71 on: August 17, 2021, 10:32:21 PM »
I got the zoning variance.

I can build my house.

I can't fucking believe it.   :-*
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Spectere

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #72 on: August 23, 2021, 05:17:53 PM »
I got the zoning variance.

I can build my house.

I can't fucking believe it.   :-*

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! ;D

Congrats!
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Bobbias

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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #73 on: August 25, 2021, 07:25:22 AM »
And I'm done my job. Well, my last official day is the 27th, but I took this week off with my last week of holidays. Now I just gotta figure out money. I'm relatively debt free (car loan, but that's it), haven't taken any OSAP, and should be able to apply for various grants and whatnot. And at some point I'm supposed to get 10k in inheritance from my grandmother, but I have absolutely no clue when that's gonna show up. So I'm not fucked, but I still don't have a complete solution. Still, I'm happy to be out of that hellhole.
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Re: The Thread of Extreme Happiness
« Reply #74 on: August 31, 2021, 04:18:46 PM »
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! ;D

Congrats!

Thanks!  <3

And it even got kinda-sorta better.  A day or two after we got word that I can have my house, the guy who sold me the house called us up.  Said that he's pretty sure he made a mistake in our contract. 

I had put a deposit down on this https://www.riverviewhomesinc.com/product/atlantic-icma95075-modular-home-p/ (henceforth to be referred to as #1) house.  I like it, it was only going to run me about $110k once everything was said and done, including setting up all the utilities.  It wasn't the house I really really wanted, but I have zero problems with that house.

 The house I REALLY REALLY wanted is this one:  https://www.riverviewhomesinc.com/product/atlantic-esda26402-sectional-home-p/ (henceforth to be referred to as #2).  It's gorgeous, it's considerably larger, has a humongous walk-in pantry, and it's just overall nicer.  However, it was another $25k more expensive, and I couldn't justify that much more money when the first house was perfectly fine.  I can technically afford both, but the first one I'd have paid off within two years.  The second one would take me a bit longer.

Sooo, guy asks us to come up to his site ASAP.  We oblige.  We get there, he tells us that he put the wrong model number down on my contract, and so I'd actually put a deposit down on house #2.  And in the few months it had taken me to get a zoning variance, he had sold the model for house #1.  Now, being manufactured homes, it's not really a HUGE problem.  They could simply build me another one. 

However, the prices for everything had gone up in the interim.  And unfortunately, since I hadn't actually put a deposit down on house #1, he couldn't give me the same price we had back in the Spring.  During those few months, the price went up roughly $20k, and there was a new clause in the contracts that said that the price of the piers needed for installation could also change at the last minute, and they could easily go up another $5k.

So suddenly, my bargain, "perfectly fine" house could cost me the same amount of money as the super nice one I really wanted in the first place, but couldn't justify the money for.

Kinda wanting to throw up / seeing a potential small legal windfall depending on how decent his company was at this time, I asked the guy what the house I'd actually put the deposit down on cost. 

Thank fuck, the price can't change since I'd cut them a check months ago.  Otherwise, it too would have gone up at least $20k.

So yeah, I'm spending more than I initially intended to, but the world justified me getting the house I really wanted. 

I'm so fucking excited.  I might even get to move in by the end of the year.  If not then, definitely not much longer past the new year.  :)
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