You Audio in Review

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent for this post. And this is a bit off a wall of text you could say, but to start with, here's Zedd's remix of his own song Clarity so you have something to listen to if you want to read on. (There are 2 more tracks in there later on too.) Zedd remixed his own track and came up with something that is clearly Clarity, but sounds completely different, a completely different genre actually, but if you like the original, you'll probably have some appreciation for this. I find this remix much more passive and maybe more hopeful and although I probably like the original more, this still has it's place and is pretty sweet.
     Zedd - Clarity feat. Foxes (Zedd Union Mix)

Check it out and read on through my ranting and raving if you want.

If you really like listening to music, and if you’re reading this you probably do, you need to have something to pump the audio out over. Sure you laptop has built in speakers, but those things suck harder than your town whore. And sure you bought an iPod and they came with those great little earbuds right? Well those pretty much blow too, and they are always falling out and hurting your ears too. Those are something you want to use when you are running and you can’t tell what you are listening to but you need something to distract you from the horrible pain as you franticly gasp for breath as you fight to stay alive because you, being your own personal trainer, decided to replace the word regular with sporadic in your training routine. But I guess they are okay if you want to keep them in your pocket so you’ll at least have something better than the crackly mono speaker on your phone.

Now you might ask what about my desktop speakers? Well chances are you, being the poor “college” student you are/were, didn’t really invest in a nice set, probably just something with a built in amp that was on sale. So sure those are better than laptop speakers, and you can turn them up way louder, but louder isn’t quality. You’ve gotta get pretty fucking drunk to actually think that sounds real good. Sure you can turn up the bass knob and brag to your friends that don’t know much about music about ‘how fucking loud the bass is’, but then you’re just distorting the shit out of the sound and drowning out all the detail and hard work the artist put into the track. Oh yeah, and don’t be that dick that cranks the volume and the bass right up at house parties to try and be cool, it’s a fucking party where you talk to people, not a fucking rave, and no one likes it when you blow the shit out of their speakers, have some fucking respect.

So maybe you have a nice sound system that can handle some volume without distorting, and that’s sweet for sharing your tunes, but not everyone wants to hear your music turned up all the time, and you are gonna miss some intricacies in the music because of other sounds in the world, and not to mention the price tag on good system.

So now you might be wondering what does this guy think you should listen to music on, then you remember those Beats by Dr. Dre that you see people walking around with, and your thinking ‘Yeah those must be it!’ So yeah, I’ve listened to those headphones before, and they are pretty decent, but the bass boost they give and the active noise cancellation introduce can some distortion and mask some detail in the sound and I find the extra bass tiring on your ears so I can't listen to them for that long, but the sound quality is still pretty good, so don’t feel bad if you own a pair. But I wouldn’t go out and buy a pair of those, they are kinda heavy and I’ve seen a lot of broken pairs, although they look pretty cool, the build quality could be a bit better. But there are a couple more reasons not to pick these up, like the fucking batteries. These puppies don’t work unless they have batteries in them, and the little fucking triple A batteries too. So you always have to have a pair of batteries with you for when these things die, and they will die, cause guess what, you actually have to turn these headphones off when you’re not using them, and you will forget. Seriously, who actually wants to turn their headphones off? So in addition to the pain in the ass of having to deal with batteries all the time (maybe every couple weeks depending on usage), you’ve gotta buy those batteries, and this adds to the already inflated $330ish price tag.

I'm gonna guess that if your still reading this Clarity might be finishing up so your gonna need something else to listen to if you wan to keep on going. So how about checking out a song off Kill Paris' new EP. Kill Paris - To a New Earth (That's the name of the EP and the specific song I'm talking about). I find this song has got some good groove to it, and find it good to listen to when I'm just doing everyday stuff. I actually found the whole EP to be pretty decent all around too with a similar feeling to all the tracks,  Check it out.

 


Now that you have something else to listen to, back to the 'wall' that I'm surprised your still reading.

Now may you wonder, so if not the ‘super cool’ Beats that everyone has, then what should I buy? Well after talking to my buddy Braydon, and hours of research, I decided to go and buy a pair of headphones. Audio Technica ATH-M50. These headphones are probably the best headphones I’ve ever listened to. Songs I liked before just have a whole new depth and are so much more enjoyable. The experience is so much more immersive. These are actually monitor headphones, meaning they try and give the most accurate audio reproduction possible so you get to hear your favourite songs how the artists wanted you to hear them. And trust me its better this way, these guys really know what they are doing and you’ll love picking up on the subtleties they incorporated that you can hear with these bitchin’ headphones. Once you start listening to these things you probably won’t want to stop, and these things are so comfortable that you don’t have to. I’ve probably listened to these for 8 hours straight and I haven’t gotten sore spots on my head or ears like I have from other headphones. I often forget I’m wearing them, then I’m like ‘Holy fuck this track sounds great’, then I’m like ‘Oh yeah, I’m wearing my Audio Technicas.’

The headphones also to a great job of muting a lot of the sound around you too, but not to the creepy extent of some active noise cancellation headphones. For example when there is nothing playing I can just hear the keys on my keyboard clicking and you can still understand what people are saying well enough, it’s just a bit quiet. And these headphones you don’t have to turn up to really appreciate, and this means you can listen to great music for longer without having to worry about damaging your ears (this means more of your favourite tracks!). But all that great sound might just make you want to turn these bitches up, and man do they perform when you do!

Now the build quality on these is great too. They feel solid, but light, all the joints feel good and strong and the adjustment band has that nice premium ‘click in’ feel. You can fold them up and flip them around and all that shit too so you can do one ear monitoring and what not. As much as I love these things and try to treat them the best, sometimes accidents happen, like I put them on the edge of my desk and go to get up and snag the chord and send them flying onto the floor, or I’m not paying attention and I step on the chord an try to stand up and end up ripping them off or across my face with the chord, but these things haven’t faltered. Nothing’s broke or gone wrong, and I’m still loving listening to my favourite and new songs on them after about 8 months.

And guess what else? No batteries. That’s right, no fucking batteries. Not only does this make them lighter, but it also means they have no fucking batteries. Gawd I fucking hate dealing with batteries.

So now that I dropped that detail on the batteries you are probably thinking these things are pretty fucking amazing, but you’re kinda curious about the drawbacks. So I guess there is one thing I would change on them if I could; I’d make the chord detachable. That’s right, that’s it. That is the only one thing I would change on these heavenly headphones.

So you might be wondering if there are variations in this product, and why yes, there are. You can get them with a straight chord or a coiled chord, and there are special edition ones that are just silver instead of black and only come with a straight chord, and there are those fancy white ones too, but coiled chord only, and the newest ones are red and black for that extra flash.

Oh yeah, and I’ll mention, even if you aren’t a fan you have to admit Skrillex has got some skills and knows what he is doing, and he uses these in the studio, so if you don’t believe me that these are good, why would this acclaimed producer be using them? (Lots of other guys do too, but I’m lazy and not gonna look it up)

Now that you might actually want to buy these, you start to think there is no way I can afford something that sounds this good! And as much as I hate/love to sound like an infomercial; That’s the best part! You can pick these up for about $130, maybe less if you find them on sale, but these have no business being on sale at that price anywhere. The catch is you may have to order them online and maybe from the states to get the colour and price you are looking for.

Even if you’re a hipster and don’t want to be to mainstream, those red one will probably do the job, cause not only are they noticeable, but they are the newest ones, so you can tell everyone about how you got them before they were cool too. So get your ass out there and buy your own pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones. You won’t regret it. And if you need a gift for your girlfriend, get her a pair of these in white, cause how fucking sexy are white headphones on girls? And when they sound this good, she will wear them.

If you want to hear the tracks we post on this blog the right way, you might want to own a pair of these.

 So if you don’t have $150 for these and shipping, I’ll give you a few tips on how to save that money up.

But first here's another track to listen to if your still reading. Years from Alesso featuring Matthew Koma. This song just has such a beautiful melody to it and nice set of vocals and gives off a great uplifting feeling. Seeing this live at Frequency was pretty fucking sweet! Him and Porter Robinson were definitely the highlights of their respective nights with Bingo Players coming in a close second on Porter's night. 'Unfortunately' I missed Grimey Tech so I can't say how he stacked up though.

Now back to a few ways to get that $150 you need:
1: Try selling your old textbooks, you can usually get up to $75 a book, so that’s only two you have to move. Or maybe just don’t buy one textbook (just one!) and be the dick that borrows it from someone else all the time or you can just go the library and read it there, and with these headphones on you won’t even care that the person next to you is tapping their pen or the guy across from you doesn’t know what a shower is, actually you might care about that smelly guy once that new headphone smell wears off, but just move your ass if that’s the case.

2: Maybe you could just not eat or drink the alcohol for about a week and that should probably save up most of the money, but this may not be the best idea because you might die, or maybe just lose a lot of weight, so it could be good if you need to lose those pounds; and what’s better incentive to lose weight than the audio of your dreams.

3: So maybe textbooks and fasting doesn’t work for you, just try adopting a third world diet for two weeks. Like fuck those guys live of almost no money. Sure you may be missing out on a bit of flavour for a while, but you’ll end up being glad you don’t live there and that the taste of that amazing audio will more than make up for it, assuming you have synaesthesia that is. But maybe you don’t want to pretend to live in Africa for a week either.

4/5: You could try calling your parents and asking for it, but if you know they won’t just give it to you, then you need to make up the most ridiculous lie that just borders plausible to get it from them, these fuckers are worth it, maybe consider saying something like drugs dealers are gonna kill you if you don’t get them their money by the end of the week (Parents usually would rather have a living drug addict for a child than a dead one, so it might work, and then you can just drown out the drug lecture your gonna get later with your brand new headphones).

6: Don’t leave out the option of ‘kidnapping’ yourself if you think the drug dealer thing wouldn’t go over that well either, just call home on a pay phone and use a fucked up voice like Batman’s and say the money needs to be deposited to your account so that the ‘kidnapper’ can make you withdrawal cash before letting you go (shit like this actually kinda happens in developing nations or something I heard, so you might be able to get that to work).

7/8: But maybe your parents are broke or can see through your scams real easy cause you used them too often, you could just try mugging strangers with a knife, but that is a bit illegal I think, so maybe pan handle instead.

9: But if you don’t want to sacrifice you dignity on the street so publicly, you can always try sucking dicks for cash in an alley or something, now you should be able to get at least $10 a pop, so that’s only maximum 15 dicks. And then once you get your headphones you won’t even be able to hear all those sorrows and regrets in your head. Be careful though, the strong positive reinforcement that these headphones give you might just condition you to like sucking the dick for the rest of your life, you’ve been forewarned.

10: Win at gambling (You can either win or lose so your odds are 50 50 right? So just bet on one number in roulette a couple times and you should come out on top).

11: Sell a kidney or testicle or whatever people are looking for nowadays, just not your ears because you need those for your new headphones.

So I just gave you a bunch of way to make the cash you need for these, so I don’t wanna hear that shit about I don’t have the money, get out there and make it, you won’t regret it.

Buy your own Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones and enjoy the audio we blog to your ears.

If I have offended you at all by you reading this, I apologize, but you're a but responsible too, you did read it by yourself after all.