そして、あのおとこはおれさまです。ＧＭさん、積まない。

Today was the clash of two gatherings going on the same time, at different places. One – a mini gathering with primary school mates, hanging out with a friend who just came back from New Zealand at KLCC; Two – a surprise birthday mini-celebration of a college buddy at Sunway Pyramid. Both were scheduled at 1300 hours.

For cavemen: KLCC is situated here.

In the end I opt for the first one due to difficulty arranging transport (and perhaps part of it is because of my curiosity). During my primary 6 days, our class’ female to male ratio is 38 to 10; today’s gathering was deja vu all over (yay, all of them are shorter than me *hohoho*).

Looks like KY had her hair redone – the new hairstyle suits her better than her last hairstyle (and also the earliest hairstyle I know of *LOL*) – kinda reminds me of one of the characters in Full Metal Panic. ZY didn’t change much since the last gathering, still giving out the Good Samaritan aura. Our New Zealand PR – ML, is as quirky (MUAHAHAHA) as always.

How quirky (to prevent misunderstanding, I’ve avoided the word ‘cute’)? She still occasionally glances downwards when chatting, still jumps around randomly – she literally hopped onto the escalator (かわいいですね~).

KLCC was really packed today, most of the restaurants were fully packed (as if the food is free). In the end we settled in Sushi King. The bad news is, I already took my lunch; the good news is, I got myself a cool melon-plastic-container-thingy from the Melon Sherbet (メロンボール – lit. Melon Ball) I ordered. So we spent most of our time eating + random chatting.

Originally, we decided to watch Bolt, but the time was unsuitable, so we settled for Madagascar 2. ML has to go off early due to some programs arranged by her grandmother (FYI, she flew back to Malaysia alone, her parents are still in New Zealand), so she missed the movie. The photo was taken while queuing up for the movie tickets. My camera is unforgiving, so I Photoshopped it just a bit :3 (tell me if you want the original photos *hohoho*).

Before going back, we stopped by Sony Style. Looks like they’ve renovated since I last visited. They now have a booth specially for headphones and earphones, with sample units hooked up for you to audition them. <boast> Apparently, none of the listed units (including full-sized headphones) are on-par with my Triple.fi. </boast> The earphones are generally harsh on the high-ends, similar to my Denon AH-C551, so generally I don’t regret the big decision made a few days ago.

今日は楽しかった。

- Unrelated -

Because of this, I slept at 0330 today.

(updates…)

“No more geeky blog posts!” is now heard somewhere across the Internet. Alright, I’ll make this my (hopefully) last geeky post. It is time to share some experience I obtained after auditioning different sets of earphones.

Note: All headphones are auditioned with Comply memory foam tips attached to ensure maximum fit.

The Bad (< 5)
Stock earphones. Why? Because they suck. “I can hear my mom talking a few metres away even when the music is on lol.” Music should not be interrupted by external noise – that’s the primary objective of using earphones (as opposed to regular speakers). Another thing is – they have really bad sound quality – after using higher quality earphones, you’ll never ever wanted to go back to the dark ages of using stock earphones that comes with your MP3 player etc.

The Good (> 5 && < 7)
Philips SHE9500 and Denon AH-C551. Denon AH-C551, after auditioning for more than a month, proves to be lacking in performance (contrary to my previous review) – while the bass is phat, the high mid-ranges are over highlighted – making listening to female vocal songs rather painful to the ear and narrowing the soundstage (it’s surprisingly good at techno though). Philips SHE9500 on the other hand (no, these are not mine), is a bit too dark but with good overall balance and same bass response as the Denons (coincidently having same “Acoustic Optimizer”/“Turbo Bass” holes). If I were to recommend, SHE9500 is the one to go (unless you are an avid technophile). If AH-C551 doesn’t over-emphasize on treble, its clarity and great bass response would outperform Philips SHE9850.

The Great (> 7 && < 9) - updated
Philips SHE9850 – These earphones have decent mid-ranges. However, signals between 31 Hz to 250 Hz (low-ends) and 4 kHz to 16 kHz (high-ends) are weak; an equalizer may help to add a bit of sparkle to the music though. The only unit that came with Comply memory-foam tips, and the best packaging of all units. However, it lacks deep bass and clarity in high-ends.

The Best (> 9)
Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro. It disappointingly came with dodo foam tips (bullshit, they’re actually sponges) that breaks off before use. But if you pair these babies up with Comply tips (buy them, it’s worth it) – you’re on the road to audio nirvana, period. Excellent clarity, excellent quick and controlled bass response (though not overwhelming).

As usual, I check my blog statistics every day. The statistics page shows page visits and which page the visitors are referred from. Usually there’s a bunch of “Elecom Shield” queries from the Brazilian Google search engine.

But for today, something caught my attention. Someone searched for “lance kbu” (without the quotes) in Google. Normally, ‘Lance’ is only constrained to the virtual world and has nothing in relation to the real world. For someone to search for “lance kbu” is certainly extraordinary – the person knows ‘Lance’ virtually, but somewhat know the other half’s relations with KBU.

Identifying the Googler

It’s not easy to pinpoint exactly who is The Googler due to strict limitations of Windows Live Spaces concerning privacy issues. Based on first-pass footprint analysis, here’s what I can determine:

• The Googler is a Malaysian
• The Googler speaks English (duh?)

Here comes something strange:

The Googler didn’t click on the first result. This can only mean he/she is either not interested in T.F.O., already knows T.F.O., or was purely targeting the main blog webpage.

Therefore the assumptions I can make so far are:

• Malaysian
• English-speaking
• Doesn’t know the other half in real life
• Knows the other half is related to KBU
• Have tried to search on something else or doesn’t use the search bar
• Probably knows ‘Lance’ on the Internet

*hopes not one of the lecturers xD*

“To design a movementic robot…”

- Engineering Practice Lecturer

“p/s (abbreviation of ‘password’)”

- Engineering Practice Lecturer

“not (abbreviation of ‘numbers’)”

- Engineering Practice Lecturer

“This is what we done in 2005 last year… (and today’s date is 2008-11-07)”

- Engineering Practice Lecturer

A few examples of what we usually do in boring lectures (that typically repeats what we have learnt during the Foundations, which beats the whole point of attending it).

This guide will show you how to solve common sign-in problems in Windows Live Messenger (previously known as MSN Messenger).

• If you get the exact error shown above:
  1. Try to check if your computer’s clock settings are correct. It might be out of date.
  2. Try to sign-in again.
• If you get an error that immediately pops-up when you press the ‘sign-in’ button:
  1. Try opening up Internet Explorer (yes, not Firefox/Opera). (Shortcut: Press [Windows Key]+[R] –> Type in ‘iexplore.exe’ –> Press OK)
  2. Navigate to the website of your choice. Make sure it’s not ‘Working Offline’.
  3. Try to sign-in again.
• If the above problem still persists:
  1. Open up Task Manager. (Shortcut: [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[Esc])
  2. Go to the ‘Processes’ tab and search for ‘WLLoginProxy.exe’.
  3. End it.
  4. Try to sign-in. If it works, proceed to Step 5.
  5. Go to ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live’ and rename ‘WLLoginProxy.exe’ to something else.
• If Windows Live Messenger is still stubborn (last resort):
1. Open up Task Manager (look above).
2. End Windows Live Mail 2009, ‘wlmail.exe’, if you are running one.
3. End Windows Live Messenger 2009, ‘msnmsgr.exe’.
4. Start Windows Live Messenger. (Shortcut: [Windows Key + R] –> ‘msnmsgr.exe’ –> OK)

And this shall be my final review on earphones before I burn a whole in my (electronic) pocket. Anyway, let’s begin.

“WARNING: Your brain has never experienced music with this level of clarity, precision and impact. We cannot anticipate how it will react.”

Pretty bold statement, I might say.

Form Factor
The packaging of the Triple.fi 10 Pro (Tfi) comes with a shiny hard case with brushed metallic finishing. The body of the earphone is coated with shiny blue metal finishing dubbed “gunmetal blue” which looks really nice. However, the size of the earphones are the largest of what I’ve seen so far thanks to the three balanced armature speakers fitted inside. But nevertheless, it still feels light while maintaining its solidness.

As for the accessories, I can’t help but to comment on the extremely low quality memory foam tips. The plastic broke off even before use. A huge disappointment on such a high-end product. The silicon tips provided are either too small or too large to get a perfect fit in my ear.

Sound Quality
After around 5 minutes of break-in, it’s time to audition the Tfi. First of all, the usual over-treble I used to hear from the AH-C551 is immediately toned down. No, that doesn’t mean the Tfi do not perform treble well, in fact, it reproduces really impressive high-ends. I mean REALLY IMPRESSIVE HIGH ENDS. The crispness, the clarity of the trumpets in “Vama’alla Flamenco (Tokyo Symphony Orchestra Ver.)” are as never heard before.

In “Zelda 64 Pachelbel’s Ganon OC Remix”, you can literally hear the vibrations of the cellos, the ringing of the triangle metal-piece thingies and the pumping of the bass drum. However, the bass drums are not strong enough to the extent that it can be felt, it does not distort the mid-ranges, blending perfectly with the rest of the score.

“The Legend Comes to Life (From the Power of One Score”, for the first time I hear the bass hit without any cracking, my first time hearing many layers of bass, blended with many layers of mid-range, with a touch of high pitched bells and those-triangle-metal-stuffs. A dramatic piece impressively reproduced by Tfi. My ears are in heaven, seriously.

I’ve never heard the reverb of the (folk) drums as true-to-life than what I hear with Tfi in “Peaceful Forest”, you can really hear the hands slapping on the skin of the drums, and the vibration slowly resides.

Megumi’s voice is clear and free of distortions in “星間飛行”, you can listen to additional sound layers and nuances never heard in other audio reproducing devices. The high-ends are faithfully reproduced, the mid-ends are meaty, and the low-ends are punching tightly. What more can I say?

The double bass is ‘discovered’ in the opening of “天来~Divinity 1~”.

I have nothing much to say about Tfi in terms of sound quality except OMFGKTHXBAI. If you’re somebody with dog ears (audiophile), this IS the earphone for you (if you don’t plan to break the bank with custom made ones).

Verdict
Apart from the poor accessories and price tag, I have nothing to complain about the Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro, 9.5/10 hands down. Amazing clarity, amazing performance. Maybe the bass should be slightly stronger, but I wonder if my ear can handle all these goodies =P.