Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

It sure is tough to stay happy, healthy and also sane all at the same time. Surfing helps, audio nerdery helps, actually going to the market and buying edible food helps. And most recently I started running in mornings till it got all soggy out there. Three songs on a random play list till I make the U turn. I really love not knowing how far or long the run will be as I head to the mystery turning point yet to be determined. Some days are 20 minute jogs and some are 40 and it is a great pre surf way to start the day.

Ha! Though I did not find much gear wise at NAMM to get excited about, I did find Keith Morris!

Wow, has it really been over 30 years since I first met him with Black Flag rehearsing at the church in Hermosa. Yikes!

I have been doing my best to try and get my head around making some more youtube video's. There are so many concepts in the sound world that just do not translate when put into words and articles yet when demonstrated in a way that it can be seen and heard, it all comes together. So my goal is to come up with some simple clear demo's on various sound subjects and also try and debunk a few absurdities I see floating around.

I have spent an enormous amount of time over the past decade working on the MicroWedge series of monitors. There are a lot of wedges out there with various feature sets yet my experience indicates that most monitor wedge designs miss the most critical point. Monitors spend much of their working lives near open mics trying to get loud without feeding back. While monitor tuning can not be effectively eliminated with today's technology, I believe it is a huge asset to have wedges that actually get really loud and sound great right out of the box. So I have spent all this time and effort getting MicroWedges to to do exactly that and yet I really have had no way of easily demonstrating that advantage without personally doing side by side demo's next to other wedges. So what I did was get the today's best of the best, top requested world class monitors to compare: a D&B Audiotechnik M2 and an L-Acoustics 115XT HiQ and did my best to do an unbiased comparison demo video:

Also, in my quest for the best live sound headphones I keep running across some pretty interesting concepts and my curiousness inspires me to do a bit of credibility checking.

And if you are in the mood for a dabble into some babble and passionate claims of deep unsubstantiated knowledge - http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/how-bright-ultrasone-pro-900-a-396267/

Oh, and I am still seeking the ideal live sound headphones and will have another installment as soon as a few more pairs arrive. It is looking more like an ongoing adventure rather than a "find a winner" scenario. The V6, 7506's and Sennheiser HD280's are nice units but I am considering them to be the baseline ones to beat. The Sennheiser HD25II's and Sony MDR V600's both look quite good on the RTA but they just do not have the power and clarity I am getting out of the Ultrasone HFI-680's and Denon AH-D2000. But don't take my word on that, as I am pondering a way to test and demonstrate it rather than merely offering an opinion. So far I have been eliminating based on frequency response, which I believe to be a valid first step. Hey, if the phones can't reproduce all the frequencies at a relatively similar volume, can they really provide an accurate reference point? The tricky part now is to find a simple clear test that clearly demonstrates the sonic issues I am hearing.

Thank you Maija. And the movie is produced by super cool surf friend, Takuji!