Sennheiser HD660S Speculation

Fear not my friend. Just post random shit there every 5 minutes and you'll soon reach Headphoneus Supremus level.

EDIT: I'm being too sarcastic about Head-Fi. Not all of Head-Fi is necessarily like that. But there is definitively some of that, and the site does not seem to discourage it.

Also, obviously curious about the HD660S. Hopefully @Tyll Hertsens will be considered as an early reviewer. Note that the fact that Sennheiser provided Jude a sample before providing it to @Tyll Hertsens (and maybe not providing one at all) does not pass the stink test for me. Very possible I'm reading too much into it.

 

Did not meant to discourage anyone from posting.

At least Jude got to hear the cans and even measure them. Perhaps some other folks had that chance as well. Those are data points.

@SSL, those definitions are what they are. But it probably maters little as long as we can communicate.

Did a quick search, the release date seems to be November 16 for the HD660S. Found some relatively large discounts on the HD700 too.

 

Common core is well intention misguided bullshit that any kid can learn to think like Einstein. It's like trying to teach Jeremy Lin that he too can fly like Air Jordan or smash people like King James. Ain't gonna happen.

The scary thing that some people in radical academic circles actually believe that it all comes down to techniques used in teaching, and that individual aptitude has nothing to do with it. This is what happens when people theorize in a bubble rather than actually do in the field.

Personally, I think Common Core is a Communist plot to destroy the United States, to make sure that most kids suck at the fundamentals while they dream of being elite.

 

I barely made it into university as an engineering major. The reason was that my fundamentals were not strong enough - largely because I was put into experimental smart kids programs that supposedly taught me how to think rather than how to do.

Engineering is all math. Having extremely strong fundamentals in math is crucial when applying higher level concepts. The foundations build on top of each other, and when solving more difficult problems such as differential equations or integrating in three dimensions, a student cannot afford to be farting around trying to remember or figure out lower level sub problems. They need to know the lower level stuff like the back of their hand.

It's not that the higher level concepts are not important. It's just that they will naturally be arrived at through repetition. And if not, they can more easily be taught after mastery of simple problem solving.

My son breezes through all this stuff. My daughter, who is three years older, can't do multiplication problems as quick as my son. I feel Common Core failed her. She can't do single digit multiplication with speed because of lack of drill work, and she still can't conceptualize like my son, who can break down double digit multiplication in his head as a series of easier problems. Common Core did not even the playing field. It made it worse.

Any engineer will tell you that it's repetition, drills, doing math problems, solving more math problems, and having strong basic problem solving skills that enabled them to get at least a C- in the seriously difficult courses (dynamics, differential equations, or for aerospace, fluid dynamics ... ugh).

 

And to add, not everyone can be an engineer. Engineers (and math and physics guys) are like the Marine Corp of academia.

I don't think my son can be an engineer. He's too lazy and won't torture himself solving problems repetitively much less do it for fun. Most engineers and math guys I knew loved solving math problems and doing every single problem in the textbooks, including the ones not assigned. The ones who didn't seem to work hard? They worked their asses off too on the basic fundamentals. It's just that they never let anyone see them doing it, because they liked to f**k with people.

In engineering, not everyone wins. I was #11 in my first math class of 160. Then I was #24 in my second math class of 80. Then I was #28 in my third math class of 40. By the time I hit dynamics and differential equations (seriously, I was so traumatized that I blanked out those classes), I said f**k this shit and changed focus to computer architecture. No amount of understanding of higher level concepts would have helped. I was a lost cause. There simply is no evening of the playing field. I understood the concepts, but I sucked at doing the work.

I was however good with computer architecture, CPU, ALU designs because I did weird shit like learn 6502 assembly and machine language when I was a kid instead of doing my trig homework. I didn't know exactly what I was doing as a kid, I copied from books, and sprinkled in my own code. But the repetition of writing code that would sometimes do stuff like accidentally erase the contents of the 5.25" floppy disk helped build up my fundamentals in this area. By the time I hit the architecture classes, it all made sense. I ended up petitioning to take the graduate level courses, with the professors' permission of course because my fundamentals were strong enough. Don't even bother designing parts of a CPU if assembly or machine language scare you. Sure you can talk about it, like those fucks on AnandTech or Tom's Hardware, but that's all.

And to this day I have nightmares of not graduating from university.