3 'n the Mornin' Part Two [MF's haunt]

So yeah! I’m normally not so hot on the custom earphone thing; if there’s a universal version available, I’ll usually take it (an exception over the years being the FitEar MH334 over the ToGo version). Sometimes you only get certain earphones in custom shells, and I really have to like a demo to wanna go down that path...




I’m adding the UE18+ Pro to that very short list of “custom-only monitors I really wanna buy.” More to add tomorrow!
Assuming I don’t forget.

 

Aw damn. The timing could not be worse for me right now lmao.
Still, congrats to those who snag these

 

I’m just glad my FitEars still fit me like tiny ear gloves. Prolly due to the more shallow insertion.

 

Not too long ago, I used to say that one particular advantage IEMs had over headphones was a wider breadth of sounds signatures. More nuance. More subtle differences from flavor to flavor. More flavors in general. As for why this was so, I think that’s best left for another post. For now let’s just say that it lead to new jargon like neutralish or neutral tending. This linguistic spittle pissed some folks off, since jargon — being the jargon that it is— is often imprecise. And really headphones are neutral or they aren’t, right? How could something sound fairly neutral? It’s enough to give someone conniptions.

But here we are, living in a post UERM world with several successors, including: a less expensive, miniature UERM plus honest-to-goodness sub bass (plus me and shotgunshane honest-to-goodness shilling the crap out of it, depending on who you ask). There’s also the Andromeda from Campfire Audio and the PP8 from some company vaguely called In-Ear.

The funniest thing (for me at least) as people take sides to declare the new king of neutral monitors you can stick in your waxy holes, the former champion was, itself, never really that wholly neutral. It was neutralish. Whatever the hell that means.

Well, for me at least, it meant that most tracks sounded immediately listenable.

I know there’s this pervasive notion that the best heaphones pairings make bad music sound excruciating, while symphonic lossless lapdances are —as one might expect— oh so appealing, primarily throughout the midrange. When I put my naughty torture tracks on however, I can quickly delineate between a Headphone A that’s on more of a treble peaks = more detail perception = more detail ego trip. The weaponized higher frequencies are good at “faking” a high-fi sort of signature. Meanwhile that same Merzbow, Whitehouse, and Skullflower mixtap is incessantly unpleasant on Headphone B, yet it doesn’t exceedingly hurt. No, the sheetmetal sheering off your frontal lobe isn’t supposedly to be relaxing unless you’re Takashi Miike or someone birthed from the same test vat, but at the same time it should be tolerable with a bit of a volume reduction at most.

Going back to the UERM and back to music, things just sound... well, right. It’s the laziest kind of review one can give on the way something sounds; at the same time it’s also one of the most sincere. Things just sound the way they tend to sound out of the UERM. Short of the recording engineer wanting to literally harm the small hairs in your ear canals, I feel that cliché amomg cliché take hold: I’m hearing how something was surely meant to be mastered (notice I mercifully stop short of artist intentions or other such phenomena born from a haunted hymnal). Things that factor into thoughts of how things should be mastered include beer and an occasional spliff.

Okay, so great, the UERM sounded immediately listenable. Only it wasn’t. One cool thing to do with A/Bing (just about the only cool thing) is brain burn in: coming from a thick sounding IEM like the MH334, the UERM sounded brittle. Maybe even fatiguing. Brain burn in later: swapping to the MH334 drenches everything in copious sonic syrup. Haven’t done this? Try it. It’s fun.

In the end, I was one of those individuals who felt the UERM needed some extra sub frequency. Like a dormant monster occasionally letting out a gruff huff or rumble and scratched its backside. Some tracks need that tectonic shift, and short of having some big floor standing speakers or a dedicated sub, there’s only so much you can do with the limitations of modern science. The Plus does a pretty great job for an IEM, yknow? The very fact that you’re getting a UERM which sacrifices some spatial prowess for more even tempered highs (in a universal form factor no less; one that does, in fact, feel like the end result of some theologically concerning deal involving human souls) should be enough to sell the Plus completely out. Yet these things feel like a complete, coherent package that strive for more than just midrange perfection elegantly bowing out at either extreme.

Talking about this stuff gets me feeling excited! I wanna make some coffee now!
Speaking of which, I really am hard **pressed** to think of another earphone I’d want for Plus money. Hurrr.




“Shill harder MF” — my detractors aka not so secret admirers



Now for three times the price... the UE18+ Pro is a serious temptation. Like I said, I don’t normally “do” customs, but the UE18+ Pro is just giving me musically satisfying track after track. What’s there to say at this point? Any roughness the Plus has in sports is just not here, though admittedly the Plus still draws me further into the mix in some instances like Beck’s new thing. Also The UE18+ Pro isn’t trying to be a UERM successor AFAIK. The UE18 was more like the JH16Pro from memories. Except still more neutralish. Or trending toward neutral. Or neutral-y.

Especially down below.


Down below. Where the devil thinks up new audiophile speak to inflict upon the tormented.

 

Falling of a cliff notes:

The UERM was great but not perfect. The Plus does everything it did basically but more. For less. Why hasn’t it sold out? Oh yeah, Massdrop branding I guess?

UE’s 18+ Pro sounds best of all to me, furthest from neutral of the lot, but whatever. Music still sound like music. I love music. And coffee.

 

The Andromeda is a technically proficient IEM, and I can understand where the praise is coming from and all that.

It’s just not for me.

But I’ll revisit it soon when I write more on the UE18+ Pro.
Who knows, opinions change. Samples vary.

 

Hey a list of music!

It being the start of a new week and all, I figured I’d counter the prior angsty nonsense by talking about some of the music as that’s provided a soundtrack to my chilly pre-dawn walks and daydreams as of late.





The two big ones for me lately have been King Krule’s magnum oozpus The Ooz and Saicobab having finally putting something down on some form of physical media that isn’t an obscure VA compilation for an even obscurer local tribe. Or a fan made tribute captured via smartphone lense and put up on YouTube in thirty, one minute long installments.

King Krule, as mentioned before in blogs of old, is a hauntingly soulful blues singer who somehow looks like Ron Howard. Past the initial mindfuck, the gentleman’s personality is just so immensely likeable. It’s hard not to cheer for him as his set winds down, and damn is The Ooz one hell of a setlist: it’s a setlist for those long government queues, epilepsy inducing nightclub bathrooms, people sitting on stairwells: mostly comprised of the mere moments right before and after some bone fracturing action takes places.

Saicobab is a not what I was expecting. That’s good, as after so many electro-raga jams like On The Roof of Kedar Lodge, I feel they kind of came to thrive almost exclusively the pocket of reality that Boredoms forged from Super Roots 7 to ANT10. This is something new, a building up of scraps of sun colored balloon bust from the simple needle of OOIOO’s Gamelan. It twists and gets tangled up at times in its repetitive motion. It’s a new creation story always told in motion, already creating a parallax effect as that frankly disturbing “baby” on the cover is seen at all times against a white void off in the distance, one never quite sure of its size. It certainly ~seems~ large as the sitaar work themselves up into a frenzy directly in the foreground, all the while Yoshimi’s tribal dancing plants roots and vines which grow into flowers and collaps into living origami animals.

There’s plenty of gloom n doom amongst this week’s picks:

Necro Deathmort — Overland
Vacivus — Temple of The Abyss
Spectral Voice — Erroded Cordors of Unbeing (not pictured)
Bell Witch — Mirror Reaper (not pictured)
Vassafor — Malediction

That last one in particular is a doozy. Mind, I’ve always had a place in my disgusting heart for Obsidian Codex. Which you should also check out if you like unholy funerary processions drenched in blackened tarpit sludge.

On the lighter side of things is Uncle Acid’s Vol. 1. Which I’m assuming isn’t the first part of a collection so much as a take on Sabbath’s numerical thing. Though aparently there’s some elaborate backstory about early recordings and shitty resportarion jobs and... IDK. Believe whatever you want lmao. This stuff sound stupid and fun. Like a good Hammer Film.

That just leaves some gloomtronic odds and ends: the most excellent Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement (comprised of some smaller, hard to find releases all conveniently boxed together now for all your questionable enslavement needs) which reminds me in some ways or a much wetter Demdike Stare, as well as Phase Fatal’s Redeemer which has all of hell’s top club bangers right now.

Iglooghost is cute Brainfeeder type whimsy mixed with some chunks of breakcore and very well puréed gibs from the war between PC Music and Vaporwave which somehow never took place.

 

I love Bjork. For someone to be so well know yet give so little fucks about what ppl think of her art... can’t help but feel like a bit of Death Gribs rubbed off on her ‘round the time she was making unspide down vagina goop monsters.

Her latest cover though is just dripping alien swag like a faucet.



But as psyched as I am for Utopia (the album, not the headphones)... really this November is all about Godflesh’s Post Self as far as I’m concerned. The 2014 ‘reunion’ that was A World Only Lit By Fire was a reunion done right. Unlike that Pixies abomination, which is still far more grotesque than anything I’ve heard on goregrind albums to come. Exhumed’s Death Revenge is a good effort and all, but... yeah.

https://godflesh1.bandcamp.com/track/post-self-single


So Happy Halloween and all that!




My fiancé’s decidedly “Slender Man meets Jack Shkreli-ngton” effort at pumpkin carving.

For old time’s sake, here’s a review I did of one of my all time favorite Halloween spoop films. I think it’s getting more attention now that Criterion had the good sense to add it to their lineup.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...-her-30s-part-2.626954/page-1288#post-9940895

 

The fairy of clear and concise points just isn’t visiting me right now (it rarely does). Maybe I’ve had too much of this sparkling candy cola from Japan to celebrate the dead and undead and re-dead, and any other form of existence in the zombie rainbow.



At home I keep mine carefully parked next to the black Corvette.

The soda itself is almost sickeningly sweet, something approximating genuine liquid candy. Certainly moreso than the label bandied about by folks who are convinced minor changes in water pH are the secret to longevity. Sugar water, blah blah. Come face to face with this stuff would probably give them a coronary or something,

The UE18+ Pro is nice. I dig it, yet I’m finding it rather hard to actually talk about, y’know? Of course I mean its sound. I can certainly gripe about how large and uncomfortable the universal version is: they do painful and naughty things to your ear canals. The overall finish is nice though, so if they offer comfort similar to my FitEars rather than, say, Jerry Harvey, then I’d definitely think about picking myself up a pair.

As an aside... just what **is** Jerry Harvey up to these days, lawsuits aside? They seem preoccupied with playing around with artist pics in photoshop and naming inanimate objects your shove into your bodily orifaces after women who’ve been namedropped in songs. That much is clear. What isn’t clear interestingly enough is just what models they happen to be offering anymore? For instance you see names like “Layla II” and “Rosie” or whatever, those seemingly I’ll fated souls who adorn boxes with Astell & Kern branding. These names are not mentioned on the actual JH website. If I were going off of the latest official news, I’d assume most of the girly names got heaped on A&K, while only the Roxanne really still exists alongside the 13 and 16pro under JH’s own name.

It’s just weird. Confusing. Not how I’d go about instilling brand stability, but hey. Maybe those pics that get photoshopped are totes legit, and JH is busy hanging out with aging white rockers. What gets shopped out the most is the aging white nose candy. Hurrr.

I’ve come full circle and managed to completely overshot my target.

I guess what it comes down to is this: not having much to say about a pair of headphones can be a good thing. Any flowery sound description just feels empty to me at the moment; these have a nice, natural sounding FR to me. They're fun, hovering closer to my memory of the JH13Pro than the UERM. I’ll look over my “notes” (lmfao... notes...) after I send them on to the next person on the listening tour. This is why I try to avoid listening tours unless it’s something I’m really curious about, by the way: I’m a lazy yet constantly anxious little rodent-like creature. I wanna get these to the next person more than sit and play the ol A/B/A/B game. Nothing stands out as particularly **wrong** so I sigh a sigh of relief and go about enjoying the rest of Velvet Underground with Nico.



This cover is just begging to be captured on faceplates. On the cover the banana was actually a large sticker and a message compelled one to “peel and see.” Under the yellow banana peel? A pink banana. And so we need white shells, one variant per side, and matching acrylic body: left in yellow and right in pink.

Maybe one day?

Maybe one day I’ll take to calling IEMs teeny phones. Tiny things just have this universal appeal, as illustrated by erasers that look like smol food (talk about encouraging Pica) and other assorted objects:



Pictured above are little cacti shaped erasers. They remind me of the bento box ones from Japan. The aforementioned UE18+ Pro congregate around them, sort of betraying the whole “teeny” theme. Helping to make up for it then are the VSonic VSD5S and these strange little woodie things from China called Rose Pudding. This might just be the best name for a pair of things you stick in your ears. Ever.

A brief word on the Pudding before I return later with “UE18+ Pro cliff notes” or whatever:
They cost more than you’d think. They sound a lot nicer than you’d prolly think, too, assuming you’re a basshead (closeted or otherwise). Or a basehead. Whatever.

The new Com Truise, Beck, and Four Tet albums have been on rotation a lot lately, and trying to compare musical satisfaction gleaned from the new flagship UEs or these teeny ‘phones made by university students in China in school labs is just something I can’t be assed to do. I will say that the UE monitors are more like monitors, have better control up top and down below. They also cost like three times as much, so, that’s... Yknow.

One thing I like about Teeny Pudding is that it has a bit of that super secret sauce the Koss ESP950 + SRM-717 combo has in spades.

Have I mentioned the 950 + 717 combo as of late? If not, I’m not doing my real job here. Screw all these earphones. Screw most headphones too. Get a Koss ESP950, chuck the teeny amp in the bin outside Koss HQ and somehow find an old 717 or 313 amp from Stax. Change the plug out, earning your official mad scientist degree.

Relax and enjoy the end credits. If they’re from any of the new albums mentioned above, get off your butt and dance.

Look at more Andy Warhol art.
Drink unnaturally colored sodas.
Play Quake Champions or Hollow Knight.

I guess the fairy of clear and concise points paid me a visit afterall.
And it only took a TL;DR wall to summon it.

 

Stuff to write about at some point or another:

Time spent with the UE18+ Pro and why it’s good to be forgettable
Ocharaku Sakura and Keyaki: pure guilty pleasure (or: why it’s good to be memorable)
A brief history of the Liquid Glass and why it’s my favorite headphone amp ever
Phenomenon E-Stats
Thoughts on ZMF, and ZMF’s thoughts on headphones
Listening to Teitanblood on the Focal Clear is f'ing hysterical
Why a review of Bjork’s new album is obligatory at this point
Hollow Knight and other videogames I’ve fallen in love with this year

Just keeping some notes for myself.
Or making a monument to ineffectual blog posting (cuz watch me not do any of this...).

Edit: Oh yeah. Might do a MySphere writeup early next year if the guys there decide to include me in their listening tour.