Fun at the hifi store

Edit: Just to let you know, I found out that the Klipsch speakers I used were RB-61s rather than RB-52s. I don't feel like changing everywhere I mentioned them so I'm just putting this here.

I went to a nearby HiFi store recently. It was a great store, very helpful in my quest to get good speakers. Right now I'm really liking the Paradigm Titan Monitors (they're bookshelves). They sounded pretty good. They also pointed out to me why people are saying new Klipsch products don't stack up to the old ones. The Paradigms did cost $50 more than the Klipsch RB-52 bookshelf speakers (I decided they are good enough to wait 'till I have a job for), but there was a noticeable difference in sound that makes them worth the extra $50. While the Klipschs were also good, the problem was that in comparison to the Paradigms, vocals were less full and the sound muddled together just a bit. I was using Smash Mouth as demo material, anyone who knows them will know that their songs tend to be pretty busy, pretty often having a lot of sounds going on at once. They were more defined and separate on the Paradigms than on the Klipschs. Later on I got to use some of their floorstanders (from their Reference series, it was either the hueg RF-82s or the hueger RF-83s, not sure which, but they're pretty similar) and surprisingly enough, I still prefer the sound of those Paradigm bookshelves. Either Klipsch has gone down in quality (I can't say for sure though since I haven't heard their older stuff, but my friend's uncle seemed pretty sure that old Klipschs sound worlds better than new ones, and after hearing the new ones I wouldn't be so quick to doubt that) or Paradigm just makes a really mean pair of speakers. I'm not saying the giant Klipsch floorstanders were bad, they just weren't super good. I'm actually going to have to wonder if they were set up wrong or something or if they actually sounded like that. It sounded like either the lower mids were coming more from the tweeter than they should've, or the horn was coloring the sound in a fashion that I didn't like. Regardless of what it was, I preferred the sound of the Paradigm Titan Monitors. They also sounded better than some tiny Paradigm floorstanders that they had, though that was kind of expected since the floorstanders had smaller midrange drivers.

Leaning away from Klipsch wasn't the only thing I did there though. I also got to try the famous B&W Zeppelin. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's another one of those iPod docking speaker systems. It's probably the most praised one though. It costs (and sounds like) $500, it's one of the only speakers in the small "high-end" side of iPod speakers. Sadly I didn't get to spend more than about a minute or two with it, but it was great. It didn't sound like any iPod speaker I'd heard before, the sound is like a pretty good home stereo. Vocals were clear and full, instruments sounded real, everything was great about it. Probably the biggest problem with it is that most people who buy iPod speakers only do it for casual listening. But if I had the money I'd snatch one up right away and find a use for it, it becomes much more worth the money after you get to listen to one (as opposed to reading very favorable reviews online).

As well as that, I got a chance to speakers from B&W's 800 series (I believe the ones I used were the 802Ds, but I could be wrong). I can't say enough about them. Music has never sounded so good. He (the salesman) first put on the Smash Mouth CD I'd brought with me. It sounded awesome, I'd never heard Smash Mouth sound that good. That played for a bit, then he gave me back the CD and put on a Beatles record. These were the first speakers I'd listened to that showed a big difference between vinyl and CD. Yes, I know Smash Mouth and The Beatles are pretty different in style, but that doesn't change how good The Beatles sounded, especially through these speakers. Everything sounded very warm and real. The definition was incredible. All the instruments, the guitar, the drums, and of course the vocals, all would've made you look to see if The Beatles were in the room. I can't imagine a pair of speakers being better than those. Unfortunately they were $14000, but now I'll know what kind of speakers to look at when I'm ready to spend that much money. Here's a fun fact, the 800 series floorstanders are used for mastering.

So those were my adventures at the speaker store. Drop me a comment if you've got any comments to drop.

Dear record companies, what the fuck

Today I have chosen to complain about CDs. Awful stupid record companies who don't care about music at all are ruining music, especially CDs, for everyone. So maybe now you're thinking "Well, what's wrong with CDs?" If you are thinking that, you're pretty ignorant. You probably shop at Hollister.

Everything is wrong with CDs. This really stood out to me the other day when I bought a Smash Mouth CD at FYE the other day. It's used, cost $4, and is almost in new condition. That was when it occurred to me that $4 is how much a CD should cost. Alright, maybe a little more, but not much more than that. CDs cost way too much today. I'm seeing some go as far as $19. This would be OK if they were loaded with tracks or something, but they're not. They aren't even always new or anything special, they're just that much because they want to charge that much. In fact, the "low" $12 is still kind of expensive. While fitting a machine with the parts to make a specific CD can be somewhat costly, pressing them can't cost much. Think about it, about $30 buys you a stack of 100 rewritable CDs (sometimes it costs more, sometimes less, but it's usually around 30). That's ¢3 per disc. On bestbuy.com I found a 100 pack for $38*, which is 38 cents per disc. So it's a bit more than 3 cents per disc, but still definitely not a lot. Then I found a 50 pack of jewel CD cases for $28, which is ¢56 per case. That comes out to ¢96 for every boxed disc. Still not a dollar. And of course these blank discs and cases had extra money tacked on for the manufacturer. If I had the manufacturing costs it'd be even less. So where does all the other money come from? Well, they need to have money to run the machines that make the discs and write to them, to make the parts that go in the machines that make each disc the specific disc that it is, and they need to pay workers. So we add to the bare cost of about ¢96 per disc the cost of all that. I'm going to assume just a few dollars, lets up it to $3.96. Doesn't sound like much, but since big record companies are selling millions of CDs each day, it sorta adds up. That'll easily pay for everything involving manufacturing.

Then how about some money for the artist. One more dollar will make the artist rich as long as it's one of those awful horrible bad ones that everyone likes because they've been pressured into liking it. In fact, it'll make any moderately popular artist rich. One dollar is plenty. Then how about some money for the record company. Two dollars, since they're greedy like that and they gotta pay all their marketing people who make the world think that their most popular yet worst artist are good. That brings us to $7 after rounding up from the 96 cents. OK so I was wrong about $4 earlier, but $7 is still not a bad price. However, I do think the record company and artist could live with a little less money.

If you've ever walked into a CD store though, you know that CDs do not cost $7. They cost $7 in heaven maybe. Where's all the money going? Right to the greedy record company and artist. Even if the artist doesn't want to charge a lot, the record company does, and so they do. They're charging you as much as $19-22 (come to think of it, sometimes they do hit 22) now for a CD that costs around $4 for supplies and manufacturing. They don't know what makes it worth that much any better than you do, they just want money. If you look you can still find some CDs that are somewhat less, ones from less rich record companies who can't afford to charge as much for a few pieces of plastic, one CD, and a few pieces of paper.

Then there's special edition type things. These tend to include a second disc and maybe some more bonus material such as album art. OK, so that's ¢38 cents for the 2nd disc, a few more for the bigger case to hold both discs, and almost nothing for the extra album art. Why does it cost $28? There is no logical explanation, it costs so little extra to make one of these that they could leave the price the same as a regular album and they'd take just about no hit from it. The problem is that they are greedy bastards.

And now what's with the lower quality of CD cases? I'm not talking flimsier plastic or anything like that. The other day when I was at a CD store I was flipping through some Parliament CDs (don't criticize me for not looking for vinyl, my record player doesn't work right) and I saw something awful. It was either styrofoam or that paper material they use to make egg cartons (pretty sure it was styrofoam) as the part that holds the CD, wrapped in thin cardboard (so you could slide out the styrofoam part, shrinkwrapped. It was the most half assed, budget cutty thing I have ever seen. Seriously, what the fuck was that? Not only was it clearly just to spend less money on a better case, but it would be much easier to destroy than a plastic CD case. Think about it. It could get squished in a stack of CDs or an overstuffed CD shelf and be forever disfigured, it could bend and stay that way forever (as well as lose it's ability to hold the CD), there's just so many things that could go wrong with something like that. 

Another thing I have problems with is the way stores package the CDs. They seriously need to stop putting price tags on the actual case. Especially since they usually wrap them in plastic after that. After you peel them off you have sticker residue (or worse, the sticker falls apart and then you have some paper stuck to the case that never goes away and turns into a sticky goopymess that attracts dust and hair after a few years that still doesn't go away), or you could leave them on and have an unsightly price tag on your case. Put the fucking sticker on the plastic or price everything at a fair $6 or $7 so the cashier can always know how much something is.

I also don't like those stickers that they put along the top of the CD. They're annoying to remove since they like to shred when you peel them off, then they leave some residue that attracts hair and dust. Plus, if you've got any CDs in your collection with cases made of cardboard, this can stick to that, and if that happens long enough, it can tear the cardboard. 

Speaking of cardboard cases, it's horrible when stores put stickers on them. Cardboard cases are most often used for singles, but I have seen them for full albums (my The Day I Turned to Glass from Honeycut is made of cardboard). I don't really have anything against cardboard cases, because they pose as no problem when you take care of them right. But if you buy one with a sticker on it, it's already ruined. The sticker is going to tear it up, or you can leave it on and naturally have it look awful. This is why it's good to always buy them new online.

If vinyl were easier, I'd switch mostly over. I buy a lot of CDs that also have vinyl releases, and vinyl releases tend to sell used for around $1. Awesome. Thing is, records are easier to screw up than CDs, they require more care, they aren't as convenient, and they're much less easy to put on your iPod. I do like vinyl though, and when I have a good sound system and more money, I am going to get a nice record player and start collecting. New vinyl still costs about as much as new CDs though.

So what can you do to boycott CDs? Not much, mostly just pirate/file share. I don't do that though, for numerous reasons. In fact, I still buy CDs. This is why I don't pirate/share though:

- If it's an artist I like, I still want to support them. Unfortunately though, buying a CD (or using a service like iTunes, which is slightly better, but not by a ton) is just about the only way to do that.

- File sharing and pirating is convenient and free, except you usually get the wrong songnames/artists, so in an automatically organizing system like the iPod, you could have 20 songs from one artist and they'd all display under different artists. On the iPod, all the songs from an artist need to have the artist's name typed, capitalized, and punctuated the same way, or it displays as different artists.

- File sharing and pirating almost never gives you good sound quality, and you still don't get the 1444 kbps of a CD for listening on very high end systems (where digitally encoded music vs better digitally encoded music shows more of a difference). Some people don't mind that, I do.

- I also won't switch to buying on iTunes. I do use iTunes, and while albums costing less money (usually) are pretty tempting, if I'm going to buy an album I want a hard copy. A hard copy can be played on a separate stereo without burning, there's no DRM bothering me, and while some iTunes songs come in a pretty nice 256 kbps (that's the iTunes Plus songs), others come in a measly 128kbps. 256 is pretty nice, but iTunes will never give the 1444 kbps of a CD. I do use it if I want just one or two songs from an album though, since it saves me money and space on my CD case.

To conclude (Jeez this was long), CDs are great. Record companies are just ruining them.

Oh, and before I finish this post, why isn't SACD taking off? It's so perfect. Most SACDs can still be read on an ordinary CD player, but SACDs have better quality on an SACD player. It's the perfect successor (so fuck DVD audio) and will apparently sound better on a moderate system (I confess I still haven't used it myself). The thing is, no CD stores sell them, and they just don't advertise it at all. There's also no SACD drives for your computer (to my knowledge), so us computer listeners can't get SACD joy on our computers. So yeah, let's see more SACD.

* http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8739065&st=cd-r&type=product&id=1201913867194

** http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7950014&st=cd+case&type=product&id=1152229204211

DeAndre Way is an asshole and I hate him

DeAndre Way is probably the most hatable asshole in the world. You might know him better as Soulja Boy. His only popular song is horrible noisy shit and that's all it is. It's hardly even music. It's just noise. It's people screaming. And somehow a bunch of idiots bought it. I think hip hop guy Ice-T will agree with me. To quote Wikipedia:

In June 2008, on DJ Cisco’s Urban Legend mixtape, Ice-T criticized Soulja Boy for "killing hip-hop" and his song "Crank That" for being "garbage" compared to the works of other hip-hop artists as Rakim, Das EFX,Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube.

I don't know any of the other people mentioned, but I agree anyway. It just makes no sense to me at all how music as awful and bad as his could manage to get so popular. I can usually understand things from other people's point of view, even if I disagree with it. I can sort of see why people like Enya. But this, bluh. I can't possibly imagine what could cause people to think he is anything other than shit. It boggles the mind.

Now usually when someone is this awful there is some good somewhere. Not with this guy. He is awful no matter how you look at him. For example, I don't like Beyonce's music at all. But I think she's an awesome actress. DeAndre Way is always hatable. He's the worst kind of person. First he got rich off that awful horrible song, then he's a doucebag about being rich. Does Bill Gates walk around telling people he has money? No. And he has the most money. Does Oprah do that? No. DeAndre Way does just that. He loves telling people that he has money. At any chance he gets he tries to express that he has money. Why does he do that? Because he's an asshole. 

I think the world would be a better and happier place if he just went ahead and died. No one needs him and no one needs his shitty shit. 

Attention everyone: Stop being a pussy

I think it's pretty bullshitty that every time anyone does anything that could be considered remotely offensive to anyone, they get slapped in the face with protesters and maybe a lawsuit or two. So what if Tropic Thunder is offensive to retarded people? Tell them not to watch it. I hate it when people think we should all live in a happy world where no one makes jokes about any group of people, any object, thing, clothing brand, or computer manufacturer. Being offended is part of life. If you plan to live, you will be offended from time to time. If you don't like it, die. If there are jokes about your race in a movie and you don't like them, then don't see the movie. What good does protesting or lawsuiting do? The movie has already been made, you can't recall it from thousands of movie theaters so you can scratch out the parts that aren't soccer mom-friendly. Those parts are always the best parts. Without them, movies would stop being funny. Look at Norbit. The whole thing was a jab at fat black women, and to my knowledge no one has said anything about it. No, not a lot of people liked it (I did), but how many fat black women sued DreamWorks for it? No one!

Basically what I'm saying is, if a movie is offensive to you, don't watch it. What horrible thing does it do to you if you don't watch it? Hell, what horrible thing does it do to you if you DO watch it? Learn to laugh at yourself. It's humorless douchebags like you that are ruining everything for everyone else. Either get a sense of humor, or stop living.

Oh that's funny

I thought it was pretty funny that iHome calls the drivers on one of their clock radios "Reson8 drivers." It's like a clever way to say "don't turn this up." The cabinet resonates with everything at any volume. It sounds decent (for an iPod clock radio that costs $90 anyway...) until you turn it up. Devo made this noticeable. I was listening to Whip It and the coloration from the resonance was so bad at high volumes that the singer sounded like he had a piece of wax paper over his mouth. I was thinking of getting one until that happened. I'd need it to be loud to wake up, and I do not want to start my day with wax paper vocals.

Issmahburt'day

Yeah it's my birthday. So that's cool. I now have that much needed external HDD I needed and a CD rack and an Aperture Science mug which is pretty awesome. Other than that I was born today. Wouldn't it have been cool if I'd decided to be born on the 15th so I'd share a birthday with the iMac? That would've been pretty cool.

Windows Mobile is awful.

Windows mobile is the worst mobile OS I've ever seen or used. Let me tell you why. It's not easy to use, in fact it's hard to use. Menus aren't self explanatory, they're annoying to navigate, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to do anything. When I use a cell phone, I want to be able to figure it out within two minutes of picking it up. Within two minutes of picking up a phone with Windows Mobile, I'm either trying to figure out how to get to something that should be easy or waiting for it to stop lagging. Speaking of that, it's clunky. But back on topic. Navigating is worse than on any mobile device I have ever used. They try to make it easy by giving you eight ways to execute any function, but that just complicates things and adds tons of bulk to all the menus. Often while using it I can't figure out how to get to some app or something I was just in. Often on home screens or whatever (I word it like this because I've never been able to find a genuine home screen) there are mystery icons without text. The interface is always too busy. There's always too much onscreen at once. That clutters it up even on a big high res screen. When you manage to get to the app you wanted, it's hard to use. All this gets even worse when they add a touch screen because of how half-assed it is. The icons on touch screen Win'Mobile phones are just as small as on non-touchscreen ones, and that's small. Touch screen navigation is worse than using the buttons. And using the buttons is already terrible. Using Windows Mobile is like trying to solve a rubik's cube where there are no two stickers that are the same color. 

All they did was try to sum up Windows into a mobile device. That is not how phones should work. Windows (kind of) works on your desktop because you have the big spacious screen that's harder to clutter up. On a phone, it's much different. It's always cluttered. No matter what. It is just always cluttered. There is always too much stuff crammed onscreen at once. And with that complex interface (it really feels like a bunch of other interfaces lazily taped together) you can never just whip it open and start doing what you want. The crappy interface that comes on most Verizon phones is better than this. And that's just sad.

Now I don't actually own one of these (which is good), this is all stuff I've learned from using it now and then. Out of my entire life, probably about 8 or 10 minutes of it has been spent on one of these, and this is what I've learned so far. It just seems really half-assed, especially with the interface. I always have a very lasting first impression with interfaces. This is because it lets me judge how easy it is to use from the perspective of someone who has never used it. I expect an interface to be pretty self explanatory on how to use it, I expect it to be fast, and I expect it to be efficient. Windows Mobile pretty much failed all of those. It probably did the best on "fast" except for when it randomly starts to lag a lot. The people who work the Windows Mobile part of the company could really learn a lot from the Zune people. The Zune has an awesome interface. It's very easy to navigate and works quite well. I think it'd be great in a phone if used right.

Definitely the worst thing about Windows Mobile though, is that all the smartphone manufacturers are using it in their phones. And it's such a disappointment. I'm seeing tons of great hardware being put to waste on this monstrosity, especially that Sony Xperia one. The manufacturers are to blame here. Windows Mobile gives everyone a chance to half-ass things. This is because the people making the phones can just tweak it a little to work on their hardware (I use the word "work" lightly here) and leave it at that. Maybe that's why the hardware is so good now, they don't have to put as much effort into the software so they put it toward hardware. There's tons of great smartphones that I'd love to look at if the companies got off their asses and made their own software. I doubt I'd dislike Windows Mobile nearly as much if it wasn't on all the new phones now, like some kind of horrible contagious infection spreading across the whole smartphone industry. Even Palm is using it now. I actually thought the old Palm OS was OK. OK to the point where I've looked at Treos in the past.

I'm going to congratulate RIM now though. RIM is the only company left with any balls. Even though they're starting to fall at the hands of the iPhone, they haven't dropped their decent OS. Instead, they're releasing phones with full assed software. That's right. They made it themselves and they're sticking to it. I even thought of a Blackberry Curve for a little bit because it's not running Windows Mobile, and ultimately decided not to because if I got one, that would give my dad more of a reason to not let me get an iPhone. So congratulations, RIM. Give yourself a hug. I'm pretty sure you're the last one who hasn't sold your balls to Microsoft.

Portable music player idiocy!

Recently out of boredom I've been answering questions on Yahoo! Answers and noticed quite a bit of portable music player idiocy in the category for portable music players. Since I don't feel like thinking of an intelligent way to word my complaints, I'll just make a list.

- The estimates that you get on how much music an MP3 player can hold are always right. Quite often when people ask questions like which size iPod or Zune would be best, people answer "well, this one can hold 20000 songs, so that will probably be OK maybe." What could possibly cause these people to not notice just how wrong those estimates are? You could argue that they don't understand things like encoders and bit rates, but what about song length? This was something I understood when I was 11 and browsing the Apple site, saying "Oh, those estimates don't make much sense. What about song length?" I didn't even know what a bit rate or an encoder was. It just makes sense.

- iPods and MP3 players are different things. ...What? I'll admit, Yahoo! Answers wasn't the first place I read this. But seriously, what? How the fuck are they different? Are iPods just so almighty and overly trendy that they now are classified as something other than an MP3 player? Yes, I know MP3 isn't even their regular format, but regardless, it plays MP3s, and MP3 player is the common name for "portable music player," hence why I stopped saying that. And don't get pissy if you're an Apple nazi because I said they're overly trendy. I own one, I love it, I love iPods, and they ARE overly trendy. This is fact, and anyone who isn't blind or stupid will tell you that.

- Not being able to figure out something that is so simple, the only way it could be easier would be to retardify it by taking away something important, like needing a computer to put songs on the MP3 player. This means all the people who ask us how to put songs on their iPods. How can you not know how to do that? It tells you in the manual to download iTunes if you don't have it, and just about the only thing you need to use iTunes is an IQ over 80. In fact, after you have it installed all you have to do is plug your iPod in and click "sync." I guess somehow these morons get it in their heads that the manual does not contain any useful information on using the product. But we all know that if we saved a few (continents of) forests by not packing manuals with consumer products, all the people who buy them would be calling in asking where the manual is. People are stupid.

- Not knowing how to put music into iTunes. Yeah, this one should've been in the above one, but I didn't want to cram it full of too many words. And also, you may have noticed that I talk about iPods and iTunes a lot. This is because they're what I have the most experience in, so questions pertaining to those things are the ones I usually click on. Anyway, there are questions like this more often than you'd think. Questions where people ask how to get music into iTunes. What the crap is that? How do you not get music into it? It pulls itself to the front of the screen when you put in a CD and even prompts you on whether or not you want to add it to your library. That's less common though, than people asking how to get music that's already on their computers into it. Apple tries as hard as they can to make it easy on these kinds of people and they still can't figure out how to get an MP3 they got on Limewire into iTunes. For those who don't know iTunes, you drag it. It's just that easy. You drag the song over to the library in iTunes and WHAMO. It's in iTunes. How do these people even figure out how to use Limewire? It's not like it's hard to use, but it's not nearly as user friendly as iTunes is.

And once a guy asked how to replace the battery on an iPod because it went through the washing machine. He somehow thought that the only part damaged was the battery. I'm sure it was damaged, but I have somehow gotten it in my head that even if he replaced it, it still wouldn't turn on. I dunno, it's just one of those feelings.

Happy Birthday, iMac

Today is the iMac's birthday. Celebrate by shouting "Woo hoo!" and then going back to what you were doing.

Does this make sense?

So I'm looking at USB 5.1 adapters (for those who don't know, they plug into the USB port of a computer and let you use a 5.1 computer speaker set), and I've finally found one that looks pretty good (actually it's just the only one I've found). Reviews are nice, and you can even plug in microphones and things of that nature. It even has Mac support. But oh wait, the Mac version of the software only has support for two channel audio. Does that make sense? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of buying it or even giving it Mac support? I had to read that little bit a few times over just to make sure I was reading it right. It also states that performance is best under Windows XP. I wouldn't have guessed that, since it can't fucking do what it was made for on Mac. I might have to call this company's tech support tomorrow just to make sure that wasn't a typo. 

Delaware is cool

I was just in Delaware for a few days, just got back. It was cool. We were in the Rehoba (pretty sure I got the name wrong, but I definitely spelled it wrong) beach area. I didn't actually go to the beach though, since I don't like beaches that much. Instead, I went on the boardwalk. That was pretty cool. There was this one arcade (Playland arcade I think) that had a Pump It Up machine. I got a high score so hooray for that ("VCWK" is my high score name). It was pretty fun, it'd been a while since I played PIU. If there were some reputable metal homepads for it and some more home versions I'd get those. I do have that Cobalt Flux in the basement (a very popular metal DDR pad) that I could use for PIU, but if you're a non-biased dance gamer then you'll know that in order to properly play Pump, you need to have the properly sized diagonal arrows as on the machine.

What I never understood was why Pump is so unpopular in the US. It's so much more fun than DDR ever will be, and was better than ITG by a hair, yet still no one likes it. Maybe they're not manly enough for Pump's better charts or harder songs.

Other interesting things at Best Buy

Other than proving to myself that Promedia 2.1s were better than Logitech Z-2300s, a few other interesting things happened while I was there. I was around for a little while since I didn't want to hang around while my mom took my sister around for shoe shopping and got stuck in traffic. Anyway here are things that I saw:

Bose cube speakers in both the single and double cube config's sitting on shelves. They were connected to nothing, they didn't have security devices on them and could be picked up and placed elsewhere. They actually had a few speakers from other brands like that, as in other ones that could fit in a big pocket. What was their purpose?

There was an Indian guy squeezing the Bose sats described above. I saw the whole thing. First he picked up a cube and squeezed it pretty hard. Then he grabbed a double-cube and squeezed that too. Then a Bose center. Maybe he was testing them for ripeness? If so, that might be why all those speakers were left out, so people could see if they were ripe. He may have just been trying to remove the grill though.

Insignia brand computer speakers. They were tiny. Really tiny. They were pretty much a cheap laugh for anyone into audio. The sats probably went down to 250hz. Then the "sub" had what was probably a 2.5" driver. I laughed when I looked at it.

Logitech Z-2300 better than Klipsch Promedia 2.1?

They aren't, and never think that they are. Yesterday I was at Best Buy and they had these two speakers sets right next to each other. That was great, because whether or not the Promedia 2.1s or the Logitech Z-2300s sounded better was a widely debated issue. Now I'm going to put an end to it.

The Promedias are better and anyone who says otherwise has lead ears. Now if you know me personally you probably know Klipsch is my favorite speaker brand. So you're probably thinking there's some bias going on here. There isn't, I'm perfectly open to finding something that I'll like more, which is why I did the comparison. I got them to about the same volume, subs too, but I just couldn't find out what was great about the Logitech pair. The Klipschs were clearer, they had much better mids (they sounded fuller and more lifelike) and I just liked the Klipsch's sub more. Now the 8" sub on the Logitech pair was a nice touch, and Logitech makes good subs (not great, but good, and I know because at the moment my speakers are some older Logitechs with an 8" sub), but somehow I just much preferred the 6.5" Promedia sub. They were both ported as well. I guess what was nice about the Promedia's was that it was clearer and it mixed with the sats very well. The Logitechs were pretty good too, but I'm just putting that old debate to rest (well actually I'm not since no one will read this, but I'm putting it to rest in my head), and I'm still getting me some Promedias sometime.

Also, I guarantee you that if Klipsch made a big display for their computer speakers like Bose does with there's, Bose would never sell another pair. Just saying, because any good pair of speakers will sound awesome in a display where they're playing sound effect-loaded movies and jazzy music at high volumes. 

Columbians!

For a while now, people who claim to be from Columbia who don't speak English (except for when they send me English replies out of the blue) have been adding me to their MSN lists and then ignoring me except for when they try sending me files. I've been blocking them though. I hope they all get impaled with cars.