A Guide to IEMs: Part 1 (basics)

IEMs, also known as in ear monitors, are earpieces originally created for performing artistes for the purpose of monitoring their performances. You see them as the earpieces that your favourite singers wear when performing live. They were created in the 1980s as a replacement to conventional stages monitors (wedges) in order to reduce the noise exposure levels to performers (to hear themselves, these speakers are at levels above that of the crowd and often exceed 100 decibels)Basically they fall into 2 types, custom moulded and generic. Custom molded are those that are shaped to fit a specific person ears, and usually require a visit to the audiologist in order to create. They are more expensive than the generic types but they offer significant advantages like better comfort, greater isolation (up to over 30db). Companies that create such earpieces includes Ultimate Ears, FutureSonics, Livewires , Westone , Sensaphonics and FreQ. Originally created for professional usage, these have now a significant number of audiophile users whom are aware of the benefits of such earpieces

Generic pieces on the other hand are basically earpieces that will fit most users at the lowest costs whilst offering greater fidelity as compared to normal earphones. Originally for professional usage, these too have gained a wide following amongst audiophile users. At a lower cost than custom earpieces, these offer great bang for the buck and a sigificant upgrade from those throwaway earphones you get with your digital audio players. The great thing is that whilst their isolation is not much worse than customs (the best average at over 25-30db), they can be used by more than one person and as a result, is resellable. As a result, these are often bundled with in ear monitoring systems by Sennheiser, AKG, Audio-Technica , Shure and others.l These can also be fitted with custom earpieces that provides the best of both worlds in terms of versitility, comfort and sound quality. Companies that create such earpieces includes Shure, Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Westone, Ultimate Ears, Crossroads, Sensorcom etc

Coming Soon: Part II - IEM drivers and which types suit me?

Something Cool: Live television from Space

haha, no I'm not out of my mind. Americans may know it but not many here locally so here goes.

NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) has a online TV channel. During shuttle missions and important ISS missions, they'll broadcast directly from Johnson Space Centre (Houston) and Kennedy Space Centre, so we're getting direct satelite feeds from space. Cool!

NASA TV

Strange Things...I'm listening to Classical!!

Until recently I was listening to all sorts of stuff that people of my age will listen to, loads of pop (in particular JPOP like Utada Hikaru) and some rock. But upon the advice of Stereophile that I had been reading (hoping to pick up tips on improving my desktop system actually...), I picked up some classical, and I actually liked them :). Here's what I've been listening to, and if you think there is a better version out there let me know i.e. a very good pianist or conductor or orchestra

Vivaldi - 4 Seasons
JS Bach - Goldberg Variations (1955 Gould)
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata, Diabelli Variations
Mozart - Requiem

A Journey through earphones: Beyond the humble earbuds.

Well, about 2 years ago I got into this whole Head-Fi, headphone affectionado thingy. The very strange bit is how that begun. See, it was a period when I was feeling really down and I was listening to plenty of generally sad sad music... So I saw this magazine review of something thats alien to me....something called in ear monitors. It was a review of Westone UM1 with Creative Zen Aurvana. At that point I already abandoned the cheapo included earbuds and had a pair of absolutely wonderful sounding Sennheiser MX400 and I thought: how much better could it be? So I took a plunge and bought the Westone. So here I am quite a few hundred bucks poorer but aurally more satisfied, here's a quick look at the stuff that I went through

Sennheiser MX400: Great little earbuds, cheap but with a full bodied sound thats typical sennheiser. Highly recommended

Westone UM1: Very comfortable, my first real IEM. Great fit and isolation, flat sound thats very musical at the same time. Good build quality. Recommended

MiPro E8P: Not available commercially and normally sold as part of a wireless in ear monitor kit. Got mine off EBay (seller is Zolton) for a cheap cheap price. Bargain of the year. Fantastic sound with great treble extension and plenty of visceral bass(and IMHO better than the more expensive Westone). Like Westones very good fit (once the memory wire is fixed) and comfort. Problems: Only comes in one colour (skintone beige) and wires are thin (caution!!!). Highly Recommended

KOSS Plugs: AVOID at ALL COST. Muddy with poor bass definition. Nuff said lest I get sued :P

Ultimate Ears Super Fi 3: Great sound, peaky with bass and mid treble spikes. Very suitable for pop/rock tracks but less so for classical. Awkward form factor, although goodies like replaceable wires are a big big plus. Recommended

Audio Technica ATH-M20: Limited treble extension, slightly muddy. But oh so comfortable.

AKG Acoustics K55: Fantastic treble with superb high end sparkle. Just that the damn fit is annoying and causes discomfort in longer listening sessions. Recommended

Audio Technica ATH-Pro6: fantastic bass and treble extension, slightly bass biased, smooth non fatiguing sound but at the expense of ultimate treble definition. Extremely comfortable with more adjustments than I can use, but gets a little warm under the cups. Highly recommended

Freedom of Speech & Expression: When is boom a bane?

heh heh, this is one of those controversial stuff again ain't it? And as a political science student (and soon to be practitioner of this black art) this is one issue that I've heard over and over (along with classics like democracy or dictatorship; agency or structure....you get the idea.) Like a lot of people I do value the freedom of expression and speech. So do many around the world. However, the question that always bugs national leaders and thinkers alike is how much is too much, is absolute too much?

But first, a little explanation...see I realised that everywhere I look on the internet people are expressing their views hidden behind anonymous nicks indiscriminately expressing their every conviction and prejudice. Inevitably when censure occurs those whom offend often decry the death of freedom of expression, and cloaking their actions behind noble ideals. Now, here's my two fingered reply to such hypocrisy (okay, now I must stress this is a personal point of view and that you are of course free to differ, but remember what I will say next before you angrily reply).

First of all, lets look at some premises of this freedom. Some see it as a right, in other societies it is more of an privilege (cultural factors apply....your town may differ from mine). Which means that this 'right' is not a natural state of being(and therefore is not to be shoved down the throats of others, just because they don't believe this doesn't make them any less human) although I will not argue that its the ideal ultimate condition of human society.

So far so good. However, as you can see in the real world, there are some problems. Some one is bound to say something that pisses people off so bad/or motivates people in a way that something may happen in the real world. Take for instance the messages that Al Qaeda posts which translates into real attacks...or the publication of the comics in Denmark that resulted in protests and violence. Therefore what I can conclude is that the freedom of expression is perhaps unrealistic due to some very fundamental flaws in our society. Therefore, whilst freedom of expression is what we aspire to, perhaps it may remain an unachieveable ideal.

Huh? Okay, the thing is to avoid those ills above, there are a few necessary condition, things like a complete education of society. Why? Because education teaches a person to think, to be rational . In this case, to be rational will bestow responsibility in our speech, the ability to exercise proper judgement in what we say and do. For example, even with things we might not agree with, we may express our difference in a logical manner that creates (hopefully) conviction of the other party

From here on, everything above goes down the drain. Here's why, despite what we'd like to think of our own superiority as human beings, we are but ruled by our emotions and prejudices (Just ask George Dubbya what he thinks of Saadam). We like to think our actions are justified when its rarely so in the absence of perfect information and in the circumstance of personal biases. Therefore, what we say or do is always shaped by illogical forces. Second, human beings thrive on emotions. What does this mean? It means that all our past glories, all our future achievements as a species is driven by emotions, the desire to suceed, the will to move on and beyond our current state of being. Therefore, as long as we remain so, we will say or do whatever we like thinking it was for the genuine advancement of the fellow man (again, ask George). As we can see so far, humans are illogical and irrational. And, freedom of speech itself requires a degree of rationality to function as it should. Plus the problem of the inability of education to be wide reaching as well as complete (we are all familiar with the failures of education so....) All this adds up to an impossible dream.

Naughty and Nice, Are You a Photographer or a Critic?

Well, yet one of those days , yet one of those rants. I find that internet etiquette is seriously lacking culturally for us Singaporeans...no make that plain manners. Add short sighted(no kidding, we have the highest incidence of that in the world, but in this case I mean in terms of mindset) with little room for accomodating others. Is it something bred out of generations of success resulting in confidence of our opinions ('nope, our way is better'....sounds familiar?)

Now to the real question, why this rant...okay, really I am a member of a local internet forum on photography....I posted some photos asking for opinions and hopefully words of wisdom, what I got was scorn. It wasn't the sticking point there. A quick check of the dissenter's history shows no attempts at this particular field of photography whatsoever( and don't dare to show the world his photo page for some reason), and yet here is a person with certain fixed opinions (opinionated in other words) about something (too flat lighting, unflattering angle...hello, you have any idea what is being attempted here?). At no point was any constructive opinion made (i.e. try this angle instead...) Then I realised that in that particular section, the photos are uniformly of pretty SYTs with sweet smiles, preferably little clothes and posing sweetly etc... So where's the room for creativity and differing takes then?

This set me thinking....hey wait a minute, I seen this before. Everywhere around me in college is conceited people whom behave in the same manner! (not those whom I call friend, they are exception...) Makes me rather worried for the future survival of this nation honestly.

Hi Fi, Mid Fi , Low-Fi - Head-Fi

Its pretty funny how as the older one gets, the more expensive your hobbies become. First it was model collecting, then its photography and 2 years back it was then high(er) end headphones. Now I've gone through 4 (or 5) expensive headphones (Ultimate Ears, Westone, Audio-Technica that sort...) by now. Seems like a natural progression for guys to go from photography into audio as well it seems. Well everyone needs a drug, and for me its probably some music as well as taking photos I guess. Why so expensive you may ask, afterall the mighty iPod and iBud is sufficient. Surely the blessed Steve Jobs can do no better (or so Mac-olytes say) .

Or so I thought. I've always been into decent earphones, you know the $30 ish ones instead of the given one with your audio player. So I always knew that the given ones sucked. But I didn't know how much it really sucked until I saw a review in a magazine and thought why not? So so begun the downward spiral.... So whats the value of these expensive toys then? The ability for me to really listen to music and appreciate (rather than the music inevitably fading into the background as I do other stuff) the work of artists (its because of this that my CD collection actually grew in a world of iPod....). In periods of stress (like exams), music from these kept me somewhat sane.

Of course, if you want to you can put a price to anything (even human life, just ask insurance firms.....). But price is irrelevant to the experience of being and feeling alive

The Illusion of Stock Photography?

Myself @ Dreamtime (search by user: rapier84)

For many of us, we take photos for the pleasure. At some point we may harbour the thought that our photos may be of value to someone out there. And of course the easiest measure of that worth will be monetary. Photographers would have at some point heard of stock or microstock photography. Basically they act as agents for thousands of photographers whom are able to sell their photos to a worldwide audience without knocking on doors and getting rejected left right and center, in the process validating their creative vision and hopefully go towards funding that shiny new lens/tripod/flash (delete where applicable).

So how true is this. Illusion is all I can say. The lucky few that manage to sell their photos and actually make a living as a stock photographer will of course dispute this. But the saturation of the marketplace by DSLR wielding amatuers means that the internet is flooded with images. At best you get perhaps a dollar or so for every download . Now what is the process the buyer goes through before he even buys your photo that earns you that paltry sum?

First he/she goes to a stock site (shutterstock, i shutter stock, dreamtime etc) and keys in a few words on the search bar on the theme needed. Then thousands of thousands of shots appear. Then the buyer runs through the images and usually buys the first one that he/she sees that suits his/her need (without ever running through the rest, I know because I had the chance to ask the editor of a local magazine). What this means for most photographers on microstock sites is that they usually don't sell anything for a long time if at all, and when they do the stiff competition means that the prices are....well not equal to the effort taken to produce those images in the first place.

So where does that leave photographers? No where, with a dream of selling our work that remains a dream