A Glimpse Into My Life… Pt. XV

Everyone has an obsession…

My obsession is speakers/headphones.  Over the years, I have tried and collected many different headphones in my life.  I have gone through many different speakers in cars and surround sound.  My love for music, how it sounds to my ears, has always been my search for perfection.  Something about a deep low bass hitting your ear drum that sends vibrations throughout your body thrills me.

I use to drop a lot of money on my car systems in my past, although I don’t have the cash today to do such things, I wish I still could have a system in my truck.  My first car, a Ford Escort, had some amazing subs in it.  Two 12″ Kicker Competition subs sounded amazing in that hackback.  The two Kickers almost vibrated my car apart.  I then went with a Jeep Cherokee and had two 12″ Blaupunkt subs in it, and those sounded amazing in the back of this vehicle.

Then I decided to upgrade my car to a Honda Accord and decided to drop some serious money into this ride.  In two years time, I dropped over 5K on equipment and upgrades to the sound for this car.  I lined the doors and trunk with Dynamat which was a sound insulator.  Dynamat kept the sound inside the car to make it louder, which also in turn, let less sound escape the car.  This product also helped with the vibrations on the car, making it sound me crisp and clean when the base hit.

I decided it was also time to upgrade the subs.  I went with two 15″ Orion HCCA subs.  These subs kicked some serious ass around town when showing off to friends and foes. I also had a four-way Blaupunkt amp to power my Blaupunkt component speakers.  I added blue LED lights in the trunk to show off all the different components to the system.  The radio and mixer in the dash were Alpine.  Alpine has the best radios in the industry, and they arguably still do today.

I haven’t done anything to my vehicles since my Honda… but I have been wanting to do a custom job to my truck.  Some day in the near future, I will get this done.

When it comes to headphones/earphones, I have an obsession to collect these.  My favorite pair, Shure SE550, ran me $600.  I have own these since 2008, and they still sound incredible.  I recently have purchased two different earphones.  Jay Bird’s Bluebuds X are bluetooth stereo earphones that sound amazing.  I can usually get about 7 hours of play time with these.  These earphones come with controls to adjust the volume, skip a song, repeat a song, and take phone calls.  I have been very pleased with these earphones.

My newest pair is one made by ZAGG.  They, very recently, released the ZR-Six.  These come with controls to skip, repeat, and take phone calls, however; you can not adjust the volume.  These earphones are made facing the wrong way.  The sub, mid, and tweeter are all facing away from your ear.  The design is quite brilliant.  They claim that reflective sound sounds better than a line of sight of sound.  They placed a “mirror” (if you will) to the far end of the earphones (furthest point away from your ear) that will “reflect” the sound back to your ear.  Think of it like a symphony… the stage is acoustically surround.  The music hits you in many different areas, and perfectly.  The sound isn’t coming straight at you, it’s being bounced to you.  These earphones have been surprisingly amazing.  I love using them.

I have also purchased a headphone for my DJ business.  These are amazing as well because they are designed with the DJ in mind.  They are made by Skullcandy.  They allow you to mute sound coming into the headphones with a click of a button.  They also allow you to attach different cords to them so these can be used in different ways.  They are called Mix Master.  If you get the chance to try them out, I would highly suggest that.

To Be Continued…

robert1ee