Re-cabled HD681

So you can see the result in the picture, the cable has changed the sound of the headphone quite a lot. The bass is tighter and I think the highs got a bit harsher, though I don’t her much or any difference in the mids.

The cable is a Double Helix Nucleotide OCC 24awg cable, with one of their Jack 1/4″ connectors, the cabling internally has also been changed, because the stock cable was very fragile and I kinda broke it

Today I finally got them, first impressions of these headphones were that they feel very flimsy, the build quality is not very good compared to my previous Sennheiser HD555 or my current Beyerdynamic DT880. That did not scare me away. I plugged the headphones into my amp, and started to listen to them. First thing I noticed was the awesome bass, they are like having a subwoofer on your head! But the mids and highs are very good as well, but as many mentioned the highs can be a bit metallic, which is why I am in the process of breaking these headphones in. Pink noise for some hours or 10 to start with, and then some more until I hit about 100 hours or so. But I have to listen to them from time to time to see how the sound develops.

I am also planning on changing the cable on these headphones, because the factory cable is very very thin and flimsy. I might also try some of the other mods people have made on their headphones on Rock Grotto, such as the aluminium rings to replace the red ones, maybe also the filter to filter away those nasty metallic highs. But I am really looking forward to listening more to these headphones, probably the best buy I have done in a long time. Cheap ass headphones with great sound, what else do you want?

Also here is a quick picture for the interested.

A picture of the Superlux HD681's headphones with AKG k240 velour pads

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SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4e12", SYMLINK+="android_adb"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTR{idProduct}=="0fff", SYMLINK+="android_fastboot"

This works well with both adb and fastboot.

Oh and for reference I had the following rules for my Magic which ought to work with the Dream as well:

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SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTR{idProduct}=="0fff", SYMLINK+="android_fastboot"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb|usb_device", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTR{idProduct}=="0c02", SYMLINK+="android_adb"

So what can I say about this CD? First of all the artwork is pretty cool, you are greeted with a blue front cover which looks a bit worn and torn, just a bit like stonewashed jeans, there are also some nice big letters telling you this is RELOCATOR! Flipping it on the other side you see a dessert with a deep blue sky, with the same effect as on the front of the CD cover, looks pretty cool. Inside the booklet you find a page for each song on the album, each page contains a picture frame with art from different artists inside suiting the mood of each song. On the last two pages you find credits, and in my case signatures as well on all the artists except Derek Sherinian, I guess I have got to get that one some other day. What can I say, all in all pretty nice artwork, simple yet very nice.

So what about the music? I guess you want to know about that as well. First of all it is hard to classify this album, but it is mainly progressive metal with a lot of melodic, jazzy and fusion passages. The music reminds a bit about Planet X, which Derek Sherinian founded, though still even though they have their similarities, there are a lot of difference between the two bands.
On the album you find 8 very good songs. The titles are as follows.

1. Red Vibes
2. Biosphere
3. Relocator
4. Proxima
5. Aavishkar
6. 13 Reasons
7. Urban Blue
8. The Alchemist

The songs vary in duration and are between 5 and 12 minutes long, just as you would find on many other albums in this genre.

I have listened to the songs about 6 to 7 times now, and I do not get tired of listening to them. New passages and unheard stuff pops into my ears all the time, stuff that I did not hear the first time. The songs consist of very distinctive melodic and very interesting keyboards by Derek Sherinian, as well as awesome hard riffs and metal solos by Stefan Artwin. Great deep and melodic bass passages by Michael Pruchnicki. Technically great drumming, very precise and good groove by Frank Tinge. Unfortunately we only hear Bartek Strycharski on 3 tracks on his violin, but what we hear is very good, it adds a lot to the music.

It is really hard for me to describe the songs, but I find them great, a lot of different sounds you never get tired of, also an album you can yeah from both ends without getting confused, a lot of great instrumental passages, what else can you expect?

If you like progressive metal very similar to Planet X you should definitely get this album, it is worth all the money. This band consists of a bunch of great guys and I approve of the music! Go get it!

To listen to some of their tracks and find a way to buy their CD visit them at their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/relocatorproject
or their personal webpage: http://www.relocator-project.com/

This device is truly one beast with its very good specifications along with probably the best screen I have seen yet on a smartphone to this date. Also not to forget the Android OS 2.1, which comes with it, which I tried on my Magic a while ago, but because of the hardware didn’t run as fast as it does on this speed demon. Everything is snappy and fast, you do not have to wait long for things to happen on the device. You can only love this device. I can keep on praising it, but there is one minor thing that annoys me, which is the battery time, which seems very short to me, but I guess that is normal on a powerful smartphone like this one. I am just used to my HTC Magic running for almost two days, finding the Nexus One lasts a day maybe less depending on the usage.

Though I can conclude that this is one hell of a phone, if you like Android you should consider buying a Nexus One or maybe the soon to be released in Denmark, HTC Desire, which is supposed to be very similar, just with HTC’s popular sense interface.

Some new features include that you can now change language inside the application, which you could not do before because it required the HTC Framework, which could only be done by changing a configuration file by hand. A lot of other hacks and mods has been done to it, which you can all see in the tread on XDA-developers.com

A new thing is that there are now two versions of the HTC_IME, one for low res screens such as the G1 and Magic and a high res version for Nexus one and other similar devices. But you can read all that in the thread.

This also means that the instructions in my old post about changing language in HTC_IME, is not releveant anymore, and should be considered obsolete, though you are still welcome to use them.

So a friend and I decided that we wanted to play a game together, so we picked a game called FlatOut2, because Re-Volt does not like Windows 7 64-bit. After the installation of the game ends it says that you need to install some protect drivers, which are being blocked by Windows, because they are not signed. Left without no choice I just cancel the installation of these drivers. I find out the game works fine without.

On my friends computer though, the installation of the drivers is not blocked and they install fine and asks to reboot the machine, he reboots it and now he is met by a friendly screen saying that Windows cannot boot and it will try to repair it, though without finding any solutions to the problem. Failsafe mode does not work, deleting the game from recovery console does not help either; he had to reinstall.

Since I did not install the drivers I did not reboot my machine until today, a couple of days after the incident with his machine, exactly the same problem. I had to reinstall Windows 7 on my machine as well.

Strange thing about this is that I had FlatOut2 installed on the same Windows 7 installation before and then I did not have any problems, how the heck can a simple game screw the installation up so much?

Anyways, my advice is to omit this game and not install it at all if, unless you want to reinstall Windows on your computer.

Though I have to say, I liked the animated backgrounds a lot, it is fun to have interactive stuff in the background without even starting a new application, and you can have all kinds of stuff going on there, either for show or for real use, like the VU meter and so on.

I guess I just have to get a new phone soon, I’d just wish that an operator in Denmark was selling one of these lovely Nexus One devices. I guess I will either have to wait or get it from abroad.

If you like designing software systems I highly recommend reading this article (link below).

No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering

There is also a Wikipedia page on this topic which sums it up pretty good (link below).

No Silver Bullet on Wikipedia

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del /f /s /q %tmp%\.
rd /s/q %tmp%\
 
del /f /s /q %temp%\.
rd /s /q %temp%\
 
del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*._mp
del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.log
del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.old
del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.dmp
del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.tmp

You can of course specify more extensions if you want to… Have fun with the script!