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What the Hell Am I Even Doing Here?

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  My dad died in December of 2019.  Way to start on a down note, amiright? December of 2019 and January of 2020 were a crazy time in the world. We were just starting to hear about this thing called COVID-19, and trying to figure out how it was going to impact our world and our lives. We set up a wake for Dad for the first week of March of 2020. We arranged food, a location, and invited a bunch of people. And on the morning of the wake, we got a call from a dear friend asking us to cancel, because the first cases had been detected in our county (and the wake would have been a pretty broad cross-section of the elderly folks in the community, include a whole bunch of teachers and school employees). We canceled.  Because our extended family was already on the way, we opted to give them the option of coming to our house for a very small gathering where we could talk about and remember Dad. As part of that, my brother and I prepared brief remarks. Mine was, I am quite sure, poi...
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Headfi Audio for Dummies

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Last year I wrote a Stereo Building for Dummies post laying out the basics for a loudspeaker system. In the last couple of months I’ve gotten a few similar questions about headphones and their care and feeding, so I thought it would be worth putting together a quick outline of the basics of headphone hifi, or Headfi. I’m going to focus primarily on digital media in this post, but much of it (except the parts about DACs) will also apply to a purely analog system. I’ll start by reiterating my four rules of hi-fi audio, then get into it: You like what you like. The most important factor in judging an audio system is also the simplest: does it sound good, to you, in your space, and listening to the things you want to listen to? [1] Many of my fellow audio nerds spend a lot of time arguing about objectivity and measurements, and that seems silly to me. Do you like the $5 headphones that came with your phone? Sweet! Enjoy! Do you want to spend $25,000 on a set of Macintosh separates? Awe...
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