Audio

Good things with sound. My Etymotic ER4s died (after how many years of solid use?) — sent them off to the US for repair and the nice people at Etymotic simply replaced them with the current version. They sound excellent, and the new anti-microphonic cables are much better than the original ones. Much walking around London with downloads from Thinner‘s archive on scene.org as background. Also, managed to get a pair of ex-demo Vivid B1s. The equally nice people at Vivid even reconditioned them by replacing all the drivers before shipping them. And they sound amazing. Shame that they’re so …

Vivid

Busy week. Have been in Amsterdam (lovely) and South of France (also lovely). On Sunday we went to a hifi show in the wasteland hotels near Heathrow airport. Many average or averagely good things, and we ended up short of time, so didn’t get to see everything. But the standouts, by far were the Avantgarde Duo and Vivid speakers. The Duos demonstrated (at least from vinyl, through decent valve amplification) the most transparent sound I’ve ever heard. The Vivids, on the other hand, seemed ready for absolutely anything — not as ætherial as the Duos, but as happy with every …