azrael_archangel's Profile

Instead of the veggies, add to the fried beans a fat grilled butifarra (a white fresh pork Catalonian sausage), a generous serving of thick allioli (the true kind, just garlic cloves and olive oil) and you'll have the classical lunch of the Catalonian farmer.

Isolation is not the same as sound conditioning. Bass traps are used to dampen low frequencies within a room so they do not resonate and cancel each other, creating both standing waves and nulls. If your neighbor makes noise you need isolation, not a solution to improve your listening experience. Best sound isolation is any material heavy enough not to be made to vibrate by the bass fequencies energy. Lead and granite are excellent, but since you are not going to build a crypt at home, and lead has some environmental issues, there are high density isolation mats in the market that might help. You have to keep in mind that sound proofing a room means treating every part of it, and that a perfectly isolated room is practically airtight. With neighbors my own experience is that it is better to make them realize that you have more soundpower than them, watt for watt, and that you mean to use it in the most annoying way until they behave.

@Shiyiya Then, you've got it all. :)

@passionflower As you most probably know, white gazpacho´s name is actually "ajoblanco". In Spanish cuisine, a "gazpacho" is any soup based in an emulsion of bread, water and olive oil. In La Mancha, "gazpacho manchego" is a traditional shepherd's dish consisting in a thick stew of partridge, wild rabbit and pieces of a very hard flatbread, flavoured with thyme and meant to be shared directly from the pan.

I agree with you on the wine, a dry white matches better than a red.

@George Then the "average person" is just throwing his money down the drain if and when he spends more than a couple hundreds in a pair of speakers. I do not suggest turning a living room in a mastering studio, especially because mastering suites are built on purpose and there is way more money in the walls than in the speakers, but being aware of the fact that the most important thing for your listening experience is the room and not the gear may save a lot of money that could be invested in one of the many affordable options available for home theaters and such from companies like Auralex and Primacoustics.

Unlike your $110 cables, its performance is easily measurable and noticeable. I find amazing to watch so many pictures of "home theaters" and "media centers" in this website with no visible acoustic conditioning in the room. By the way, moving speakers around or even using EQ will not help much. Most rooms need dampening low frequencies to avoid standing waves and diffussion of high frequencies to give sense of space and preserve the stereo image. Most living rooms just do the opposite. The results in the sound when you improve that a bit are dramatic. Actually, the reason why pro studios spend less in speakers than many consumer audiophiles and more in acoustic foam is precisely that.

Yep, the idea that digital is not subject to loss of quality is just wrong.

iMic will ALWAYS sound terrible with whatever high impedance instrument such as a guitar that you connect to it. Your pickups have nothing to do with it, EMG pickups will sound terrible, too. iMic is a consumer audio adaptor, wrong tool for almost anything that has to do with recording.