Coming up... (Patreon)

Hi guys just wanted to let you know what will be coming up soon and what plans I have for future because I noticed that many are jumping off again after some days.

I am not quite sure what expectations all of you have and how I should continue to satisfy most needs.

I didn’t want to do the same shit I did on YouTube so far but rather wanted to get more into detail with my videos as if I would talk to like-minded people who have the same interest for good sound.

Just to let you know how the current status is: currently I am on a pause with headphone videos as I am not fully satisfied with the results I produced so far. A big issue of my current binaural recording setup is that my microphones block my ear canal at least partially, this means the frequency response I am hearing during the recording is completely different than what I would usually hear. This goes for both headphones and speakers. I have to extrapolate the impression I am hearing during the recording to something that I would hear normally. This is not always possible and sometimes I judge the heard sound wrong in my videos because I couldn’t hear it correctly when I recorded it. During recordings of headphones this issue is even more pronounced, I just cannot judge the sound of a given headphone reliably if I haven’t already heard it before. The result is that I cannot do any first impressions or live unboxings of headphones because I just don’t hear them right when wearing my microphones. (The unboxings of the LCD-1 and Elex I did back then were of course fake as I have already heard the headphones before recording just pretending that I am hearing them for the first time).

But my idea for future videos (apart from my idea of binaural live streams where we could listen live to any stuff you would like to hear) was also to attend different types of events or visit headphone/audio stores where I could listen to headphones and record everything at the same time in order to share this with all of you. But this implies that my results are valid and consistent for any type of headphone: I must be sure that 2 different headphones recorded on 2 different days still represent the original sound I heard. Otherwise all such videos wouldn’t make sense. One important factor is also to get a consistent fit. When I wear my microphones I must be sure that they are positioned equally for left and right ear and to get exactly the same fit the other day. Because any small deviation of positioning will change the response especially in the critical treble region.

All this may appear trivial but unfortunately it isn’t and I have sleepless nights because of this as I want to capture the sound like I heard in reality.

To cut the long story short: I am expecting a completely new pair of binaural microphones from a friend of mine. They are open design and I have already tested his first prototype with very promising results. I hardly notice at all that I am wearing a microphone. The change in perceived sound is minimal and even close to negligible. By wearing these microphones I can just judge the heard sound like I would in real life. I am planning to use these microphones for both headphone and my usual ambient recordings because right now I use different types of microphones for any given subject). I never managed to use my headphone microphones to also record speakers although the results should be even more realistic regarding imaging and 3d-ness because those block me out nearly completely and are very uncomfortable to wear.

Of course I will need lots of time to tweak my results for the new microphones until I can finally decide which method to concentrate on more and which one to settle for in future.

Now as I finally have people somehow supporting me and what I am doing I can concentrate more on this topic and invest more time into it, as my goal would be to capture any sound source in the most realistic way possible and with a single recording setup: just imagine me listening to a headphone and then switch over to a speaker standing in front of me and both still resemble their real sound and how I heard them in reality.

Right now I am quite confident with my recording setup for speakers thus I believe my recent sound samples are quite valid. Therefore it’s easier for me to create speaker videos now as I can be sure that the sound samples I offer you are not some shit.

I am only fighting with my first person camera now, as I want to give my videos a particular look, which maybe doesn’t matter to many but I want to give my videos a kind of smoothness as I think that the image you see when listening to a binaural recording improves the perception of the heard environment.

So my next videos will be definitely speaker related, I have already recorded a night listening session of the Vifa Reykjavik against the Beosound A1, unfortunately copyright of a Prince track would block the video worldwide again therefore I have to re-edit it again.

I also planned to make a video comparing my old VIFA Helsinki which is still from 2015 with a more recent unit from 2019 as there are significant changes in sound that I would like to treat in a critical manner.

I know many are interested in the Minirigs 3 vs Minirig Mini and Mini 2. This is also very high on my list I just need to sit down one night and find the right tracks which would reveal the differences in the most obvious way.

I also thought about a direct comparison of the Denon Envaya against Anker Soundcore Motion+ as I still couldn’t really tell which one is better overall.

I am expecting a pair of new updated Tribit Xsound Go which are stuck at the customs right now. These could be promising little speakers for little money as the old one was already quite decent. I hope I can get them soon so that we can listen to them together.

In the meantime the new microphones should have arrived which will occupy me as well.

Therefore I just beg you to be a bit patient with me. I cannot do everything at once and want to finish that stuff first that I can manage with less time and effort.

Of course I also welcome ideas from you if you are interested in a particular topic. I don’t want to waste your time with stuff that interests just me...

To conclude all this, I just wanted to say that I am so happy to have you here and that I would like to thank all of you again because I finally have some fun at doing all this again and always look forward to recording something new for you.

Yours, O.