One way to improve the performance of your beloved headphone or IEM is by getting an upgrade cable, although whether the improvement is noticeable remains debateable. I have never been a cable believer and the thought to upgrade my cable never actually cross my mind. Until recently when I got myself a Radius HP-TWF41 and I genuinely hated the cable that comes with it, which brings me to some valid reasons for getting aftermarket cable: less microphonic, not easy to tangle and easy to skin.
Radius as a company is probably not widely known among audiophiles, unless if you are based or have visited Japan, chance are, you won’t find their products in stores near you. Their history actually started in United States on May 1986 as a subsidiary of Apple. In 1991, the company expanded to Japan. Not long after that, in 1996, the Japanese branch became independent and separated from their United States origin. Since then, the Japanese Radius has been focused on making peripheral for Apple devices and also on home and portable audio market. The United States branch however, changed their name to Digital Origin, allowing the Japanese company to keep the Radius name today. Quite a journey, eh?
The current product lines of Radius consisted of home and portable DAC and amplifier, earphones, the digital audio player software called NePLAYER and some other accessories for Apple and Android devices. What I’m interested in is their audio product of course, in the case of IEM, Radius has covered the market from the bottom into the mid-fi range.
Their highest-end IEM is unique that they have Dual Diaphragm Matrix (DDM) driver, possibly the first that combine dynamic and piezoelectric driver in each side of the IEM. That current lineup consisted of two identical siblings, TWF31 and TWF41. I have used their flagship, TWF41 for a couple of months now, while it’s not trying to compete with the (ridiculous) high-end market for IEM, it’s a quite impressive performer in their price range… and unique.
Craving for some wooden IEM? Then the Wood series from JVC could be a good pair to consider. Released back in 2014, JVC Wood series line consisted of FX650, FX750, FX850 and FX1100 (or FX1200 for international version).
This is my review of FX850, which I acquire earlier this year. Priced below the flagship FX1100/FX1200, FX850 shares many similarities with the flagship sibling, including the unique 11mm “wood dome unit” dynamic driver and detachable cable.
Last year’s Massdrop collaboration with Fostex is a hit among audiophiles, selling all the allocated 1950 units in just a few days. The drop has been successfully run the second time and has now added Purpleheart version to the mix, which has attracted more than 1600 buyer at the time of the writing.
There is a reason why TH-X00 is popular, since it follows the predecessor success, namely the Denon D2000, D5000 and D7000 made by Foster, which later Fostex (Foster consumer brand) succeeded with TH600 and TH900. The Denons has been discontinued, while Fostex TH600 and TH900 is still regarded as one of the best closed headphone today, albeit not for everyone.
I got mine from the first drop last year, while late, here’s my review.
I have never been an audiophile myself, although I love to own a good pair of headphones, I didn’t worry much about my setup. My personal belief is that to upgrade audio quality, a good pair of headphones is a lot more important than anything else. Of course, a good source is important, but I’m also in the camp that couldn’t distinguish a lossless file with a good compressed one (iTunes AAC files for example, is generally good).
But I have always been curious how a separate DAC/AMP could do to improve my setup. Is it worth upgrading over the on-board sound from my setup? So FiiO recently released Q1, an entry-level ($69.99) portable DAC/Amp and I decided to give it a test myself.
Developed by Amzy and recently published by Teyon in North America, Iron Combat: War in the Air is an action shoot-em-up game. In this game, we control a next-gen mecha-girl that can transform into plane at will. Both mode offers a distinct control, with their own advantage and disadvantage.
The game is split into multiple missions. In story mode, we have to complete 16 missions to reach the ending, the missions then split into two paths. In total, the whole game offers 20 missions. Some mission have boss, while some is simply wiping every enemies you found. The boss can be a huge battleship or Ratel, a next-gen unit like the character we control, which we encounter multiple times throughout the story. Everything sounds promising, but could the game can live up to it’s premise?
On it’s Spring Forward event, Apple announced a shiny new Macbook with 12 inches retina display, which surprisingly become a new lineup than replacing the Macbook Air line, contrary to the previous rumour. Beside the odd naming (how Macbook is supposed to be thinner and lighter than a Macbook Air?), the new machine is quite exciting. And Apple is quite ambitious that they believe they reinvented the notebook.
Unfortunately, after the unveil, it looks like the machine get more negativity than positivity. I, however, beg to differ and would contribute to the positivity of this machine. Although the machine is not for everyone now, as there is a lot of sacrifice to make, but I can see in future that this might be common in all notebooks, it just start with the new Macbook.
So from what I see, there’s at least three major complains over the new Macbook: limited Core M processor, unified single USB Type-C port and the pricing. All of them are valid complains of course, but is it really that bad?
Launched back in 2008, Chrome has been my favorite browser since it’s inception. At that time, a bloated toolbars is something common in desktop browser, even if we tries to minimalize them, they still took a precious space on our screen. When Chrome arrived with the simple and clean UI, it immediately become my primary browser. It’s also faster and stable, and thanks to the multi-process architecture, I never have to worry to crash my browser when one tab is not responsive.
Although, sadly, one thing I have to let go when migrating from Firefox is the ability to run third-party extension. So I still find myself going back and forth with Firefox. It’s not until 2010 that Google added extension support to Chrome, and since then I can finally make Chrome my primary browser without looking back at the others (except when I do testing of course). 🙂
Now, I’m going to list my 5 favorite Chrome extensions that I couldn’t imagine to live without them. Here I go.
It has been a while since the last time I change the design of this blog, it is almost three years ago. The web landscape has been changed rapidly since then, with HTML5 becoming more standard and CSS3 is more supported, that made my old design outdated. So the thought came to me, it is the time for a new design.
Also with this opportunity, I also introduced a new domain for this blog, jeffri.me. Starting today, jeffri.me is the default domain for this blog, while my old domain – jeffri.net – will redirect to this new domain. In case you are wondering, why did I change a dot net to dot me, well, no specific reason. I just feel like it, it’s shorter by one letter and it’s more personal. 🙂 Besides, it’s not like my old domain ranked high, although it’s 5 years old now. I will keep jeffri.net for as long as I live though.
While working on a responsive website, testing it could be tricky. The usual way (and effective) is to resize the browser window and there’s many plugins on the browser that do just that. Another way is to use an available tools on the web, many of these are awesome, like The Responsinator and Screenqueri.es. Another one that is also my favorite is RWD Bookmarklet by Victor Coulon.
These were all cool and I frequently used it. However, these tools were made for testing on mobile and tablet display resolution, what if, you want to test a laptop or desktop resolution as well? In my case, I have 1280×800 laptop, so I never knew how the website will look on higher resolution screen. There’s also many display resolution on mobile now to consider, not just iOS resolution.
And so I created a simple tool to test responsive website, with a wide range of resolution to select, from mobile to tablet to desktop. Also HDPI display is common now, so I added a device pixel ratio selection that calculate the effective resolution. For example, Motorola RAZR have QHD display with pixel ratio of 1.5, so the effective resolution is actually 640×360, that is the resolution the phone display on it’s browser.
Feel free to use the tool here: responsive.jeffri.net
A little bit of disclaimer, I don’t store any data from your usage. There’s no trip to the server when you use it, at all. 🙂
Hope you find it useful! Cheers!