Unattributed

Introduction

In 2015, I wrote a series of reviews on the best ear buds under $25 and $50 on The CerebralRift. The winners out of the whole series were a pair of Symphonized earbuds that are no longer available, and the SoundMAGIC E10's. These were truly, for the price and the time, some of the best earbuds that I could find. However, one of the failed after a couple of years of use, and the other I lost a couple of years ago. So, I had to replace them.

But, things change. The prices on these products have all gone up (even if only slightly), and my usage has changed: I'm much more interested in home use these days, and while I still prefer cabled earbuds, the value in wireless earbuds hasn't escaped me.

So, this isn't a review, exactly. Instead, I'm just going to document my recent journey in regard to finding some audio products that I feel are worthwhile. Buckle up, there's close to a dozen products that we'll cover in this list over the next several weeks. This week we're just going to focus on the headphones.

Headphones

This is the easiest of the items to start with. I didn't have to do a lot of research, and I knew that what I was getting was going to be excellent. Why? Because I bought headphones that fit into two categories: (a) extremely well reviewed headphones, and (b) headphones that are considered iconic in audio circles.

There's also something else to be said about these: I wasn't paying super close attention to the price tag. Why? Large headphones are home use products to me these days. In the past I carried a set of Bose Tri-Port headphones with me. But the problem with them was they kept breaking in ways that couldn't be fixed easily (part of the headband mount for the ear cups kept breaking which I could only repair by sending them back to Bose, which I never investigated doing). So, as I mentioned in my original article, that was one of the reasons I went to inexpensive wired earbuds in the first place: I was tired of spending $100-$120 each time I needed to replace a pair of Bose headphones.

But, just because I wasn't paying attention to the price tag in the way I would have in the past, that doesn't mean I just went out and spent frivolously. $500 or $1000 is a ridiculous amount of money for a pair of headphones, IMO. But keeping to $100 for a set of headphones doesn't mean you will get the best bang-for-the-buck either.

The other thing is: sometimes being iconic matters as much or more than sound quality. What? Is this the Unattributed you know? Where did he go? Let me explain.... The sound signature of an audio component is a personal choice. This has always been true. And, while I tend to favor accuracy in sound, sometimes you want to listen to music in a way that is more comfortable to your ears, instead of listening with something that is analytical and perfectly correct. I've known this for decades, it's just that I've favored accuracy most of the time.

I can give an example: there were a pair of loudspeakers (in fact I think it was the whole line from one company) that I really liked. I visited an audio store multiple times with different audio recordings to throw at them, and time after time they continued to impress me. The clarity, the detail, the imaging was all amazing. However, the sound signature was not what you'd expect. The bass was clear and consistent, the mid-range was warm and flat, the top end actually had a signal roll-off. And to my ears they were amazingly comfortable to listen to, even if I couldn't afford them (IIRC, the price as around the price was around $800/pair). So, instead I found speakers that I could afford that weren't nearly as great sounding, but they weren't going to break my bank account.

So, while I've always favored accuracy in reproduction, I also understand the value in having a sound signature that fits how you want to listen to the music. And sometimes the accuracy of something doesn't need to be perfect in order for it to be enjoyable. But, this doesn't mean I'll accept just anything: fuck Beats – they still sound like shit. Same with Raycon. Those two brands scream, “I care about fashion” and bullshit lifestyle branding instead of a good product.

With that understanding in mind let's talk about a couple of pairs of headphones.

Grado SR80x

Yeah, this is what I meant when I said 'sometimes' the sound signature is more important than the accuracy of the sound. This is also the case where the brand is so iconic that it's well known in audio circles, and the company has a reputation solely based on their products and service. If you look at the RTings review for the SR80e (the SR80x is an update to the SR80e) you can see they found the SR80e has an overall neutral sound. But when you dig into the graphs another story emerges.

These headphones have a bass roll-off, basically from the mid-bass down the signal response gets lower and lower. These days we see the opposite in most headphones: the bass, especially in this frequency range, is boosted. This often leads to muddiness and pulsating / throbbing sounds that, IMO, are annoying. Basically bass that has a bit of boost or is flat may be better, IMO. But sometimes having the roll-off characteristic is welcome.

The mid-range is basically flat, except for one small bump in the lower mid-range that is likely to go unnoticed. The treble is where things get interesting with several spikes in the lower and mid-treble range, while the upper treble rolls (not the best word for it given the chart) off. This just gives these headphones a light and bright sound, with a solid mid-range.

The thing I think most people would find surprising about these headphones is that there is still a well-defined bass sound. I said above that you expect “pulsating / throbbing” sounds from headphones that have boosted bass. However, you still get that from these headphones, just not at the level that you feel like your head is going to split open.

There are a couple of characteristics of these headphones that are worth noting. First, they are open back headphones. What does that mean? It means the wall behind the driver, the one that is on the outside of the headphone is not closed. This allows to the sound to feel more open and natural, but it also means that others around you can hear what you are listening (IE, the sound leaks). The nice thing about this is that there is a lot of room to breath in them: air can move between your head and the ear pads. If you've ever started sweating while wearing headphones, you'll know how annoying it can be. For me personally, this has allowed me to listen using the headphones for literally hours on end. Something that is pretty rare for me, and is also partially explained by the other characteristic worth mentioning.

That characteristic is that these are on-ear headphones, and that puts them in a class that is less seen in this class of headphone. These headphones are design to sit on your ears, and don't have cups that fit over your ears. This is one of the reasons that there is more room to breath: there is more space for air to get to your ears and help keep you cool. This does have the side effect of not providing any sound isolation, so these aren't headphones that you want to use outside, on the street, in crowded places, or anywhere there is a lot of noise that could detract from your listening. Personally, that's not an issue I'm concerned with since, as I said in the beginning, I don't consider these for travel, These headphones are for home use where I can control the environment.

Sennheiser HD600

If you've known me for a long time, you probably know that I like Sennheiser headphones, well at least the ones designed for a more premium audio experience. The fact is, I had wanted to buy Sennheiser headphones for years. The HD600 came out in 1997, and I knew of them in the early 2000s, but at that time I didn't have the budget for them. But now that I could afford them, they had to be part of my collection. Why? Consider that they are often considered reference headphones by many in the audio world because of the flat, detailed sound, excellent sound stage and just overall quality. Don't believe me, just check the RTings.com review of the HD600's. (Note: the photo above is of the HD650 headphones since it was the only one I could find under a Creative Commons license.)

This does mark one of the bigger trends for me in terms of audio. I tend to like a “neutral sound”. That is, I tend towards a sound that is more flat, and less “V shaped” (V shaped sound is characterized by boosted bass and treble). I think the reason for this is that the “boosted bass” style of headphones just sounds too unnatural to me, which ends up distracting from the rest of the music.

How do these compare to the Grados? There is less bass roll-off, and the treble is not quite as bright. The sound stage is larger, the imaging is nicer. Basically anything that I liked about the Grado headphones is present and improved in the HD600. Of course, you probably should expect that given that the HD600 costs 3x as much as the SR80x.

There are a few qualities that are quite different between the Grado and Sennheiser headphones that are worth talking about. The first is that these are over ear style, instead of on ear style. As I mentioned above one of the advantages of the Grado headphones is that they don't put a lot of force on your head (~0.8lbs of pressure). The Sennheiser headphones use about double the pressure (1.5lbs of pressure). This has the disadvantage for me of pushing the temple of my glasses against my head. It's not too bad overall, but sometimes it contributes to me wanting to take the headphones off sooner.

The second big difference is in the cables. The Sennheiser's take the win in this area — mostly. The cables on the HD600 is long: 3 meters (9ft, 10in), whereas the SR80x is 1.8 meters (6ft). The Sennheiser's have a thinner, more flexible rubber shielded cable. The Grados have a cloth covered, thick cable that isn't as flexible but is also far less prone to twisting and kinking. But all of that doesn't really matter, they both work well, don't have transference issues and sound good. Where the Sennheiser wins is that the cables are detachable. The cable is plugged into little sockets in the bottom of each driver enclosure. This is convenient in several ways: want to get a shorter cable? Need a longer cable? Need to replace a broken cable? Need a cable for a 2.5mm jack instead of the standard 3.5mm jack? Just look them up, and order them. No need to do any extra work with these headphones, it's all just a quick swap that will take less than 5 minutes.

The last item worth mentioning is (a) quite technical, and (b) debate-able. The issue at hand is impedance or resistance. The resistance is the property that determines how much power is needed to energize the drivers in the headset. Now this can be important in some cases, however most of the time it isn't that big of a consideration. However, some people swear that if a pair of headphones has a high resistance, then an amplifier is needed to drive them properly. However, there are others, such as Crinacle (a highly prolific IEM and Headphone reviewer) that say that you typically don't need a specialized DAC and headphone amplifier to drive most headphones, just a simple dongle style DAC is enough.

So, why did I bring this up, especially if it doesn't matter? Well, the impedance of the SR80x is 38Ω, while the HD600 is 300Ω. Yes, the Sennheiser resistance is nearly 8 times that of the Grado headphones. That's just too big of a difference to ignore. However, I did try using the HD600s with a simple USB-C DAC dongle on my phone, and they seemed to work fine. Then I tried it with my Fiio BTR5 DAC (Bluetooth wireless DAC that can output more power), and the HD600s sounded better to me than they did with the USB-C DAC. But that's all very subjective, and really outside my use case since I'm only using these headphones at home and not taking them on trips.

That Big Ol' Elephant

I'm sure the above reviews are going to be controversial. How can I give a 79% to the Sennheiser's, and 86% to the Grados? Well, the fact is that if I were only judging this based on the Sound Quality, the Sennheiser's would absolutely be the winner. I feel comfortable saying that the HD600's achieve a 91 out of 100 score, while the SR80x's achieve 85 out of 100. Seriously if you haven't listened to this generation of the Grados, you should. They are surprisingly good. And, if you compare the charts on RTings, you will notice more similarities than differences.

The build quality of both of these headphones is fairly equal. I know there are headphones that are built better: better, exotic materials, more interesting design language, etc. However, I don't feel like headphones need to be fashion statements. So, as long as the build quality isn't cheap, seems like it will last a long time, and doesn't interfere with the sound quality, I can only give them a good score.

So, that brings us to Price and Value, also known as: The Big Fat Elephant In The Room.

The Grados cost $125US, while the Sennheiser's are $400US. That makes the Sennheiser's 3.2 times more expensive than the Grados. So, the big difference between the HD600 and SR80x comes down to the value of the drivers and tuning. Given that the component differences are significant, can you say that the price difference is justified? Or, to put it another way: does the improvement in sound quality that the components and tuning bring to the HD600 justify the price difference? And, if it doesn't then what would have been appropriate.

Honestly, I'm still going back and forth on this a bit. But, I think I've settled on an answer: and that is no, the HD600 does not offer 3.2x the sound improvement over the SR80x. They do, however sound about somewhere between 1.5-2x of the SR80x. That means the price point for the HD600 should be about 2x the price of the Grados, or $250. Given that the price of the components is also a factor, then I would consider $250-$300 to be on target. And that's how the ratings end up with the Sennheiser's being lower than the Grados.

Something To Note

If you hadn't realized it already, I've focused this review mostly on the sound quality of the headphones. I haven't stated that I am looking for anything other than sound from them. I don't care about isolation, noise cancellation, sound leakage, or other DSP (digital signal processing) types of features that you find on modern headphones. What I do care about is that the sound that is coming out of my computer, cell phone, tablet, stereo or what ever I use for my music to be as cleanly relayed to my ears as possible.

There are times when you want these other DSP features in your listening device. However, I find that for me those features aren't useful in 90 percent of my use case. For example, if I want to play a game, I'm generally not wearing headphones, instead I'll use desktop speakers with the DSP effects necessary for that game (spatial processing for effects, for example).

This doesn't mean that I never want these features. In fact, typically in the devices that I want for mobile application, I am likely to want those features. And, there are other ways to get them, like using a Fiio BTR5, which has both noise cancellation and a microphone (which means it's a good option for using headphones to make phone calls).

The idea of having these features separate from the headphone is an advantage. The technology for DSP is constantly changing and evolving. Offloading that to a device that can be replaced makes sense, and allows me to use these timeless headphones as I want to use them.

Where Do I Go From Here?

So am I done with headphones? Not by a long shot. I have come to a point where I think the headphones that I listen to are more a part of how I want to listen to music at a given point in time, than they are solely about accuracy / neutrality. And, honestly, I want to have some of the truly iconic headphones in my collection, and be able to compare them with each other to understand how they earned their reputation.

Some of the brands (I won't name the models) of headphones I want to check out include: Sony, Beyer Dynamic, Philips, AKG, Samson, and more. I also might check out some more models from Sennheiser and Grado. However, I don't know how soon I will be checking them out. I have developed several interests lately, including some different in-ear styles of headphones that we'll be checking out in future installments of this series.

	FediRing
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Introduction

I first heard about RISC-V machines a year or two ago, and was very interested in the technology. Why? Well a couple of reasons:

• First, I've always like the idea of RISC architectures.
• Second, RISC-V is the first architecture that has an open specification behind it.

So, maybe I should explain a little bit about these items before I move on to explain what is exciting to me.

CISC versus RISC

First a couple of definitions: RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing, while CISC stands for Complex Instruction Set Computing. These terms are used to describe how the processor in your computer, phone, and many other devices have been designed. Typically, most desktop computers and laptops have been using processors that are based on CISC design, while phones and tablets typically use RISC based processors.

Now, we are getting into the territory where there could be a very long-winded technical explanation of the difference between these types of processors. However, I am not the right person to provide a major technical discussion, and I don't want to make this article into a technical treatise. However, I will provide a grossly simplified explanation of the difference, with a bit of technical information thrown in as needed.

Computer processors execute a single instruction at a time. That time is generally measure in Hertz, or cycles. Today's computers function frequencies in the Gigahertz range (literally billions of hertz per second). The time to execute an instruction is a fraction of a single hertz in most cases. This has lead to one of the key measures for processors to be listed as Instructions Per Clock, or IPC. (Note: while IPC is a key measure of a CPU's performance, it is by no means the only factor in measuring the performance of a processor in a modern device.)

And this is where the difference comes into play with CISC and RISC designs. In CISC processors instructions typically vary from simple to complex. Because of this variance, the instructions take a varying amount of time (clocks) to execute. Whereas with a RISC based processor, all the instructions are simple, and as a rule they all take the same amount of time execute.

That might be confusing because both types of processors are capable of performing the same operations, right? Yes, both of them can perform the same operations. However, with a RISC processor it may have to execute many more instructions compared to a lower number of instructions in a CISC processor. So, doesn't that make CISC processors better? No, not really because of the question of complexity of the instructions.

There honestly, isn't a winner between the CISC and RISC architectures when looked at from the aspect of their performance abilities. However, there is another factor that is important in regard to the differences between these processor architectures: predictability. And predictability has important attributes that are very useful.

Why Predictability Is Important

What do I mean by predictability? Remember above when I said that CISC architecture processors have instructions that range from simple to complex, while RISC processors have simple instructions? This means it's possible to predict things with a RISC processor that aren't as easily predicted with the CISC processor.

For example, say you wanted to know precisely how long it would take to execute 1000 instructions. With a RISC processor all 1000 instructions would take the same amount of time because all the instructions are simple, and they use a consistent amount of time. With a CISC processor this isn't as easily measured because not all the instructions use the same amount of time, the more complex the instruction the more time it takes to execute (again, this is a gross generalization, it's a far more complicated topic that I don't have the engineering background to speak to).

This predictability of RISC processors has another effect: power usage predictability. Since all the instructions are the same, all of them require the same amount of power to be performed (note: we are only talking within the processor itself, not about interactions with anything else like memory, storage, displays, etc.). CISC processors aren't as tidy in this regard: more complex instructions take more time, and also take more power. (Again, the same disclaimer: we're only talking about instructions within the processor, not interactions with other devices.)

Now, when you think about power consumption, and being able to measure it on a consistent basis because of the predictability of RISC based processors, you might understand why most phones and tablets using RISC based processors. Or (put another way) you might understand why a laptop's battery may last 8 hours when you are reading / writing emails, and doing general work, but when watching videos the battery only lasts 5 or 6 hours instead. Most laptops use CISC based processors (typically x86 processors from AMD or Intel), and some operations (like watching videos) use more complex instructions that require more power.

Note: I may sound like a broken record: but these examples are extreme simplifications that only account for a portion of the overall question of power consumption. For example, watching a video on YouTube requires more interaction with the display and network connection, which affects the power consumption of a tablet or laptop. The processor alone isn't the whole story when it comes to measuring these things. What does matter is the fact that it is predictable, which allows better engineering.

This predictability can be important even when it comes to working with a desktop computer. Currently, each new generation of CISC processors tends to require more power because (a) they are trying to increase the clock speed in order to increase the amount of instructions that can be executed with a specific number of clock cycles, and (b) because of changes (typically) additions to the instruction set with increased complexity.

Some companies (like AMD) do make the effort to optimize the IPC (instructions per clock) of their processors, and therefore improve the efficiency of their processors. Intel also pays attention to this, however they tend to have not done as good of a job, which has led to their recent shift to a hybrid processor model where they have “efficiency” cores which can run at lower clocks, and use less power.

But the way AMD and Intel have approached their CISC processor designs up until now is likely to change with the emergence of RISC-V as a potential general use platform. (Yes, I know I haven't explained why I'm so excited about this now... I'll get to it soon...)

But the potential of RISC-V isn't just based on the RISC versus CISC architecture shift.

Open Architecture

Up until the advent of RISC-V all the platform architectures have been closed. This meant that manufacturers had to license either buy processors produced by AMD, Intel, ARM, Snapdragon, etc. or license the right to use the architecture in their products. This posed a fairly high barrier of entry to any company / manufacturer that wanted to produce a product. RISC-V is about to change that.

RISC-V is an open architecture. This means that anyone that wants to use the architecture as the basis for their processors can. There's no threshold or barrier to using the ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) from the Open Standard for RISC-V. This also has the added benefit of meaning that any company that wants to extend the ISA of RISC-V is free to do so.

Recently, Apple made the move to producing their own processors with the M1. While initially there were rumors that it was going to be RISC-V based, they instead turned to ARM and licensed the ARMv8 ISA. However, there are still rumors that many companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon have been looking at RISC-V for their servers and other applications.

And, as the adoption of RISC-V grows, there will likely be other companies that will embrace it for many reasons: scalability, efficiency, predictability, being a few of them. But the most important is likely to be the ability to modify and add things to the architecture. This means that companies can use the RISC-V ISA and add support for, say, cryptography, or real-time signal processing (DSP), and other functions. That's a big point in the favor of RISC-V: not only are they getting an ISA, but they aren't restricted in how they modify it, which isn't the case with any of their other ISA's that exist now (x86, ARM, etc.).

If this starts to happen, we will see the first real competition to enter into the computer processor market for literally decades. That poses major disruptive potential, and makes me as excited about the upcoming possibilities of future computers.

What Made Me Really Excited

Up to this point, I've talked about the technical differences between RISC and CISC architectures, and why I've been a fan of RISC for a long time (despite it not being a force in the desktop or laptop market). And I've talked about the disruptive potential of an Open ISA in the market. But all of this is (mostly) theoretical, right? Yes, up until recently it was theoretical. But now the theoretical is starting to become reality.

There are now two single board computers (SBC's) that have RISC-V based processors available on the market. That is a big indicator that RISC-V is starting to find its way into the market. These two single board computers are the Allwinner D1, and the VisionFive from StarFive. (Explaining Computers on YouTube has done videos on these two SBC's. That's where I learned about them.)

Understand, these aren't the types of systems that you are going to run out to Best Buy or Micro Center to buy in place of your desktop or laptop computer (or your phone for that matter). These are computers for people that want to experiment with the new technology, or need to do development work on applications in specific fields that they are working in (the VisionFive, for example, includes Nvidia open AI platform).

However, the thing that really got me excited is that these SBCs share attributes of the Raspberry Pi and other SBC computers. In particular, they include the GPIO header as found on the Raspberry Pi, which means that they will be good computers for students to start learning coding and controlling devices with. And that's definitely going to be one of the keys to broader adoption of the RISC-V ISA: getting it to a younger generation who will embrace it.

However, I am not seeing all of this rose colored glasses. There are still things that these current RISC-V SBC's are lacking. First is performance: they are several generations behind where current ARM processors like the Raspberry Pi is right now. However, that is something that will likely improve quickly as more manufacturers find different implementations of the ISA.

The second thing that these computers are behind on is device support: you won't find PCIe or NVMe support on these computers. So you are limited to using SD Cards and USB sticks for storage. Most likely this is due to licensing issues, at least that would be my guess. Hopefully as more manufacturers get into the RISC-V space we'll see improvements in this area.

This means, also, that the handling of video is limited to what the vendors were able to supply on these boards. You won't be adding your RTX 3090 Ti to one of these systems to play Cyber Punk 2077 any time soon.

Conclusion

The introduction of RISC-V based single board computers into the market marks a major milestone, and a potential for a sea-change in the computing landscape. Yes, the current systems are limited, and don't approach the performance of the current phones and laptops that we carry around on a daily basis, but the first steps to getting this technology to the people that can make the improvements necessary to make them more mainstream is happening.

Not to mention, now that there are a couple of companies that have invested in the technology, many of their competitors are likely to enter the space as well. This is even more true with RISC-V given its Open ISA, which removes one of the biggest barriers that many companies – especially startups – face when trying to make a move in the technology sector.

When I first learned about RISC-V a year or two ago I said in comments on several videos that I thought we'd be seeing RISC-V in the PC market in 5–10 years. These two SBC's are right on the schedule that I was thinking of when I made those statements, in fact they might even be a bit ahead of what I was thinking at the time.

I am now excited about the future of technology in a way that I haven't been in over a decade.

	FediRing
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