Adventures in decentralization
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individualism and consumerism – differentiate that!
I know it’s Christmas and we’re all swimming in a sea of presents, happily munching Christmas cookies and having a great-ole-time! But: I realized, with shock, that for most of the way to express our individuality is extremely tied, if not solely reliant on the choices we make as consumers. “I’m vegan!”, “I don’t buy…
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Philips Fidelio X1/00 – Review
So I went out and bought the Philips X1 headphone. It’s expensive. It comes in a HUGE box, the unboxing experience is nice, although it’s kind of hard to get the cable out. I plugged the cable into my tube headphone preamp, put in the SACD remastered version of “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis…
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in search of the ultimate headphone – update
My search for the perfect headphone continued with me buying Shure SRH 840s. These are great everyday headphones, workhorses. Easy to wear, not fatiguing, comfortable, come with a nice carrying pouch, and are really affordable (100€). But, they’re not great. So I kept searching, listening to stuff like Chambers by RZA, HD 700 by Sennheiser,…
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My vision for mobile computing – 2015
I’ve been carrying around a vision of where mobile computing could go in the next couple of years. 3 trends shape that vision: mobile devices are increasingly location aware – geospatial big data. more and more of our activities are organized, shared and conducted online. economic development suggests fewer full jobs – the rise of…
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The wounded child – misunderstandings about
Although I set this up and edit this blog as very tech-centered and tech-related, from time to time I feel moved to write something about life, our perceptions or our attitudes. This blog post is one example. For some time now there has been a lot of talk, especially in psychological, spiritual and self-help circles…
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Why High Definition digital audio matters
Today I found a very well-researched, well written article on xiph.org, that basically said that 16/44.1k should be enough for everybody. I was slightly irritated, because I’m a firm advocate of DSD and 24/96k; having heard, and been able to spot the differences many times. The author, Monty, argued that the human hear is unable…
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Hearing in a relative world – perception bias
I’ve been reflecting on the process of hearing, a lot, lately, and most of all about how we hear frequency response. When do we percieve a song or a mix to be flat spectrum, when do we think a song is “phat” and when is it just bass-heavy? I think the human brain strives towards…
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Jazzfest Vienna, Staatsoper and Fernwärme
No started working at the Jazzfest Vienna this year. First was a Gig for 5k+ people at the Fernwärme Wien, Viennas main waste incineration plant that produces heat for over 200,000 households. You can see pictures of the enormous waste-storage cavern below. That was pretty spooky. The stage location there was terrible, with one of…
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donauinselfest 2012 – FM4 Stage – tech
Last weekend I did system tech for the FM4 Stage at the Donauinselfest in Vienna. For those of you, who don’t know about it, the Donaunselfest is one of Europe’s largest music festivals. It’s hosted on an Island in the Danube river in Vienna, lasts 3 days in June and attracts close to 2 million…
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tapestry work – beyond the portfolio
There’s been a lot of talk about “portfolio work” in recent years. Meaning that more and more people don’t hold on to a steady job, or have one singular carrer path, but instead have multiple work and revenue streams that they connect to make their livelyhood. The term portfolio however, implies for me a certain…
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