What would Logan buy: Over the ear headphones

For some reason in my circle of friends and family I have a reputation for researching things extensively. When I buy things, I like to make informed purchases, and know that I'm purchasing something that is best suited to my needs. Because of that, afterwards I generally have a working knowledge of the subject.

I recently had two good friends ask me at out of the blue about which headphones I use, and which ones they should consider because they were "in the market" for new ones. When I responded with some basic questions and followed by a few recommendations one of them laughed and told me that I should do this "professionally".

This prompted me to write these "What would Logan Buy" posts. I thought that as long as I had spent so much time learning about something, I might as well put that information somewhere for others to use so they can make use of it. So here we are. It might be a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but here are two pairs of headphones that I feel offer amazing value.

Creative Aurvana Live (CAL)

If you decided to start googling what real "audiophiles" think about most of Creatives headphone products, I don't think most people would give this pair of cans (over the ear headphones) a second thought, thinking they'd be garbage like many of rest of headphones that Creative makes. They'd be wrong.

The CAL is actually a Denon headphone that was discontinued (as a Denon), that Creative purchased the rights to continue to manufacture making this CAL a cheap rebadged Denon . If you've never heard of Denon, then I'll just say that they are a highly respected audio company. And like many Denon products they have something of a "warm" and "smooth" sound.

These are closed headphones with a relatively flat response curve. They are known (like many closed headphones) to have a slight emphasis in the bass frequencies. However, they are very clear, and not muddy at all. And like most closed headphones, they isolate you from the sound of your surroundings well. This isolation works both ways. You can't hear people around you (good for using them in a loud environment), and people (or microphones for you recorders out there) can't hear you. And for a closed headphone, they have a good soundstage

These are the first headphones I purchased, and are the ones I use at home. They're very comfortable, have a low clamping force,  are lightweight, and have more than enough clarity for the MP3's and other compressed audio I listen to off of the internet. Plus when I record audio, the microphone doesn't pick up what is playing. I can also wear them for a few hours at a time comfortably. Overall, I'm completely satisfied with the CAL's

Most of the time their street price hovers around $60-75.

Superlux 668b/Samson SR850

Superlux is a kind of obscure brand, that you won't find in your local Best Buy. This is because Superlux was more or less a driver manufacturer for other headphone companies. A few years ago they started selling their own headphones using some of the same drivers they used in other brands headphones. These headphones took the audiophile community "by storm" becoming among the most frequently recommended budget headphones. They are known for a "brighter" or "crisper" sound.

The Superlux 668b and Samson SR850 are actually the same headphone (cans and drivers), but the Samson has a different headband and a non-detachable cable. It is also usually about $15 more expensive than the Superlux. These are both semi-open headphones, so you hear more of your surroundings than you will with a closed can like the CAL. However, this semi-open nature of the can also gives these headphones a very wide soundstage. The "soundstage" is what audio nerds use to describe how well audio equipment gives the illusion of space. So if you close your eyes and listen to something, can you picture where the sounds are coming from? Are the sounds all coming from the same space, or different places? A large soundstage gives great immersion, and can really surprise you at times.

These are also known for having a very very flat response curve. This means that there is not really a frequency range where the headphones make any frequency noticeably louder or softer than the other frequencies. This is a good thing because it means that it very accurately represents how the original audio that you are listening to was recorded. It might however not be what you are used to because its a common trend right now for headphones to have extremely to moderately inflated bass. So if you're expecting a "Beats by Dre" type of experience these headphones might not be for you.

One of my friends with an ear for music got these recently, and loves them. He said that these are a "game changer" for how he thinks about headphone audio. In fact, he says that he immediately started paying for higher bitrate music, and is re-recording all of his CD's into lossless formats because the headphones are actually accurate enough for him to hear the compression artifacts found in lower bitrate MP3 audio. He also now defines music in terms of if he can hear the squeak of the bass drums pedal, or the guitarists fingers moving on the strings.

Another friends previous "best" headphones he had ever heard were the famous Koss Porta Pros. He now owns the 668b's and says there is no comparison

Oh, and the price? These two hover between $36-58.

What would I buy now?

I currently own one of them, and a variation of the other (superlux 681 Evo, bought when the 668b's were twice their current price). So in that sense my money is already "where my mouth is" and feel that neither of these are bad choices.

The main deciding factors for me would be price, and the "features". If you need your headphones to block out more sound because of the environment then the CAL makes the most sense in my mind. The Superlux does have the edge in soundstage and clarity though. Also, the removable headphone cable is a small feature, but I love it. It makes it easier to transport the headphones, and provides the advantage of not pulling the cable out of the headphone if you trip on the cable.

All things considered though if I were to do it over again I would start with the cheaper Superluxes. They provide a remarkably low price of entry into the world of "high quality" sound. Once you have those, you can assess your needs and find out if you were a hidden audiophile this whole time and want to invest more into audio equipment or headphones.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to tell me what you think about this post and/or the headphones in the comments :).

What would Logan buy: Kitchen knives

When people find out I know anything about knives, one thing I commonly hear is "All of mine are total junk" usually followed by something like "I'd get something different if I knew what to get". This post is to help people with questions like that. Where the topic is something they're mildly interested in, but want a simple recommendation instead of a long lecture about the reasons why.

Oh, and a quick note about kitchen knives. PLEASE do not keep them in a drawer, or put them through the dishwasher. A drawer is a bad storage place for knives because 1) the knives knock against each other dulling themselves, and 2) its not really safe to reach into a drawer of unsheathed knives (particularly if they are sharp like they are supposed to be). And the dishwasher can do all sorts of things to knives. The water and heated drying can warp the handles (particularly wooden handles), get water into places it shouldn't be at cause rust, and even dull them.

The proper way to store a sharp knife is to keep it in a block, or on a magnetic strip. Each of these keeps the blade away from anything hard that could dull it, and keeps everyone involved fingers and toes where they are.

Buying a set actually usually just gets you a large block of knives most of which you don't actually use. Because of that, I actually just recommend buying a few knives you know you'll use. You can buy a block separately, or even build one like I did HERE.

Well, here is what I recommend. There are VERY expensive kitchen knives out there, but most people they won't really appreciate them (or take care of them). Thankfully, these knives are not expensive. These knives though are good "enough" and have great value.

Chefs knife

You'll want a "main" kitchen knife. Usually this is somewhere between 7 and 10 inches long, has a tall face (blade is "tall" when viewed from the side) and a good belly (unsurprisingly the "curved" portion of the blade). You'll use this one for slicing tomatoes, potatoes and most other kitchen tasks.

My wife and I have two Chefs style knives. An 8in French (traditional) chefs knife, and a 7in Santoku (Japanese chefs/cleaver hybrid). Of these two knives, I personally find myself reaching for the santoku more often. It is thinner, and the handle is more comfortable in the pinch grip that my wife and I tend to use. You might have a different preference though.

Here is the first knife I bought. Bought it after lots of research for a "budget" kitchen knife led me here. The knife is made by Victorinox (the company is better known for its "Swiss Army" knives) and has a great handle texture. Its never slippery even when wet, and isn't ever going to warp, crack, etc.

Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef's Knife

Here is the Santoku with the slightly different handle.

Victorinox Swiss Army 7-Inch Fibrox Granton Edge Santoku Knife

Paring knife

This is a small knife that while not as frequently used, it is very useful when you must use it.

I actually haven't purchased a specific paring knife. I have a half decent pampered chefs knife that was gifted to my wife and I for our wedding, and that sees most of the paring knife use. That said, unless we're taking the top off of a strawberry our paring knives don't see much use.

Since I've had good results with the other Victorinox Fibrox knives, even though I don't have any personal experience with their paring knife I feel good recommending it.

Bread knife

If you eat unsliced bread frequently then a real and bread knife is super useful. If you don't, then your chefs knife will work for the few times you actually need to slice bread. These are usually 10-12in long, and commonly have a serrated or waved edge.

With just those three types of knives you'll be set for most of what happens in the kitchen. Keep them sharp, and I doubt you'll have any complaints about them.

Here is the bread knife I have. Once again, for the record, these knives have gone up quite a bit since I purchased them. Still though, they're a decent deal.

Victorinox Swiss Army 10-1/4-Inch Fibrox Wavy Bread Knife

What would I buy now?

I would be recommending the Victorinox knives right now if the prices had remained where they were two years ago. I purchased each of the Victorinox knives I have now for roughly ~$23. If you've been checking the links in this post, you'll notice most of them going for roughly double that now.

In light of the price hikes on victorinox knives I don't think I would actually buy them right now. I know I mentioned that knife sets should generally be avoided, but there is one that I'll say is worth it. The Ethan Becker Signature series knives are totally worth the (low) price of ~$57. This set though is a far cry from the usual Wal-Mart set that contains a cheapo chef knife, 3 utilities you'll never use, and 8 really dull steak knives. In fact, when they were released they were selling for $150. So buy them while you can at that low price.

This knife set was designed by Ethan Becker. Most of you will have no idea who that is, but trust me, its a good thing (Ethan Becker is Co-Author to the world famous "Joy of Cooking", and a renowned knife designer and maker of more than 25 years. He also happens to make my favorite camping knives, but that's for another post). Also, these knives are manufactured by ESEE. Again, I don't expect people to know most knife manufacturers by name. But they are known for two things. World class knives, and an unlimited lifetime warranty that TRANSFERS between owners. So no matter what, if there is a problem you get a new knife free of charge.

ESEE Knives B1109 Ethan Becker Cooking Knives Signature Set

I recommended that my mom get this set, and now I can actually recommend them on the quality of the knife because I have actually handled them. I have more knifes than most folks, and I can say that this knife set by FAR is the sharpest I've used (out of the box).

The only "reservations" I have about these knives are that the sizes are a bit off from what most would say is "standard" (largest is 7 inches). Also, the handles have some orange on them. That may be a deal breaker to some if it doesn't fit into the motif of your kitchen.

So if you've been hankering to try some better kitchen knives, I'd spend the ~$60 on the set of 4 of Ethans ESEE made knives. And maybe throw in a paring knife and a bread knife if you feel the need.

As you know this is the first of my posts like this, so let me know what you think of it in the comments :).

That's it.

Logans Leisure #3: Bamboo Skewer knife block

Ok, so I've mentioned that I have wanted to get better at woodworking. As a result of this, I decided to go ahead and do something I've been wanting to do for a while. I made my wife a custom knife block for Christmas.

Once again, while no expert, I'll walk you through what I did, and will give you the plans that I came up with, as well as anything that I would change about the project.

The first thing about this project that makes it stand out is the type of knife block is. I designed and built a bamboo skewer knife block. Why bamboo skewers you say?

1. If you've looked at some of my other posts, you'll notice that I'm a bit of a knife guy. On occasion the knives in the block change, and sometimes the knives don't fit in the old slots of normal blocks. This causes problems.
2. Second (and more importantly) the other thing about normal knife blocks is that they are difficult to clean inside the long slots. With a skewer design you can clean it easily by either swapping out the skewers or washing them. Score.
3. It looks unique and awesome.

The design

A knife bock like this is simple. There are no fancy cuts to make. Instead of having specific slots in the block for the knife to fit in, you simply make a open area for the skewers. The other nice thing about designing a knife block is that it is non structural in design, meaning, it doesn't have to support any critical amounts of weight. Therefore you don't have to be a structural engineer to build one, and you can use just about anything design you can come up with.

Because I'm an amateur, with only three "real" tools I decided to make the design something easy to both cut, and build. I mean, this is really just my second or third project.

I came up with a design that requires only three pieces of raw materials:

1. One 1in x 6in x 72in piece of hardwood
2. one 5ft x 3/4in piece of EMT (aluminum electrical conduit)
3. One 5ft x 3/8in piece wooden dowel

If you have a biscuit cutter, and don't want the "aluminum accent pieces" you can skip the EMT and the wooden dowel. The same goes for if you don't mind exposed screws in your finished product and don't want the EMT.

Here is the cutsheet/assembly diagram that I made for the 1x6. You can see that the cuts are arranged to make them as easy as possible. You can also see roughly how you're supposed to put the thing together. And Sorry about the size, but I wanted this to be halfway readable.

The block will be assembled using wooden dowel construction to keep the edges free of any fasteners. If having screws on the edges doesn't bother you, then go ahead and use them.

The construction

Its amateur hour here in the construction portion, so keep any construction comments primarily "constructive" (< see what I did there :P).

First, I measured out and cut the main box pieces as well as I could with only a square and a jigsaw. I then cut the bottom for the box. With these pieces, I started assembly.

Wooden dowel construction is simple in concept, and if you have a drill press, it is pretty straightforward. If you don't have either of those pieces it gets harder, but it still is doable. The hard part is getting the holes lined up in the boards correctly, if you're off by any the joints will be visibly off. This happened below, and I had to redrill a whole new set of holes. So I'm clearly not perfect in my woodworking skills yet.

Before I got my "drill depth guide" set up, I accidentally drilled right through the board on the bottom, luckily that board was going to be covered up anyway.

 

The good news is because this is solid wood, if any of your wholes aren't lined up perfectly, you can just sand it down. Just take your time, and it will turn out fine.

To help line things up I made a crude jig (scrap piece of wood of the same thickness) to get the holes centered. I also made a VERY crude drill depth indicator (tape on the drill bit). The wood is 0.75in thick, so I decided to go a half inch deep on each side, and cut the dowel into one inch long pieces.

Pro-tip: drill a small pilot hole first, its much easier to get the hole centered with a tiny drill bit. Then move on to the 3/8in bit. Otherwise, your holes will not line up as well as you want.

And now the part most people want to see. Here are some photos of the construction.

I elected to design this with three brushed aluminum bars on one side instead of finishing the box off with mahogany. Because of that choice, I made things harder for myself (but it looks great, so I can't complain). The EMT pipe was cut to the right length, and then the dowels were used just like they were in other dowel joints, except in this case the dowel is long enough to pass through the EMT and into both sides.

Then I started construction on the "stand" portion of the project. The same process happened here as in other portions of the project. Cut the wood, drill the holes, etc, etc, etc.

 

Bam, here is the finished product.

Without the skewers.

 

With roughly ~625 4mm thick skewers

 

 

Conclusion

 

I am happy with the end product. It looks fantastic, gets lots of comments from house guests and is very functional. If I made another one would I change anything? yes, yes I would actually. First off, I would make it larger. The size I built looks great, but we have a hone, three full size knives (8in chef, 7in santoku, 10in bread), two paring knives, and a set of kitchen shears. Secondly, I think I'd make a separate spot for both the hone ("butchers steel"), the smaller knives, and the kitchen shears. The hone gets stuck in the skewers a bit, and takes up a lot of space. Same thing with the shears.

 

I think I would use 1x6 for the sides, and 1x8 for the front and back. This would just make it wider, but not make it take up much more space on the counter. I could add a section only for the small knives, but I'm not sure how I'd do that at this point.

 

Anyway, if you have any questions or feedback let me know.

 

Cheers!

Logans Lessons #5: WinISD Basics

In Logans Leisure #2: Building an end table subwoofer, I detail the process of how I built my first "DIY" subwoofer. Because I'd received lots of questions about it, I wanted to go into some depth about some of the process. However, I didn't want to clutter up the build post with this "technical" portion.

This is not meant to be an all inclusive guide, because frankly, I'm not an expert with WinISD, or with building subwoofers. However, when I was working on designing my subwoofer, this is the stuff that I was wanting to find online but took more than a few minutes to find. As it turns out, there are a few guides out there that exist. This is not meant as a replacement, but instead as a supplement.

Using WinISD

This is a BRIEF intro on how to use WinSD. I learned the basics by stumbling around on my own, and checking out threads on hometheatershack.com (the forums). So if you're keen to start your own project and have questions, then the best place to look would likely be there, as by most ways of measuring, I'm at most a novice at this type of work. However, finding all of this information was difficult for me, so I'm trying to present what was hard for me to really find.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do after installing WinISD (I downloaded from HERE)is to make sure that it has the driver that you are wanting to use. If not, then you either need to create the WinISD driver file, or download one from the internet somewhere. If you check out hometheatershack and their driver file thread, you may find that someone already created one for you. That's where I got all of mine.

After you have the drivers that you're interested in, you now need to create a new project. The project should be the type that you are wanting to create (sealed, ported, etc). You'll also use the driver file that you just got.

After you create the project, you are first presented with the driver tab. However, since you already chose the driver, this tab doesn't really help you much.

Transfer function magnitude / "Box" tabs

The next tab is where I found myself doing most of my work. It is the "box" tab. This is where you specify the settings used on the enclosure. This is where you choose the tuning frequency, and the volume. Generally I adjusted the settings on this tab in conjunction with the "Transfer function magnitude" graph. This shows the frequency extension of the subwoofer, and even includes the -3db point for it which is quite useful.

Vents and Air velocity 

The "vents" tab is where it shows you the size of the port that gave you the tuning frequency that you desired. The specifications of the port can be changed in this tab. One thing you need to know, is that the subwoofer volume does NOT include the volume of the port. So changing the port size affects how much volume you need to subtract from the subwoofer enclosure volume. This in turn changes the length of the port, which means that the volume being subtracted is changing. Its a vicious cycle.

When you are adjusting anything with vents, you should be looking at the air velocity graph. Because a ported subwoofer does in fact move air through the port, its important to keep the air speed below a certain level to prevent that port from acting like a whistle. In my research I heard recommendations saying to keep the air speeds below 24 m/s, and below 17 m/s to eliminate any port noise (known as "chuffing" in subwoofer-speak). Because I wasn't hurting for space, I tried to stay below 17 m/s just to be on the safe side.

Signal/Max SPL

The signal tab is where you get to specify the wattage of the amplifier. To really see the results from the changes to the wattage, you need to view them from one of the SPL graphs. This is the maximum SPL tab, and you can see that while the previous transfer function magnitude graph showed the frequency extension, the maximum SPL graph shows the actual volume.

You can see from the graph, that my sub has a slight 1db dip centered roughly around 36hz. Generally you want the graph perfectly flat, obviously this isn't the case here. From what I understand from my research is that this isn't super common. The reason that speakers are measured to their +- 3db point is that that is a halving of volume. So to have a 1db drop in output isn't a huge concern to me. I could have made the enclosure smaller, and tuned it higher and flattened out the graph, but I was trying to sneak out as much extension as I could.

Cone Excursion/Filters

And here we are at the last main topic. Now that you've done everything else in the design (enclosure size, tuning, air velocity, etc), there is one last main thing to check. Subwoofers rely on travel to move enough air to provide that "umph" in the low notes. Too much travel can damage a sub though, and each driver is different. The cone excursion graph is where you see the travel of the subwoofer in millimeters. The red line on top is the subwoofer drivers maximum extension.

If the excursion goes over that line on the left, that is because the subwoofer is trying too hard to reproduce the really low notes as the low notes require more travel for the same volume. So if you filter out those low notes, the driver won't be pushed to travel as far, thus keeping it from self destructing.

My design was over-excursing without any filters (bad). However the BASH 300w amplifier that I used has built in filters. It has a built in High Pass Filter, and a slight degree of bass boost  (1db). This is how I accounted for them in the project, as both affect it.

You can see that I'm nowhere close to maximum extension, even if my amplifier at full power. This means I shouldn't have to worry about damaging my driver.

There you have it, now you all know about as much as it I do. If you have questions, I'm more than willing to do what I can to help out. However the people over at hometheatershack.com have much more experience than I do on this, so if this didn't help you, perhaps you should start an account there and ask your question.

Cheers!