Archive for ◊ July, 2006 ◊

A Musical Holiday
Author: Matt
• Monday, July 31st, 2006

For the first time in quite a ages I’ve had a day off work and had a nice three day weekend. I was feeling mildly ill on Sunday and it was very cold so I just spent the whole day in bed, also for the first time in ages, and played Trapt on PS2. I managed to get all the way to the end and some of the last levels are on the verge of being frustratingly difficult but as a whole, I really enjoyed the game; enough so that I’m tempted to play it again sometime (Some of the story is different on a second play through.

I’ve also been upgrading some of my audio gear. I heard a while back that Shure was coming out with a new pair of quality in-ear canalphones and I’ve totally enjoyed my Shure E5c pair so was quite interested. After quite a bit of research on the new E500 model it appeared that they would be my kind of thing so I pre-ordered a pair. About a long wait, about week before the shipping date I was notified by the supplier that Shure did not want them sold outside the US. It seemed every store I looked had also been given the same instructions from Shure. I was busy planning some way to get around this problem a few days later when I got a second email from the supplier telling me that Shure had authorised them to go ahead with my order! I guess that’s what comes of being a returning customer pre-ordering some expensive gear (I ordered my Shure E5c pair from the same place). ;) I’m currently waiting for these things to arrive although I’m not looking forward to the GST bill from customs.

When I was doing all my research on the new earphones, I was finding many people saying what a difference a headphone amplifier made. I’d always intended to pick up one of these things but just never got around to it. I did expect there to be some difference between the amp that typically comes built into something like an iPod and a dedicated quality headphone amp but I did wonder if I’d really notice that much difference. I don’t mind spending some extra money if something sounds noticeably better but I’m very resistant to spending extra if I can’t pick it. All the comments I read though suggested the difference was actually quite significant.

I ended up deciding to jump in and ordered a Xin SuperMacro IV headphone amplifier which ended up on backorder due to heavy demand. In the meantime I kept reading and thought I might try to pick up a cheap valve-based (or tube-based for those Americans) headphone amp to play around with to compare and contrast to the op-amp based SuperMacro. I ended up finding a new Xiang Sheng 708b on ebay and managed to win the auction. This is a Class-A Chinese preamp with a quality headphone output. It came with a series of Chinese valves but I had already verified that they were compatible with some commonly available valves. This arrived about a week and a half ago and I carefully started burning it in. The difference was huge to put it bluntly (I’m using line out too B.T.W, not the iPod’s headphone jack like some). A few days ago I swapped the pair of 6N11 output valves for a compatible matched and balanced pair of JJ E88CC valves which are still in production and quite cheap. After some more burn in time, this too made some noticeable improvements to the sound. I’d like to try some quality “New Old Stock” (NOS) valves some time but they’re a bit pricey to add on top of the price of the headphones and the two amps at the current point in time.


The Xiang Sheng 708b with valves glowing

So, anyway, the Xin SuperMacro amp arrived the other day. It’s a very cool and flexible piece of kit, smaller than a credit card in length x width and less than 2cm tall. It takes 8 AAA batteries and manages the charging. I gave it a number of hours to burn in and then started listening. On my first listen I was a little disappointed, the Xiang Sheng 708b sounded noticeably better which just goes to show that more expensive/newer technology definitely doesn’t always mean better. On further listening, I felt my initial impression was a bit harsh, the SuperMacro totally blows away the amp built into the iPod. It’s also much smaller and portable than the Xiang Sheng.


The SuperMacro-IV by Dr Xin next to an iPod for size reference

I want to write more about how these two amps actually sound and how exactly they are better than the default amp on a typical portable device such as an iPod, PSP or Discman but this post is already too big. ;) Some other time…

Category: Games, General, Life, Music, Reviews, Technology  | 3 Comments
Recent games news
Author: Matt
• Monday, July 17th, 2006

I was originally going to write about something other than games here but if I had this post would have been massive so I’ll probably write a separate post soon without any games related stuff.
Monaco, the company that has been acting as New Zealand’s Nintendo agency for many years, has said recently that they are going to give up the job. They hope to hand it off before the new Nintendo console generation kicks off. This could be both a good and a bad thing for the local Nintendo market. It’s no secret that Monaco have never really promoted Nintendo gear here and avoided bringing in the more risky (aka innovative) titles. Hopefully this will encourage Nintendo to open their own branch here even if it’s just a Nintendo Australia spin off. Sony and Microsoft both already have local branches so it’s not an unreasonable expectation. On the down side, this could mean local delays for the upcoming Wii console (Yes, the name does still suck). Considering that the console is rumoured to be out by October, they don’t have a lot of time on their hands if delays are to be avoided.

I haven’t been gaming a lot recently due to being busy with other things but I have been getting in a little time with Legion Arena on the Mac (There’s a Windows version too), Trapt on the PS2 and some of the “Stunts and Effects” expansion pack for “The Movies” on Windows.

Legion Arena is a army strategy/RPG focusing on the Romans. Normally I hate these games, because typically the control method is horrible and the implementation is poor making them largely unplayable. Legion Arena though actually pulls it off making the control work well which gives the player the freedom to focus on the strategy. On the downside, I’m not sure the RPG-ish campaign allows the player to fully utilise the strategy as almost always you control the smaller army having to make better use of your men. That is fine in itself as it makes it more of a challenge but it severely limits variety in the strategies you can make use of.

Trapt is a sequel to Tecmo’s old Dark Delusion series from the original Playstation. I doubt most people would have played any of those games because they were mostly not released in English territories although I did enjoy Dark Delusion 3 back in the day myself. Essentially the game is about laying traps. Not innocent traps in the sense of a dainty little net falling from the roof but spinning blades of death flying out of a wall or large stone objects falling upon the unsuspecting. Even though this is a local release, the voices are all in Japanese with English subtitles. The gameplay feels very original and the story is quite interesting although somewhat predictable. It really feels like a Japanese take on a medieval European world which is in itself interesting. The concept is somewhat gruesome and the fact the main character is encouraged to seriously hurt others makes it somewhat surprising this got a western release given the current climate. For those with a more open view though, Trapt is quite a lot of fun and very original. Perhaps a bit too much of a Japanese game for some maybe.

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