I’ve recently posted my extremely pleasant experience with the Comply tips in my Ultimate Ears 700 and is really sad that I have to add a downside.
The Comply tips seems to be very fragile and don’t last long.
The first pair is already showing a major indication of wear: you can see that is tearing apart in the picture below.
At 19.99$ for a set of 3 pairs the tips could quickly become a greater cost than the earphones themselves.
Hopefully it’s only bad luck with one of the tips.
The book is focused on the subject of how the modern fathers relate to their children and how this is impacting the development of the kids.
The author describes the situation as the parent behaving like the union of the kids.
Instead of providing a strong and structured reasoning about the problem the author decided to provide to the readers a set of facts from the news that demonstrate the relevance of the phenomenon and the consequences.
Given the fact the Antonio Polito is a journalist and not a philosopher this approach makes sense.
It is possible to considered the book as a vertical case study of the wider problem that authors like Kenneth Minogue, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Roger Scruton (and others) raise about the modern approach to life and the consequences in the long-term.
The book can be appreciated in any case even without a theoretical background but this is not a guarantee that the message will be accepted by the reader ad I’ve learned after lending it.
When I can I try to read the books that are proposed to my son.
A two weeks trip to the USA was a good opportunity to do so.
Ernest et Celestine is a good reading for an age between 8 and 10 years: the subject may appear light at a first glimpse (the story of a mouse and a bear) but the message about against using prejudices as the guiding criteria of relations is very strong and clear.
While the construction of the phrases is simple a few words will likely be missing in the vocabulary of a kid: be prepared to answer questions or have a dictionary for kids readily available.
Recommended.
Yesterday evening a colleague pushed me to go to Bernard’O for dinner.
The dishes in the menu appeared overly rich in the list of ingredients for my general preference when I took a glimpse before entering but looks like it is a fairly common practice in this area making the choice hard for someone looking for simple food.
I was not very hungry so I went for something small and that should fit well with the fact that the cook is french: a french onion soup.
While waiting we were offered bread and butter:
the bread was hot but fairly undercooked (at least for the italian standards) and the butter was absolutely sub par: almost perfectly tasteless.
If I decide to hit my health I want it to be worth and I think this should be a general guidance for everyone.
Skip the butter altogether at Bernard’O.
Then the onion soup arrived.
The first thing that I noticed as soon as I raised the first spoon is that the broth was heavy on taste enhancers.
I wonder if it actually ever had the opportunity to see some actual meat.
The taste was very heavy on pepper while the onion test was almost completely missing: ridiculous for an onion soup.
It’s a classical french dish: it’s not acceptable to have it made like this in a french restaurant.
The restaurant site claims that they won the “best french restaurant in San Diego” in 2008.
Either they changed cook in the meanwhile or I don’t want to try any other french restaurant in the area.
Save yourself the money (the place is not cheap) and the time and avoid it as long as you can.
A few weeks ago I posted about my experiments dealing with in-flight noise and anticipated a new test.
Today I’m reporting what I found when using the Ultimate Ears 700 from Logitech that I recently purchased.
It is an in-ear solution that is noise blocking or, if you prefer, is doing passive noise canceling.
It comes with the option of using either silicone plugs or foam plugs (“Comply” tips): the former solution is comparable with the standard tips coming with most of the in-ear solutions while the foam tip is less common and makes a difference.
I’ve tried both and picked up the Comply as the best solution for me: better noise blocking, more comfortable, lower cable noise.
Pay attention when fitting the foam tips as it’s a bit harder than fitting correctly the silicone ones and you don’t want to remove the earphones leaving the tip inside your ear.
How good they are?
unbelievably good.
Two weeks ago I was in our London office working on a presentation and needed to focus so I used the earphones to avoid the distraction of the conversations in the open space.
At one point I noticed the colleague on my right jumping on the chair: it turned out that someone slammed hard a door but I did not notice at all.
I thought that I might be too focused to notice but it turned out to be really the good performance of the Ultimate Ears that made the difference.
Last week I used them again, this time for the purpose I originally purchased them: dealing with the in-flight noise.
When the music was turned on, even at low volume the humming of the 737 was totally removed and the only noise was coming from the seat and through my spine.
With the music off the noise coming in is similar to what gets through when I use the 3M plugs mentioned in the earlier post.
It’s all perfect? Almost.
I have relatively small ear canal so there it is a bit of fatigue after a while. It may happen to other people too.
To ear the cabin crew you have to remove the earphones.
I discourage using them in places that are not totally under control because anything can happen with you not noticing; you really don’t want to do jogging while using them.
And the musical fidelity?
It is there too.
At least as far as an in-ear solution can go: I like the physical impact provided by a loudspeaker and no earphone can provide that.
They are in a totally different league compared to the Creative and Philips solutions I tried earlier.
When working at my desk I always prefer my pair of indiana line 5.04 with the support of the DTA-100a amplifier over the earphones when neighbours complains are not a risk.
I’m very happy with my ultimate ears 700 and I recommend them.
marcoullasci 