My Christmas Present to me. :)

This is going to be a relatively short post because I spent most of my half day off at the wedding and with friends after that so I didn't really get started on my planned Japan Day 1 / Kalafina Museum / Kalafina After Eden Live Part 2 post till about 1 1/2 hours ago.  Unfortunately, I'm very verbose and although I have written quite a bit already, it'll still take a little while more before I complete writing it and uploading the photos etc.

Meanwhile, I really want to make a little note in my blog about a purchase I didn't think I should make but ended up making in the end.  After thinking about it for months, I finally decided to plunk some money down to buy myself a new pair of in-ear noise isolation headphones.  The headphones of my choice is the Creative Aurvana In-Ear3.  I used to own the first Aurvana which was a decent entry level in-ear earphones aimed at audiophiles.  What I liked about the Aurvana line was that they have so far all been very balanced earphones.  I prefer clarity and I don't like an over powering bass.

I, however, can be rather rough with my earphones and after I destroyed my first Aurvana, I decided to see if I could find a more sturdy earphone that gave me a similar performance.  So I got one of the ceramic Nakamichi earphones which had a really study housing but the connections weren't quite as sturdy and the nozzle is rather large and the ear tips kept slipping off and before long I was trying to find replacement tips after losing all the ones that came with the earphones.  After a while, I just got a little annoyed with it since it wasn't fitting in my ear properly so I wasn't getting enough noise isolation on it and because of that I was losing clarity too.  And although these phones were the most expensive ones I had gotten to date, it didn't sound that much better than my first Aurvana to me, hence, it was back to the Auvana line again for me.

After reading many reviews, click me, me, me... and because I've had good experiences with most of the Creative products that I have purchased previously, I decided to go back to what I was familiar with especially since there was also a SGD20 holiday discount at the brick and mortar store in Marina Square.

After test driving the earphones with some Kalafina music (flac compression on a Creative Zen X-fi Style without any software/hardware enhancements), I decided to go for it.  And I must say that after a day of using it, I am very pleased with my purchase.  The A3s are my favourite in-ear headphones to date.... they really sound extremely good.  Kajiura Yuki's music, FictionJunction, Kalafina, Utada Hikaru all sound wonderful to me.  I can hear Keiko quite nicely even in a song like Stone Cold where she's mainly in harmony and it's harder to pick her voice out.  And for some reason, symphonia sounds really good to me on this earphone, even without the more powerful bass some other earphones may give you, Keiko still comes across sounding quite powerful and the overall song sounds really epicly beautiful to me.  That said, the bass isn't going to wow anyone who wants and likes lots of bass but since I prefer more balance and clarity, I'm not bothered about it at all.  The noise isolation on the phones is quite exceptional and blocks out a lot of unwanted sound.  And although it looks a little awkward it is actually very comfortable to wear.  The design is also way better than the earlier Auvanas because I'm not really bothered by the sound of my own breathing and rustling of my clothes when I walk... of course it could also be possible that I'm so used to in-ears that I've learned to tune those sounds out. :)

I'm super happy with my present to myself. :)  Now, I just have to make sure I take better care of it. :p

K... time for bed... I'll continue working on my Japan / Kalafina After Eden Special Live post in the next two days and will hopefully have that up by the end of the week before Christmas.  My Christmas present to some of my friends. :)

Okay, that's it from me for now... good night everyone. :)

The Creative Zen

image courtesy of Creative Technology

Not too long ago, maybe about a month or two ago, Creative Technology released a new mp3 player called the Zen. This little player is about the size of a credit card and is light and quite sleek looking. When I first set my eyes on it, I already loved the look and so I did some research on the specs and read as many reviews as I could get my hands on and when my mum got one, I played with it extensively and really liked it tons. The audio on the Zen is also really good even on the average earphones that come bundled with the player.

Sadly, some of the reviews by reputable gadget websites were obviously Apple biased. One or two of them actually said the Zen's GUI was confusing which is definitely nonsense. My mum is in her 60s and not the most technology savvy person in the world and she had no problem making sense of the GUI. I didn't even need to help her with it and she was zipping though it like Woody Wood Pecker.


SE k750i - Dohby Ghaut MRT Station, 2007, Creative Zen Ad Banner

Okay, rant over. =) Let's get to the player. The reason why I'm talking about the player now is because while clearing out the photos on my SE k750i phone, I came across a photo I took sometime back and I thought I'll put it up in the blog because I think Creative fans might enjoy seeing it if they should chance upon it and also because I hope to get my hands on an 8gig Zen by the end of this week.


SE k750i - my banged up Creative Zen Neeon

My current player is a really banged up Creative Neeon. It's banged up only because it's been through tons of heavy duty usage... heh heh... I'm not always that careful with my gadgets. =) My Neeon is a 5gig player and I don't have it filled so an 8gig Zen would be more than sufficient for my needs. While my Neeon is still chugging along, I've come to the conclusion that I would like an upgrade because my Neeon is a hard drive player and would sometimes crash when I shake it too much while chasing after the bus or the train. The Zen, however, is a flash drive player and so chances of it crashing while I chase after buses. trains or bees in the bonnet aren't really that likely. =)

Moreover, a bonus is that the screen on this beautiful gadget is 16 million colours and video playback looks quite awesome. It is not likely that I'll be carrying too much video around on it though because I also own a Zen Vision 30gig and a Zen Vision W 60gig. As to why I own both... it's a long story and not that interesting anyway. =) But on the off-chance that I would like to carry some video, I could always put it on a SD card and pop it into the build-in SD card slot in the Zen. Yup, the Zen comes with a SD card slot, hence, unlimited expandability in a sense. You're only limited by the size of the SD cards that are available or that you're willing to buy.

Creative's latest warehouse sale is from the 16th-18th Nov which is the end of this week. I'm quite tempted to go even though I'm quite adverse to crowds, especially crowds of bargain hunters, but there are several Creative products I kind of like and if I get lucky, I could get a 16gig Zen at a very good price... well, will see. =)

Zen Aurvana

I've been eyeing these earphones for like the longest time ever since I demo-ed them. But it was priced over SGD200 at that time and I just couldn't justify buying them. So in the end I opted for the Creative EP635 which were good in-ear earphones for their price range (SGD45). I wasn't too fond of the neck strap but that was my fault. I didn't realize at that time that the EP630 and the EP635's difference wasn't the colour but that one was attached to a neck strap and the other wasn't. Also the EP630s were sold out then and I had put my Audio-Technica headphones through so much punishment that they had finally quit working on me and I guess I was a little too eager to try out these well reviewed earphones. While I liked my Audio-Techina headphones a lot I was ready for something less bulky and thought I would try out the Creative earphones since the reviews for them were good.

In the end, I did end up liking the EP635, although I'm still not that fond of the neck-strap. However, I did need to tweak the custom EQ on my Zen Neeon to get it to sound the way I like. Their problem was funnily enough that they were almost too clear and so I began to noticed that my mp3s were really kinda sucky and have since re-ripped them to a much higher bitrate. Previously, I thought that the 128k bitrate was enough but I think the base and the good enough quality of my Audio-Technica headphones masked out their inadequacies.

Recently, the price of the Aurvana's dropped to SGD169 and I was really tempted to get them but still... it was kind of a lot of money to plunk down on a pair of earphones. So I resisted. However, I discovered that my mum had accumulated SGD34 on the Creative Club Card as my dad had gotten the the Creative Zen Vision: W (grrrrrr.... I wanted them too :D ). So finally, with the further SGD34 discount, I decided to get the Aurvana today.

They are GREAT. They do a good job of keeping out unwanted ambient sound and the music sounds fantastic. The thing is, I don't even need to use the custom EQ on the Zen Neeon for them to sound good. The bass isn't as muddy without the custom EQ as they were when I used the EP635 and the sound is all well separated unlike when I used the Audio-Techinca headphones. I think they look cool too and like it that they come with a nice case to carry them around.

Yup, I'm pretty happy I got them although I'm going to have to be more frugal in the next couple of months if I'm to try and get myself a Nintendo Wii and also make another trip to China. Next time I hope to go to Jiu Zai Gou to see more water and mountains.... my kind of thing. :) I think that's why I liked Guizhou so much. A pity I didn't see the other waterfall in the north part of Guizhou but we were making our way South and a trip up North would have taken too much time. Actually, I hope to one day maybe visit Guizhou without a tour group. I think that way I can really explore the national parks.

Okay, time to go crash out. Need to try and clean up my room in time for Christmas tomorrow and all who know me well know that that is quite a monumental task indeed. =)

cheers
p.s. If I get bored of cleaning my room, heh heh, I might just write up another entry on my Guizhou trip. I have quite a few photographs ready to be uploaded but kind of feel I need to sort them ALL out first as I have to start giving out full sets to my sis-in-law, her friend etc. So we'll see... good night. :)

The Zen Vision

Anyway, I'm still soooooo in love with my Creative Zen Vision. (For more information on the Zen Vision and its little brother the Zen Vision: M, go here.) It's really been the one gadget that has helped me really keep up to date with my anime viewing. Previously I had to encode EVERYTHING for my PSP and before that my GBA Movie Player. Now I just dump eps of Fate/Stay Night and Mai Otome on it and I'm good to go.

The screen on this thing is INCREDIBLE too. It's so clear and the colours so vivid, I've never seen anything like it. The iPod Video really stinks compared to this. Since I don't use itunes unless I have to and I don't buy anything through iTunes, I have no reason to own the iPod Video.

I wish I had time to wax lyrical and write a haiku for my ZV but then I pretty much flunked poetry and I'm really tired now so it'll have to wait. =) I'll leave you with this picture of perfection for now. Cheers. =)

(photo of the ZV courtesy of Creative Labs)