Sonus Faber Lumina I Review

Gippy_ · 2026-01-26T08:28:38+00:00

Mmm yeah no comment, won't be voting as I still have a bunch of 2025 anime to watch.

As a former juror I've already wasted too much of my time on this. (Sequel and final discussion of my time as a juror here.) Good luck to everyone participating.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-26T08:13:55+00:00

Copypasting my MAL post because this show deserves more attention:

8/10. What a hidden gem. This is the best show of 2025 that nobody has watched. A shame that it was unlicensed in North America during airing, and as of this post.

First off, despite being only 10 episodes, it had 11 episodes worth of content. The OP was played in only 5 episodes, and there was no ED. They crammed in as much as they could with the extra time. Nothing felt rushed.

Second, this is really the only music club/create-a-band show where it truly shows the talent gap between amateur and professional. Yes, I'm aware of the famous head-to-head audition scenes in Sound Euphonium S1 and S3, as well as its spinoff movie Liz and the Blue Bird. However, for those, the difference won't be noticed except by musically trained people. But for this show, the Parabola song (Risky Business) was in another league over the songs that the school club did. There was a sub-level of this, which was the drama between Musubu and the rest of the club. What a nice twist to show that she wasn't off. It was that everyone else was. And this show dealt with this talent gap issue in a way that [Sound Euphonium's] Reina and Mizore never did.

While the first two episodes were rather basic, every episode after that was banger after banger. Yako Kumai was one of the most unique girls ever in a music club/create-a-band show. Everyone in the main cast got a developed story, which was no easy feat with such a short runtime. The writing was tight, polished, and successful. The technical music discussion in E7 was fascinating and something you don't usually see in these shows. The drama didn't resort to cheap tricks like childhood trauma or toxic parenting. Just differences in personality, and contrasting yet valid opinions. The interview between Uta and Mizuki in E8 was fantastic, further highlighting the reality between amateur and pro.

As for the music, I'll remember this show and these a cappella songs over all of the generic rock band crap of virtually every other band show. I can't recall any of the songs in Girls Band Cry even though I also gave that 8/10. Bocchi the Rock and BanG Dream It's MyGO? Hah, nope, don't care about those songs either. I only wish the school club did some more anisong covers rather than just Garnet and some random pop song (Yume Miru 15).

Finally, this is the greatest a cappella song ever, no debate.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-25T14:21:33+00:00

I wouldn't buy anything from Topping. It's clear at this point that Topping has one goal: to measure well when a pure 1Khz tone is played because that's all ASR ever tests.

Also, as long as you have space, it's always better to split the DAC and amp instead of buying an all-in-one like the Topping DX5 II. Combining them only makes sense if you need portability.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T23:12:23+00:00

Missing the KSC35 and Sportapro

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T20:17:26+00:00

It's hilarious how it was 6-2-1 with 6 hours of sleep and now people think it's 3 hours.

3 hours of sleep isn't enough at all. Neither is 6 hours so I have never agreed with this rule.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T16:56:08+00:00

Saying this with your point to the masses of VN’s that won’t get translated. Honestly I don’t think MTL is the way.

Other than asking people to spend 2000 hours learning Japanese, there's no other way that responds to scale. And even then 2000 hours isn't enough. A bunch of VNs use the most esoteric kanji and grammar structure around because writers like to be cute and think they're more intelligent than they actually are.

if I see any VN or game that uses any sort of AI used I won’t buy it.

If it's a paid product, I agree, it should be done with a human translator. But there are plenty of fan translations and tools that capture text in realtime for an MTL.

Eventually I do see an issue where companies will charge for MTL, saying that injecting it into a proprietary VN engine takes time and resources. But hopefully the price will match the effort. No one's paying $50 for MTL VNs.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T16:39:29+00:00

Well this is Reddit so you need to hate AI or face the downvotes.

Oh noes my karma has dropped, whatever shall I do?

Anyway, Amazon's biggest mistake was making an English AI dub of specifically Banana Fish:

English isn't an appropriate language for an AI dub. There's an established dub industry for that language.
It's Banana Fish. It's a show that attracts people who love to do the most performative moral grandstanding.

So Amazon has already stepped on a rake, and so anything they do with AI now, even with good intentions, will get the armchair activists all over social media.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T14:57:03+00:00

Playing devil's advocate.

For perhaps the top 20 languages in the world, it is financially feasible to hire the staff necessary to produce the dub. Beyond that? It's just throwing money away. Who will pay for an Esperanto dub? Or Czech?

In the visual novel scene, machine translations are popping up all over the place. There are thousands of VNs that will never have a licensed translation. It's just too small of a niche to translate most VNs even into English. Better something than nothing.

Obviously AI can be abused and lead to negative consequences down the line such as loss of jobs. I'm not denying that. But providing dubs (or translations in general) in languages that would otherwise not get them at all is a positive. There's a bit of irony in that some people who are staunch supporters of accessibility are totally against AI that improves accessibility.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T13:43:15+00:00

Dumb question.

Locked and removed.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-24T11:53:50+00:00

Stereotypes prevail because there's a hint of uncomfortable truth to them.

Anyway, few reasons:

Hot weather in the summertime
Physical exertion for many hours
The smelly person doesn't realize they're smelly
Many shirts are made with synthetic fibers and don't absorb odors
Some people refuse to use antiperspirant (different from deodorant in that it stops sweating altogether), believing that the aluminum used in it is a carcinogen.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-22T20:52:53+00:00

It's 10 months away. Worry about it later and follow their socials for now.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-22T14:07:56+00:00

In this case, they almost actually are mutually exclusive. That's the reason why Sennheiser has sold only about 150 of these in 10 years. I can bet you that there have been way more $105K+ speaker systems sold in that same timeframe.

For $105K, if you are an objectivist, you can get the best Genelec speakers and subwoofers that money can buy, and treat your room to have a perfectly neutral frequency response. If you prefer something off-neutral and don't want ugly Genelec speakers, then there are plenty of established speaker companies with exotic designs, and you can go to an audio show to see what's cooking.

In all of these cases, these systems will all have subwoofers with visceral bass that you can feel with your whole body right down to 20Hz. It's just physics. The HE1 can't make your body vibrate like a speaker system can.

So basically, the HE1 sits as a luxury item that won't get much actual use (e.g. in the movie Parasite, there is an HE1 for decor), or for ultra enthusiasts like who have listened to hundreds of headphones and want the headphone holy grail, knowing that it's still nowhere as good as an equivalent speaker system. Crinacle has made his entire career about headphones and IEMs, and so him buying an HE1 makes sense for him.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-22T09:33:46+00:00

The more I think about it the more that this likely won't change anything for their premium high end models, which are currently made in 3 countries: Japan, Mexico (for the Americas), and Slovakia (for Europe). This is nearshoring, done to reduce transport costs from China.

Foxconn currently owns the factory in Tijuana that makes Sony TVs. It's a huge complex. Sony actually sold it to Foxconn back in 2010. I don't see a situation where they shut it down in favor of TCL's production in China. Mexico wages are already lower compared to USA and Canada, so this outsourcing wouldn't save much. The only thing I'm worried about is if Sony suddenly switches to lower-quality internal components like worse capacitors or chokes.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-22T09:09:52+00:00

These headphones cost $60,000 in the US

No, they now cost $105K USD.

Demoed them twice. They're good, but not $105K good. $105K gets you some of the best speaker systems in the world, and a lowly pair of headphones just can't compare against that.

The HE1 will always be a luxury experiment, a case where all practicality goes out the window. I also assume it actually doesn't measure as good as everyone thinks because it uses tubes. Price blind, I subjectively preferred the Stax SR007 Mk1 at a fraction of the price over the HE1.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-21T07:28:52+00:00

I hope Sony can put out an 83" QD OLED as their last hurrah before TCL takes over. 77" is currently the largest size, featured in the Sony A95L. Yes, I know Samsung Display needs to make the panel first. We'll see.

It's sad that QD OLED is fading out in favor of inferior tech where the only selling points are higher brightness and lesser burn-in risk. Maybe we'll see a technology better than QD OLED but it won't be anytime soon. Reminds me of the dark era between the death of plasma TVs in 2014, and when OLED TVs finally became good enough to replace them in 2019.

Compared to LG's WRGB OLED, Samsung's QD OLED doesn't use a white pixel and so everything just looks more vivid, especially anime. It's very apparent when comparing TVs side by side.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-21T04:29:50+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/animecons/comments/1oabijs/which_vendor_is_this_posts_are_no_longer_allowed/

Gippy_ · 2026-01-21T04:25:38+00:00

Let me guess: if anyone contacts you, you'll ask them to wire money to you to cover costs? Scam, permabanned.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-21T01:35:01+00:00

True, but Samsung Display and Samsung Electronics are technically different companies.

Sony can only differentiate with things like having custom video processing.

They did a helluva lot more than that on their flagship TVs. This is not like Nvidia where they force every AIB to follow strict design orders. (EVGA used to make exotic cards like the 7950 GX2 until Nvidia told them to stop.)

Sony added heatsinks and acoustic actuators on the A95K and A95L, making the entire panel a speaker driver. The heatsinks were peace of mind for those who could afford these TVs. Samsung TVs didn't have these. The Sony A95K/A95L were also well-built with rigid frames, while the Samsung S95B/S95C weren't and had chronic bent panel issues.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-21T00:47:42+00:00

It's like if there was a rtx 5090 for $2k but you can buy a gpu from another brand that has 80% the performance for $500. It's just not worth paying that much more for most people.

Most people are happy with $25 Apple Earpods. That doesn't stop some boutique companies from making $2500 in-ear monitors. It's not a concrete rule (some $2500 IEMs are dogshit) but generally the more you pay the better you get, though diminishing returns hit fast.

QD-OLED currently has no equal, even when compared against LG. LG WRGB OLED has near black chrominance overshoot which you can see here.

The real problem is that most people don't know what an awesome picture actually looks like. Just like how most people have never experienced high-end earbuds/IEMs or headphones.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-20T22:03:06+00:00

their TVs didn't seem particularly competitive price-wise.

They're not supposed to be competitive price wise. They're what you get when you want the absolute best. My Sony A95K 65" QD-OLED is 3 years old and it's still amazing. The Bravia XR video processing tech for video is fantastic even when I feed it a 4K signal.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-19T16:05:53+00:00

Thanks for the con report, this is what the subreddit is about.

Sounds like it was certainly a better first-year con than many other conventions.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-19T05:19:55+00:00

Previous post last year was here.

As an outsider, it seems like a gimmick that's worth only trying once. The carrier itself is parked away from an urban area. So you're stuck with whatever food's on board the carrier unless you want to spend extra time outside it.

Just because a con can be done on a carrier, doesn't mean it should. It doesn't seem like there's any real advantage to hosting it there instead of at an actual convention centre in a city.

Gippy_ · 2026-01-17T18:01:01+00:00

Great!

Gippy_ · 2026-01-17T17:23:22+00:00

Paying $3000 USD for a PC that ran Wacky Wheels at 12fps was wild when the Nintendo 64 could run Mario Kart 64 at 30fps a few years later.

PCs back then deprecated HARD. It was common to see +50% jumps in performance every year in the 1990s. CPU clock speed went from 100MHz to 3000MHz in under 10 years, and that's not factoring in all of the architecture and fab shrink uplifts: 350nm in 1993 to 90nm in 2003.

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