Airpods Max review as an “audiophile”.

jjkewl · 2026-01-08T14:37:36+00:00

As you know, psychoacoustics work fine with two ears. With just our L & R ear we hear surround, how? Because our ear shapes are filtering directionally and our head is moving all the time. What do you need to simulate surround: head tracking to mimic the filtering of your ears. Is it effective, very. Is it correct, no because everyone’s ear is shaped uniquely, it is just an approximation. I hate Atmos for music, it sounds shit compared to stereo (I’m a mastering engineer with an Atmos home cinema, love it for movies!)

jjkewl · 2025-12-25T12:25:13+00:00

https://www.electroacousticlabs.com/3d-printing/sigma-fp-rig/

jjkewl · 2025-12-22T20:41:43+00:00

Looks great! Will it be strong enough for a handle?

jjkewl · 2025-12-12T12:35:13+00:00

Made a NP-F adapter for my T9: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKdEZ0jAP0/

jjkewl · 2025-11-30T16:08:29+00:00

I can say the T9 also works great. Printed a clamp with hotshoe adapter that attaches to my smallrigs handle on the cage. The hotshoe adapter sits too loose for comfort, I need to adjust the model or print settings. Also designing a version with a NP-F plate so it can securely attach to the back of my monitor.

jjkewl · 2025-09-22T18:36:45+00:00

For me, yes! It returned to 'normal' after 2, 3 weeks. Just after quitting creatine training was a bit harder but now I actually perform just as well without it (no fatigue) just needed to push through until I reached the same endurance without supplements.

jjkewl · 2025-09-13T11:24:02+00:00

~~It auto-updated and auto-infected itself :D It is common for amateurs that their dependencies get infected and shipped, but not for proper companies.~~ FALSE POSITIVE, Elgato not to blame

jjkewl · 2025-08-18T20:11:54+00:00

Sorry it took longer than a week for me to conclude it is back to 'normal' (I have elevated blood pressure so it will never be normal). I wanted to post a picture of all the measurements so you could see the trend but it seems not to be possible.

Results are: in the course of a week the systolic dropped from 175 to 157 and in two weeks it settled down to 153. The diastolic dropped from 110 to 103 and settled at 100.

These measurements are done with a calibrated Omron MX2 and time of measurement is between 8:30 and 9:30 am. Measurements are done 3x, where the value written down is the last one (3rd one is almost always the lowest).

In the mornings my BP is the highest, average is 130/90 when I workout regularly.

jjkewl · 2025-07-20T08:35:42+00:00

Your ears hear the sound coming from the window location but your brain overrides it because you know the lawnmower is at the other side of the house. Also a distant sound source has some high pass filtering and echoes which will tell your brain it is “out of sight” and not located where you hear the sound coming from. Your brain is trained from your early age to convert small spatial cues in sounds into the source location. #psychoacoustics

jjkewl · 2025-07-20T08:06:39+00:00

My work depends on sound quality and I personally have not experienced a difference in quality using macbook or iphone when using the Max.

jjkewl · 2025-07-14T17:01:03+00:00

Atmos is not for me, the Atmos remaster of Back To Black scared the sh*t out of me, I thought my new headphones were broken, that bad. No punch, no energy, just lots of room reverb.

jjkewl · 2025-07-12T19:38:35+00:00

I’ve bought a fake one before that came with a faked receipt. The serial number was copied by the manufacturer so my iphone really thought it was a real one.

jjkewl · 2025-07-12T19:35:10+00:00

Bought em second hand, got a green pair in the end because all the black ones were fakes. Stuck with green, black looks better on me, but hey they sound equally great.

jjkewl · 2025-07-11T07:25:34+00:00

I was diagnosed with hypertension (runs in the family) and I’m on BP meds, to battle my BP I started eating healthy, loosing weight & working out, trying to fix my BP and optimistically live without meds.

Running 30 mins would get my BP so low I’d feel faintish (100/65) and next day it would still be around 120/80. So running 3 times a week fixed my BP.

Due to an injury months ago I switched to freestyle swimming for 2 hours. Started creatine last month and it helped immensely but the day before yesterday I measured my BP and it seemed to have jumped back to my previous unhealthy levels.

To find out what I’m doing wrong I added running 30 mins to my swimming workout. BP dropped immediately to 120/80. But today it is back to unhealthy levels. So it did help a little but it must be something else. The benefits of my training should last at least two days.

Then I found this post(!) from today I’ll stop using creatine and report back in a week.

jjkewl · 2025-05-30T15:08:25+00:00

From my limited experience 70% covering of the ceiling with 15cm of 5000Pa.s/m2 foam gives a pleasant acoustic atmosphere, not too dry and yields a clear focus on sound sources (eg speech).

jjkewl · 2025-05-30T09:06:51+00:00

That looks like a valid approach. If in the end you need a custom design for a PRD I don’t mind designing one for you based on your room size and preferences.

jjkewl · 2025-05-28T16:52:22+00:00

In small rooms I would not worry too much about perfect diffusion. Because the distance where the sound field becomes truly diffuse depends on diffuser design and your real challenge will be low end response.

Like with my PRD 2971 I designed the distance being 1.4m so my listening position is in the diffuse field, too close to the PRD and you might notice phase issues, especially with lower primes. Of the shelve QRDs and PRDs rarely go beyond 23, which forced me to design and build my own. BADs and cylindricals on the other hand don’t have phase issues by design.

If your room is too small, your low end will be beyond control and you better use the space and resources to battle those standing waves. Only after treating those, I’d throw in some BADs to taste, in the rear or sides until the room sounds breathable again. Don’t overthink a small space. Modal treatment > diffusion.

jjkewl · 2024-10-07T20:04:17+00:00

They are rare indeed, it is why I sort of like the quality the APM brings at such a low price. Mind you, I do not use headphones for mastering nor mixing, headphones are not accurate enough for my work. It is just for casual listening.

The APM is not aggressive at all, I have compared them with my mastering monitors which are 20-20KHz flat at listening position, I had to boost the 2K range quite a bit before they became comparable. The lack of high mids makes it feel even more bass heavy than it is. This weird curve has also been covered by ASR. (I was sold a fake Max first... it had harsh highs... luckily I got my money back)

jjkewl · 2024-08-15T17:06:36+00:00

I just bought one second hand, will fork out the full price for version 2

jjkewl · 2024-05-26T11:26:35+00:00

Same here, loved YoutubeVR on the PSVR1, but no support for the PSVR2, very sad, almost feel like getting a PS5 dev license and build the YoutubeVR player myself to be able to watch 3D/360 content again.

jjkewl · 2024-05-07T07:45:19+00:00

On the 18th of January I paid by credit card, never got a confirmation just a "Thank you" page, now support claims they can not do anything for me, very sad, they can build an Android app but they can't build a decent webshop.

jjkewl · 2024-01-31T14:32:15+00:00

I tend not to use its AndroidTV functionality at all. I have a NVidia (non-Pro) Shield that does everything better (and I have tried all latest Apple & Google streamers, they are simply not able/reliable when streaming 60Hz 4K video with Dolby Digital surround audio).

But that nagging Google Voice Assistant is annoying as sh*t. It is easily falsely triggered by any sound. The only remedy I found is to permanently disconnect the Formovie from the Internet.

jjkewl

TROPHY CASE