Aerial7 Chopper2 Headphones… My review

After the disappointment of my nixon purchase, I went on the hunt for a new pair of headphones. After a lot of googling and research, I stumbled across the DJ Warehouse website. A great, Australian website for headphones and DJ’ing gear, and, it so happened at the time, was having a sale on the Aerial7 Chopper2 headphones. From memory they were around $50 on sale from the normal price of $100. This immediately caught my eye and I then went on the web hunt for reviews of the headphones. 

Now at the time, there weren’t that many reviews on it, I think maybe 1 or 2, but they were both positive so I decided to pop them.

Cause they were only coming from Sydney they came pretty quick, I immediately plugged them into my iPhone 3G and fired them up, and, WOW! They sounded unbelievable. So, here’s the review

Sound:

One word, WOW! Now, if you’re an audiophile who strives for exact and accurate reproduction these headphones may not be fore you, because the bass is PHAT on these headphones. It’s the only way I can describe it, it’s like have a sub woofer on your ears. If you like your music with phat bass lines that these are for you. Having said that though it doesn’t lack in the mids and highs at all, it’s just that the bass is awesome on these. Because of these sorta emphasis on bass with these headphone, prolly wouldn’t recommend it for DJing or studio work either. And even though they come with an adapter so you can use them with your computer for skyping and stuff, wouldn’t recommend it for that either because the other ends sounds sorta muffled from the bass amplification. But to listen to music, these are absolutely AWESOME!

Aesthetics:

I ended up going for the Verde colour scheme. The green is throwback classic, sorta like British racing car green, and the gold colour on the metal bits is just the right amount of bling. These headphones are head turners, for all the right reasons. 

Comfort and fit:

Definitely no complaints here. These are super comfy. Padding around the earpieces is plush, and the leather lining is nice and soft. A big plus for me is the wide fit of the band. My mrs has got a pair of wesc headphones, and I find the narrow headband uncomfortable, not only to wear but to hang around my neck too. The ear cups go over the whole ear, and create a great noise isolation seal.  The only negative point with the comfort of these headphones is wearing them on a hot day. With these, and any over the ear headphones, you’ll find that they get a bit sweaty and uncomfortable, but conversely they’re excellent earmuffs on a cold day!

Functionality:

As I touched on before, these have a built-in mic with a mic button for use with the iphone. With the headphones you get an adapter for use with a PC for skype and stuff too. The mic quality in calls is clear, and the mic button works as it should. I used the mic button all the time, not just for answering calls, but also for controlling ipod functions on my iphone. 

Build quality:

Not much to complain about here. I’m about anal about my stuff though, so I don’t really toss em about but I’m pretty sure they’re hold up to some abuse. The only complaint I’d have is the headphone jack, personally I would’ve liked to see these with either a right-angled headphone jack or a braided cord. It has a standard sorta rubber/silicon insulated cord and jack, and if your like me and like to keep your iphone in your front pocket, I’d go ahead and put a bit of extra heat shrink tubing around the jack and a bit up the cord to stop it from splitting around the top of the jack. I’ve already got into the habit of doing this with all my headphones because I found that that’s the spot they always tend to fail.

The phone upgrade:

A few months ago I upgraded from my old trusty iPhone 3G to the new iPhone 4, and it wasn’t good.

Now I’ve got conflicting reports as to the exact cause of the issue, some say that it’s because the metal ring around the headphone port of the iphone 4 causes a short with certain types of plugs, some say its because apple have changed the design of how the inline mic functions, but basically, everything goes wrong.

What happens is that:

a) The mic no longer works in calls, all the other person hears is muffled garble.

b) The mic button no longer works as it should, hitting the mic button just seems to make the volume go up and down by itself really quickly.

c) It’s like the mic is always on. Not like as in always on, but basically the phone registers noise coming through the headphones as a button press or something, so on a windy day the volume goes up and down all the time seemingly by itself. 

When I first discovered this issue I hit the net, found out there were a few other 3rd party headphones that had the same issue, like the skull candy full metal jackets, and the bose earphones as well. I called up apple support about the issue and they said that they were aware of it and it may be fixed in the next firmware. When I asked, “Oh, can you fix this sorta thing in the firmware” the support agent replied, “Anything is fixable in the firmware”. 

So I called up DJ warehouse and let them know about the issue too, just in case anyone else came across it. They were so helpful and offered me a replacement. Even though I had had the headphones for a couple of months, they staff member there said that if I wanted too I could just send up the choppers and swap them for something else. Now even though I didn’t take them up on this, because I love the way these headphones sound, I thought this was awesome customer service, so props to them. 

I also contacted Aerial7 about the issue, and they hadn’t heard about the issue yet. This is what they said:

“ Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This could be a software issue, we haven't heard about this issue from anyone else. We will provide this information to our design development team to look into it.

Thank you again for letting us know and thank you for your support!"

They then followed up with this:

 "Apple had a change its design. Our design development team is working to fix this and our new production of Chopper2's will have this fixed moving forwards. The new production of Chopper2's will take place early next year. We haven't had to many people come forward with this, its the small metal ring around which causes it to short out. Your headphones are perfectly fine, its just the change that Apple made in the new iPhone.”

So… that was that. Not much I could do. So I ran a couple of layers sticky tape around the mic to help with the windy mic issue, this didn’t stop it entirely, but helped a bit. I also started to use them with the skype adapter included, the skype adapter separates the mic and headphone channels, so this eliminated all the mic related issues cause it cut the mic out completely, only down side was this massive clump of cable in my pocket with the phone. 

So months had passed, and I had just sorta grown to accept the fact that my headphones were no longer perfect for me. The mic didn’t work, the mic button didn’t work, they were just good sounding headphones. I kept searching the net, looking for a solution, and came across this adapter I thought I could use. Now the cause of the issue was in fact the metal ring, this may have fixed it. Before I went ahead and ordered it though I thought I’d shoot aerial 7 another email to see if they had found any solutions for this issue. This is what they had to say:

"Are you located in the US? If so you can always return them to the address below along with this email chain and I can send you a new and improved Chopper2!!" 

I was like wow! This is awesome.. but also.. disappointing… because I thought that I couldn’t take them up on the offer. Being on the other side of the world in Australia and all. So I emailed them and let them know I appreciated the offer, but I was in the Australia, and this is what they had to say:

 "Hey Lex,

 What is your address? I'll send you a pair anyways! "

I was like “WOWWWWWW!!!!”. Now here are some guys that stick by their products. They’re prepared to send a replacement set of headphones to some dude on the other side of the world. Now that is customer service. As it stands today, I’ve got a new pair of new and improved Chopper2 headphones on the way. As for the colour scheme I’m getting, I’m not sure. Sadly they don’t make the verde’s in the new and improved version, so I requested the snow colour. Now I’m not sure if I’ll get the snow colour, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’d be happy with anything. I can’t wait to get my PERFECT headphones back, these chopper2’s are everything I look for in a pair of day-to-day headphones for use with my iphone. GREAT sounding, inline mic, mic button control of the ipod. PERFECT!

Nixon Nomadic Headphones… My review

Well.. where do I begin.

I was in the market for some new headphones, as my old senny MM50’s got stolen. When we went to NZ last year I saw a guy at the airport with these headphones and thought they looked wicked. The only thing was I could really hear what he was listening too, but i just thought he was a tosser who listened to his music too loud. So anyways, I headed down to Surf Dive n Ski in Melbourne central and popped em. I think I paid around $150ish for them and was happy. 

So.. with my new headphones on, I walked down to the train station. While i was walking i noticed something, a rattle. The chrome ring around one of the sides was loose, and every time I took a step, it rattled. Massive suck. But not unresolvable, as they were brand new i knew i could take them back and exchange them, so abit annoying and dissapointing, but not the end of the world. 

Now, the realisation and deal breaker. Remember how i said i thought that guy i saw with these headphones and i thought he was just a tosser that listened to his headphones too loud? Now, on the train, I WAS THAT TOSSER! There is absolutely no sound isolation on these earphones, zero, zip, zilch. All noise from around you(i.e the train) will come in, and all noise from your headphones will escape. Sure you can turn the volume right down, but then you can’t hear the music over the noise around you. 

So that was it for me, sure, they look AWESOME. But, i don’t enjoy being that guy. That tosser who listens to his music too loud. So i took them back to SDS the next day, showed them a rattle, and got a refund. Right now I’m so glad I did, because i ended up with something soooo much better.

Snowboard Binding Weights.

Binding weights (LBS) for the 2010 lines are as follows:
2.19 - Rome 390
2.31 - Rome Targa
2.38 - Union Force
2.44 - Flux Super Titan
2.50 - Union Data
2.56 - Ride NRc
2.69 - Ride CAD

Forgotten Acer eRecovery Managment password

So you've forgotten your acer recovery password and can't perform a factory recovery on your Acer laptop? all you need to do it boot up with your favourite linux live cd, mount the PQService parition.
In the partition you should be able to locate the file aimdrs.dat, open it with notepad.
Now you see the password and password tip and you can edit it.

that simple.

Getting Avira Antivir Personal FREE Edition to work with Windows Server 2008.

So you're after a good FREE antivirus to use with your Windows 2008 machine?

When it comes to free antivirus, and my personal preference in free antivirus is Avira Antivir Personal, it's very effective and has a pretty small footprint in terms of resources.

But alas, Avira can't be installed on Windows Server 2008, and I your like me that just uses 2008 as a workstation OS, that's a real bummer.

But there is hope, you can get Avira to install and run in Windows 2008, in only a few simple steps.

Now if you just download the installer from www.avira.com and try to run it you get an error message saying something along the lines of  ' this product can't be installed onto a server os' or something along those lines. What you need to do is deny it from checking part of your OS version.

So, this is what you need to do:

Step 1 - Create a User account..
First up you need to create a seperate user account, just call it "User" , the account must be an Administrator. You can do this by going to Control Panel -> Users.

Step 2 - Set registry permissions.
Now, still logged in as your default Adminitrator account, fire up regedit(start->run->regedit) and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions
Right-click the ProductOptions folder(in the left hand pane) and click permissions. With the permissions window open, click Add->Find Now and scroll down and select the User account you just created. Make sure you select User and not Users. Once the User account is added to the list, select it, then set the permissions for the account(in the bottom pane) to Deny everything. Click Ok. You'll get a couple of messages about setting the permissions just click ok to them.

Step 3 - Logon as User
Logoff your default Administrator account and log back in using the User account you created.

Step 4 - Install Avira
Now you should be able to install Avira from your User account. Don't worry, it installs the application for all users, so it'll be there for your default administrator account too.

Step 5 - Clean up.
Once that's finished installing log back in as Administrator, make sure the antivirus is all working nicely. You can then go ahead and revert all the changes you made in steps 1 and 2. That's it.

Linksys WAG 160N Crashing

So.. your WAG160N keeps crashing. Linksys have been absolutely useless with support for this product, and there are definately alot of unhappy people. The old WRT54G was an awesome little wireless router, so good in fact I had 4 of them, and they made me fall in love with linksys, the WAG160N however, has made me HATE linksys.

But anyways, so you've got one, your stuck with it, and it keeps locking up, crashing and being an overall pain in the ass.

Right now, I've got mine setup to the point where I don't have to physically get up, walk to the hallway, and reset the modem. it's always working, and it's all pretty solid. But it did take some effort, and a couple of extra little things.

1. Update the firmware to V1.00.15. This made a huge difference for me, and was a massive step forward for linksys in regards to fixing up this product. But although it was a massive step forward, it's still far from perfect, and unfortunately it doesn't look like linksys will develop any more firmwares for this product.

2. 120mm Cooling Fan - See my other post in this blog. The WAG160N gets really hot, and I found that that caused alot of instability, keeping it cool definately helps.

3. An electronic timer switch. Like this one pictured below is an awesome investment. Because my ISP has peak/off-peak times for downloading, I've got all my downloads set to start at 2am, when my off-peak time begins. What I found was when the modem was going from no load to MAX load it would crap itself and lock up, so, I've got the electronic timer switch to turn off the modem for 1 minute then turn it back on at 2:05am, and again at 6am. Most people that have this modem, have to manually restart it at least once a day, by having the tiimer switch, it'll do it for you.

4. Modified Settings - Now, there are a couple of little settings you can tweak in the modem config to make it more stable. The changes are:

1. Change the MTU to 1350
2. Change Wireless Radio Band to Standard - 20MHz Channel
3. Change Standard Channel to 13 - 2.472GHz
4. Change Beacon Interval to 75ms
5. Change Fragmentation Threshold to 2304
6. Change RTS Threshold to 2304

Here's how you change these settings in pictures:

That's pretty much it. These are the 4 things I've done and I've got a pretty solid modem now, the wireless doesn't drop out, and adsl never craps itself, it all just seems to work, like it should've in the first place.

As a side note, linksys have recently released and new hardware version(2.0), which means they probably won't be releasing any more firmware updates for the troublesome v1.0, which sucks. I'd love to have mine just run, without a fan, without having to be reset every night, but I think that there is very little hope for us poor 1.0 owners now.

How to Get Rid of Fast Browser Search Toolbar

Well... just jumped on the Mrs laptop and there's a friggen search toolbar installed. I HATE these things, they're useless, and more commonly associated with spyware. Which is why I was surprised to find out where it actually came from, this particular nuisance was actually from Facebook. Basically it comes from some facebook application called "Tattoons".. i thought facebook would've had abit more control over that it's apps where doing... but installing websearch toolbars is pretty bad.
Anyways, to get rid of it. It's pretty easy to get rid of, all you need to do in firefox is to go to Tools->Add-Ons->Externsions and uninstall it. Restart Firefox and it all should go back to normal.

el :)