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Not quite. I’m saying that huge price variance exists in the high output monitor space, and very often price reflects quality.

I never inferred that this sector was immune to price hiking bullshit – digital cable prices are a perfect example of that, and I’m sure that there are plenty of overpriced monitors all over the place too. My point was that unlike wine tasting (which is verifiably subjective), quality in the PA space is measurable.

14 days ago on Ecstasy for my eardrums: tripping through the addictive psychedelia of million-dollar hi-fi

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Also came here to post about the Samsung ad. We get it, you need to make money, and I don’t run any ad-blocking software on The Verge domains because of that.

But an ad that size, that completely breaks the page content layout, is not cool. Aesthetics are irrelevant here; for an every day user, this falls into the same annoyance category as page-hijacking ads. Its irritating and ugly, simple as. You guys have always done a stellar job of unobtrusively including ads in a way that fits your page layouts, but this is just obscene.

16 days ago on Really, guys? This Samsung Ad? What is this? 4 recommends

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Lubuntu and Xubuntu are both really lightweight, and elementary OS is pretty lightweight too (though more resource heavy than Lubuntu and Xubuntu). You could also try a stock Ubuntu and use a lightweight DM like Awesome.

17 days ago on Ubuntu 13.04 from a "normal user" persective 1 reply

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Your analogy falls flat, because its bullshit. Sense of taste is far more subjective then sound, and that’s simple fact.

Your point about digital cables stands; there is no interference in digital signals. However, sound systems are analogue devices. The signal may be digital, but it has to be converted into analogue because sound waves are a thing. Music doesn’t magically beam itself from your digital audio file to your brain, it has to be converted into sound waves which pass through the air to your ears which convert those vibrating waves into what we recognize as sound.

Basic anatomy aside, creating good speakers is fucking hard work, and I’ve been to enough festivals and know enough sound engineers to know that even an extremely talented engineer cannot make a set of bar-standard monitors sound anything close to as good proper set of monitors like those described in the article.

I’ve been to a pair of gigs recently; at the first, the audio engineers had complete control over the venue, setting up everything exactly how they wanted it to be; these guys are no joke, and they spent weeks setting up for one gig. The sound was great, but it still came absolutely nowhere close to the sound quality of a set of Funktion Ones they set up inside a crappy tent in a muddy field at a festival last weekend. The reason? The monitors they had to work with indoors were crap, the ones they worked with outdoors were simply outstanding.

Pretension is everywhere; wherever there’s passion there’s likely to be pretension. But in this case, $80,000 Funktion Ones beat the absolute shit out of $30,000 bar speakers any day of the week, and all you need to do to prove it is to hear it for yourself.

18 days ago on Ecstasy for my eardrums: tripping through the addictive psychedelia of million-dollar hi-fi 2 replies 4 recommends

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Basic spec 15" MacBook Pro is a better buy for that price range.

20 days ago on The new Razer Blade: hands-on with the 14-inch model 1 reply

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$1,999 for the 256GB version, according to the Razer website.

20 days ago on The new Razer Blade: hands-on with the 14-inch model 1 recommend

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Combined audio in/out, no SD card reader and no Ethernet. I’m glad Razer have finally built a sub 17" laptop, but why are such basic inputs missing? And why oh why is that monitor <1080p? Come on Razer, if you want to compete with Apple you’re gonna need to try harder.

20 days ago on The new Razer Blade: hands-on with the 14-inch model 1 reply 1 recommend

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+1 for misleading title.

about 1 month ago on How two Valve engineers walked away with the company's augmented reality glasses