headphones whirligirl they're back. 031130 ... lotuseater just as important as the cd player that gets me through life 040120 ... nom i guess she thought i had my headphones on or maybe she thought i was not there 060120 ... shilohlives Mine always seem to break at the most inconvenient times. 060121 ... raze i've had a lot of different pairs over the years. at the moment there are six of them, all with their own niches, running the gamut from cheapies i got from a friend in partial jest as trade for a much better pair i never used, to expensive denon cans with housings made of mahogany. the best of the lot are these battered sennheisers i've had for fifteen years. they don't make them anymore. and i'm positive the stereo cable was manufactured to break every two or three years so they could make more money off of selling replacement cables. in high school i used to walk around outside with my sony discman stuffed into the inside pocket of my leather jacket, these giant black closed headphones wrapped around my head. i didn't care how ridiculous i looked. what mattered was hearing the music with the bass response it desired, and letting it serve as the soundtrack for those walks, shutting out the sounds of the world around me, recontextualizing the visual stimulus. because these headphones have been discontinued for close to a decade now, getting sennheiser to send me their leftover replacement cables is a task and a half. to combat this necessary evil, i bought a second set while they were still being sold...only to sit on the backup 'phones absentmindedly, crushing them beyond repair. the originals survive into their teenage years. their frequency response may not be the most linear or "flat", but i know them so intimately, it doesn't matter. those are my headphones, and they've never lied to me. 130307 ... raze the cable's dying again. the 'phones themselves go on living. 140614 ... flowerock are for blocking out the noise of the city and other pesky sounds of "progress" when I went back to forest I began puting the ear buds in then stopped. I want to hearthe wind and the birds. I was not in the city. head phones, endless cycle of love and hate as they tangle, wear out, the sound gets scratchy, thy work i f bent at just the right angle... 140615 ... raze a while back, i found someone who was selling a pair of those long-discontinued sennheiser headphones on ebay for a price that wasn't insane. i snapped them up. the ones i've been running into the ground are more than twenty years old now. i figured it was a good idea to have a backup. you never know when you might sit on a pair of headphones and kill them without meaning to. next to my battered old pair, the ones i got off of ebay almost look like a different species. and the physical degradation of my long-suffering utility headphones has been such a gradual process, i didn't notice the sound was changing along with their appearance. as the headband has lost most of its shape and the faux-leather ear pads have exploded, allowing the cloth and foam inside to escape, it's turned these cans into something closer to a closed/open hybrid. the ear pads, or what's left of them, sit on top of the ear more than they wrap around it. no wonder i didn't understand why most of the old reviews i read online had people complaining about how bass-heavy these headphones were. the ones i've been using forever don't even sound like themselves anymore. they haven't for a long time. they're much more open and balanced now, with a great, deep soundstage. who knew something could evolve into a better version of itself while falling apart? 210906 what's it to you? who go blather from