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comment by ecib
ecib  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Eighth Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

So something slightly off topic but related.

My sis works for Harmon Kardon and someone in her group needed some SoundSticks for a conference or trade show, and they were back ordered throughout the entire company. Since I just got a set, I loaned them out. Couple weeks later they returned them and threw me a pair of these headphones:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/636439/akg-k167-ti-sto-discussion-i...

I pretty much spent all weekend next to my stereo listening to music on these. It blew my mind how good everything sounded. The last time I had an actual set of cans over my ears was probably when I was 6 or 7 years old listening to Sesame Street records on my dad's stereo. In this age of crappy ear-buds that come with phones and shitty MP3 formats, I was just blown away at how good music could sound.

If you haven't tried a pair on (or have not in a while), I highly recommend doing so. It completely transforms the sound. Also, it was pretty interesting diving into the headphone subculture on the net. These AKGs had a thread talking about them over 100 pages long. That's just this particular model. Really cool.

Edit: But here is a song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQJ3HXeKG4





user-inactivated  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All I could think reading that thread was, must be nice to have some money...

ecib  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was very fortunate in that the speakers were a Christmas gift from my sis (which she got at about a 70% discount off retail), and the headphones Harmon tossed in were unexpected and no charge to anybody.

I'm definitely not Mr. Moneybags :)

On a side note, I got to see her company intranet page where employees log in to get their discounts on products. It is INSANE how much of a markdown they get. I was imagining something like 30-40%. It's actually closer to 60-70% across the board. They must be making some serious margin in the audio electronics market, unless they are giving them to their employees at a loss, which I wouldn't imagine they'd do.

user-inactivated  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Contribution margin is massive in the tech fields, usually. But yeah, every once in a while I think about spending 80-100 bucks on music-listening equipment, since it's such a big part of my life, but I can never quite make myself do it.

_refugee_  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's funny, all I could think was "Wow, this reads like an advertisement that doesn't have anything to do with the thread. Oh look, the poster added on a video in an edit as an afterthought."

ecib  ·  4318 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well the point was how incredible music sounds through a pair of over-the-ear headphones as opposed to speakers or earbuds. If you love listening to music, it really improves the sound immensely...by almost a shocking amount. Some people might be into that.