Converging Shipments: A Headphone Synergy

A few days ago a massdrop special, offering the Sennheiser HD58X Jubilee headphones, caught my attention at a price I couldn’t pass up ($135, less the $20 for being a new drop member). I’ve been listening to Bose QC25s at the office and QC35 IIs at home, but they just lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. (In particular: Bass. Bury a Friend just gets murdered on them.) Meanwhile, I still haven’t listened to Fear Inoculum, as I haven’t found the right time to sit down with it, without distraction. (I named my first Labrador Maynard, y’all...) Finally, cleaning house, I found (again) my old iPod mini first generation, and toyed with the idea (again) of modernizing it. It still works, but the battery is pretty weak, and the MicroDrive is a moving part that will fail sooner or later. So I ordered:

• A high capacity replacement battery (750mAh EC003, 3.7 VDC, 2.77 Wh) ($17 when I ordered it, free shipping) (no reviews; wish me luck) (I would have gone with the relative known quantity of the iFixit.com battery, but they’re out of stock)
• SanDisk Ultra 16GB Compact Flash card (SDCFHS-016G-A46) ($21) (better bang for the buck might have been a 32GB card, which are around $1/GB, but larger cards use more power and I kinda wanted to - maybe irrationally - keep this on the cheap side; it’s still going to have 4x the capacity it did when new)
• Some spudger tools ($7), which haven’t shipped yet and which I’m not sure are strictly necessary, given everything else I have in my toolbox.

The battery was supposed to arrive yesterday but the office was closed, so it showed up today. The CompactFlash card was always supposed to arrive today, and hopefully it will. The headphones were supposed to arrive tomorrow, but the most recent tracking information now shows them out for delivery and expected delivery today. And the old friend I was supposed to have dinner with tonight had to kick it back at least a week while he deals with employee issues.

Tonight may finally be the night I sit down and properly listen to the first TOOL album in ~13 years...

So, yeah, I got the iPod running.

I tore apart my circa-2004 iPod mini 1st gen (still working, but the battery life was minuscule and as long as I was in there, figured I might as well remove the MicroDrive and upgrade it to larger capacity flash storage). It's now got the 750 mAh battery and a 16GB CompactFlash card installed. That done, I put it in disk mode and let iTunes restore it, and then loaded some curated high(ish) quality audio files.

I'll be the first to admit, I don't have a “palette,” and after decades of rock concerts, ragtop Jeep Wranglers, other convertibles (I've never owned a car where the top wasn't removable or retractable), motorcycling, and flying general aviation piston planes, honestly, I probably never will.

But OMG. I hooked up the HD58Xs and ... It was like I've been drinking “Two Three Buck Chuck” my whole life, and finally had my first taste of estate grown, small production Pinot Noir. Nothing seems to stress these things out, not even the bass line in Billie Eilish's bury a friend. Listening to newer^‡ TOOL, I get lost chasing the instruments around in the soundstage. (I’m still learning the vocabulary.)

I know my kit is still “bargain basement” adjacent, but I have the feeling I'm going to be exploring far beyond the QC25s that started this trek.

I’ve since learned about https://www.rockbox.org, though haven’t installed it. Might, someday. For now, I’m loving having it work as it did 17 years ago.

^‡ I remember one of the first concerts I attended, back in ’93, described by the local newspaper as a "Dour Wall of Sound ..." Even as early as Lateralus, that was definitely not true (luxuriating immersed in Schism as I type this).