I'm a loser, baby
The Perfecting Equilibrium Digest, November 13-19, 2024
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control
Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat
Yo, cut it
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby
Comment of the Week
Jack Baruth on Sunday OT: Testing Feola's Buds, Tiny Tube Fetish, The End Of RVs, Blip-Whiff: Perfecting EQ-librium-Speaking of shills, losers, wannabes… How about our old pal Chris Feola and his pathetic attempt to remain relevant to his no-doubt-shrinking cohort of disappointed readers by pimping a stupid set of $24.99 Bluetooth earbuds, claiming that they’re as good as the $250 competition?
Two of our mutual subscribers actually messaged me about Feola’s claims, with one of them noting, additionally, “PURE BULLSHIT”. Well, there’s nothing I like better than knocking some know-it-all down a peg, so I bought the Moondrops immediately, and let me tell you, pal…
the old S.O.B. isn’t entirely wrong. Let me start with some caveats. Unlike Mr. Feola, I do own a bunch of high-end earbuds, up to and including the almighty Noble Kaiser 10 wired model that is generally acknowledged to be among the finest such items ever made. No wireless earbud is going to touch what you get when you pair the Kaiser 10 with a proper headphone amp and DAC. So instead I compared the Moondrop Space Travels to my top three wireless earbuds in regular rotation:
Bowers&Wilkins Pi7 S2, $399 per set: These are, to my mind, the best Bluetooth earbuds in history, by a disturbing margin. The gap between these and Apple’s crummy-ass, chick-oriented AirPods is like the difference between the Revel Ultima setup in the old Lincoln Continental and the two-speaker dealer-installed tape deck in my mom’s 1983 Civic 1500S.
Noble Fokus Mystique, $320 per set: These sound a little better than the B&Ws if you’re alone in a quiet room, but they can’t match the Pi7 for noise cancellation and sealing against the ear canal, so they’re inferior out in the real world where you actually use Bluetooth earbuds.
Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro 2, $199 per set: The best all-purpose, long-life earbuds on the market. These go ten hours on a plane trip and will cancel noise the whole time, compared to the above two audiophile-oriented products that run out of steam at three hours or less. Best when paired with the compressed-foam, USA-made earbuds from Comply Audio.
So where do the $24.99 Moondrops fit in? My first twenty minutes’ worth of listening didn’t impress me at all — but as I turned up the volume and let the Space Travels settle in, I was more and more awestruck. By their dynamic range, by the impactful clarity with which cymbals and synth lines appear on the soundstage, and by the remarkably hi-fi way in which the subtleties of voice are put across to the listener. I listened to them for an hour on my exercise bike with no ear fatigue whatsoever.
Damn you, Feola!
I’d put them at least equal to the Galaxy Buds in terms of range and audio fidelity. The noise canceling is perfectly adequate, a little bit behind the Samsungs and an astronomical unit (get it?) worse than the B&Ws. These Moondrops are better than the average $100 set of wired earbuds. It’s truly amazing.
Are they perfect? No. The Moondrop app is famously trash, especially on Android, and it’s also a privacy nightmare, so I won’t install it. Which leaves me with no way to cancel touch sensitivity or adjust noise canceling or do any of the stuff that is dead easy on the Samsungs and at least possible with the higher-end buds. I can’t use these in a race car or motorcycle, because they don’t seal well enough and their AirPod-like form factor isn’t great with a helmet. Last but not least, of course, they’re 100% made in China, not like anybody does Bluetooth buds anywhere else.
Oh, and the case sets new records for stupidity in design, being monstrously sized and somehow nailing the combination of “trivially easy to let the earbuds fall out accidentally” and “kinda difficult to get them out on purpose.” Just awful.
The bottom line, however: Christopher is right. These are worth buying, and the price makes them close to disposable. They’d be great for workouts, travel, any place you really don’t want to risk a set of Nobles. Unlike Mr. Feola, I am not too proud to give you this affiliate link, which gets you a price of $21.24 and earns me a full thirty cents. Enjoy, ya filthy animals.
Jack,
As always, thank you for the kind words! One more note about the Space Travelers: yes, the app is ass, but at least it's completely useless! You can switch ANC modes by long pressing either bud for about a second; the buds will click, switch ANC modes, then have their idoru say something cute. "Shhh" means noise canceling is on; "Heh" means your in transparency mode; "Eh" means your in normal mode.
Speaking of useless, I don't know why you'd go through the expense of programming an artificial idol like an idoru, and then have it say Heh, Eh and Shhhh. I mean, she also says "Connected" when you turn them on, but it hardly seems worth it. Next time put that money into the case!
Perfecting Equilibrium Stories
Easter Eggs
My brain is a peculiar place; it likes to play word association, and then play back songs with those words. Here are the songs playing in my mind as I wrote these articles.
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