It seems like every summer we have an extended power failure. The last two years it’s been right around July 4 weekend, when hot weather with no AC becomes an issue. Hopefully we have gotten this year’s out of the way now…
The outage from the storms lasted a total of 16 hours, and there were no updates at all from the power company during the whole process. In fact the last “update” (with no changed information) was at 3 AM, only 6 hours into the mess.
So Monday night we went to retrieve our rescued dairy products from my parents’ fridge… only to have the power go out again Tuesday as my lunch break from work was wrapping up. This time, instead of small clusters of 10 homes without power here, 50 there, 1 elsewhere, it was one big batch of 1400. My UPS estimated 38 minutes of usage, but it seemed to actually give about half that or less. I waited a little while to see if the power would come back, then dragged myself to the office to finish the workday, figuring that we’d have to shuffle our groceries again. Naturally as soon as I arrived I got a text from my spouse saying the power was back. Then the power company said it was restored.
I started getting a little more used to the sound of those Space 2 headphones, but I found I really didn’t like them for walking around even just for a short while at work. They’d have been completely unsuitable for a longer walk in warmer weather. So I gave them to my spouse (who’s a bit less picky about sound, and just wanted some wired headphones to use for her computer… they do wired as well as Bluetooth) and researched open earbuds.
There are a few categories of designs for them, but the generally favored style now seems to be one where there’s a little speaker blob that sits in front of your ear canal, attached via flexible band to a battery blob that sits behind your ear. It doesn’t pinch but remains both secure and comfortable. Eliminating the most expensive options, almost every reviewer gives top marks to the Soundcore Aeroclip. But a strong second, among those that reviewed it, is the Tozo Open EarRing… nearly as good in sound quality and 1/3 the price (or less!) I opted for those…
…and I’m not at all disappointed. I was listening to Heilung and Client_03 on them at my home office today and didn’t feel tempted to switch back to my studio headphones; after work I gave Stärker’s Spectral (a Bandcamp Friday pick) a first listen while walking around the park. Super comfortable. Decent but not perfect sound — open earbuds can’t deliver much sub-bass. But what’s there is clear and pretty well balanced and doesn’t feel “wrong.” There’s no sound isolation, nor active noise cancellation… but there’s no air isolation either which feels great. The charging case even has a nice LED screen to show its charge level and that of the two buds. I wouldn’t mix or master an album on them, but for a day at the office or some exercise, at this price I could hardly be happier with them. Maybe eventually I’ll upgrade to the Aeroclip (perhaps when there’s an updated version) or even Bose or something.
Speaking of Bandcamp Friday, I really focused on dark ambient this time. In addition to the aforementioned Stärker, I went for Schloss Tegal, TROUM & Raison d’Etre, Kloob. One from Muied Lumens and a live album from Kristoffer Liselgaard rounded it out, and while not strictly dark ambient they’re not all that far off from it either. I guess this kind of goes with my inclination toward a more droney form in my own recording project, but I also turned away a bit from more typical ambient stuff (stringlike pads playing calm major chords, you know the sort of thing).