Kobo Glo HD: Review & Comparison to Kindle

I recently bought a Kobo Glo HD, mainly out of curiosity to see how it compares with Kindle’s e-readers – specifically, the Kindle 4 and Kindle Touch. I bought it new from Japan for $100, which is cheaper than the Kobo web site price of $130. Now that I’ve been using the Kobo for a couple of weeks, here’s what I’ve found.

First I should list my e-reader priorities:

  • Screen: contrast, resolution, layout, font rendering. Unlike a tablet that does many things, an e-reader does only one. It should do it in the absolutely best way. The screen should be easy to read for hours: high contrast, high resolution, smoothly rendered fonts, optimal spacing, with the maximum possible user customization: margins, line spacing, font typeface, rendering, etc.
  • Book Formats: part of doing only one thing in the best way, an  e-reader should be able to read all popular book formats: at least the big three: MOBI, EPUB, PDF.
  • Reference Lookups: sometimes you want to look up a word in the dictionary or encyclopedia.
  • Calibre Integration: I use Calibre to manage my e-books. Pushing books to the e-reader from Calibre should be seamless. Automatically synchronizing collections, tags, highlights and annotations is a big plus.
  • Free and Open: I mean free as in liberty, not free as in beer. Books are available from many sources; the e-reader should not lock me into any single vendor’s ecosystem, devices or apps.
  • Ecosystem: the e-reader’s native ecosystem – selection, pricing, reviews, etc.

Now here’s how the Kobo Glo HD compares with the Kindle 4 and Kindle Touch.

Screen: overall, Kobo is better than Kindle – it has a nicer-looking easier to read page with a more customizable appearance and layout.

Size: Kobo and Kindle both have 6″ screens. The Kobo is smaller in overall dimensions, and lighter.

Resolution: Kobo is much higher resolution: 1448×1072 which makes 1.55 M pixels. A 6″ diagonal screen is about 4.25″ per side, which makes about 18 square inches, which makes 86k pixels per square inch, linear 294 dpi. This is the same as the Kindle Voyage, which I don’t have and didn’t compare. The Kindle 4 and Touch are both 800×600 which makes 480 K pixels, about 27k pixels per square inch, linear 163 dpi. The Kobo has much higher resolution.

Contrast: about the same. I didn’t observe any significant difference in contrast.

Layout: Kobo has far more layout options. Margins and linespacing can be adjusted over a wider range, and with more fine steps. Kobo spaces fonts and full justification more evenly. Kobo has a fullscreen option that eliminates the header & footer on each page, Kindle does not.

Fonts: Kobo has 7 built-in fonts and can render embedded publisher fonts. Kobo can also use any font files you copy to it, so its fonts are unlimited. Kindle has 3 fonts and you cannot add new ones. Kobo also has a wider range of font sizes with finer sizing steps so you can always get the “just right” size. Kobo has a font weight adjustment the Kindle entirely lacks, so you can get each typeface to the right level of light-dark-contrast to suit your eyes. This weight adjustment works only with Kobo’s built-in fonts, not user-added fonts. Kobo also renders fonts more smoothly – both the characters and kerning.

Lighting: Kobo has built-in lighting whose intensity you can adjust by sliding a finger up and down the left side of the screen. It turns off completely at the dimmest setting (slide downward). This blue-ish cast backlight illuminates the screen evenly. Kindle has no backlight. You can get Kindle cases with built-in lights, but they are expensive, run down the battery quickly, and light the screen unevenly.

Page Turns: Kobo lets you set how often it does a full screen refresh on page turns, where Kindle is fixed at 6. Kindle page turns are slightly faster than Kobo – probably because the Kobo has more than 3 times as many pixels.

Graphics: Many books have graphics and images. The Kindle can explode them full-screen for a better view. Kobo can do this only for books in the KEPUB format. This is not much of a problem because Calibre can convert any book to  KEPUB, and when the book is in KEPUB it opens other Kobo features.

Storage: Kobo has 4 GB of space and just over 3 GB is available for storage. Kindle 4 has 2 GB and Kindle Touch has 4 GB. None of them accept SD cards, but e-books don’t take up much space. You can store thousands of books on any of these devices.

Book Formats: The key difference here is that Kobo supports both MOBI and EPUB while Kindle supports only MOBI. Kobo supports EPUB, MOBI, PDF and KEPUB, Kobo’s proprietary format based on EPUB. Kindle supports MOBI, PDF and AZ3, Amazon’s proprietary DRM locked format based on MOBI. Neither has a good PDF experience – better to use a tablet or computer for PDFs.

Kobo has extra features with books in its native KEPUB format. Graphics can be zoomed and panned, it tracks detailed reading stats like your rate of reading and how long it will take to finish the current chapter or book. Also, the Kobo is more responsive, less sluggish and more accurate when highlighting and annotating text in KEPUB books. This is not a problem, since Calibre can convert any book into the KEPUB format, which does not have to be DRM-locked like Amazon’s proprietary AZ3 format.

Reference Lookups: Kobo and Kindle both have a built-in dictionary and link to Wikipedia. Kobo has dictionaries for additional languages and can translate foreign language words. Both have links to Facebook to share with friends what you are reading, but I haven’t used this feature (I don’t have a FB account).

Calibre Integration: both integrate with Calibre, but Kobo is more seamless in two ways. First, Calibre can automatically manage collections on the Kobo based on each book’s Calibre tags (or other Calibre properties). Thus, when you push your books to Kobo, they are automatically organized the same way they are in Calibre. With Kindle you must manage your collections separately. Second, Calibre synchronizes annotations – highlights and annotations you make on the Kobo appear in Calibre as notes in the book details screen. And if you delete the book from Kobo then re-send it from Calibre, your highlights & notes go with it. This is the killer feature for me – I use highlights & notes in all my books and it’s so nice to have them synchronized and stored. Kindle lets you manually copy your annotations as text files, but there’s no easy way to load them into Calibre attached to your books.

Free & Open: Kobo and Kindle both have a DRM-protected bookstore and ecosystem (apps, devices). Yet Kobo is not locked into this as strongly as Kindle is. Kobo has built-in support for Adobe Digital Editions accounts, making it easy to read library books from Overdrive, which most libraries use. As mentioned above, Kobo also reads both EPUB and MOBI files. Kobo’s software is also more open, and independent software developers have used this to create a more seamless Calibre experience. You can easily edit Kobo’s config files to enable a full screen reading mode, add fonts, and other things.

Ecosystem: here is Kindle’s advantage. Amazon’s selection of books is wider and pricing, while often the same as Kobo, is sometimes lower. Amazon has more readers and more reviews which helps when selecting books.

However, people like me who use Calibre to manage our e-books don’t depend on any single vendor’s ecosystem. I get books anywhere – Kobo, Google, Amazon, library, etc. Copy them to Calibre and organize them by topic so the source is on my PC, not out in someone else’s DRM-locked ecosystem or cloud. I convert them to any format I want, to read on any device I want.

Conclusion: If want the best reading experience and you maintain your books in Calibre, Kobo is your e-reader. The one area where Kindle beats Kobo is in the ecosystem. If you don’t want to manage your e-books yourself, if you prefer the speed and simplicity of single-click reading and you don’t mind being locked into a single vendor’s ecosystem, Amazon is the biggest and cheapest.

One-Device Alternatives: I had a Kindle years ago but for the past few years I read on my tablet because it gives one-device to rule them all – from aviation charts to movies to books to browsing, email and games, I can do everything on one device: my 8″ tablet. My tablet reader is Mantano which is a great app, and I synchronize with books on Dropbox. But this reading system has 2 key drawbacks. First, organizing books on my tablet. I’ve tagged all my books in Calibre but this doesn’t carry over to my tablet, where I have to re-organize everything. Second, my highlights and notes in Mantano cannot appear anywhere else. They don’t sync to Calibre and they are fragile – unless I’m careful I can lose them simply by changing where on the device I store the book. Kobo fixes both of these drawbacks. That could be enough for me to switch back to a dedicated e-reader.

While the Kobo suits my needs better than Kindle, the Kobo isn’t perfect. Here’s what I’d like to see Kobo do to make it better:

  • Enable it to display images in books to full screen, and zoom & pan – like Kindle does.
  • The default system font is too small and not resizeable. Make it bigger. Better yet, add a system font size setting that applies to the home screen, menus, etc.
  • Make it faster / more responsive. It’s a bit laggy pretty much everywhere. Kindle is laggy too, but Kobo is a bit more laggy than Kindle.
  • Keep it open – don’t lock it down with DRM. This is the Kobo’s key differentiating feature from Kindle.

Good IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) aka Earbuds

Most phones have very good audio output quality via their analog headphone jack <note to self: resist urge to crack iPhone 7 joke…> if you can find earbuds that sound good. Yet that’s a big if. Most earbuds sound like crap. Of the few that sound good, some have impedance or efficiency that don’t match well to a phone. Also, while phone audio output is often very good, that does not mean excellent or reference quality, so don’t go overboard and waste money on really expensive IEMs.

I listen to mostly natural acoustic music and I’m picky about sound. The best really good IEM I’ve found is the Vsonic GR07. They cost about $100 and sound really good. To my ears, they’re comparable to a pair of full-size HD-600. They have flat, neutral response that is neither warm nor bright, but just right. The treble is smooth with good detail. Due to a phone’s audio output limitations, even with uncompressed FLAC files the extreme high frequencies are rolled off and there’s less “air”, slightly less crisp transient response.  It sounds very good, even great, but not excellent or reference quality. The GR07 is about the best quality it’s worth paying for given the limitations of the source.

The best cheap IEM I’ve found is the Vsonic VSD1S. They cost about $35, have the same high quality construction and 90% as good sound as the GR07. Comparatively, the VSD1S has a slight midrange recess, not quite as smooth or extended treble. Overall, they still have a nice neutral sound despite have a touch more “V” shaped response curve. They’re good enough to listen to for hours enjoyably without fatigue, better than most other good IEMs, but just not quite as refined as the GR-07.

Flying over Mountains

Mountain flying in small single engine airplanes adds potential risks. But there are things pilots can do to minimize these risks and do it safely.

Night: don’t do it. Night adds risk, mountains add risk. Either alone can be safe if you take precautions. But don’t combine them.

Fuel: use a bigger fuel reserve because there is greater chance to be delayed – either having to take an alternate route, or due to strong wind. But don’t simply top off the tanks if you don’t need to because that can add unnecessary weight, impairing performance. Flying in mountains at high DA, you need all the performance you can get. Normally, I plan to land with at least 1 hour of fuel in the tanks. When flying in mountains I increase this to 90 minutes.

Water: you’ll be at high altitude which is dehydrating. Bring plenty of water for everyone on board.

Wind: understand how wind flows around mountains and plan accordingly. Here’s a great picture I got by Googling:

wind-mountain

  • I’ve circled in red the areas you should never fly. Here be dragons: down-drafts and turbulence.
  • Nasty wind effects begin at around 20 kts. If the UA forecast shows winds this strong over the mountains you’re crossing, consider an alternate route or be at least 50% higher than the highest ridge (see below).
  • Crossing mountains against the wind is super nasty:
    • First, you have the obvious: a headwind which slows down your ground speed and kills efficiency – and you’re at high altitude where winds are generally stronger.
    • Second, the downwind side of the mountain has strong down-drafts, so you need to climb just to maintain level altitude, which saps speed and efficiency even further.
    • Third, the downwind side also has a lot of turbulence. The last time you need turbulence is when your ground speed is slow and you are fighting down-drafts.
    • Fourth, you are at high altitude, where your engine has less power and your prop & wing are less efficient. Just when you need power and efficiency the most, you don’t have them.
  • Nasty wind effects exist from the surface to about 50% higher than the height of the ridge. For example if you’re crossing an 8,000′ mountain on a windy day, you need to be at least 12,000′ high to avoid the worst down-drafts and turbulence, though you will still feel some mountain wind wave effects.
  • Climb early. Know how high you need to be and get there well before you reach the mountains. If you get too close before climbing, you may get stuck in down-drafts making it impossible to climb to the altitude you need.

To summarize, if you’re flying over mountains here are ways to minimize the risk:

  • Do it during the day.
  • Have more fuel than you need, but not so much you’re unnecessarily heavy.
  • Climb to 50% higher than the highest ridge at least 50 miles before you reach it.
    • This is not necessary with calm or very light winds.
  • If you’re going against the wind, use full power properly leaned. At 10,000′ your engine only makes about 70% of its rated power. You need it all, and in the high altitude cool thin air you can’t hurt the engine.
  • If you get into mountain waves, ride them instead of fight them.
    • If they’re smooth and gentle, let them push you up or down at least 500′ before counteracting them.
    • If they’re pushing you too far up, maintain power, nose down & gain some airspeed.
    • If they’re pushing you too far down, maintain power, nose up to Vy if necessary to minimize the altitude loss.
    • Remember at sea level Vx is always slower than Vy. As you climb Vx gets faster, Vy gets slower, until they meet, which is your airplane’s absolute ceiling.
  • If you’re going against the wind, after you reach the top of the highest ridge you’ll be in an up-draft with a lot of altitude you no longer need. Nose down and convert all this energy into airspeed. You’ll regain some of the lost time and efficiency.

A Cheap Audiophile Headphone System

Note: I wrote this over 5 years ago. Technology has changed and we have better options today. Update: http://mclements.net/blogWP/index.php/2023/02/23/a-cheap-audiophile-headphone-system-2/

Here’s a cheap audiophile quality sound system:

That’s it. Connect the Juli@ unbalanced analog outputs to the amp’s inputs. Play your CDs, DVDs, whatever on the computer. Use whatever headphones you want.

Total cost: $510 = $170 for the card, $340 for the amp. Plus the headphones. You can get some vintage Sennheiser HD-580 or HD-600 on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. Or you can go all-in with a really nice set of headphones like the Audeze LCD. The Corda Jazz has a smooth sound, detailed and sweet yet neutral, with enough power to  drive almost any headphone on the planet.

I use this as a secondary system to drive my Audeze LCD-2F when my reference system is unavailable. It is amazing – 95% as good as the reference system. Extreme treble and large ensemble complex music is not quite as refined, but that’s just picking nits because it sounds damn good.

Years ago when I was in college I would have climbed a mountain of broken glass for sound like this, especially at this price.

Note: you can get an audio system like this even cheaper from JDS Labs. Get a single DAC+Amp for $300, so you don’t need the sound card. Just stream the bits from the USB port of any computer into the DAC. JDS Labs is the American version of Jan Meier’s Corda in Germany: a few guys in Illinois who are good electrical engineers and take a non-nonsense approach to building audiophile quality gear without audiophile prices or bullshit. That said, my ears say Meier’s gear has the advantage over JDS. Both have excellent specs but Meier’s stuff is subtly sweeter and more refined.

The Fantastic Audeze LCD-X

A few years ago I found the best headphones I’ve ever heard, the Audeze LCD-2. These are the 2014 Fazor version. A while later I made them even better with a subtle parametric EQ. That may sound like sacrilege to some audiophiles, but it works for me. The LCD-2 has  enhanced my late-night music listening and I still enjoy and use them regularly.

Since then, Audeze came out with another headphone: the LCD-X. It is designed to have a more neutral (flatter) frequency response and faster/cleaner transient response. Both of these claims are substantiated by measurements. But how do they sound? I wanted to find out. Audeze had a sale so I ordered a pair to get a listen.

Dimensionally, the X are exactly the same as my 2, or so close I couldn’t tell the difference. They’re black and made of metal, where the 2 are wood. The X are a bit heavier, but I didn’t feel the difference. Clamping force, fit, they felt exactly the same on my head.

I ran the comparison through my Behringer DEQ2496. More precisely, CDs played on my Oppo BDP-83, toslink to DEQ2496, toslink to Oppo HA-1, balanced headphone out. The DEQ2496 enabled me to level match within 0.5 dB, keeping the signal otherwise unchanged, or apply EQ as mentioned below. This doesn’t use the DEQ2496’s DA or AD converters; it operates in pure digital mode. Subjectively, I found the X to be 8.5 dB louder than the 2, so used this to equalize the levels.

Tech note: According to specs the X is about 11 dB louder than the 2 at the same volume setting. According to Audeze specs, the X makes 103 dB with 1 mW of power and has a 20 ohm impedance. Since it’s planar magnetic, the impedance is flat vs. frequency. That means 0.1414 V (141 mV) will make 103 dB, so 0.0317 V (32 mV) will make 90 dB. The voltage sensitivity of the LCD-2 is 0.114 V @ 1 kHz @ 90 dB. So we have 20*log(0.141/0.032) = 12.9 dB. My subjective impression was slightly different. Attenuated by 13 dB, the X was quieter than the 2; I used 8.5 dB.

First I did the fair comparison: head to head, no EQ. Here it was no contest: the X was easy to differentiate, and overall better sound:

  • X has more upper mid – less of the 2’s dip
  • X has wonky voicing – something uneven in the mid to treble response
  • X bass is slightly (about 2dB) quieter, but just as flat and deep
  • X has slightly better bass clarity
  • X has more linear and extended treble
  • X sounds “cool”, not “warm” like the LCD-2
  • Detail: X is on stage with the musicians, 2 is in the 5th row back
  • The X has more detail than reality; the 2 has less than reality; neither is perfect but the X is closer

However, I don’t listen to my 2s straight. I apply a parametric EQ: +4 dB @ 3800 Hz, Q=0.67 (4 dB / octave, 2 octaves wide). This counteracts the 2’s softness in the upper mids and lower treble, giving it a more neutral response curve and a bit more detail as if you’re sitting a few rows closer to the stage.

So next I did the realistic comparison: how I would actually listen to them: X raw, versus 2 with the above EQ:

  • They sound almost the same
  • X emphasizes the overtones, but still has the core sound
  • 2 favors the core sound, but still has the overtones
  • X is slightly more clear, yet less realistic, uneven voicing on some recordings
  • 2 has more realistic voicing on most recordings, yet slightly less clear
  • 2 is on the warm side of reality, X is on the cool side
  • Overall, which sounds better depends on the recording

Here it was a much harder decision. I also compared them to my speakers. They were about equally close to that sound, yet approaching it from opposite sides. These are both excellent headphones and I could be happy with either. They wipe the floor with any conventional dynamic headphone I have ever heard. If I didn’t already own the 2, or if I didn’t have a digital parametric EQ, I would pick the X. But I do already own the 2, and with the parametric EQ they are just as good as the X. I listen mostly to acoustic music and the 2’s realistic voicing is more important to me than the X’s extra 1% of detail. So why change anything?

I kept my LCD-2F and returned the LCD-X thanks to Audeze’s excellent service which includes a 30 day trial period. It was a fun experiment and satisfied my curiosity. While I kept my LCD-2F, I can heartily recommend the LCD-X to anyone who wants a fantastic set of headphones with dynamic and detailed yet realistic sound.

Addendum: In 2016 Audeze improved the LCD-2 drivers, making them thinner and lighter with better transient response, and improved reliability. The frequency response is unchanged. I upgraded my LCD-2 to these new drivers, now I have the best of both!

PS: a few years after I made this comparison, DIY Audio released reviews of these headphones. Their FR measurements correlate to some of my subjective observations above: namely the LCD-X has (1) low bass slight lower in level, and (2) uneven response from mids to treble.

Cyanogenmod is Great

Cyanogenmod (CM) is the most popular Android ROM supporting the greatest number of devices. Along with CWM and TWRP recovery, I’ve installed CM on 3 phones and 3 tablets, currently run it on 1 phone and 2 tablets. Here are the practical reasons why:

  • No bloatware from carrier or manufacturer
  • Clean, well organized – Android as it was meant to be. In comparison, stock ROMs like TouchWiz are a hot mess.
  • Faster performance, equal or better battery life.
  • All Android features supported, even ones your carrier might disable in their ROM (like tethering).
  • Root is built-in, turn on or off with a checkbox.
  • Easy automatic updates, just like a stock ROM.
  • More frequent updates – most daily builds are stable enough for daily use.

I used to list the following, but removed it:

  • Long term support – no planned obsolescence.

Originally I listed this because thanks to CM I’m running Android 6.0.1 on my 4-year-old Note 2 phone, long after Samsung & Verizon abandoned it to Android 4.3. However, I removed this point when I recently learned that CM stopped development for the Note 4. I realized that long term support is always fragile. The most you can expect from the manufacturer is a couple of years. With CM it may go longer, but you depend on developers with professional skills working on it for free as a hobby. At least with CM, if it ever is abandoned there’s at least a chance it will get picked up again, if it’s a popular device with developers.

There are also philosophical reasons I run CM:

  • If I own a device, I should be able to run any software I want. I applaud carriers and manufacturers for the work they do building reliable software, yet I object to them locking down the software. Customers should have the choice to run any software they want, so long as it plays nicely on the carrier’s network.
  • The above point is especially true when a carrier or manufacturer abandons a device. One could argue that as long as they’re providing software, they can prevent customers from running anything else on their network. I disagree, but there’s at least a thread of merit to that argument. But once a carrier abandons a device, they lose any right to tell customers they can’t run their own software.
  • Suggestion: carriers like Verizon and AT&T who lock the bootloaders, should issue their final software release on any device with an unlocked bootloader.
  • All human institutions are fallible, but when it comes to security and privacy I trust the open source community and transparency more than I trust any single company. Even for companies like Apple who have earned a public reputation supporting security and privacy, it is reasonable to wonder what goes on privately. What backdoors might exist in their ROM, what private data are they collecting and sharing, because some government agency forced them to do it? Since their ROMs are proprietary and close-source, we’ll never know. Prior to 2013, this would sound like paranoia, but events since then have proved otherwise.

Practical tips before buying any phone or tablet

  • Check to see if CM is available and how current it is.
  • Make sure it has an unlocked bootloader. This depends on the device and the carrier. For example, the Galaxy Note phones are unlocked on T-Mobile, but locked on Verizon or AT&T.
  • Remember – “unlocked” is ambiguous – don’t get confused.
    • Carrier unlocked: carriers are required by law to unlock on request any phone that is not on contract.
    • Bootloader unlocked: there is no law requiring this – carrier’s discretion.

 

P-51 Flight Experience

On July 4, 2016, I flew in the P-51C. Got a little instruction and stick time, and a 0.7 hour log book entry I will treasure for the rest of my life. It was every bit as amazing and cool as I expected.

After a few mins getting the feel of the P-51, this conundrum hit me. Sure it has enough fire-breathing power and performance to kill you in a blink, and there’s this foreboding sense of responsibility not wanting to screw up and destroy a magnificent 70-year-old piece of history despite having the CFI on board doing the real flying. Yet at the same time I expected the P-51 to be this beasty monster and instead found it so smooth and responsive and natural feeling, not just fast but also quick despite its weight, sensitive but not twitchy, just a really sweet flying airplane. I don’t mean to imply it’s easy to fly, at 0.7 hours I’m no judge of that, I don’t even have the skill to fly it on my own – the CFI up front did all the hard work. Even so, it seemed much more well behaved than I expected which left me in even greater awe of the men who designed it, and admiration for the men who mastered this airplane and flew it into battle.

From what I’ve read, more than half the pilots and planes lost during WW-II were in training or other non-combat activities. That goes to show that flying warbirds like the P-51 and AT-6 is like holding a tiger by the tail. I expected the tiger to be evident in every aspect of the plane: noise, control, handling, vibration, twitchiness, etc. What I didn’t expect was such a smooth responsive sweet flying airplane. Yet this actually makes it even more scary and dangerous because the tiger hides and whispers “you can do it”, until it suddenly strikes.

Photos & videos here.

Misleading Economics and Reporting

Here’s an example of poor reporting: misleading statements based on mistaken assumptions arising from economic ignorance, that tends to stoke groundless class envy:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/16/news/economy/top-1/index.html

Correcting and re-wording statements in the video completely changes the tone:

“The world’s millionaires control 47% of the world’s wealth” –> People can only control wealth they created, so we can say: “The world’s millionaires created more than half the world’s wealth, a fraction of which they control themselves, the rest enjoyed by consumers – or captured by governments as taxes, which ostensibly benefits the people.”

“Millionaires are growing their money at 6.3%, while lower income earners saw their wealth grow 4.3%” –> All income brackets are getting wealthier, which is healthy. Yet this analysis follows income brackets, not individual people or families, who move up and down between brackets, so it doesn’t imply that poor individuals or families are advancing slower than rich individuals or families. Indeed, mathematical variance would cause the brackets to diverge even if individuals were shifting brackets and moving closer together. More detail here:
http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2014/09/income-inequality-and-fed-report.html

“It is the up-and-comers creating most of this wealth” –> “Economic distinctions are dynamic, not static, which is a healthy sign that anyone with the right combination of ideas, work and luck can become wealthy. And successful people who don’t continue to work work hard lose their wealth and fall back into lower income brackets”.

The Amazing Audeze LCD-2 (rev 2 Fazor)

A couple years ago I bought a pair of Audeze LCD-2 headphones. I’ve listened to many headphones over the years and they are the best headphones I’ve ever heard. This is what I had to say about them.

But, like all things created by mankind, they’re not perfect. Their near-perfect frequency response has a small dip between 2 kHz and 9 kHz. It’s linear and smooth, so subjectively is barely noticeable. Yet it slightly subdues the sound, as if you’re sitting a few rows back from the 1st row.

Since I recently got a digital signal processor, I figured I’d try it out on the headphones. I put a single parametric EQ, +4 dB, centered at 4,000 Hz, 2 octaves wide (slope 4 dB / octave, or Q=0.67), so it has effect between 2,000 and 8,000 Hz. To my ears, this made the LCD-2 absolutely perfect. It’s subtle yet definitely noticeable (I blind tested it on a variety of recordings), and shifts you back to the 1st row of the audience.

I tried +6 dB and it was good, though a bit more than needed. +3 was not quite enough. And I tried shifting the frequency up and down a bit, but 4,000 Hz was the sweet spot.

From what I can see in specs, this makes the LCD-2 sound closer to the LCD-X, taking it from slightly warm or rounded, to neutral. The LCD-2 still sounds yummy, yet realistic – yet now it’s a touch more detailed. This EQ doesn’t change the character of the sound, it just makes that dip shallower giving a bit more upper midrange and treble detail. It’s about as close to perfect sound as human engineering can achieve in a headphone.

I’ve considered getting the LCD-X but this change nixed that entirely, making the LCD-2F near enough perfection to keep for a long time.

Fixing Intermittent Car Problems

A few months ago Michelle’s car (2004 Subaru Forester), which has been solid & reliable since we bought it new almost 13 years ago, acquired an intermittent problem: it would not start when warm. Cold starts were always good, but after you drive it 5-10 miles, just enough for the engine to warm up, then turn it off, then come back 15-30 mins later, it would not start. The problem was intermittent, happening only about 10-20% of the time. When it did fail to warm start, remove the key from the ignition and try again. It would almost always start the 2nd try. The start failure was: engine would crank like normal, but would not actually start. If you modulate the gas pedal it would start and run smoothly but it wouldn’t idle. No check engine light, and no OBD-II codes were ever thrown – not even when it was refusing to start. When the problem started, the car was about 12 years old with about 78,000 miles. It had always been well maintained – oil changes, air filter, clutch, tranny, brake & diff fluids, belt tension, etc. and was still getting about 20 mpg in around town driving, same as when it was new.

I do all our car maintenance because it’s fun problem solving, I trust myself to take the time and do the job right, and it saves a lot of money. Intermittent problems can be frustrating, but the challenge to fix them can be fun.

Since the problem only affected idle, and was electronic and intermittent, the obvious culprit was the Idle Air Control Valve (IACV). But this is a $350 part, and if it fails the engine is supposed to throw codes – but it wasn’t. There are several far less expensive parts that could be causing the problem, and I’d feel like an idiot replacing a $350 part only to find that the real problem was an $8 set of spark plugs or a $25 sensor.

Here’s what I did, in order… after each step I gave it a week or so to see if it had any effect.

  • Replace the front O2 sensor (the rear ones had been replaced a few years ago).
  • Replace the spark plugs (new ones gapped to spec). The old ones were clean but gap was about 4 times higher than spec. It ran smoother but didn’t fix the problem.
  • Re-teach the ECU idle (disconnect battery, ignition OFF then ON pattern, etc.). This improved the idle but didn’t fix the problem.
  • Clean the IACV – idle air control valve. It was pretty clean to start with, but cleaned it anyway. Also tested its function – OK.
  • Check & clean the crankshaft & camshaft position sensor. Upon removal they were surprisingly clean, but I measured the proper impedance, cleaned & re-installed them anyway.

That last item is what fixed it.

Correction: Dec 2016 – no it didn’t fix it – problem returned!

Since the sensors were operational, I can only surmise that the problem was an intermittent or poor electrical connection to the sensor, that got cleaned when I removed & reinstalled it.

Since the problem came back – next steps on my list below. Since the engine has never thrown a code or lit up check engine light, I wondered if the OBD-II system was even working. When testing the IACV I unplugged it while the engine was running. It immediately threw 4 codes, one for each wire pin. So the OBD-II system and my code reader are both working.

  • Replace the fuel pump relay: sometimes with age, the point contacts get corroded and don’t provide enough power to the fuel pump. When my 15-year old Honda Civic developed a similar problem, this was the root cause.
    • Replaced in Nov – did not fix the problem.
  • Main relay: probably not the problem; everything else on the car works fine – radio, headlights, etc.
  • Clean throttle body: no. A dirty throttle body would cause problems all the time.
  • Clean/replace the MAF: this engine – 2004 2.5 liter Subaru flat 4 – has no MAF.
    • It has a TPS – throttle position sensor
      • Inspected OK – operates smoothly and measures 190 Ohm – 5 kOhm
    • It has a MAP – manifold pressure/vacuum sensor

Update: Jan 2017

Finally, I decided to do what the original symptoms suggested: replace the IACV. By this time I had replaced every other cheaper part that could be causing the problem, to no avail. I found an IACV on Amazon for $250, which is still ridiculous but about $100 cheaper than the local parts place wanted, has a warranty, and is probably the exact same part from the same manufacturer. Took all of 10 minutes to install it, and the difference was instantaneous and obvious. First start-up, engine spun up to 2,700 RPM (which is unusual but this is a brand-new sensor the computer is learning how to control) then slowly ramped down to a normal idle speed. Next morning’s cold start (ambient temp 31* F) engine fired right up, spun initially to 1,700 RPM then slowly ramped down to 750 as it warmed up.

Ah, give me the good old days when an engine’s idle was adjusted by cracking the throttle open a smidge with a simple set screw. There’s a reason airplane engines don’t use all these electronic controls.