As someone who’s already “retired” from the audiophile hobby, I’m not really interested in mysticism anymore. Mostly I just look for songs to listen to—following arrangers, following singers, seeing which singers look good… oh, I mean sing well. I used to use the Dunu DN20000J as my retirement IEM, but lately my tastes have gotten a bit heavier. That IEM, well… you know how it is. Back then I fell for the bullshit those KOLs were peddling, chasing after “female poison” and transparency. Who’d have thought I’d end up liking EDM and Hip-Hop? And even when it’s not EDM or Hip-Hop, ordinary pop just lacks something through the Dunu… So in the end, I guess I just prefer that dynamic driver feel? Finally I saw the JVC FX1200 on sale for JD Double Eleven, so I just bought it. As the flagship of dynamic drivers, I figured I’d experience its charm.

I’ve wanted to listen to a tube amp for ages. Everyone says tube amps are super classy, mostly because they supposedly have this amazing “flavor.” So I got together with a high school buddy to figure out how to put one together. He said the circuit and soldering should be fine—schematics are all over the internet—and the tubes are no problem either, you can just buy ready-made ones. Solder it up using the public mold designs online… So I placed the order. We’d agreed to do the soldering together, but last month his master’s thesis defense was such a pain and kept him so busy that I let him start on his own. When he finished, he said: after soldering it with someone else’s board, someone else’s case, someone else’s power supply, and someone else’s tubes, it ended up exactly the same as the finished units other people sell. So why not just buy a finished one? Yeah… for something this cheap, why not just buy a finished one?

My father said he wanted a Bluetooth speaker, to pair with his phone and listen to music. Sure, when he’s home he blasts music from his phone at some ungodly hour every morning and wakes me up with all that boom-tss boom-tss, but since it’s my tsundere old man asking, and he’s wearing that face of “if it’s convenient for you you can just casually buy me one, of course if you don’t I can buy it myself, it’s not like I’m asking you to buy it or anything”—no reason not to buy it. Money spent on your parents is money well spent. But since this was my first time buying one of these, I didn’t want to go too expensive. Buying a Bose felt like a bit much for him—start with something with good value for money, so it won’t hurt if Dad accidentally loses it. After looking around, I settled on the Sounder Honeycomb 2S+. It happened to be on special at JD, 299 - 100, and with a BaiTiao savings coupon it came to 169 in the end.

I bought my mom a Xiaomi Mi Band 2, so her old optical heart rate Mi Band landed in my hands. I tried wearing it on my right wrist, since my left one already has a Moto 360 2nd. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much from this thing. I even installed the pairing app on my backup Nexus 5X. My demands were low — mostly I just wanted to see if it could track my sleep quality, and whatever else it did, whatever. Since it has an alarm function, I set an alarm on it identical to the one on the Moto 360 2nd. The original band strap was disgustingly filthy, so I swapped on a spare yellow one that came free when I bought the thing.

I bought a Mi Robot Vacuum because my room gathers way too much dust—the kind where you leave your phone out overnight and wake up to a layer of dust on the screen. I tried sweeping once a day, but it still wasn’t enough, so I figured I’d get a robot vacuum. I looked on Quora and couldn’t afford anything they recommended, until I was scrolling X (Twitter) and saw that creep Wu Lao’er’s avatar, and thought, why not just follow Wu Lao’er and buy Xiaomi stuff? I assumed the Mi Robot Vacuum would be hard to snag, but it turned out to be in stock on the official site… so I placed an order. Ordered in the morning, and EMS delivered it that afternoon. Damn impressive…

A while back I had the Mojo modded and hooked it up to another computer as a DAC, so the laptop has been without a portable DAC lately. Figured I’d pick up something cheap as a replacement. The requirement was to get charge-and-play working as much as possible, instead of the Mojo dying on me every other minute. And the bar for sound quality isn’t that high either — just needs to be a real step up from the laptop itself, ideally without too much hiss. Obviously none of this compares to the high-end demands of mystic audiophile tycoon Wu Lao’er, who runs desktop amps straight into Xiaomi hybrid IEMs — the very setup that pulled him out of the Philips fan camp and got him hooked as a proud Miboy. Given my lowly requirements, I thought it over and went with a Japan-import CYBERDRIVE USB DAC. This CYBERDRIVE USB DAC thing is made by a Taiwanese company, ran a crowdfunding campaign on JD.com, and went for 240 or 300 RMB there, can’t remember which. Claims to be USB-stick-sized and decode DSD.

As a total novice in the audiophile mysticism scene, I inevitably had to go consult a master. So I tracked down Wu Lao Er. Wu Lao Er is the ultimate veteran audiophile — he knows more mystical buzzwords than TFBoys has released singles. I asked Wu Lao Er if he could recommend any earphones, preferably comfortable ones, for lying in bed. “Xiaomi Circle Iron.” Wu Lao Er didn’t even hesitate. “Xiaomi Circle Iron, the ultimate endgame pair. Buy it and you’ll be as free of worldly desires as I am… oh right, what do you listen to?” “I don’t really listen to music. I’m mainly buying them to listen to eroge.” “Then you should want the Xiaomi Circle Iron even more!” Wu Lao Er’s voice went up. “The Xiaomi Circle Iron… the vocals are forward, the mouth shapes are big, sibilance is low, the soundstage is wide but controlled, the mids are fairly tight, leans warm, and there’s a whiff of rosin to it. Perfect for a vocals person like you.” “But my budget is only… 20 yuan.” “What the hell are you gonna buy with 20 yuan, you dumbass? You gotta add some money!”

A while back I bought a Meizu EP51 Bluetooth earphone, and a few days ago it broke. It broke out of nowhere. I got home from a run and the right earbud just kept hissing noise, the thing stopped responding, then it got hot, then it was dead. I’m guessing some part of the waterproofing wasn’t done right. But I bought the mainland China version, so I figured I’d take it to the local Meizu place for repair. Their attitude was actually fine, it’s just that you have to wait in line.

People gotta treat themselves, sure—but you also have to factor in the possibility of gifts. So how does a Xiaomi hater like me end up with a Xiaomi Sign Pen?

Earlier this month I helped a coworker buy a discounted BlackBerry Priv — the one recommended on Smzdm. Based on my coworker’s case, it took a bit over two weeks to reach him via a forwarding service. The price was pretty cheap, or at least not expensive. After it arrived, I got to play with it for a while since I’d helped with the purchase — maybe half an hour or so. Here are my impressions.