We already had a NAS at home, but it was useless to the older folks in the family. Fine for me, too much hassle for my parents. For them a NAS is actually necessary — they need somewhere to keep the photos they take, whether on phones or cameras. Importing photos from a phone to a PC is way too much trouble for them, and I didn’t want to install some domestic Chinese management app and get burned. Dumping everything onto one computer also seemed unsafe — one dead hard drive and it’s all gone. So we decided to go with a Synology. Given data safety concerns, I picked the two-bay DS216se.

Recently I keep hearing this word, “light luxury.” No idea who cooked it up first, but it caught on for a while anyway. “Luxury” I get, but what the hell is “light luxury”? “Luxury” mostly means: something you could handle for 50 yuan, you insist on handling in a 5000-yuan way, chasing that low cost-performance ratio. No doubt, luxury belongs to the rich, and “light luxury” looks more like a different kind of luxury for the broke-ass crowd. Funny, right? Being broke and still wanting luxury, pretending to have money when you don’t — isn’t that just showing off? Though fair enough, “light luxury” does carry a bit of that showing-off flavor to begin with.

“So… you like music?” When I told the blind-date woman—God knows which number by now—about the only hobby I can actually bring up, I finally got something slightly more positive than the usual “oh.” “Yeah, a lot.” As I said it, my head was full of the line from an eroge: “はい、大好きです。”

I’m flat broke lately, so I’ve been eating whatever’s cheap enough to keep me full. Military rations, for instance…

A long time ago I had no idea who Luo Yonghao was, yet plenty of my classmates were obsessed with him. They all thought he was amazing, so I watched his talks about idealism and startup history too, and figured yeah, the guy really is something. At least he isn’t the type who only cares about profit, and that alone is worth a lot. Then he decided to make phones and started boasting online every day. It annoyed me, but I could sort of see what he was up to. He just wanted marketing and eyeballs. He just picked a fairly low-brow way to get them. I wrote about this a long time ago. I was kind of itching to try the Smartisan T1, but I really hate physical buttons, so I never pulled the trigger. This time, with the Nut, I thought it over… figured worst case I could just replace my old Meizu M1 Note, so I went for it.

A long time ago I didn’t like Chinese DAPs. They were ugly and the battery life was bad. Later the battery life at least improved a bit, getting into double digits at least, but they were still ugly. So now we’ve reached the point where Chinese DAPs finally look not-terrible and have passable battery life, but the gap in software experience is still a real wound. This is a fundamental gap. While world-class portable players give you all sorts of comfortable control experiences, our Chinese DAPs are still way behind on the basic function of “searching for songs.” All we can do is pull out “but our sound quality is better” to console ourselves, but the number of audiophiles willing to give up usability is small after all, and long-term self-numbing inside a small circle only leaves you further stuck in place. Fortunately, a manufacturer is finally willing to break through, and that’s FiiO.

Why did the K314P earbud climb to 1000 yuan? Back when I bought mine, it just sounded like a bright, airy earbud with a bit of a bass deficit. Though to be fair, I never listened that closely… I just figured: At this price, an earbud is only good for making some noise… Turns out the K314P made quite a name for itself with that noise. According to the various audio gurus, the K314P’s treble can match or even exceed the K3003—you know the K3003? The big hybrid flagship! And then it got discontinued… and nothing else reaches that treble height. So the price went up.

Back when I’d just started university, I bought my first pair of in-ear earphones — an Edifier model, I think. Once I pushed them in, I discovered a whole new world. Over time, “earphones” came to mean “in-ears” as an unwritten rule. After all, if a thing can’t even isolate sound, it just sounds bad, and the lows and highs are hard to get right too. But people are fickle. Lately I’ve been fascinated by flat-head earbuds, because I dug out an old Creative Air, and its surprisingly wide soundstage caught me off guard. That’s when I realized flat-heads can do things in-ears can’t. There aren’t many high-end flat-heads, and even if there are, they’re hard to track down. Luckily, Beyerdynamic Earbuds happened to put out an entry-level model, so I gave it a try — and it felt like discovering a new world again. How to put it… that slightly wider soundstage, bass that isn’t too cramped, paired with full mids, really gives you a different feeling when you listen in the dead of night. Of course, I said the dead of night, because the weak spot of flat-heads is that the isolation is terrible.

The first time I heard of Rene Liu wasn’t because of her songs. That was probably middle school. Star Chinese Channel was airing April Rhapsody, and Rene Liu played the rather tragic lead — but it was that role that stuck with me. I don’t know if I liked the frail woman she played or liked Rene Liu herself, but I think it was the former. At least later, when Pink Ladies came on, I took one look and ignored it. Luckily I later heard her songs. Most of them have the shadow of cover versions, but her distinctive voice still left that first impression: a frail woman, quietly singing those slightly sad stories.

One thing that annoyed me about the PHA-2: you can’t use it while charging. Most of the time I’m using it as a laptop DAC, and the thing constantly running out of juice got on my nerves. So whether the PHA-2 can be powered over USB became a big question for me. Some people say it can, but mine can’t, so I had to email and ask… Fine then, time to buy a spare.