I’d been using the Sony Walkman ZX300a China version the whole time before this, and honestly I was pretty happy with it. In theory, two years later Sony puts out its upgraded Walkman ZX505, and I should be excited and upgrade ASAP. But I wasn’t. The upgrade points were too few: The system switched to Android (but it’s just a player — Android is useless here) The port switched to Type-C (a good thing, but not enough to drive an upgrade; I already have way too many Walkman cables) A bigger non-matte screen with higher resolution (who was it that hyped matte screens back then?) Some features that look nostalgic (who actually uses that Walkman cassette playback mode? Besides buying it to show off) More for the same price (slightly cheaper than the ZX300 preorder, but still not as good as the FiiO you’d compare it against)

A lot of people want to buy “sleep plugs” — by which I mean earbuds that are comfortable when you lie on your side. Most people using them want to fall asleep to something: maybe a symphony, maybe rock, maybe Guo Degang, maybe a ghost story. In any case, it’s definitely not going to be ASMR. Of course, the two big requirements for sleep plugs are probably just these: The sound quality has to be passable, no noise Comfortable to wear — no matter how you lie on your side, it shouldn’t feel bad So recently a batch of “sleep plugs” showed up on Taobao, pretty cheap, with a full set of connectors — they support the usual 3.5 as well as Type-C. Really thoughtful. So, being the bored idiot I am, I bought a pair to check them out.

Once again, my hands got itchy. This one was for use at the office, so obviously I couldn’t buy anything too nice, and the budget couldn’t be too high either. So I found this on Taobao. It claims to be an RHA CL750, some kind of “factory surplus stock,” but the price is obviously suspicious — only 150 yuan.

After buying FiiO’s Bluetooth over-ear headphones last time and liking them, I’ve finally started buying FiiO earphones too. The reason I bought this was purely my hands acting on their own. By the time I came to my senses, the order was already placed. Of course, the main factor in that impulse was the discount being too big to resist. The first-batch preorder was 30 yuan cheaper, with six interest-free installments, plus a free cable if you posted a review. Basically 100 yuan off. The earphones arrived pretty fast, and unboxing them was full of that typical FiiO “pile on the extras” vibe. It came with a bunch of accessories — a case, a pouch, everything you’d expect. But what we care about is the earphones themselves. As a certified fat otaku, purple was the obvious choice.

I originally planned to write a 2019 eroge roundup, but my beloved Duan-ye nagged me on social media to post a shopping writeup, so that one gets pushed back. Honestly I like writing shopping posts too. They’re fast, simple, low-effort, and they still count as a post. Who wouldn’t? Esoteric audio stuff especially — you can bullshit freely with zero accountability, and apparently there are idiots who enjoy reading it. Perfect time for one, no? This time it’s about: the FiiO EH3 NC over-ear Bluetooth wireless headphones.

Needed something at home to listen to music, so I decided to buy a network speaker. Honestly, I know the best in this category is the Apple HomePod. But nobody in my house uses Apple devices except my wife, and I’m an Android guy, so buying it was obviously unrealistic. Ended up going with Sonos, and I had solid reasons for choosing Sonos:

A few days ago while aimlessly browsing the web, I came across this article: The highest-sound-quality earphones in history, now only 20 yuan At the time it felt pretty badass, and also pretty bullshit, so I figured—I may not be as rich as Old Wu the Second, but 20 yuan is something I can grit my teeth and fork over, so I decided to test for myself whether it’s really that magical.

A while back there was a thread on Reddit recommending some cheap Chinese e-waste, and it was pushing this Bluetooth speaker: the Jambox mini. I’d honestly never heard of this Jambox mini thing. I just saw the thread hyping it up with “can’t lose at this price” and “beats stuff at the 500 yuan tier,” so since it was cheap I figured I’d buy one and mess around with it. This kind of thing always reminds me of back in the day when I’d read some idiot “poison-pen” post going on about how some earbuds only cost 49 or 99 and you can’t go wrong buying them, and in the end it turns out you really can’t go wrong — they just sit there gathering dust. This time I couldn’t hold back and ordered one. And the seller, who seemed to be some kind of official Foxconn outlet, took nearly a week and a half to ship. But it did eventually arrive. The speaker is bare-bones: just the unit and a charger, that’s it.

As someone who’s been out of the audiophile game for ages, I find the current enthusiast market kind of funny and kind of sad at the same time. Ever since I redirected the money I used to spend on headphones into buying music albums, I feel like my horizons have widened. “A ten-thousand-yuan IEM isn’t worth hearing ten thousand albums,” or something like that. At least I’m not like some grade-schooler on Reddit, buying insanely expensive IEMs just to listen to a music library that hasn’t been updated in years, flipping back and forth through the same dumb test tracks. Or running high-end gear to listen to doujin music produced in some low-end studio. That’s just unscientific. High-end audio gear really does work, sure. But for most people it’s useless, and for most audiophiles it’s also not much use — unless you’re a die-hard classical fan and love other large-ensemble music so much you refuse to listen to anything that isn’t a SACD from a famous studio. Then yes, high-end gear does work. But for most people like me, who listen to pop, occasionally some small-ensemble stuff, and just want to feel the charm of a melody — as long as the headphones don’t have that “boom-tss boom-tss” low-brow tuning and aren’t distorting or off-balance, that’s about enough. Yes, about enough. How do you know that the ten-thousand-yuan suit-and-tie stack you bought wasn’t used to listen to songs made by someone using a garbage 5-yuan USB cable? With that money you’re better off just listening to more music. So I’ve been increasingly abandoning wired gear and trying Bluetooth. The biggest advantage of Bluetooth is convenience. The biggest disadvantage is, naturally, sound quality. But with APTX and LDAC gradually opening up, Bluetooth has more or less reached the “listenable” stage. So I bought the FiiO BTR3 Bluetooth DAC/amp, two and a half months ago… Why did it take me this long to write up my impressions? That’s a long story.

Haven’t done an impulse buy in a while. This time it’s because I saw this thing was cheap enough: A 99-yuan Bluetooth earphone with aptX support and killer battery life. So I bought one to check it out — my laptop supports aptX now too, after all.