Product Review- Coby CV320 Studio Monitor Headphones

A new addition to CriticalArticles.org: 

product reviews.

BOTTOM LINE

The Coby CV320 Professional Studio Monitor Headphones are extremely comfortable, sound good, and are a great value at less than $10.

In terms of construction, some parts appear sturdy while others look kind of flimsy. Hard to say after only two weeks of ownership.
Highly recommended. 9/10 stars
 
Read below for the details.
 
Inexpensive

These were bought to replace a much-used and worn out pair of $10 generic jumbo over the ear headphones.

I wear headphones at all times and places- on the train, cooking lunch, in the rain, doing yard work, and so on, and I don't want to worry about damaging expensive, fancy new audio headgear. So I opt to never spend more than a hamilton and live without the dread of "what if somebody keys my Cobies."

Also, price\performance-wise, more expensive headphones are, in all respects, only marginally better, in my opinion. Anyway I'm not planning on using these to mix Dark Side of the Moon- maybe the rawer Animals, but I'm no audiophile.

Big is good

After years of experience, this really large, over the ear, cushioned monitor style is my clear favorite for portable music. A recent episode of experimentation with some trendy silicone tipped, in-ear "canalphones" left my violated ears sore and disturbingly dilated, plus the damn earwax crudded things always fell out!

Sound

Speaking of earbuds, tiny headphones tend to have puny bass. The situation typically improves as the the drivers get bigger. The Coby CV320's were tested using Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and were more than satisfactory for enjoying the low end.

Cushioned, isolating headphones like this model are also great for outdoor audio book listening, since ambient noise is minimized.

Comfort

These are definitely the most comfortable headphones I've ever owned. My ears are covered entirely by the cups: no ear squishing here. The earpiece assembly swivels for the best positioning and comfort. The connecting piece above the head is drawn forward for a better fit.

The Coby CV320's have a solid monitor feel yet they are remarkably light, which may be the product's stand-out feature. You don't feel like your putting on a helmet or suiting up for amateur boxing when wearing these.

The single cord design is excellent and the cord itself feels surprisingly tough. It's quite long, too, which is a plus for me.

Build

This lightweight design may actually prove to be a problem. The plastic assembly that connects the earpieces is so adaptable because it is thin and the attachments are not very robust. I've only had these for two weeks so time will tell.

Finally, the built in volume knobs per ear are a little silly, for my purposes anyway.

Conclusion

Highly recommended if you have my tastes in headphones. Will update regarding durability.

The Abolitionist Project - David Pearce Podcast - The Hedonistic Imperative

Philosopher David Pearce made this podcast in 2007 and it is currently available on www.abolitionist.com. I made single image videos that accompany the audio and uploaded them on YouTube. This allows for easier embedding and linking. There are other video versions of this podcast but they tend to be accompanied by distracting and melodramatic slideshows.

Pearce's online piece The Hedonistic Imperative (found at www.hedweb.com) has had a profound influence on me, and I am a big fan of his various articles and websites. I often try to explain these ideas to others and am usually met with strong but predictable resistance. It is easier to link to these videos and sites than to debate something that has already been outlined so well.

My only issue with Pearce is that he seems to be associated with the "animal rights" movement. While I agree with everything mentioned about animals in this podcast, nothing in it would be possible without research on animals. My conclusion (based on a video of another talk) is that Pearce is not opposed to animal testing for the ends described. I despise the anti-testing movement and just want to make that clear.

Here are the videos. Enjoy!
PART I:

PART II:

PART III:

American Censorship ©

Please call your representative today.
Use the link below:

http://americancensorship.org/modal/call-form-moz.html

SOPA, Jobs, and the Future of Music Industry Middlemen

[Edit (1-19-2012) Luckily, since this was written, anyone not living under a rock (or alternately who isn't a senile old senator who can't remember which bill he was paid to sponsor) has heard of SOPA and PIPA, due to internet blackout day. The following link is still worth looking over.]

If you have never heard of the proposed SOPA bill, make sure to check out the following link before reading any further. This thing is a big deal.

http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html

SOPA and its senate sister PIPA will enable unprecedented internet censorship in the US. This legislation will authorize anti-competitive corporate practices, shift burden of proof to those least able to defend themselves, and generally restrict the internet, undermining its utility, privacy, and safety.

The Colbert Report hosted a very brief, humorous debate on SOPA. Music industry exec Danny Goldberg defended SOPA as harmless and necessary for the survival of the entertainment business.

Here's a link to the segment:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/403466/december-01-2011/stop-online-piracy-act---danny-goldberg---jonathan-zittrain

Despite Goldberg's smug assurance that such broad legislation will only be used as promised, the dangers of SOPA and PIPA seem clear. But I will deal with a supposed benefit of the bill. To quote Goldberg in the debate:

"Over the last 15 years, multibillion dollar [internet] companies have been created. At the same time, thousands of jobs [were] lost in movies and records and books."

He's saying SOPA will save jobs in America. It also sounds like he's vaguely suggesting that the jobs situation is the fault of powerful online newcomers. Jobs-lost numbers are controversial and I don't know how they are calculated or by whom. It's hard to trust statistics quotes from trade group reps who tend to count every download as a lost sale. I do believe his statement and in any case the quantity of jobs lost is irrelevant in this discussion. Rather, it is the kinds of jobs lost that matter.

Losing one's job, or not being able to find work is, at best, very rough and more often disastrous. There is, however, a kind of dissonance when jobs are talked about relative to costs. Lowering taxes often means firing people- an obvious example. Purely as a point of argument, let's say a $20 dollar CD sale versus a $4 digital download produces additional revenue that can contribute to more salaries allowing for more office cubicle jobs at record companies. Does this justify industry price gouging, monopolization, and especially the limitation of digital (immaterial) access to art, education, and knowledge in general to the public? There may be a dilemma on an emotional level- unemployment sucks. Still, you will find few people willing to subsidize the resurrection of the telegraph industry for the sake of new jobs.

On his official website, Danny Goldberg states that he has "worked in the music business as a personal manager, record company President, public relations man." To appropriate a quote from a non-SOPA article in Spin magazine¹, I believe he is or was a "gatekeeper of the few channels to reach consumers [e.g. radio, MTV]." Goldberg's knowledge of the industry system as well as the kinds of services he provides were required by aspiring professional recording artists. Something changed in the last decade and a half that resulted in a massive depreciation in value of such services, if not their complete irrelevance. Can you guess what it was? The internet suddenly allowed artists to market themselves, communicate directly with fans, and so on.

Danny Goldberg is probably sufficiently well off and not in a panic about losing his job. Nonetheless, such a job, or at least much of what it entails, is obsolete. He is desperately lobbying for the preservation of an anachronistic system, arguing that it was a source of employment and therefore an intrinsic good. Is it a stretch to call him a Luddite? Middlemen like him no longer have a significant place in either making, distributing, or broadcasting music. Anyone planning such a career should probably reconsider or risk becoming one of the supposed thousands without a job due to what is commonly termed internet piracy. Being a PR mouthpiece for the recording industry like Goldberg seems like a safer bet.

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing that all the reported jobs lost were related to business and establishment positions and exclusive of those actually involved in making music. However, it seems very likely that the much larger proportion were such middlemen.

Predictably, Goldberg uses language like "theft" and "stealing" in his argument. This equates stealing a car to duplicating and storing electromagnetic bits of binary data. The economic implications of the latter certainly deserve serious discussion, but the analogy is absurd and has no basis considering the logic of the physical, corporeal world we live in; a car is a tangible object, information is not.

And so, ironically even though SOPA is wrong on so many levels, it's apparent that even the mindset behind its expressed goal is considerably flawed.

¹Spin, January 2012 (I'm not actually a fan of this magazine).