Hi there. Lifelong Turtle fan here. It took me a while but I finally got around to seeing the newest film based on the morphed adolescent terrapins, directed by Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs the Machines) and Kyle Spears (storyboard artist for The Mitchells vs the Machines), and written and produced by Seth Rogan. It's an animated movie, the second ever after 2007's TMNT.
I have thoughts about it, so let's talk.
When I started this blog, I had a lot of problems in my life and writing about my hobbies gave me something of an outlet. It may not have addressed my core issues, but it gave me a needed distraction and some relief from the depression and anxiety those issues brought. It was also an exercise, as I enjoyed writing and I saw it as a way to hone my skill, albeit in a vacuum largely devoid of feedback. But I am my own worst critic, and so in obsessing over the things I had written, I was generating my own feedback loop. If nothing else, I could grow my skill at expressing the feelings I was trying to convey.
When one of my hobbies turned into a YouTube channel, that became all I could do. I didn't have the time or the energy to devote to blog posts, and any other hobbies that didn't involve just simple collecting tended to go by the wayside. Without even the remotest idea of what I was doing, I naïvely set out to develop and conquer a new skill: Video production.
I love headphones. I love technology. So it stands to reason I like headphone technology. In fact I've written about it here on a couple occasions. So when a "new" innovation in the field springs up, I tend to take notice. It was just such an innovation that motivated me to peck out those original writings some thirteen years ago.
Back then I was quite bullish on the concept of planar magnetic technology. Here was something that promised to deliver much of the speed and resolution of electrostatic drivers, but with the ability to be plugged into any conventional headphone amp. And they were being made by a couple guys futzing around in a garage, producing headphones that rivaled the best multi-million dollar technology from the market's biggest players. It was almost like getting to witness Jobs and Wozniak stamping the first fruit logo on a home computer. And yeah, to me and many others, the writing was on the wall.
I'm less bullish on AMT technology, though. AMT, or Air Motion Transformer transducers, are closer in DNA to planars than dynamics or anything else. Essentially it's like an accordion. You have a folded diaphragm that squeezes and expands to move air. OK it's not really an accordion — an accordion is basically a bellows that squeezes air through reeds. AMT produces sounds through the folds themselves via extremely fast movement. One manufacturer reckons four times faster movement than planars or dynamics. (We'll get to them in a bit.) And like those technologies, you can plug it into an ordinary headphone amp.
Sounds promising so far, right?
