For those of you who don’t know, I run some music related stuff over at h0key.net.  Part of what I besides chronicling concerts is actually making music.  My schedule fills up fast so more often than not, I run out of time exploring.  Enter the RPM Challenge.  It’s a February long challenge to produce an album.  No strings, no expectations, and no real quality levels.  Just make.  This year was my second crack at it and it ended being a much different experience.

Last year I had way more time.  This year, not so much.  Because of all that extra time, I took to task some mixing and mastering.  You know, really shape the sounds and make sure they play nicely with each other over the speakers.  I did nothing of the sort this time around.  It was just a straight dump from a an audio workstation straight to disk.

Traveling was a big theme for me this year.  I had people in town and I skirted on to Vegas for my bachelor party.  I guess that's why it's called Air Travel.  Lots of these tunes were done on the road for me or my loved ones.  In fact the big producer of music for me this year was the iPod Touch.

I ended up leaning on a combination of Propellerhead Figure, DM1, and FL Studio Mobile.  I think I tossed some other things in there, but it was those three apps that really fleshed out my voice for this RPM Challenge.  FL Studio Mobile may ring a bell for some of you out there as it is an extension of the what used to Fruity Loops on the desktop.  I'm most comfortable in its interface than any other DAW on the iPod.

Figure, however, is something everyone needs to get.  If you have an iPod Touch, it's worth $1 to plunk down and try out for yourself.  The intuitive nature of the interface makes it easy to punch up any of the three different types of sound available.  You get the choice of Drums, Bass, and Lead.  It's way too easy and way too much fun.

It wasn't all snaps and bleeps and clicks however.  I missed out on Ableton Live work as well as not as many live parts coming in.  On one song I did get to rock the Kalimba, but outside of that it was all programmed and perform on a computer.  I also missed out on using my self-built MIDI controller called the Boomawang.  I guess I have some things to work on now.

But that's the fun of the RPM Challenge.  You start in with an idea of what you want to do and it ends up being completely different.  The only real pressure was the time.  And that's healthy pressure.  I already and planning on knocking out more stuff from my missed goal list and am coming up with more goodies for next February.

I workout but I need to stay connected.  Connected to the internet?  Well, not so much, but it does help.  Connected to music?  Definitely.  It's the major motivating factor in my, and probably your, workout routine.  There's just so many pains around the delivery that makes the routine hard to manage.  Welp, I think I finally found a way to make it easy.  And all on the cheap too.

I got a beautiful pair of Sennheiser ear buds for my birthday last year and I was really hoping to take care of them.  You all know the story.  Get ear buds, workout, watch them break.  They can break in so many ways.  The sweat can short out the speakers, an errant arm swing can knock them out of your ears and bash it against something, or you could even stretch a weird way to wear the wire around the jack thin and useless.  So after going through another pair in almost record time,  I knew it was time for the internets to help me out.

Research abound from Googles to Lifehackers had me compile a tasty list of ingredients that combined into the flavorful workout accessory I have today.  What is it?  It's 1 part Monoprice MEP-933, 1 part marshmallow ear bud plug, and HDE Bluetooth Receiver.  The combined forces makes it versatile, inexpensive, and a good quality sound.  I can even replace each individual item fairly quickly.

So apparently the ultra cheap Monoprice MEP-933 puts out good quality.  I grabbed the guy from Amazon and gave it a twirl.  So the sound is pretty crisp, right up there with my old Sennheisers, but the lows could not keep.  It's not too terrible of a nit pick.  Especially when 6 of the Monoprice MEP-933 could garnish me another Sennheiser.  One thing I did do, however, is replace the stock rubber stoppers with some marshmallow ear bud plugs.  The sound was better but that's not why I replaced them.

Now on to the HDE Bluetooth Receiver.  I heard about this guy as well and fell back to it after checking out the prices for the Bluetooth wireless sport ear buds online.  This device was advertised as incredibly simple to use and easy to maintain.  They were mostly right.  The biggest issue I'm having right now with HDE Bluetooth Receiver is the board keeps jostling loose from its plastic encasing.  That causes the switch to go wonky and leaves audio jack in an impossible place to plug in.  Everything else works as advertised so it's only a notice and not a warning to stay away.

The combination of the Monoprice MEP-933 and the HDE Bluetooth Receiver works out great at the gym.  Since it is wireless, I can rig the cloth Monoprice MEP-933 cable to be shorter and closer to my body.  Granted, I would've done this before, but I also had extra room in my workout arm band to stuff in the extra cable.  Because of that, I also am heading off any worn wire at the jack issues.  Plus, because I'm a huge nerd and lug around 3 different Bluetooth capable devices at the gym, I can switch between all of them when necessary.

One more warning, Bluetooth itself isn't as high a quality (at least the version that HDE Bluetooth Receiver is using), so if you are expecting near clear sounds you won't get it with this setup.  What you will get is flexibility, increased protection against wear and tear, and some extra bucks in your pocket.  Go ahead and try this setup out.  Or better yet, if you have something better, please let me know.  Happy workout!

Yes, Tuesday was the last day of SXSW Interactive and I'm starting to get bogged down.  It's a good that all I have to do is drink more Red Bull and pop the ole collar here.  In all seriousness, the day's events for Tuesday went from learning to exploring to networking to partying.  My voice is gone and my legs are dead.  But it was all worth it to me.

The first panel brought great discussion in terms of choosing native or web app development for your product. They had some Facebook, Apple, Tumblr, and embr.js representatives. Eventually they came to the conclusion that going hybrid is the best for right now. We'll see how things change in the future.  And the Ember.js guy kept saying Bro.

Next up it was music tech day and I watched a panel on the future of music with a Spotify guy and the lead singer of Disturbed. It was a glorified commercial. But there were some decent points made about the loss of exposure with the loss of MTV .

So I ended the morning going to the Turntable.fm talk and their vision of the future of music, which was social.  IM glad the founder went over the history of  Turntable.fm through Stickybits. Sprinkled in between that and the big announcement that they are fully licensed were great tips for startups.  Very light and enjoyable talk.

So after lunch I decided to hit up the musictech mixer.  SoundCloud was there and I got to talk to Paul Lemere .  Before that I accidentally stumbled on the sxsw create event at the registrants lounge.  Lots of cool DIY electronics and very inspirational.  In fact, I met a whole host of great people at both events.

Finally it was time for interactive closing party. I was already a little toasty from the trade show.block party and took full advantage of the amenities during the show.  I'll talk more about the shows on h0key.net but for now I'll just say it was off the chain.  Thank you very much SXSW Interactive it was well worth it once again.

Now that the rain was behind us, it was time to make up for lost outside time. Monday brought some travelling as well as some gathering. I only attended 3 panels, but they were all pretty much worth it. The rest of the day was good ole booth to booth fun. After Tuesday, it's all music and all anight. So Monday was a way lighter day.

The first talk was the kickoff of Adobe's schedule of creative talks at Radission. I went up there to see about HTML5 and performance for animations and transitions. What it ended up being was a pretty cool demo of Adobe Edge. Edge is basically Flash but content gets created in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. I was impressed with how they are trying to revive that kind of creatives use this tool and not learn hardcore stuff that they do really well. Oh and I also won a drawing for Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection. So that was cool.

After making sure my address was correct, I bolted to the Hilton for som Kinect hacking. Okay I didn't really hack anything with Kincect, but I got to see some cool demos. They started out the panel well by going over simple examples using the Microsoft SDK for Kinect and Visual Studio Free 2010. Then it progressivley got more complicated. Among that was controlling a quad copter by flapping your arms and giant rock em sock em robots that can be controlled by people. All in all, I walked out real interested in playing with Kinect.

The last talk I went to involved how WebGL is affecting the browser these days. I wasn't exactly super coherent about this talk but I got to see some good uses of WebGL online toady. It was geared toward modelling mostly. The AutoDesk/AutoCad lady demoed how they are actually using WebGL to create an online webapp version of their AutoCad software. Very cool.

Yeah so that was my session attendance. The schedule wasn't intentionally light, I just went to the ones that interested me for the day. So the Trade Show kicked off Monday as well and I got to fill the empty time with that. Let's just say that I'm a schwag ninja. Guessing by the weight of my bas, I have about another 20 shirts to add to my wardrobe. Oh and tons of buttons.

That was about the highlight of the day. I went to the Nokia Lab and saw some first live music of SXSW. Also, some lady gave me here drink tickets, which was why I was a little incoherent for the WebGL talk. The GDGT party was in the evening and it turned out to be a dud. So we called it a night and bussed back home early. Yeah it's about to get alot rougher.

Sunday started out raining but it ended up being a SUNdat fun day. Yeah, puns all over the place. I ran throug some sessions, got some grub and schwag, and shook hands with a real cool. All while it from cold and rainy to warm and sunny. It was like the sun energized the whole crowd. Let's look at the talks:

The Fast HMTL5 talk at the Radission was a great overview of all things JavaScript for great development. He was also the guy that did the SXSW Interactive Shuttle website, which does real time tracking ofthe shuttle. He talked about some programming methodoles like MVC for JavaScript and how to work with. He also gave a high level over view of HTML5. A nice little round up of best practices.

Continuing on the trend I then headed over to the ACC and caught the CSS optimizaiton talk. The guy was from Mozilla and he helped walk through how the gecko browser rendered the DOM and specifically CSS. He then talked about when redraw events happen and what strategies to do to avoid redraw. The take away from this talk was that the nightly build of Firefox has a debug toggle to flash the screen whenever CSS is redrawn.

I opted for a change for a change of pace next and caught up with Spencer Hall from Everyday Should Be Saturday, a college football blog. His focus was on developing memes and new ways to cover sports versus the old world way. I got some great idead for KC College GameDay and also got chuckle on him jamming Ron Prince and Craig James.

I went with a buddy of mine next to see the API is Your Business talk. This was a fairly huge bust. I walked in already believing that and really didn't want to see everyone on the panel either defend or cheerlead that idea. I was looking for strategies and best practices. Oh well, we bailed early and enjoyed the sun some more.

Finally, the last talk of the day saw me hit up my favorite SXSW speaker, Paul Lemere from EchoNest, and his talk Data Mining Music. It was essentially about half of what he talked about last yearh, but he also blew through about 10 demoes showcasing EchoNest's APIs and work. Multiple oohs and ahhs on top of applause all around the talk. I get soe energized after coming out of his panel and I'm anxious to get started on some his work, especially the Remix API.

As for the non talk events, as soon as the sun came out, the action was all over the street. I knocked out picking up my new Moo cards and got a whole bunch of schwag. The parties in the evening also came through. The Interactive + Film fusion party was at the Stage on 6th and featured free food and drink. The country music started so we bounced to the Parish.

The PBS Sherlock Party totally came through for us. Stephen Moffitt of Doctor Who and Sherlock fame was there to promote Sherlock season 2. After waiting in line for 2 hours and got to meet him. I asked if the Time Meddler will come back he said it's very low on the list, ha! Well, he didn't really know who the Time Meddler was. At any rate the line wrapped around the bar so we weren't jonesing for anything. That was the day and now I'm getting ready for day 4!

Yes, another wet day down here in Austin and I survived it.  This time around the buses ran on time and we actually ended up early to the convention center.  The rain came and went all day but it did not slow me down from catching some awesome panels.  Friday was more higher level talk in working and in design.  So Saturday I tried to hit up more technical workshops.  Some worked and some failed.  But I bounced where I needed to bounce and got some tasty amenities along the way.

So yes the bus ran on time.  I messed up and thought the all day events were actual sessions so we showed up a little too early in the morning.  It gave me time to get some coffee and hang out at Circus Mashimus.  The whole story behind that area are companies looking for API type work and even companies that provide API design for said API type work.  It was late opening up but I got in there for the bloody mary and skeeballed my way to a free T-Shirt (the count now is up to 4 or 5).  I learned something about Rovi, which is an EchoNest type service for music, audio, video, and any forms of entertainment/media.

But let's get to the sessions and for now I will bullet point it due to DST:

• The first talk of the day saw some guy from NetBiscuits unveil a new framework for ubiquitous touch and gesture control.  It's not JavaScript, it's markup.  The big selling point was 70 lines of code that translated to 300 for a mobile browser implementation.  The idea looks pretty cool but I'm not sold on it just yet.  Granted they will save time for me trying to code for browsers and mobile platforms, but what I understand of frameworks is that the layer of abstraction slows things down.
• Next up was building Accessible HTML5 Canvas objects.  Demo and session fail.  I know it's important but it wasn't a good fit for me.  I was interested in how to use Canvas but I didn't get that in the first 15 minutes of the talk.  So I headed over to the Hilton and watched a developer from Flipboard talk about best strategies for native and webapp development.  It was only question and answer by the time I got there but the conversation provided a few tips.
• I headed back to the Radison to check out Building Great Games in HTML5.  The speaker for that talk works at Opera and showed off how he and a team of interns ported over C++ to JavaScript/HTML5 for a game.  I'm into figuring out a way to build synthesizers in the browser and while game dev does not fall under, the graphics portion for this talk gave great insight into what I want to do.  Yes, it was all sprites, atlases, Canvas, and WebGL.  Great talk.
• The Twitter and Netflix under the hood talk was awesome.  Granted is was all Cassandra, but the panel did point toward an era of toolbox implementations just for Big Data and databases themselves.  There's no one solution (sorry Oracle).  I also thought it was cool to see Twitter admit that they use Redis.  The questions from session attendees also grilled the panel enough without burning.  This might've been the best one of the day.
• The last talk of the day for me was Rainn Wilson pimping his Soul Pancake website.  It was funny and entertaining in a Ze Frank kind of way.  I was a little uneasy when Rainn talked about the influence of religion on his journey but I got over it in time to watch him bring somebody up from the the crowd to smash guitars on the stage.  Definitely the feel good moment of SXSW so far.

So that was the panels.  Sunday, I see more Kinect and workshop type stuff so I'll know I'll be busy.  The parties Saturday night were off the chain.  I don't even remember the happy hour.  The Interactive Opening Party was once again amazing, thanks to Frog Design and new co-sponsor Microsoft.  That party gets better every year.  We called it an early night due to DST and I'm glad we did.  We need to conserve out energy for the rough and tumble of music later on next week.  I know I'll get better sleep tonight and I'll be ready to rock out on a hopefully drier day Sunday.

Okay so I mentioned earlier that this year will be a little different.  I was expecting it to be different on the fact that I was living in town, but I did not expect it to be different because of the weather.  Jinkies, that kicked my ass.  It also made me double think about the local transit system here in the city.  Nevertheless, I defeated that adversity and recovered rather nicely for the first day of SXSW 2012.Yeah the rain was brutal.  So much in fact that I got in a little fender bender trying to get home before the event.  I made fun of the locals for being rain weak and now I get to be labelled that.  It still wasn't as bad as the local bus service.  We stood in the rain and watched the scheduled bus drive by because they were out of service.  Butt rain wet later, we ended up on a bus that took us downtown.  It was brutal.

But we made it.  So because of the mishap of weather, I missed the first session.  That's okay.  Nothing really floated my boat and I had the opportunity to see how crazy it was line wise.  Yup, the line to get the badge and your bag schwag looped the Austin Convention Center at least once.  I'm glad I got it the night before.  Kelly and I warmed up to some Jo's Hot Coffee while we scurried off to our sessions.

The first session had to do with touch design.  The guy on stage did a great job of pointing out how we were used to the conventions of shortcuts in design and how we needed to break free from that and design more toward a natural extension of use.  The example he gave as a no-no were buttons.  He said that buttons were a hack, including light switches and the like.  He said that it was utility to get to what we really wanted.  Then he went over how swiping and gestures were the best next step in interactive design.  Great stuff.

Next up was the venerable Robert Scoble and some guy named Cooper who talked about how software architecture has changed from 30 years ago to today.  At first it seemed like an old codger complaining, but then they touched upon patterns that kept creeping back up.  The best example that I could explain was the adage of the old battleship and how hard it was to steer in terms on change for a company. Some of the items hit close to home but it was thought provoking nonetheless.  The takeaway for me is if you are not thinking about the right customer and how design for that, you will fail.

Okay, great.  The panels were tasty, but how about them parties?  We made it to the Mix at Six and it was food filled and Stell Artois'ed.  Next up after that was the TechSet party at The Parish.  I waited in line longer than I was there but the lady bartender there hooked me up with some real drinks as opposed to the dude bartenders.  I might've seen a grade school friend there too.  Lastly, it was the Social Ignite party at Molotov.  I found out that some of the place vibrates weird.  I didn't get a chance to tweet that but it was great anyway.

The buses came through for us in the end and we made it home safe.  For such a terrible start to the day, I was happy that we finished strong for the night.  Tomorrow I will focus some hardnuckled workshops.  Hopefully the rain will die down.  Regardless, I'm glad it can only get better from here.  The first real part of the conference sucked.  Once we got settled in, it felt like home.

Yeah, that's about all I have to say.  It seems like all I do is cover SXSW.  Well, I promise you that I will point y'all to my other interests on the other two blogs I have here real soon.  Yes, that's right I'm running too other blogs.  At some point I will bring it all together.  Until then I will showcase them here as well talk about what I'm bringing to SXSW this year and to the blog afterward.

First up is my longest running blog, KC College GameDay.  I started this with a friend in Kansas City as a reason to go out to bars on Fall Saturdays to watch college football.  I still do, but will not do it as much next fall.  Streaming is taking over the world, including live sports (sorry Disney/ABC/ESPN).  But I will give my unique voice on college sports in the form of video and social media.  I may jump on and do some articles here and there, but for now it's a new media day down there.

Next up is something I've neglected for awhile but am coming around on pretty strongly now.  That would be Helping Zero Knives Enter You (or h0key).  Not only is it a clever acronym, but it's also my music hub.  So I've been reviewing concerts and SXSW on the blog for a couple of years now but I've turned myself toward making music.  I took the RPM Challenge and will focus more on my music and the gadgets the run it.  Don't worry, I live in the Live Music Capital of World (Austin) so I will continue the concert coverage, especially for SXSW.

Which brings me to this year's SXSW.  The last two years, I was tourist.  Now I'm a homer.  It's a new experience still and I'm stoked about it big time.  Heck, I've already done the Startup Crawl am glowing from such a good time already.  So this year will be different but it will also be the same.  Is that a good thing?  I hope so.  I will put to that to the test.  It may have worn off on me.  I guess it boils down to my focus.

Two years ago it was for the experience.  Last year it was to actually connect with like minded people.  This year, I want to hone my craft with like minded people.  With my music creation bubbling up, I feel like I need to sit through some music session and not just get wasted at the day music parties.  Also, I want to focus more on music technology.  Whether it's building a cool concert going app, or building my very own USB Midi controller.  I'll judge my success this year on how deep I make down those paths.

So how deep will I go here?  Well, it has been SXSW central as of late around here.  My showcased blogs are nice, but I think I need to flaunt my technical skills just a little bit more here.  With my lean toward music technology, I will more than likely bounce back and forth between this and h0key.  That's not to say that KC College GameDay will be ignored.  It just means that actual, thought provoking writing will come from here, music from h0key.net, and my video craziness from KC College GameDay.

Hopefully, it will come together well.  If it doesn't, I'll figure something out.  I'm not going to let this down just yet.  Not with SXSW kicking off Friday.  So expect to see the usual updates here and more of the same over on h0key.  The food gods owe me one this year because of food sickness last year so I'm hoping to break the total number of bands seen. Although, the music session might hurt that.  Tune in here and everywhere to find out.

I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that SXSW was the main reason I dug my roots out of Kansas City and planted myself in Austin, but it did help a little.  Well, okay, I interviewed in person while I was on vacation during SXSW.  I somehow managed to wedge it in between the Interactive portion and the Music portion.  The rest of the story happened ultra fast.  It went from feeling like I bombed the interview to accepting an offer in about 2 weeks.  My start date was a month after and I had to scramble to plan something I've never done: relocation.

I did my research and picked up a couple of handy tools along the way.  The whole trip went mostly perfect and I stayed well within a meager budget.  SXSW season just kicked off and I figured, what better way to enjoy another go at it than by sharing my experiences.  So I signed up for the SXSW Panel Picker and created an entry, "The Magic Carpet Ride: Relocation Made Easy."  Voting began today and I'm asking everyone out there to register and vote for my panel.  There's a ton of information to share for people who are thinking about relocating or booking their ticket tomorrow. Vote for it at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12321

Here's the Description and Questions Answered:

After toiling long and hard to get your dream job, you finally landed it. The only problem is that it's in another part of the world! Fortunately, there are tools both online and in the mobile world that can help. Mike Hochanadel will discuss the tools used for his relocation experience and share tips to help the tech centric crowd in their own magic carpet ride.

1. What can my future employer do to help relocate?
2. What is the most cost effective way to relocate?
3. What are the stages of relocation?
4. How I can seamlessly surf between the stages of relocation?
5. What loose ends are tied up at the end of relocation?

No, not those kind of cans, but the kind you can wrap around your head.  Okay still, I'm talking about headphones.  Since starting at my awesome new job, there have been some freedoms that I have been accustomed to that are no longer there.  One of them has been the ability to stream audio.  That's all fine and dandy as I have an iPod Touch that I bought because I had to give up my iPhone from the old job.  So, what's a somewhat young and enterprising programmer supposed to do?  Upgrade the ear buds to a portable audiophile rig.  Here's what I did.

Alright so I figured that if I was going to be locked into rocking my headphone, then it would be a great opportunity to upgrade my ears.  Way back in the day I bought me a pair of Stanton Dj Pro 2000s and it served its purpose for such a long time.  The problem was that the band that held the earphones together cracked and today I have a glued up version of the awesome headphones of yesterday.  Even better still I originally bought it at about 20 bucks off because the store I got it at didn't have the ones I wanted in stock and gave me this upgrade at the price of mis-stocked headphones.  I needed to get the same kind of great deal.

Fast forward to a month ago.  I was awashed in my newfound job and realized it was time to upgrade.  When I got home, I researched the blazes out of entry level audiophile headphones.  I didn't want to go full out and drop over 4 figures on a pair of headphones.  All I needed was something better and richer than the ear buds I was rotating through like disposable contact lenses.  The great people at HeadRoom Audio built a list of the top 10 headphones of this year and it boiled down to two headphones.  First the Sennheiser HD 518 and some Audio Technica headphones.  My lovely girlfriend notched a wireless set of cans for me from Sennheiser for Xmas a year or two ago so that was the deciding factor.

The Sennheiser HD 518 touts being the audiophile's entry level dream.  That's exactly what I wanted.  I've been bouncing off of ear buds for a couple of years now.  First because the Stantons were too much to handle and secondly because having some circumaural cans on at the gym stands out to the point of awkwardness.  I slapped these guys on and tranced out the Daft Punk Tron: Legacy soundtrack.  Instantly I found what I was missing with second hand and first hand Apple ear buds.  I got the feeling that the mids, lows, and highs washed out better and were richer than any ear bud could come close to comparing.  That's expected though, they are higher quality.

I was told that there is a burn in period of about 100 hours for the headphones until it fully realizes its soundtential.  Even with that knowledge it was not enough for me.  The problem I had, and admittedly HeadRoom Audio pointed out, was that for portable audio, the headphones were just not enough.  I had an awesome pair of headphones that could handle way more than the power the iPod Touch was pouring out.  That's a major problem.  I mean, if I jacked in directly to the computer with my amazingly awesome long cord, then I could have the power to provide the headphones with a range to deliver quality sounds to my ears.  I need the same kind of power but in a portable format.

Enter the Fiio E11.  Head-fi.org, as well as other websites, pointed out that headphone amplifiers can be that bridge between lame sound and great sound for the swanky headphones purchased.  I was hesitant at first because most amplifiers were bulky, expensive, and too much for what I needed.  That was until I found out that Fiio was putting out an amplifier that is portable and powerful.  The E11 runs off a USB chargeable Li-On battery and drives a louder sound with adjustable EQ and Gain settings.  Long story short, the E11 was the perfect complement to my Sennheiser HD 518, after getting the cheapo Fiio iOs to audio port bridge connector.

So that's my rig.  I have the bridge connector outputting my music and podcasts to the E11 and then the sound rolls on through to my 518s.  The sound is at least 10 times better than what I had before with ear buds.  There are a couple of problems, though.  First off, I dumbed off and did not find out tha the 518s are not isolated to outside sound.  What I mean to say is that if I pump it real loud, everyone in the office will hear it.  That wasn't exactly what I was going for.  That said, the sound is richer no matter the volume so overall it is a better experience.  The only other problem is the setup and teardown time it takes to slap that stuff to my iPod Touch.  It's a first world problem so it's no big deal at all.

I encourage everyone out there to upgrade their listening experience. When researching this topic, I came across many options that increasingly wanted to take more out of my pocket.  At the end of the day, you just need to spring a little bit more on a pair of headphones.  In my case, I needed an amplifier that was portable and could pump enough juice to make the headphones worthwhile.  Just like I did, you too can get a rig that upgrades your experience  without having to drop over $200.  Seriously, Beats By Dre and the like use name recognition for price than anything else.