December 20, 2010

  • MIT MI-350 EVO Shotgun, Part 2

    Just as radio stations insist on only playing OMD's "If You Leave," radio stations insist on playing A-ha's "Take On Me."  Granted, nothing quite sounds like "Take On Me," but c'mon, A-ha have plenty of better songs.  Either way, A-Ha's cool-weather Eurosynth is a nice fit for the Bay Area's fall and winter.  I remember winter break '85, standing on Stockton Street on Union Square, toting my Walkman, listening to "Here I Stand And Face The Rain," as the rain came from over the St. Francis Hotel.  And when "Living A Boy's Adventure Tale" came up, I was hoping to find a girlfriend.  Eh, no.  No girl in her right mind would want an awkward, ugly, immature freshman like me.

    But one of pop music's all-time best songs can be found on Hunting High And Low.  Damn it, no one ever plays "The Sun Always Shines On T.V."  If you ever see the video, it picks up where "Take On Me" leaves off.  In an unexpected twist, lead singer Morten Harket and the blonde gal, Bunty Bailey, do NOT end up staying together.

    Speaking of staying together, the MIT MI-350 EVO Shotgun combines the left and right channels into one cable.  The leads go into a so-called Input Terminator box.  This is a pewter-colored metal box, reminiscent of the metal which used to be found n the Transformers and Robotech toys of 1985.  Like the Oracle series box(es), it is heavy.  You will have to find a way of securing and supporting it.

    Uh oh, we have a problem.  The MI-350 EVO Shotgun was available in three versions: Low, Medium, and High Impedance.  This is the Medium Impedance model.  It is supposed to be okay for input impedances of 47k-100k ohms.  My solid state gear typically has input impedances of 100k ohms and up.  So ideally, I'd need the High Impedance model.  What happens when there is an impedance mismatch?  The sound loses focus, cleanliness, speed, and coherence.  It's like A-ha sounding as if they hailed from the Caribbean, instead of Scandinavia.

    While most MIT interconnects have one inline box, the MI-350 EVO Shotgun has three.  I already showed the Input Terminator above.  This interconnect also sports two so-called Output Terminators.  Sorry, MIT would not make this product in any other color.  Sigh, that's kind of like radio stations insisting on not playing any other A-ha song besides "Take On Me."

    Anyway, my audio buddy says that this interconnect may be 10 years old.  It has gotten years of use.  So it should be "burned in," right?  I don't know.  It sounds kind of bumpy, slow, dirty, and muffled.  And certainly, Hunting High And Low should not sound this way, not with the high-quality CD players my friends and I have.

    You see those white clouds over Manoa Valley?  That means it's raining there.  That rain certainly cools you off from the Hawaiian heat.  But it's still in the 80s!  It is NOT the same rain as the Bay Area's.  The Bay Area gets its cooler, drier precipitation from the Gulf of Alaska.  Being in Manoa is still not cool enough to make me feel like listening to A-Ha.  And somehow, this MIT MI-350 EVO Shotgun is not making me want to listen to A-ha.