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I've been able to run some of the—

oh, no, wait, music tech did crash the shit out of my EMS cart that one time.

nitro2k01 said something in passing to me once about he and pixelh8 writing gb software quite differently and that the approach difference could lead to those kind of problems.

Shine on, you crazy thread.

I think that's a good idea. I'm tempted to throw in because it sounds like a fun game to play (plus I'd like a copy of old nanoloop), but really I don't need this stuff. I have enough equipment.

I hope you find a person who can really use it to its full potential!

Alright, here we are…

These don't sound as good as I'd hope. All of my game boys generate noise that isn't isolated by the pro-sound mod, and Audacity picks it up pretty well. I can hear it in my headphones, but usually not in stereo equipment. It sounds a lot worse in these recordings than it does in real life. Anyway, these are noisy samples, and I didn't attempt to remove the noise in Audacity later. I'm not sure if the hum is just a CGB thing or what. I think all of my game boys do it.

Regardless, here are my samples:

CGB through Headphone Jack

CGB through Post-Pot Pro-Sound

CGB through Pre-Pot Pro-Sound

In conclusion, the difference is apparently minute to negligible, assuming you remember to roll your volume pot into the lowest resistance position whenever you use the pro-sound jack in a Post-Pot installation. I can't really hear the difference in these samples.

The hum problem seems the same, I guess I got myself with the placebo effect there.

That said, I still think pre-pot is the way to go: It removes a variable one could overlook in performing or recording where one could forget to roll the pot to zero resistance, or hit it on accident in the middle of something. It also lets you leave the volume for the speaker and headphone amp at the level you normally would without having to change the adjustment for recording or performance.

For the record, EMS carts only have unofficial support via a third party command line unix flasher developed independently by a really cool dude.

Chainsaw Police wrote a pretty solid guide to using it, but it's still a pretty rudimentary command line tool that's in development. I ended up using a virtual machine instead, which I use anyway for FamiTracker, the Carillon utility, et cetera.

My point being, EMS carts have lackluster to nonexistant OS X support that requires a technically competent user with creative problem solving skills.

All of these things are the best advice.

I've been using Grados or Sennheisers for "serious" music stuff for a long time. after a while, if you listen almost entirely to music in headphones, you'll begin to acquire a feel for the bias that headphone manufacturers include in their products by design—to create their "signature sound."

I've owned multiple pairs of old school Koss PortaPros and Sennheiser PX100s—both of which are open back phones. These aren't what you want for studio sounds, but they are (or were at the time) the best headphones on the market that cost about $50—and they sound a lot like the more expensive headphones produced by each company.

What I've come to feel from thousands of hours of headphone time is that Sennheisers, generally speaking, tend to have some of the most neutral response of any similar product. My Koss headphones always had a slightly muddy and pronounced (but not unpleasant) bass frequency coloration. My Grados always had a really pleasant lower-mid emphasis that seemed very translucent, but "warmed up" recordings the way a lot of "audiophiles" like their headphones to do.

My Sennheisers, however, have always had the most neutral response. They've always seemed to accurately reproduce everything in a balanced and transparent way, clearly across their frequency range, without noticeable coloration.

That's all anecdotal, but I hope it's helpful.

As for Open vs. Closed, open air headphones just sound better in my opinion. The design principal they are based on allows the diaphragms in the earpieces to move air more freely, so there is less of a physical barrier to more accurate reproduction that has to be compensated for elsewhere in the construction. If you want to see what I mean, try on a pair of open headphones and cup your hands over the back of the earpieces. It'll sound like you're muting a trumpet or using a wah pedal, because you're obstructing airflow through the back of the phones and blocking a lot of low frequencies—literally a physical low-pass filter.

The tradeoff is that, if you're like me, you'll sit around listening to music at full blast in headphones and still have someone tell you that they can hear your music in the next room. So, if that isn't a problem for you, open phones all the way. If you have to avoid waking a baby or something, you can find closed headphones of comparable audio quality, but they tend to cost more.

The other alternative is canalphones / in-ear monitors. These tend to sound really good and be completely resistant to "bleeding sound" into your environment, but good ones can be 100 or 200 bucks. Also, they are like wearing ear plugs with speakers, and some people find that unpleasant for extended periods. Shure and Etymotic Research make pretty decent ones.

Holy shit, I forgot I was such a nerd about headphones.

You totally called it, dude. I cleaned the jack switch contact while I had the game boy apart (it's beginning to oxidize), and plugged my headphones in and out a few times.

I had to do it 20 or 30 times, but it started working again. Weird.

I'm glad it wasn't anything I fucked up in the pro sound mod.