gah.....

buzz is in the phones. in the back of my mind i knew it all along. i've been fighting with dirt in there for months, and i know there's a hair deep in the drivers because i can see it and can't reach it. i've been putting it off because the rattle was so much weaker on the other tracks and i was just mentally compensating...i couldn't imagine it was really the dirt....

but my cheaper phones aren't rattling. here's the thing: i'm not 100% certain it's rattling due to the dirt, it could be rattling because the studio phones are reproducing it properly and the non-studio phones are squishing the fuck out of it.

at least i know now that the track actually sounds good through consumer grade equipment.

the thing is i need the deep compression, and it's rattling it to the point that i can't mix it because i can't tell if the compression is actually distorting or the speaker is rattling.

so, i need to find a vacuum as a top priority this morning. i tossed the one i brought down here - it was older than my mother is, and just wasn't working.i can't mix with the other phones, it sounds like i'm wearing earplugs...but if i can't get the hair out, i may have to mix the bass separately through them...

see, the phone is sealed. it's probably why the phones have lasted 30 years. but it means i can't get the hair out with tweezers because i can't reach it...

you just can't overstate the value of high end phones like this. it would cost upwards of $500 to replace them with something comparable, and i don't have that. and i WILL tell, because i've been using them so long that my ears just won't accept anything less.

so, these basically have to last forever, sort of thing. the vacuum worked last time.