This is perhaps my favourite book on running, and I have read quite a few. The title is a play on words. The author lists two meanings, though I can find three.
The first is that running has a mystique; “athletes who fly in, astound us with barely comprehensible feats of speed and endurance, and then vanish again into thin air,” Crawley writes.
The second and most important is that western media has tended to assume that “the performances of elite Ethiopian, Kenyan and Ugandan runners are produced almost directly ‘out of thin air’,” the reason being genetic traits or natural giftedness. This is patronising and wrong, and “masks the years of preparation and sacrifice that have gone into creating this illusion,” Crawley says, as well as the fact that the support of the Ethiopian state for running is “far superior” to that in the UK.
The third is that Ethiopians train at high altitude. The thin air has benefits, encouraging the body to adapt by creating more red blood cells, more blood vessels in the muscles, deeper breathing. Therefore running performance improves out of thin air.
It is timely that I write this Ethopia’s Tadese Takele has just won the men’s 2025 Tokyo marathon held on 2nd March, with a time of 2:03:23, and Ethiopia’s Sutume Asefa Kebede has won the women’s 2025 Tokyo marathon with a time of 2:16:31.
Crawley has two advantages over most others in writing this book. First, he is an outstanding runner. In 2018 he ran the Frankfurt Marathon in 2:20:53, putting him in the top 0.1% of runners, placing him 1084th best in the world for the marathon at the time, according to his world athletics ranking.
Second, he is an academic, an anthropologist who is an assistant professor at the University of Durham.
These two factors meant that when he went to Ethiopia between 2015 to 2016 to train with some of the country’s top runners, he both won the respect of the other athletes, and also brought with him unusual skills of observation.
The consequence is that as readers we become immersed in both the training and the life stories of the athletes. I have read other books about running in Africa but none has offered the same sense of being there as this one.
We learn about about what dedication to training means in this context; that the prize money for winning or placing high in major events is transformative and a big incentive for these runners; that training together with others is not just a matter of being in the same group but a deep connection of shared energy; that running on asphalt is the hardest kind of running and that natural surfaces are much preferred for training; that mixing different kinds of training, such as speed and terrain, even within a single session, is vital for progression; and that the transition from running well in training to performing in a foreign race is a difficult one that not everyone can manage.
There is much more and I felt a sense of loss when finishing the book. I look forward to reading it again.
Out of Thin Air is available from Amazon or from your favourite bookshop.
I was a smartwatch holdout for many years, on the basis that the short battery life would be annoying (my previous watch had a 10 year battery) and that the utility of a smartwatch is limited; mainly I just need to know the time. The big feature of a smartwatch of course is health tracking but that was not something I felt I needed.
Two and half years ago I succumbed and bought an Apple Watch 7, partly to see what I had been missing, but it also nearly coincided with taking up running.
Apple Watch during a run
I used the Apple Watch from mid-2022 until January this year, to track my runs and monitor my fitness. If you are a runner you will know that you want to track your pace and distance as part of training, and if you have any interest in the data and science of running, then other things like heart rate zones, V̇O2 max and so on.
There is also the matter of listening to music while running. I enjoy this, though earbuds are controversial because of the need to pay attention to your surroundings especially on roads with traffic. I am a fan of bone conduction headphones which let you listen without blocking your ears at all; and UK Athletics, the official body for running, permits bone conduction headphones in races at the event organiser’s discretion.
The integration between the Apple Watch and iPhone is not as smooth as you might expect when it comes to music, or perhaps it is just a hard problem. If you have headphones paired to the iPhone you can control the music from the watch, but you will not get announcements about your pace and distance progress. The solution is to pair the headphones to the watch and not to the iPhone. Then you get both music and announcements, by default every km or mile (depending on preference) you are told your pace. There is also a buried setting that lets you set a playlist for workouts, that starts automatically when you start the workout and can play in random order. In case you have not found this setting, it is in the Watch app on the iPhone under Workout – Workout Playlist.
That all sounds good, but I gradually got frustrated with the Apple Watch for running. Here are the specific issues:
Starting a run (or other workout) is a matter of pressing the side button, selecting workout, scrolling to the workout you want (usually Outdoor Run for me), and tapping. Depending where you tap, you may be asked what type of run you want, open, goal-based, route, or all. Or it may just do a brief countdown and start. All sounds reasonable; but imagine that it is a cold wet day, you are wearing gloves, and about to start a race. Scrolling and tapping successfully is difficult with gloves and worse in the rain. All the above is fiddly, when what you want to do is just start the workout and get on with the race.
GPS accuracy I found not very good, especially early on when I had an iPhone SE. It would consistently under-report the distance so that a 5K race showed as 4.8K, for example. Apple Watch has GPS on board but version 7 and earlier use the GPS on the iPhone to save battery, when available. I replaced the iPhone and accuracy improved, so perhaps I was unlucky, but I still noticed anomalies from time to time. In fairness, it can be difficult with things like trail running under trees and so on.
Annoying bugs include the watch starting and ending run segments for no reason I could see, music volume resetting after a pace announcement, music playback occasionally not starting, and worst of all, the workout ending before the end of a race despite turning off the auto workout start and stop features (which never work reliably). Most of the time it worked but I never felt I could completely trust it.
Battery life is an issue. If you leave the default of the display being always on, the Watch 7 will barely last a day, and less than that if you run with music. It will do a half marathon if you start with a good charge but not a full marathon (not that I have done one); but I did find it running out of charge when training towards the end of the day. I gave up on sleep tracking because it was easiest just to stick the watch on the charger all night; with a bit of discipline you can charge it before heading to bed but of course that will mean it is not fully charged the next morning. I set the display to be off by default which improves matters a lot.
Most runners wear other types of watch, the most common being a Garmin. In January this year I decided to try a Garmin and got a Forerunner 265, a mid-range model.
Garmin differences and advantages
Garmin Forerunner 265
The Garmin has a button top right labelled Run. Press it and it searches for GPS; when found it goes green. Press it again and the run starts. Press it again and the run stops. It is easy to operate even with gloves and in rain; and touch control is disabled during workouts so there is no risk of inadvertent taps – which are a possible cause of some of the Apple Watch issues.
The second big improvement with the Garmin is the battery life, which is around a week. That means I can track my sleep and the watch is ready for a marathon (even though I am not). Battery life does reduce if used intensively, for example with GPS and music, but still a vast gain over Apple Watch.
Music is a bit of an issue on the Garmin if you use Apple Music, since it is not supported. The only solution is the old-school method of copying MP3s to the device. On Apple Garmin makes this difficult by insisting you use Garmin Express, which only recognizes the “iTunes” library, now Apple Music. I still have a ton of CDs ripped to FLAC and my solution is to select some FLAC files, copy them to a temporary location, convert them to MP3 (I used ffmpeg), add them to the Apple Music library, copy them across with Garmin Express, then remove them from the Apple Music library. There is probably an easier way.
On the plus side, music playback works really well and I do not get the volume issues I had with Apple Watch. Tracks are shuffled by default though the algorithm seems not quite as good as on Apple Watch, and tracks can repeat too soon. There is no auto-start. Controlling music is easy: just hold down the bottom left button and the music screen appears. As with Apple Watch, you get pace and distance announcements as well as music.
Fitness statistics are better on the Garmin. V̇O2 max and heart rate zones is an interesting one. V̇O2 max is an interesting statistic but not essential to know, but heart rate zones are important to training. All these figures depend on the “Maximum heart rate” (MHR) which is traditionally calculated as 220 minus age. However this formula is a crude way of calculating MHR as it assumes everyone is roughly the same, which is not the case.
Apple Watch gives you the option to enter your own MHR rather than use the formula. However it’s not that easy to find out and will change over time so that is not ideal.
The Garmin though will auto-detect your MHR which strikes me as a better approach. According to the docs:
Auto Detection can calculate your maximum heart rate value using performance data recorded by the watch during an activity. This value may differ from an observed lower value recorded by your watch as the feature can determine a different value based on a proprietary algorithm.
In my case I seem to have a higher than average MHR and as a result the Garmin is giving me more plausible data for heart rate zones and V̇O2 max. Note though that smartwatches are not reliable for this and as the Garmin docs also say “the most accurate method to measure your maximum heart rate is a graded maximum exercise test in a laboratory setting.” There is also a suggestion for calculating it with a running test.
I still think the Garmin auto detection is preferable to the Apple Watch approach. In practice the Garmin has given me a higher figure for both V̇O2 max and MHR.
The Garmin is more pro-active than Apple Watch in assessing your fitness and making recommendations. There are features like Training Readiness, Stress measurement, Body battery, and more. When you start a run, the Garmin will recommend a training run or recommend that you rest instead (you can disable this feature if you prefer). The Garmin will also assess the Training Effect of a run, divided into aerobic and anaerobic impact scores. Another interesting metric is recovery time which assesses how long you need to rest before another high intensity training effort. It is hard to say how reliable these various indicators are (and there are more that I have not mentioned) but I feel they have some value, and should improve in accuracy over time.
Apple Watch advantages
The Apple Watch is a general-purpose smartwatch, whereas the Garmin is a fitness watch and the Forerunner series designed specifically for running – so it is not surprising that the Garmin has advantages for runners.
The Apple Watch looks nicer and less geeky, and as you would expect integrates better with an iPhone. Features like Camera Remote are handy, as is turn by turn directions. You can dictate a message into the watch, which is not possible with the Garmin. I miss the integration with Apple Music.
Apple Watch workouts appear on the paired iPhone under Fitness. If you integrate with Strava you can choose which workouts to import from the Strava app. If you integrate the Garmin with Strava it either imports all, or none of your workouts. This is a nuisance as it clutters Strava to import every single little workout or repetition. The best workaround I have found is to import none, and then import the ones you want manually via export from the Garmin Connect web application. Another idea is to import all, and immediately delete the ones you do not want. Either way, Apple Watch is preferable in this respect.
Price-wise, a Forerunner 265 costs £429.99 which is more than a basic Apple Watch 9 at £399 and much more than Apple Watch SE at £219. The Apple Watch Ultra though, which I understand is better for fitness tracking, is much more expensive at £799. Even the high end Garmin Forerunner 965 is less, at £599.99. There are cheaper Garmins as well: the Forerunner 255 is apparently a decent choice at £299.99, with most of the features of the 265 but an inferior screen and no touch control.
Some reflections
I am writing from the perspective of a runner. I do not think you should consider a Garmin over an Apple Watch if you are not looking for a sports watch. Then again, I still feel that smartwatches have disappointing utility if you exclude the fitness/health tracking features.
That said, the Garmin does illustrate the advantages of physical buttons over touch control, and the greater efficiency of a custom embedded operating system over iOS (or strictly, Watch OS).
What is the Garmin OS? There are some clues in this 2020 interview with one of the developers, Brad Larson, who said it is “a full custom OS … OS is almost stretching it. It doesn’t support multiple processes, it does threading and memory management but it doesn’t multi-process, but that’s what’s necessary. Most of our codebase is still in C … we’ve been pushing for the UI framework which sits on top of everything to be C++.”
I do not know how much has changed since then but suspect it would be a disaster if Garmin were to adopt Android Wear OS, for example, with the inevitable bloat that would come with it.
It also seems to me that Apple could significantly improve its watch from a running perspective with a little effort, applying its corporate mind to simple things like the challenge of starting a workout in typical running conditions.
As of now, I recommend Garmin over Apple Watch for running, based on my experience.
This capture device is a neat device packaged in an unnecessarily bulky box – though to be fair the cables take more space than the capture box. It is called Ultra 2.1 because it supports HDMI 2.1, though not at the highest resolutions of which HDMI 2.1 is capable. However since an Xbox Series X or a PlayStation 5 supports up to 4K 120Hz, the Ultra 2.1 with passthrough at 4K 144Hz and support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) seems plenty good enough. I was able to capture at 3840 x 2160 at 60Hz using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) with very low latency.
AverMedia Live Gamer Ultra 2.1
Some features of the product are not quite ready though. Support for Avermedia’s easy to use RECentral software is not coming until the first half of 2024, according to the support page, and passthrough resolution will be enhanced to add 3440×1440 100hz in a forthcoming firmware update. Similarly, macOS support is promised before the end of 2023.
I got good results even with the product as it is though. The device is very easy to use (even if OBS is a bit fiddly) and I was glad to see that the supplied HDMI cable is fully certified. The box is USB powered, requiring a USB 3.2 Type-C port; it does not require any additional power. There is also a 4-pole audio cable supplied which can be used with a headset or controller, though I did not try this.
The box has lighting effects which to my mind are rather pointless but you can control this through the AverMedia Gaming Utility, a download from the AverMedia site. This utility can also update the firmware, which was the first thing I did. Downloads are available here.
A high quality capture box which gave me excellent results from a PS5.
Full specs:
Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (10Gbps)
Input & Output (Pass-through): HDMI 2.1
Max Pass-Through Resolution: 2160p144 HDR/VRR, 1440p240 HDR/VRR, 1080p360 HDR/VRR
3440x1440p100hz and other ultrawide resolutions promised via firmware upgrade on Nov 16th with others to follow
I have had a short time with a loan Surface 9 Pro running Windows on Arm.
My review sample came without a keyboard case. I do not recommend this unless you have very specific tablet-y requirements. It is hard to use without a keyboard. This of course means it costs more than it first appears, because the cheapest keyboard is £129.99 inc VAT. Since most people I see using a Surface use it like a laptop, I do wonder about the value of the kickstand design, which harks back to the earliest Surface devices when Microsoft was taking on the iPad. That battle was lost with the failure of the tablet personality in Windows 8. Desktop Windows won; and it needs a keyboard.
That aside, it’s a lovely device, great screen, great for video conferencing thanks to the smart camera. AI makes it appear that you are looking at the camera even if you are not. Good feature or deception? I am not sure, but I err more towards deception. It is a hard one though, because when paying attention in video conference you are looking at your video of the speaker, not at the camera, which makes it appear that you are looking elsewhere even though you are not.
Lower energy use than x64, longer battery life. Perfect Windows device? It might be, except that the vast majority of Windows applications are compiled for x64 only. This means some applications might not work, and in other areas there is friction. A contact of mine bought a Surface 9 Pro with the SQ (Arm) chipset for work. It came with Windows 11 Home on Arm. The tech specs say that “At this time, Surface Pro 9 (SQ® 3/5G) with Windows 11 Home on ARM will not install some games and CAD software, and some third-party drivers or anti-virus software. Certain features require specific hardware … find out more in the FAQ.” Where is this FAQ? It is not linked from the tech specs as far as I can tell. Maybe this is it. Windows 11 Pro not mentioned. My contact should of course have purchased Surface Pro 9 for Business. Windows Home has too many annoyances and limitations to be usable for business.
What to do? Fortunately there is a Microsoft 365 upgrade to Windows 11 Pro, which is a cost effective option. The upgrade was delivered to the Microsoft 365 portal as a license key with a link to an ISO to download. The key did not work. The ISO did not work as it was x64 only. Rumour has it that a Windows 11 Pro ARM build from UUP dump worked fine with the key, even as an in-place upgrade. Maybe Microsoft support could also sort this out. But it is friction, and I doubt it will be the last.
It seems obvious to me that if you want an Arm-based laptop with excellent performance and long battery life, a MacBook Pro is a better option. You can run Windows in a VM via VMware Fusion 13 or Parallels and it performs well. Or if you want a Windows on Arm box for test and development the Dev Kit is a good offer.
There is still a niche for the Surface 9 Pro with SQ, if you are confident that everything you need will run. It is more efficient than an x64 device, and it has 5G. It is a nicely built device even if not the best value. I think Windows on Arm will continue to improve. There is a way to go though before it is really mainstream.
This is a book about collaboration in the new era of Zoom, Teams, Slack and other such tools – not that they are completely new, but the pandemic and enforced remote working caused a huge boom in usage and some permanent changes in the way people work together. Author Phil Simon is a US specialist in business communications, and associated with the Agile methodology of software development – quite appropriate for this book, since collaboration is at the heart of Agile.
There are a few themes here. Simon believes that organisations need strong collaboration in order to thrive, and personally I think that is spot on. He spends some time distinguishing between collaboration and other related but different things like communication (a pre-requisite but insufficient on its own), or co-operation which can be a passive relationship; people can co-operate without actually collaborating.
Despite all the this, the main topic of the part 1 of this book, I am not sure that Simon ever nails what collaboration really is, at least not in this book. He has a go at it and there are many examples given of what it is not, but it remains, in my mind, a bit elusive. I did like his metric of organizational health: “The ability to rally around a common vision, execute effectively, and create a culture of innovation.”
Simon does show a good understanding of the human factor in productivity. He talks about managers versus makers, and how managers feel the need to communicate often with many people, while makers need to reduce distraction and focus on a task; I am not sure if he had software development in mind but this is a good description of what developers need.
Part 2 then gets to the heart of the book: better collaboration through technology. The key concept Simon uses is what he calls a “collaboration hub,” meaning any of a number of tools which form a central internet-connected space where users can interact with one another. This includes what the author calls the big three, Slack, Teams and Zoom, as well as other applications such as Expensify or Canva.
The author is a user of Slack and of Google Docs and while he shows a commendable neutrality in the sense that he considers other tools such as Teams equally effective, adding that “It’s fair to call the similarities around today’s internal collaboration hubs remarkable,” his greater depth of knowledge of the tools he mainly uses does show. There is really much more about Slack than about Teams, and that is something to be aware of. Teams users can still benefit from the book but less so than Slack users.
There is a big theme here though which is that the author considers email, especially internal email, a blocker to collaboration. He gives reasons, including that inboxes tend to die when an individual leaves the company; that email is gaffe-prone since a careless email, or a careless reply-all, cannot be unsent; and that emailing attachments like spreadsheets leads to multiple forks of the same data. In fact, toward the end of the book Simon remarks that “Effective, long-term collaboration cannot take place via email. Period.” He also recommends ditching internal email completely.
While I have some sympathy with this view, I think it is overdone. I reminded myself that one of the most successful collaborative projects of all time, the Linux kernel, is based on email lists.
Still, Simon is quite correct, a collaboration tool with channels for team members has lots of advantages over email, gathering all the communications in one spam-free place and making search much easier.
Part three of the book is called “moving from theory to practice” and contains lots of discussion about how organizations can move towards using collaboration hubs and what can go wrong. Then part four peeks into the future and envisages smarter collaboration hubs which use AI to book meetings for us, automatically transcribes meetings and sends automatic alerts to Slack channels.
There is plenty of wisdom though I could have done with more on practical questions about how to get the most from Slack or Teams. How many channels or Teams should you have? When should you have a video conference versus a message chat? Should we have our collaboration hubs always open or sign out sometimes? Who should be able to create a channel, or should anyone? And what more advanced or intricate features of the products are worthwhile?
I enjoyed Simon’s willingness to be blunt at times, as well as some amusing reflections like “In my consulting days, I often saw project managers call meetings essentially because they were bored.”
Towards the end of the book we also get this: “Just because the discussion or task takes place in a hub doesn’t mean that it’s truly collaborative.” I agree. What then is the magic that enables an organization to be collaborative? In the end it is corporate culture rather than tools that matter most. I think the author recognizes that, but after reading the book, I am still not clear about the best way to get to the collaborative culture to which we should aspire.
Thanks to Netgalley for an electronic review copy of this title
Does anyone still buy CDs? There are a few reasons: they sound great when well mastered, you can rip them and not be dependent on an internet connection to listen to them, they can have nice packaging and booklets, and if you are a little bit obsessive about sound quality you can play the exact version you want to play instead of whatever the streaming service decides to send you.
I love Abba, who could not? and since I don’t have many of their albums I bought the new 10 CD box. I am not quite sure what the proper name for the set is, on the box it just says Abba CD Album Box Set. It ties in with the current Abba avatar-based show.
A few observations. The music is great, Abba never made a bad album in my opinion. You get all the studio albums plus a Tracks CD of singles like Fernando and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! a Man after Midnight. So far so good; and the set is reasonable value considering the number of albums. The latest, Voyage from November 2021, is included.
Now for a few gripes. Abba’s albums in general are not superlative in sound quality but some releases have been better than others. If you want the full dynamic range you have to seek out the earliest CD releases, and this box is no different. The sound is not crushed to death but it still falls short for no good reason other than needless pursuit of “loudness”. There is also a bit too much bass boost on some of the tracks, not least Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! where the percussion sounds a little distorted. It is fine on the early CD box Thank you for the Music.
Second, why is it that an Abba fan like this one can do a better job fixing problems in the source tapes, than the professionals can manage? These are little details like a click in Money Money Money at the 0.33 mark and a slight glitch in Dancing Queen at around 2.06-2.11.
Third, why is this set so short, omitting any bonus tracks other than the singles on Tracks, and that CD is just 38 minutes long? My hunch is that the label made the CDs short enough that they would also fit on the vinyl box, which is all rather topsy-turvy in my opinion.
Fourth, the CDs are packaged in simple card sleeves reproducing the LPs, which means tiny type on things like the rear of Arrival, and you don’t get the lyrics which were on the inner sleeves of the original albums.
Overall then I’m disappointed. Nevertheless, Thank you for the music.
I’ve reviewed dozens of wireless headphones and earphones in the last six months, enough that I’m not easily impressed. The B&O HX wireless headphones are an exception; as soon as I heard them I was delighted with the sound and have been using them frequently ever since.
These are premium wireless headphones; they are over-ear but relatively compact and lightweight (285g). They are an upgrade of the previous model, Beoplay H9, with longer battery life (35 hours), upgraded ANC (Active Noise Cancellation), and four microphones in place of two. It is not top of the B&O range; for that you need to spend quite a bit more for the H95. Gamers are directed to the similarly-priced Portal model which has a few more features (Dolby Atmos, Xbox Wireless) but shorter battery life and no case; worth considering as it probably sounds equally good but I do not have a Portal to compare.
What you are paying for with the HX is a beautiful minimalist design and excellent sound quality. The sound is clean, sweet and exceptionally clear, perfect for extended listening sessions. Trying these out is a matter of “I just want to hear how they sound on [insert another favourite track]”; they convey every detail and are superbly tuneful. It is almost easier to describe what they don’t do: the bass is not distorted or exaggerated, notes are not smeared, they are never harsh. Listening to an old favourite like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis you can follow the bass lines easily, hear every nuance of the percussion. Applause on Alison Krauss and the Union Station live sounds like it does at a concert, many hands clapping. Listening to Richard Thompson’s guitar work on Acoustic Classics you get a sense of the texture of the strings plus amazing realism from the vocals. The drama on the opening bars of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, is wonderfully communicated.
In other words, if you are a hi-fi enthusiast, the HX will remind you of why. I could also easily hear the difference between the same tracks on Spotify, and CD or high-res tracks on my Sony player. AptX HD is supported.
That said, there are unfortunately a few annoyances; not deal-breakers but they must be mentioned. First, the HX has touch controls for play/pause, volume, and skip track. I dislike touch controls because you get no tactile feedback and it is easy to trigger accidentally. With the HX you play/pause by tapping the right earcup; it’s not pleasant even when it works because you get a thump sound in your ear, and half the time you don’t hit it quite right, or you think you haven’t, tap again, then realise you did and have now tapped twice. Swipe for skip track works better, but volume is not so good, you have to use a circular motion and it is curiously difficult to get a small change; nothing seems to happen, then it jumps up or down. Or you trigger skip track by mistake. Ugh.
Luckily there are some real buttons on the HX. These cover on/off, and ANC control, which toggles between on, transparent (hear external sounds) and inactive. There is also a multi-button which activates voice assistants if you use these.
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Second, there is an app. I tried it on an iPad. Major annoyance here is that it does not work at all unless you create an account with B&O and sign in. Why should you have to sign in to use your headphones? What are the privacy implications? That aside, I had a few issues getting the app to find the HX, but once I succeeded there are a few extra features. In particular, you can set listening modes which are really custom EQ, or create your own EQ using an unusual graphic controller that sets a balance between Bright, Energetic, Warm and Relaxed. You can also update firmware, set wear detection on or off (pauses play when headphones are removed). Finally, and perhaps most important, you can tune the ANC, though changes don’t seem to persist if you then operate the button. You can also enable Adaptive ANC which is meant to adjust the level of ANC automatically according to the surroundings. It didn’t seem to me to make much difference but maybe it does if you are moving about.
The ANC is pretty good though. I have a simple test; I work in a room with a constant hum from servers and ANC should cut out this noise. It does. Further, engaging ANC doesn’t change the sound much, other than cutting out noise, which is how it should work.
There is a 3.5mm jack connection for wired use, but with two important limitations. First, this does not work at all if the battery is flat; the headphones must be turned on. Second, the jack connection lacks the extra connection that enables use for calling, so for listening only. The sound quality was no better wired, perhaps slightly worse, so of limited value.
Despite a few annoyances I really like these headphones. I doubt I will use the app, other than for firmware updates, and rarely bother with the touch controls, which means I can enjoy the lovely sound, elegant design, good noise cancelling, and comfortable wear.
I have reviewed numerous wireless earbuds over the last six months, but the real test is which ones I pick out of the pile when going out for a walk or run. Often it is the Shure Aonic 215, despite some limitations. They are an unusual design which hook right over the ear instead of just fitting within; I like this because they are more secure than most designs and I don’t like the inconvenience or potential expense of losing a valuable gadget when out and about. Plus, they sound good.
How good? It was some years back that Shure opened my eyes (or ears) to how good in-ear monitors (IEMs) could sound. It was at a show, only a demo, and the IEMs had a four-figure price, but it made me realise the potential of in-ear electronics to sound better than any headphones I have heard.
I also have some lesser but much-used wired Shure wired IEMs which are a years old but still sound good. I’m happy to say that the Aonic 215s sounds substantially better in every way: clarity, frequency response, realism.
That said, the Aonic 215 true wireless has had a chequered history. Launched in April 2020, they were actually recalled by Shure because of problems with one earphone not playing, or battery issues. Shure fixed the issues to the extent of resuming supply but they are still a little troublesome.
If you value convenience above sound quality, you can get other earbuds that sound fine, have more features, and cost less – so go and do that.
Still reading? Well, if you like the Shure sound the True Wireless does have a lot going for it. It’s important to understand that this is a modular system. The Aonic 215 has Shure’s standard MMCX connector and you can get a cable that would let you use these wired. You can also get other Shure IEMs to connect to the True Wireless earhooks to let you use them wireless.
This package of course has them in one. You get a charging case too, which will charge the IEMs three times when fully charged. Play time is up to 8 hours (7 hours probably more realistic). Long enough for me.
Task number one is selecting the right ear sleeve. The aims is to create a seal in your ear. 6 pairs are supplied, including the one pre-attached. The best in my opinion are the foam type which form themselves to the shape of your ear, and which come in small, medium and large. Changing these is a little awkward and as ever one worries about damaging the unit but with a little twisting and tugging it is not too bad. Most other earbuds do not have these foam-type sleeves.
That done, you fit the earbuds and turn on. Now the fun starts. There is a single button on each ear hook, positioned on a circular piece which hangs behind your ear. You operate it either by squeezing this piece, or pressing the button which then presses into your head. I found the squeezing option better, but it is not super convenient. Don’t worry too much though as functionality is limited. You can power on and off, pause, answer or end a call, and turn environment mode on or off. A triple click activates a voice assistant (I didn’t try this).
Environment mode? This is pretty useful, and lets you hear what is going on around you. If you want to have a conversation while listening, it is pretty much essential.
What’s missing though? Well, volume control and track skip are the key ones. You will have to use your player for that. Shure is still working on the firmware so this might improve, but one button is not much to play with.
Another potentially big deal is that calls only work in the right ear. This doesn’t bother me much, but for some it is a deal-breaker, depending on how you want to use them. I expect to use them almost entirely for music.
There is a Shure Play app for iOS and Android which describes itself as a high-res audio player. This has a graphic equalizer but it only works when playing music through the app, which excludes streaming sources. You can also adjust the environment mode. You need the app to update the firmware – which given the history of the product is quite important; the update history makes reference to “bug fixes.” The update is done over Bluetooth and takes around 30 minutes; my first effort failed because the mobile went to sleep. I got this done in the end by keeping the app open and touching it from time to time to stop it sleeping. Such are the things that lovers of high quality audio endure in pursuit of the best sound!
I use these earbuds mainly with a Sony Walkman music player and like the excellent sound quality, secure fit, and very useful environment mode. A few things to note about the sound, which is the main benefit here. You get aptX, AAC and SBC, with aptX best for quality but AAC important for Apple devices. There is only a single driver which limits the quality compared to the high-end Shure devices, like the ones I heard years ago, but it is still excellent. I would characterise it as neutral in tone, with particularly good separation and bass that is clean and not at all boomy. The lack of boom may come over as bass-light at first, but persevere and you appreciate this. It is important to have a good fit and if you don’t get the seal they will sound thin; of course every ear is different so how easy this is will vary. The design of the Shure also means that the sleeves can clog with wax and a little tool is supplied to help with cleaning.
Not for everyone then; but these suit me well. One last thing to mention: Shure unfortunately has a reputation as not the most reliable of earbud brands. In my case, one wireless unit went dead after a couple of weeks. Shure replaced it and all is well, but it is somewhat concerning.
Peter Hook, known as Hooky, played bass for Joy Division and then New Order – though he is no longer with New Order, having fallen out with guitarist Bernard Sumner (also ex Joy Division) in early 2007.
Hook’s first book, called The Hacienda: how not to run a club, was published in 2010 but I paid no attention at the time, nor to its successors Unknown Pleasures and Substance. Leafing through the Hacienda book earlier this year though, I discovered that Hook is an excellent writer, with a disarming to-the-point style and deadpan humour. He is also, it seems, ruthlessly honest in his recollections; maybe there are some embellishments, or maybe he tells it just as it happens, but either way he neither holds back nor wallows in the excesses of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, just narrates it.
I resolved to do some reading over the break and have just finished his Joy Division book. It is at once illuminating, entertaining and moving. I love the prologue:
Normally I don’t include any other people in my writing. Everyone remembers the same things completely differently.
The central character in this book is not Hooky, but rather Ian Curtis, the lyricist and singer in Joy Division. In fact, as you finish the book, you realise that Hooky has kept his own personal life, such as his relationship with Iris with whom he stayed for 10 years, largely hidden from view. The Hooky self-described in the book is a lad and a japer who gets lucky with his distinctive bass playing almost by accident. Curtis on the other hand is an intellectual and a poet, though when off-stage with the band he adopts a laddish persona which is at odds with how he behaves with his wife Debbie or his mistress Annik Honoré. Maintaining these different personalities was a source of huge stress, especially since Curtis was an epileptic and not physically robust.
During the recording of the second and last Joy Division album, Closer, and just a couple of months before Curtis took his own life, the band stayed in two adjacent London flats. In one were Hooky, Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris, and in the other Curtis with girlfriend Honoré. As Hooky tells is, the band did the usual rock lifestyle focused on drink, drugs girls and recording sessions, while Curtis and Honoré would go out to art galleries and museums. The separate flats and lifestyle seem symbolic of the differences between Curtis and his band. Though that did not stop the other band members disassembling and removing their bed one night as a jape, causing Curtis to “go mental, absolutely mental”.
This and other accounts of high jinks on the road now seem deeply insensitive, considering the state of Curtis’s physical and mental health, a fact which Hook openly acknowledges.
I feel terrible about it now of course. Now I’m older and wiser, and now I’ve looked at his lyrics and worked out what a tortured soul he was. We should have left him alone to have his love affair but we didn’t because he wasn’t tragic Ian the genius then. He was just our mate and that’s what you did with your mates up north, you ripped the piss out of them.
This remark touches on another thing: that Hook says little about the content of Curtis’s lyrics and apparently took little notice of them at the time. He experienced the songs viscerally without troubling much about the meaning of the words.
The consequence is that this book says little about what Curtis was trying to communicate through the music and lyrics of Joy Division. Hook presents track-by-track descriptions of Unknown Pleasures and Closer but focuses largely on the instruments, song structure and produce Martin Hannett’s effects.
A notable feature of Joy Division’s short life is that the band never had much money. There is even a suggestion that when the band was achieving considerable success, Factory Records and band manager Rob Gretton were happy to keep the band poor on the grounds that the music was better that way. So we get accounts of travelling down the motorway in old vans that hardly worked, sleeping on tour in dormitories and brothels (if the hotel says your room will not be available until 1.00am you should worry), and making do with dodgy instruments and amplification. There is an illustration showing Joy Division’s accounts in 1980 and 1981: the band made far more money after Curtis died than it ever did before.
If you like Joy Division (and I personally find the band utterly compelling) then you will enjoy this book, even though it is not, and does not pretend to be, the last word. If you wonder what the UK’s punk movement was like at the sharp end, you should read this book (hint: it was not glamorous). Then put on some Joy Division and reflect on how amazing and accidental it is that this music exists, with all its emotional power; and how it is so unlike the music of New Order, fine though that is in its own right.
The Cure has released a 3-CD deluxe edition of Mixed Up, originally released as a double album or single CD in November 1990.
Parts of this release have already appeared on vinyl in two limited Records Store Day 2018 releases: Mixed Up, and Torn Down.
A few words about the CD. Why would anyone buy a CD in this streaming era? It is a waste of money if you just want to listen to the music, but you do get some nice packaging, weird squirly, blocky artwork, photos of the band and of memorabilia from the day, and a 32-page booklet with notes and credits. When physical media has disappeared completely I will miss these things, even though the wretched small size of CD artwork means you have to squint to read the credits.
The idea for Mixed Up came to Robert Smith when he was wondering what came next after the Prayer Tour, the 76 shows which followed the release of the epic album Disintegration in 1989. There were “increased tensions in the band”, according to a quote from Smith in the booklet. “I had to think of something else in the meantime.”
The original thought was to compile the extended mixes made for 12″ singles into an album, since some of these releases were out of print and sought-after by fans.
As he worked on the album though, he moved beyond that initial concept. The early 12″ mixes of songs like Primary, Lovecats and Inbetween Days seemed to him inferior to the more recent releases, so he moved from compiling to reworking existing mixes of earlier songs. In fact, neither Lovecats nor Primary appeared at all on the original Mixed Up. In addition, two tracks on the original Mixed Up (A Forest and The Walk) were re-recorded from scratch as the multi-tracks were missing.
Here is how the original Mixed Up (November 1990) breaks down:
Lullaby (Extended Mix): same as 12″ Fiction FICX 29 (1989)
Close To Me (Closer Mix): Same as 12″ FICSX 36 (1990), different from earlier extended mix on 12″ Fiction FICSX 23 (1985)
Fascination Street (Extended Mix): same as 12″ Elektra 0-66704 (1989, US/Canada only)
The Walk (Everything Mix): new recording for Mixed Up.
Lovesong (Extended Mix): Same as 12″ Fiction FICSX 30 (1989)
A Forest (Tree Mix): New recording for Mixed Up.
Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix): same as Fiction Records FICXB 34 where it is called Strange Mix (1990), but different from FICXA 34
Hot Hot Hot!!! (Extended Mix): same as 12″ Fiction FICSX 28 (1988)
Why Can’t I Be You? (Extended Mix):(LP only; omitted from the CD for space reasons): Same as 12″ Fiction Ficsx 25 (1987)
The Caterpillar (Flicker Mix): New extended mix for Mixed Up
In Between Days (Shiver Mix): New extended mix for Mixed Up; different from earlier 12″ Fiction FICSX 22 (1985)
Never Enough (Big Mix): New song recorded for Mixed Up
This made it a curious release, essential for Cure fans thanks to new material included but poor in terms of collecting previously released extended mixes.
What about the new 3CD set. The set breaks down as follows:
CD1: Mixed Up 2018 remaster
This is simply a remaster of the 1990 release. Track release as above, but Why Can’t I Be You still omitted (it is on the next CD in the set)
CD2: Mixed Up Extras
This CD includes (at last) most of the early extended remixes which were not on the original Mixed Up. Tracks:
Let’s Go to Bed (Extended Mix 1982)
Just One Kiss (Extended Mix 1982)
Close to Me (Extended Mix 1985)
Boys Don’t Cry (New Voice Club Mix 1986)
Why Can’t I Be You? (Extended Mix 1987)
A Japanese Dream (12″ Remix 1987)
Pictures of You (Extended Version 1990)
Let’s Go To Bed (Milk Mix 1990)
Just Like Heaven (Dizzy Mix 1990)
Primary (Red Mix 1990)
The Lovecats (TC & Benny Mix 1990)
Inevitably, there are still a few tracks missing. These are Primary (Extended Mix 1981); The Lovecats (Extended Version 1983); and In Between Days (Extended Version 1985). The notes refer to a digital release though I am not sure where or whether they have been released. Smith says of these versions that Primary was “basically a 7″ instrumental cut into the 7″ single mix”, that Lovecats was not really a remix, but rather the original single mix before it was edited down, and that In Between Days was “extended by person or persons unknown” and nothing to do with him.
Of these the only one I care about is Lovecats; I would like to have the full version here.
CD3: Torn Down
This is where Smith lets himself go and makes new mixes of favourites from the Cure’s back catalogue. “Compared to most of the Mixed Up remixes, my versions tend to work with the existing song structure; they’re pretty much the same length and tempo as the original … I found myself happier working within those structural restraints,” he says in the notes. That said, he found elements in the songs that had previously been buried, including the actual sound of heavy rain at the start and end of A Night Like This, which he brought out in the new mix.
Three Imaginary Boys (Help Me Mix)
M (Attack Mix)
The Drowning Man (Bright Birds Mix)
A Strange Day (Drowning Waves Mix)
Just One Kiss (Remember Mix)
Shake Dog Shake (New Blood Mix)
A Night Like This (Hello Goodbye Mix)
Like Cockatoos (Lonely in the Rain Mix)
Plainsong (Edge of the World Mix)
Never Enough (Time to Kill Mix)
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea (Love in Vain Mix)
Want (Time Mix)
The Last Day of Summer (31st August Mix)
Cut Here (If Only Mix)
Lost (Found Mix)
It’s Over (Whisper Mix)
So how are the new mixes? An interesting way to hear them is to play the original followed by the remix, easy to do if you rip your CDs to a computer or streaming system. You can hear some themes, such as a more techno feel to the new mixes, and that Smith’s vocals are more forward. Three Imaginary Boys, for example, gives you a new perspective on an early song, with the “Can you help me” vocal from the end moved to the beginning of the song, hence the name “Help Me Mix”.
Shake Dog Shake benefits from the extra clarity of a modern mix and sounds more sinister and colourful than the original.
It tends to be lesser-known songs that benefit most. It is difficult to re-approach a magnificent song like Plainsong without making it worse, and in this case it is as expected.
Perhaps then it is better not to listen to them alongside the originals but to enjoy it as a whole. Cure fans will enjoy it even though it is not in any sense ground-breaking.
The complete package
This collections gets a warm welcome from me. I have always enjoyed Mixed Up, and I am delighted now to get treats like the earlier extended mixes of Close To Me. Just One Kiss, and the other extended mix of Pictures of You, which to me are the definitive versions.
The sound quality is excellent, and kudos to mastering engineer Tim Young for showing some restraint in mastering so that these songs are not wrecked by excessively LOUD mastering.
