Frank1938

Just received notice from McIntosh Labs that the MC275 received the 2017 Editor's Choice award for 2017. I certainly am enchanted with mine. http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Brand/Pages/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=228&Block=1

Ryan Kilpatrick at Audio Classics would agree with you. He told me that the 225 is a little "sweeter" than the MC30 when I thought about trading one of the 225s for two 30s. They all are great amps though! Frank

You are going to love the new amp. After a few weeks , I think you will find it is just as good, or better, than the 225. I have had three three totally restored 225s and find that the 275 is more to my liking and it presents excellent soundstage and wonderful bass. There are comments about replacing the tubes in the amp and I did put in vintage BB 12AX7s and RCA 12AT7s and found that the stock tubes are just as good. Enjoy the amp. Frank

Maybe this will help you: http://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/5-1-surround-audio-passthrough

PM sent.

The RP450-C.

Does anyone know if center channel speakers can be wall mounted?

Geoff. Yes, I still have the Cornscala D's and still like them very much. I'm using a new McIntosh 275 with them now and the sound is much fuller with a great soundstage. I don't think you will be disappointed with the D but I don't know if the D will be better than the CF-3s. Haven't heard the 3s.

Power handling is 200 wpc (800 peak) Frank

I am now using the Cornscala D style. Before that I had the Cornwall III. I like the sound of both but prefer the larger horn in the D. The Crites woofer seems to have a little more punch also. Nothing against the Cornwall III, just needs a better horn since it is the same one used in the Heresy III which I also have.

I tried several devices over the years and liked most of the DBX equipment including the DBX 120. I also used a Yamaha DSP 1 and a Lexicon pre. Now, I am using an Aragon Stage One set on Stereo Direct and my little McIntosh 225 amp with Velodyne subs. Simple but most enjoyable pure sound.

Congratulations to Klipsch for their achievements at CES 2016. World Wide Stereo posted this on their web page today: https://www.worldwidestereo.com/categories/ces-award-winners

If you are using an Apple product, go to 'Find', then to 'Music' and drag the iTunes folder to the external hard drive that is on your desktop (Assuming you have connected it.) Instructions for using the HD with iTunes can be found here. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7187908?start=0&tstart=0 Also, you should format the HD for a Mac. See instructions here: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-format-storage-drive-for-mac-3541758/ Frank

See my post under "speaker ohms." Frank

Bill, the Aragon Stage One is an excellent pre/pro. I have had mine for many years and I haven't been tempted to replace it or its companion 2007. Stereo Direct produces outstanding imaging and it mates well with my Mcintosh 225 amps. I see no need for a tube preamp in my setup. Aragon components were expensive but their durability is beyond reproach. No HDMI but I question whether HDMI would improve the sound quality of the Stage One. IOW, I highly recommend you try one.

Good to hear that. I'll check that out. Enjoy the music.

I believe Rhapsody no longer sells MP3 songs and is only a streaming service. You can download songs to your device(s) at 160 or stream at 320. They do have a great selection of music and you can choose the music yourself, which I really enjoy.

The information below explains it for you. It all depends on your taste. If you are happy with AAC, no problem. With the RF7 IIs, I would think you would want the best sound possible: "When you convert a song, some data may be lost due to the way certain formats compress data. For this reason these formats are sometimes called "lossy" formats. The advantage of using a "lossy" format is that the file sizes are much smaller, which means you can store more songs in the same amount of disk space. The disadvantage is that the sound quality may not be as good as the original, uncompressed format. Depending on the song, the speakers or headphones, and the player you use to play the song, you may not be able to tell the difference between a compressed "lossy" song and a song that is not compressed. Once a song is compressed (meaning some of its data is lost) you cannot retrieve the data by uncompressing it. If you convert a song from a "lossy" format to a uncompressed format, the quality of the song will not improve and the file will only take up more disk space. For example, if you convert a song in MP3 format (a compressed format) to AIFF (an uncompressed format) the song will take up much more space on the hard disk, but it will still sound the same as the compressed file. In order to take advantage of uncompressed formats you should only import songs using these formats."

Truthfully, I ripped them so long ago, I don't recall, but I would venture to say they were not saved as lossless, as my understanding of the difference back then was non-existent. I'll check later this evening, and look into converting them if not. I am, however, beginning to sense that the overall sound quality is a sum of all the parts. I question the level of quality my current receiver can truly provide. Congrats on the RF7 IIs. USNRET is correct. You will have to rip again. If they are not ripped lossless, no way to convert to lossless.

http://syracuse.craigslist.org/eld/4916685294.html No affiliation; just trying to remove temptation to buy them!!!

I'm sure she made frequent trips to Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City to listen to the many bands that played there. I spent many nights there and spent many pesos drinking cerveza and an occasional tequila during my winter trips to Cuernavaca and Mexico City. The charro tradition has been around for a long time. José Alfredo Jiménez is best known and most loved in ranchera music. Juan Gabriel has carried on the mariachi tradition and has influenced many Mexican and Spanish singers. Enjoy the music! I listen to it frequently.

If you like latin music, Chamín Correa is one of Mexico's great guitarists and he has a series of CDs called "Cuerdas, amor y guitarra." Here's a sampling of a bolero popurri from Vol. 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz8jyVnlp7E. A copy of the CD is a must to get full enjoyment. The strings are just great on all of his CDs. Antonio de Lucena also does some good guitar work. Spanish Guitar (Manuel Granada) is also good.

your files will be properly tagged against the MusicBrainz database. Album art would be embedded in the files and included within each directory. Thaddeus, how is MusicBrainz different from the database that iTunes uses? Thanks. Frank

Here you go, Joe: Although iTunes has a feature for automatically fetching album artwork, there are likely going to be times that you’ll still want to add artwork manually to your tracks, especially for more obscure tracks that you’ve imported from your own collection. Unfortunately, with the redesign of iTunes 11, the long-established artwork pane in the bottom left corner disappeared, and with it one of the easier shortcuts for adding and removing album artwork. Fortunately, however, all is not lost, and you can still add artwork to multiple tracks through the track info dialog box. Simply select one or more tracks and choose Get Info from the iTunes File menu. If you’re working with a single track, you’ll need to switch to the “Artwork” tab, while with multiple tracks selected, an “Artwork” section will appear in the main Info tab. From here, you can drag and drop an image in from Finder or Windows Explorer, or paste an image in from the clipboard using CTRL+V (Windows) or CMD+V (Mac). As an added bonus, the clipboard options also work to copy artwork from other tracks; simply open the track info, highlight the artwork, and use CTRL+C/CMD+C to copy the selected image to the clipboard, after which you can easily paste it to one or more additional tracks using the method above. Find the album art you want using google, right click on the image and click on copy image, go to the album or song in iTunes for which you need album art, right click on the album title or song title and select "info", select "album art" and paste the image there. Frank

Next was Itunes, issue here is apple always feels the need to change crap up Yep, biggest problem with iTunes and the only artwork you can add is if they actually sell the Lp. You can manually add art work by using google search and adding it in the "info" section of the album or song also they separate various artist lp into a different lp for each song Mark an album with various artists as a "compilation" and the songs will be kept together in the same album. I am using iTunes with a USB connection to a DAC and then on to my pre/pro and it works very well. Have over 22,000 songs on the hard drive but you can use an external drive as well. You just have to change the location of where iTunes looks for the files. Very easy to do. ITunes does an outstanding job in the sorting process; switching from artist, album or songs is instantaneous. Very smooth sorting process. I also have a Dell using WMP with an external hard drive and iTunes is many, many times faster.