maxg

Seti, Just follow the links - plenty there - or do you want more even than that...???

It that time of year again folks - and this year it was bigger and badder than ever. Lots and lots of photos on line all over the place. You can see my contributions either at http://aca.gr/forum/viewtopic.php?p=23733#23733 (high speed connection really required) or direct from my Photobucket account at http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg86/max-greece/high%20end%20show%202008/ - where you can choose which photos you want to see form the thumbnails. For Klipsch fans the new Palladium range was there - but it wasnt really flourishing in a small room. Stand out setup of the show was the all new Grand Utopia in a nice little system something around $600,000. Funny thing - I listened to it for quite some time - its worth it!!! For me it completely redefined what is possible in home audio. Oh - and take a look at the REF Muono or whatever they call it (if you dont know which one it is - look for the female silver surfer and you have it). Most stunning beautiful speaker probably ever - I would want it just to put in the living room - sound was nothing special. The large stack of very square amps (of which I have forgotten the name) were driving the large Sonus Faber's in the second best sound in the show (second by a large margin - but still magnificent). First time I ever hard Sonus that were not half a second behind the music. Finally there is a way to make them run rather than walk everything. Now for those that cannot be bother to follow the links:

Rock: Roger Waters - Amused to Death. Takes up where DSOTM left off - adds the amazing Q-sound surround sound from 2 speakers and blows me away. Classical: Rachmaninof's 3rd piano / Ashkenazy - LSO - Previn on Japanese Super Analgoue of original London recording. Definitive performance of definitive concerto on amazing recording beautifully transcribed to vinyl. It dont get any better. Elgar Cello concerto / Jacqueline Du Pre /London Symphony / Sir John Barbirolli / EMI. Definitive performance of definitive concerto on decent recording well transcribed to vinyl - not as good as the above - but still to die for.

And I thought we were all just............er...............horny devils?

I think you had better make an offering to the God of punctuation - even deities need all the support they can get.... Interestingly the main God worshipped in ancient Thebes (now Thiva - been there many times) was Dionysus - who would have been right up Thebes Street - so to speak. God of wine women and fornication - not to put too fine a point on it. Good party God.

Forgot about the piano: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 3 Vladimir Ashkenazy London Symphony / Andre Previn London KIJC-9204 Stereo Japan Super Analogue Its about as good as it gets.

"Only one out of 10 of my lp's is good. Only one of a 100 is great, and one of a thousand is awesome. " Oh good- at least I buy vinyl better than you. [] Although it isnt always easy to asses I would guess that of my collection: 95% is better than CD (maybe more - not less). 60% is really good (forget its playing and just listen to the music). About a third of the above is superb (stuff you would use if an audiophile drops in to listen). And around 20% of those are jaw dropping. Translation: In 100 records, 95 are better than CD, 60 of those are good, 20 are great and 4 are astonishing.

Fair enough Dave - on both points. What can I say - you have better digital toys than me. Interesting that 1 bit 2.8 MHz does so well- as I am yet to hear an SACD that can hold a candle to vinyl. I take it we are talking DSD recording here....

Whilst Dave and the good Doctor are right - CD is hardly cutting edge and far from the pinacle of digital, it is the ONLY digitial medium (outside of MP3) with a comparible volume of music out there that one can enjoy. SACD and DVDa have fairly lousy coverage of the musical spectrum and high res "soft" digital recordings are if anything even scarcer. Sadly (and I mean that) if you want to be able to build a decent library of the best possible quality you have to go vinyl. The only viable alternative appears to be ripping your own vinyl collection to hires digital. As a copy it can only be "almost as good".

If no-one is around how do we even know it fell in the first place?

These statements usually work better when they are, at least, gramatically correct: "The properly implemented horn-loaded loudspeaker is more superior topology then juts “horn-loaded loudspeakers”. " Should read: "The properly implemented horn-loaded loudspeaker is superior topology then juts “horn-loaded loudspeakers”. " Now isnt that more better......[:^)]

Screamer radio has as many stations as I have ever seen. Quality variable - some quite good. www.screamer-radio.com Small app too.

"Digital is also a more revealing medium than analog, much like horn loaded loudspeaker systems are." Not sure I agree with either of the above, however I would like to know what more revealing means in this sense??? "If the mixdown or the mastering engineer does a sloppy job on a digital project, you will hear it and it will sound bad. In spite of the difficulty of working with digital, excellent results have been achieved using that medium." Now this is more credible. I am fortunate in that the music I love most - Opera and Classical happen to be far more massively available on vinyl than on CD. Further, the performances that I choose to listen to are, in the main, from the 1960's with a few early birds from the 50's and a few Johny come lately's from the 70's. This happened to coincide with the most dramatic competition for sales between the major players (DG, Decca/London, EMI, Philips etc etc.) on vinyl and an explosion in performances and recordings. At that time there were 2 means of differentiating yourself (as a record company) from the competition - who you had signed up (Orchestra/Conductor) and how good a sound you produced. This provided very much a win win for buyers with pricing being quite an even playing field. I have no doubt that the music I listen to - a tiny proportion of the total vinyl records produced is probably the creme de la creme both as original recordings and as new audiophile productions from the old master tapes. It is therefore probably unfair to compare these to mainstream CD. There is a point however that the best of my collection goes to where digital has simply never trod and this is why I chose to invest my hard earned money into a high end TT. Now I agree with you wholeheartedly that digital is here to stay but I do not use digitial as synonymous with CD in this case. MP3 and its equivalents are now King - CD is as outdated as is vinyl. I think you would find it hard to argue that MP3 is better than vinyl too - even if one were to spuriously accept that CD is. Quality as a determining factor in purchasing is long gone. I do not believe it was ever the primary issue for CD beyond that initial marketing of perfect sound forever. In simple terms then - were one to state that vinyl's superiority is merely a product of the greater care and attention payed to producing the best possible sound from the medium I would probably have no issue with the statement. I am, however, yet to find even a single digitial recording that is truely up there - and it would take just one to convince me.....

Actually Dave I have been kinda exploding on the digital recording front - for both video and audio. Been playing with 720p video on the computer -sure is impressive - even on a 15 inch computer display. In the meantime I have just about sorted the recording issue save for a few minor quirks I am in the process of ironing out. The main problem I have yet to overcome is to find a more sensitive input volume control so I can ride it even lower to zero than I do now. Secondary issue is the brightness of the recording in comparison to the original For some reason there is a slight boost in the treble - which all the non-audiophiles of the house spotted immediately. Current version of the recording is as good as I have gotten and very close to the vinyl - baring the treble issue. I think I will oversome this at the source by running my cart lower - laid back and therefore not as bright. Fortunately I have an arm that allows me to do this sort of change intantly - even on the fly. In the meantime after some conversations with a few nice chaps at Microsoft I figured out why their toolkit wont read my wav file to produce a loseless WMA 96/24 file. Apparently my wav is not 24 bit but 32 bit floating - whatever that means???? The software will allow 24 bit straight so the very next recording will be in that format. That's all for now - I can confirm that what I have produced is, by and large, better than anything else digital I have ever heard - including SACD on the Accuphase $15k player.....

Yes - but Mark was in on the basis of something audio - my mention is as a taxi driver...

"A well done remastered CD will simply blow away a vinyl pressing. Every time" Somehow I seem to have missed ever getting my hands on these well done remastered CDs. Stranger yet - never got hold of an SACD that outplayed a vinyl record either - nor a DVDa. Actually that is not quite true- there are plenty of very average vinyl records out there - its just that the best of the best is ALWAYS on vinyl in my experience.

[:$]Well thank you all gentlemen. They always do this to me it seems- wait till I am on holiday to make me famous....so I am the last to know. Sadly Bob was on a seriously tight time schedule so there was no way to get him in front of my system - believe me it did cross my mind - what a free consultation on your sound...... As it is it was all great - but rather tiring fun and I clocked up a good few miles running from one end of Athens to the other. I guess this is my 15 minutes then....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7537782.stm Fully restored original stereo recordings actually from 1934 but the patents were registered in 1931. Interesting stuff methinks.....

Shawn, This is a rip i have made from the Reiner Chicago RCA living stereo vinyl record that I own. Its currently on my hard drive in the shared directory and accessible to lmewire and the like. Is that what you are asking?

Dave, If you can try out the limewire - it is a bit shady but it does work- right now I have half a dozen people downloading from me but I can cut them off if I need to. Let me know - I need you to hear this before we can realistically discuss this one further.

Sudden brainwave. I have put the file on on Limewire which is one of those filesharing things. I think it is also open to Torrent users and others. Anyway if you search for "sheherezade 9624 Last movement" and find it then I would expect that's mine and you can download it. I have opened up my machine for maximum speed on downloading - so if my ISP is on form it shouldn't take too long. If others get and it leave it shared then each subsequent user will get it that much faster as it will come down from multiple sources. Here's hoping this works- again- never put a file for upload before......

Dave, OK - we need to sort something out so you can hear what I have here. It is impossible to compare the sample from here to my own as my source is obviously massively superior. I have significantly less noise and much wider dynamic swings, tonally its night and day (due to the age of the orginial source) and of course - mine is stereo and has complete soundstaging. I might be able to trim out an shorter section (not tried that yet) so I can upload a shorter but representative sample. I'd like to keep it to 100 Mb or thereabouts - as my upload speed is not that huge. Finally - I will need full instructions if shawn is game - I dont know anything about uploading on the internet....

Dave, Downloading it now - looks like it will take a while. Will be interesting to compare it to my own efforts to see. If mine compares well I will try to find a way of sharing it with others. Just have no idea where to place a 500 + Mb file for sharing - and god only knows how long it will take to upload.... Still working on recording at my end. Some things appear to be bearing fruit. Getting there slowly.