Cutting back ?

[Roger Hicks]

I'm a GNU man myself..............

How do you do? It's so very gnice to gnow you...

Personally I'm in favour of a good wallow. Though the rhyme in the follow-up is even better: "His inamorata/the hippopotama..." Not bad, two six-syllable lines with four words.

Cheers,

R.

 

[bob338]

i made the leap to new McIntosh gear a few years ago after getting tired of dealing with the tubes and maintenance. at the same time i sold my old Linn LP12(Ittok, Benz ruby, cirkus, lingo, etc.) and bought a new VPI with a 25lb platter and a new benz cart. i bought just about everything i thought i ever wanted.
i realized recently that i haven't used my turntable since my son was born two years ago and i plug the ipod into the Mc more often than i ever imagined i would. it sounds pretty good if you rip your files into Apple Lossless. my Mc cd player is the model right before they started accepting cdrs and sacds, so it gets used less and less too.
i guess my point is that spending ungodly sums of money on a new system will not necessarily increase your enjoyment of music. i guess if i had it to do over again, i would probably buy the new McIntosh music server system instead of the TT and cd player.
on the other hand, i was at a client's house a few weeks ago who has $500k in his stereo and it was mindblowing! his entire living room consists of the stereo and a couch. but i guess you have to be a bachelor to do that...

bob

 

[Roger Hicks]

on the other hand, i was at a client's house a few weeks ago who has $500k in his stereo and it was mindblowing! his entire living room consists of the stereo and a couch. but i guess you have to be a bachelor to do that...

bob

Dear Bob,

Not necessarily. A close friend is very senior in an in-car entertainment company and his in-car stereo is worth 10x as much as our car.

Then again, his car is probably worth a lot more than our car too.

And he's married.

Cheers,

R.

 

[robklurfield]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37531245@N08/4132012362/

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37531245@N08/4132012362/

Very nice!.....I seem to remember things like that - in the radio receivers, when I was a boy.
Dave.

 

[pakeha]

ah, know the feeling Dee. My NAD amp just deestructed. and to top that off my wonderful wife thought the tweeters on B&W DM1400`S NEED TO BE DUSTED!!! When you have had this stuff for so long it is kinda hard to let go and replace with new and improved - and down sized.

 

[dee]

It was this factor of beginning to focus on the equipment , rather than the music / photos which I was trying to get across [ ASdee creates constant crossed wires LOL ]
My G2 works for me as do my M8 and the Dig3 . Irrespective of the cost differential .
I can only observe ' real ' people with little comprehension - like through a glass darkly , so have to ask ' obvious ' questions

 

[Makten]

as far as digital music goes, mp3 and other music files are samples of the original and lack some of the complete information.

Which of course is the case with a vinyl record too. It's a sample, not the "complete information". There are no microphones, mixers, compressors or recorders that can take the musicians to your home and put them inside your speakers.

 

[ernstk]

Which of course is the case with a vinyl record too. It's a sample, not the "complete information". There are no microphones, mixers, compressors or recorders that can take the musicians to your home and put them inside your speakers.

However, being an analogue music signal it is much more 'complete information' than a digital equivalent.

Ernst

 

[Nescio]

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: 'tis all one; all moral
philosophy may as well be applied to a common and private life, as to one
of richer composition: every man carries the entire form of human
condition.

Montaigne (1533-1592)

The first blogger of our time

 

[Wahoo]

I seem to remember things like that - in the radio receivers, when I was a boy.
Dave.

Really Dave, was this before or after De Forest . 🙂

Only last week I read that there are plans to re-open the Blackburn (UK) plant which once employed about 7,000 people making mullard and osram valves/tubes.

The only valve/tube items that I still own are a couple of mono Philips EL 84 powered amps, 'narm Pioneer, 3 quad amps plus pre's and tuners and an ear 834p mm/mc.

Here's a more modern 90's turntable, haven't things changed since your dansette major in blue or red ?

 

[Makten]

However, being an analogue music signal it is much more 'complete information' than a digital equivalent.

There's no such rule. An analogue signal can be alot less "complete" than a digital one. It all depends on what gear is used to capture the signal, process it and put it out in your room. As long as the sample frequency is high enough, you can capture every hearable frequency in the recording. How would it be "less complete" just because it was "translated" to digital and then "translated" back to analogue?

Sorry, but there's a whole lot of BS going on among analogue freaks. Anyone is free to like the sound better, but it is by no means "more true". It CAN be, but only because of the signal chain being allover better.

 

[historicist]

Vinyl vs. CD, it's like the digital vs. film debate. Both in the sense of being a bit pointless, but they are also rather similar in the way the whole experience of using them feels.

Vinyl may not really sound better (not owning any CDs I can't really say though it strikes me as being a bit unlikely), but it certainly sounds good, and is a lot more fun than cds. It also involves much more hassle, just like film photography does - try moving house with 2000+ records when you can't drive, or getting up in the middle of a LP side to blow dust off the needle, etc. etc.

Sometimes I want to throw them all away and just have a tiny hard disk filled with all my music. But I find when I listen to Itunes, the ease of going from track to track makes me never really listen to a song, just constantly skip here and there. With records once a side is on, it stays on until it is over. I don't like digital cameras for exactly the same reason - not so much to do with the quality, but because they make it too easy to take too many photos.

I agree it can definitely be easy to loose sight of things and think about the gear more than what you actually brought the gear to do in the first place. I'm definitely guilty of that, with hi fi and cameras. But there's a balance to be struck, and once you've heard music on a good system or seen a picture taken with a good lens its hard to go back to listening to mp3s on a laptop or cheap digicams.

 

[robklurfield]

Is that one yours??? Wow!

Really Dave, was this before or after De Forest . 🙂

Only last week I read that there are plans to re-open the Blackburn (UK) plant which once employed about 7,000 people making mullard and osram valves/tubes.

The only valve/tube items that I still own are a couple of mono Philips EL 84 powered amps, 'narm Pioneer, 3 quad amps plus pre's and tuners and an ear 834p mm/mc.

Here's a more modern 90's turntable, haven't things changed since your dansette major in blue or red ?

 

[Al Kaplan]

What ever happened to all those 45 RPM singles, the ones with just one song you really wanted and the "flip side" that nobody wanted to hear?

 

[Chris101]

I think they have all been melted into bowls that sell in Southern California gift shops.

 

[nathanp]

I just typed this after reading the whole thread and then realised that I'd wandered away from the OP's point. Oh well, I'll post it anyway!

I'm finding that these days I can appreciate things like photographs, music or films in one of two ways. On the one hand I can appreciate the technical quality - in photographs this is usually where I notice the tones, bokeh and sharpness, in music it's the tracks where I may not find the song to be that great but I'd notice (and enjoy) the crispness of the hi-hats, the depth of sub-bass, or a fantastic guitar tone.
On the other hand I can appreciate things for their content - like badly recorded punk music with a strong message, a crackly old blues record or in photography terms a blurry, badly exposed shot of something amazing. Occassionally both things coincide and the result is something special but it doesn't mean that something that leans more to one side than the other can't be great.

I suppose that's all pretty obvious to most people but I've never really thought about it very much.

 

[Chris101]

Punk's got a message?

 

[Roger Hicks]

Punk's got a message?

Dear Chris,

F*** you. F*** the world. F*** everything except (possiblY) the music, but probably, f*** that too.

Seems a clear enough message to me. Or maybe I misunderstood it. The greatest proto-punk band, in my book, was the Blockheads. F***ing Ada, f***ing Ada...

Cheers,

R.

 

[bob338]

Dear Chris,

F*** you. F*** the world. F*** everything except (possiblY) the music, but probably, f*** that too.

Seems a clear enough message to me. Or maybe I misunderstood it. The greatest proto-punk band, in my book, was the Blockheads. F***ing Ada, f***ing Ada...

Cheers,

R.

sounds like you learned about punk rock from an episode of Quincy, MD.

bob