Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

If Pink Floyd was an acapella group this is how they would have done DSotM - honestly, it's that good Dark Side of the Moon (DSoTM is how I might refer to it to save typing) is a mainstay piece of music.  Not only is it the most popular Pink Floyd Album, I believe it was the artistic high-water-mark for the band.  And I love it.  I have about 4 different LP pressings (Including a treasured Mobile Fidelity copy that is astonishing in quality), a CD, and an SACD of this one album.  Once in awhile it needs to be played.  No one in the house complains, though I am pretty sure the kids aren't as in to it as I am.  In fact, I think Kathy doesn't like it as much as I do, either. When I got into audiophile gear, I also found out it was recorded very well, and is one of the audiophile standards where not only does it sound good - nearly everyone likes the music.  There is so much in the audiophile repertoire that isn't that way - its when you find yo...

I think it is something audiophiles everywhere know, but few outside this tiny community really understand. Audiophile components, in order to get them to give you the realism we're all after, are like a beautiful but high maintenance spouse.  It takes a lot, I mean a lot to see their good side.  Treat them like the princesses they feel they are, and you will have the best one ever.  But one false move, and you are in the doghouse. Let me illustrate audiophile versions with a couple of examples: YOU are the starting motor ... There is a turntable from a British firm called Nottingham Analogue Studios called the "Ace Space Deck."  You see, the designers felt that the biggest barrier to superlative performance was a motor that was too powerful to run the platter causing degrading sonics.  To this end they made the motor barely strong enough to turn the platter once it was set into motion by its owners hand.  Seriously, it will sit there all day, g...

Where he rants a bit ! There is something most audiophiles will claim as a truism.  There are flame wars over this, but frankly like most things on the internet, it is people shouting at one another with a "stance" rather than trying to find the truth or common ground.  When an audiophile, nearly any audiophile, is making this claim, it simply isn't true.  What claim, you ask?  They say, with nose in the air sometimes, "It is all about the music."  If you have stared at an audiophile setup you know right away that this is about as truthful as a politician making a promise on election eve.   If you haven't seen them, let me fill you in: A typical audiophile component has a sort of look to it - be it an expensive faceplate, a clear-coat finish, or a speaker with exotic veneer that would make a furniture maker jealous.  Cabling (another source of controversy as in "do cables make or fail make a sonic impact" - which is the wrong question, by the...

At the risk of having my audiophile card revoked, let me extol some virtues about a system that "gets it," for family audio - whole house audio - but even more importantly as a portal for music discovery. Can I tell you that the Sonos sounds great (we currently own a Play:5 , Sub , and 2 Connects ), and is simple enough that everyone in the family enjoys it?  Once you attach a few services to it (Spotify, MOG, Pandora) that people listen to and discover more music than you'd expect.  We have had so much fun over the last year that I believe our music-awareness kicked it up a notch. In fact we're splitting this into 2 parts - part 1 (this one) describing in big hand-waves, the system, and the next one (part 2) when you unleash a family with a history of practical jokes upon Sonos with every family member in the household having a remote control for it .... Has it replaced the main system? No. Could it?  No way. Does it sound great? Yes. What's my major b...

I have fantasies about how my life was before adulthood.  I'd love to be able to tell you how my friends and I went into the basement and spun Dark Side of the Moon and rocked out. I never did this But I never did that.  You see, I was very very straight laced - and was more interested in slaying imaginary dragons playing D&D than scoring Missouri ditchweed and listening to Pink Floyd (though I am certain some of my acquaintances did just that). 70's and 80's audio streaming at its finest I have pretty good memories of my parent's buying me a "boom box" or "ghetto blaster" or whatever else they were called at the time, and I recorded American Top 40 every week on cassette tape - it was a highlight of the week!  The radio was always on when I was with friends playing K-SHE 95 or KMOX (St Louis, MO for those of you wondering) which played what later became known as Classic Rock, which was just Rock at the time. My main source of mu...

The First Steampunk Book Amplifier! One thing I love about small boutique companies, is sometimes people have such a different vision, by something inside of themselves, that is far enough different from what is expected, or what any sane marketing person would tell you was right and proper.  Enter to this a (now defunct) company, Moth Audio.  Their product line is shown in all its glory on their website now aptly called the Moth Museum .  They so completely capture what audiophile equipment might have looked like if the computer revolution was based around Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and not silicon chips.  I am fascinated by it.  It tickles my inner Sci-Fi Geek. I loved William Gibson's The Difference Engine - which described a gritty, hard boiled world of Charles Dickens meets Jules Verne - and it only took a small step for someone to have decided that they wanted to have a set of audio gear to embody their imagining of this world. ...

Look what the arrived in the post yesterday?  I wonder what we'll do with them?  Stay tuned? What do all four have in common?

RIP Amar Bose ... Found out we lost Amar Bose of Bose speakers this past week - he was a giant in the industry, but his work was reviled by many purist audiophiles. We feel that he brought more people to musical enjoyment than almost anyone else.  Obituary from the NYT is here . We only know him through his products - and feel the Bose 901's he produced in 1968, was a radical solution to room filling sound that largely worked.  We absolutely love ours - and may just be firing them up at some point in the next week and play Led Zeppelin through them at window rattling levels as tribute.  RIP, you done good!

Duevel speakers are not the first, and certainly won't be the last omnidirectional speakers ever designed.  But they just may be the prettiest.  You can read about them here. The are currently distributed by a Canadian company, Duevel having dropped their US distributor and consolidated in Canada under the umbrella of the very interesting and self described "Zendo" as company Mutine . Look!  That's how they do it! Omnidirectional speakers tend to be radially symmetrical - which isn't surprising.  And the first popular success was the Ohm Walsh F.  Bose (yes that Bose) spent a lot of the 1960's trying to figure out how to do one - and eventually settled on the Bose 901's as a poly-directional speaker - 9 drivers firing to the rear, and 1 towards the listener.  I have to say, as an owner of a pair, you will not find a bigger illusion of a soundstage (but diffuse) and a convincing illusion of being at a rock concert when playing live music loudly any...

Where he rants a bit ! I want to reveal something to you about Hi Fi.  You can hear the difference between poor quality sound, good quality sound, state-of-the-art quality sound, and live music. Really. You don't need special training or have some sort of genetic gift (So-called "Golden Ears").  I will further say, that my hearing is not as good as people of my age and I can clearly make out differences, too. So I am always a little puzzled (in the eye-roll kind of way) when someone says "My hearing is not that good, so I wouldn't be able to tell the difference."  It sounds more like an excuse than a reason, perhaps thinking it is all about the emperor's new clothes, or that the differences between a $150/pr mass market speakers and a $3000/pr of speakers designed to reproduce music accurately is beyond the grasp of a normal mortal.  It'll be easy to tell the difference between them.  I have seen some prices that take my breath away - and...

) "Hey, look at this!" "What?" "Cyndi Lauper did a Blues Album." "Get out ... really?!" "Yep, and it got decent reviews.  Want to get it?" "Oh yes, absolutely!" As we dug a little deeper, we noticed that Cyndi did a cover of one of my favorite blues songs "Rollin' and Tumblin'" This made the CD really interesting since Eric Clapton has done versions of this song for decades, and Muddy Waters ... well he did, too (or he wrote it - depending on who you believe) "Rollin' and Tumblin'" by "Hambone" Willie Newbern? So we organized a little contest between the three of them. Okay, not quite.  We're pretty sure Muddy Waters will wipe the floor with both Mr. Clapton and Ms. Lauper.  But in a situation like this, if either one of them don't embarrass themselves in front of the master, it is an achievement of sorts.  And who knows?  Perhaps we'll be surp...