RPO Tickets

By -
Yes ... the two of us took the plunge and bought season tickets to our local Philharmonic.  Sure it was impulsive, but I have to say ... we're looking forward to it like you can't imagine!

We got into this crazy thing over music - and aside from a Jazz festival we blew off this last year (so crowded you could hardly move - and we don't like massive crowds) - we've been suffering a live-in-the-flesh music deficit this ought to correct.  And despite the hives I got as a kid going to St. Louis Symphony concerts as part of school functions, I managed to get over it, and it is one of the few memories I have intact from being 5 or 6.

Last season we saw a performance of Beethoven's 3rd ("Eroica" one of my favorites of all time) in a intimate hall and it was transformational.  We're hoping to have a similar levels of enjoyment this coming season.  I bet most of you have access to live music of some kind - see if you can drag yourselves and your family to something?  Opening weekend is the 23rd of September and they are playing Mahler's 1st.

So what are you doing?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Thorens MM002 and MM008 meet the Crosley C10 (Part 2 of 2)

By -
Image
It used to be that every single receiver or preamp had a built in phonostage.  The way it used to work is that you would by a turntable, plug it in, and start spinning records.  For the audio enthusiast, there was always low output moving coil cartridges, and the resultant step-up-transformer you could use to present a signal to the phono input, but the built in was always used.  When the CD came to dominate, that the good 'ol built-in phono input went away.  A minor proliferation of external phono stages began as analog declined, but it left the mass market's consciousness as the silver disc rose in domination.  Given the people sticking to their vinyl through the near death of the medium were mostly performance oriented enthusiasts.  The state of the art playback for analog rose considerably (both in performance and price) during this dark time.  Now that vinyl is beginning to flirt with becoming mainstream again, brands are introducing their own tables and phono stages aime
Read more

The Thiel CS3.7 part 2: Listening Impressions

By -
Image
The Thiel CS3.7's Driver ... pay no attention to the green turntable light that couldn't help but photobomb ... We were looking forward to the demo all week.  We showed up at around noon on Columbus Day - which allowed the salesman, Bob Cesarini, to spend about a week breaking in the speakers.  Given our experience with Thiel, and the fact that they take a long time to break in, this was a good thing. The speakers had about 75 hours or so, so while not fully run in, they would be much better than a "right out of the box" sound. Most of the ugly portion of the break in would be behind it. Bob told us that the factory claims 300+ hours are needed for them to reach their full potential, but at the point of the demo, we should be able to hear what earned them their reputation.  We'll see ... After Bob gave us the basic introduction to the speaker and his optimistic thoughts on the new owners and the direction of Thiel, he left us to our own devices. (Stereophi
Read more

The Oyaide Tonearm Cable: Everything matters. Really.

By -
Image
We're using this cable right now, and wow do we hear more music. It took me nearly a decade to come to terms with the simple concept that seemingly innocuous things, such as placing pennies under speaker spikes, or swapping out one cable for another one, can have such dramatic effects.  Some you can explain by understanding a likely mechanism, and some ... you just don't know why, you just hear what.  As an electrical engineer, my mind has to deal with quite a bit of cognitive dissonance once in awhile over this.  And I just have to tell myself at that point that "as long as it sounds better, I shouldn't get too worried" when something that shouldn't make a difference, makes a difference. In fact, there is an ongoing debate, really heated sometimes, about various tweaks.  Like American politicians discussing US policy - there is an awful lot of shouting, yelling, hurt feelings, and anger with no resolution.  Thankfully your stereo doesn't end up shu
Read more