Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

Birch and Mahogany Plinth -- in the Project/Music Hall world not obtainable unless you spend twice as much.  FWIW. "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar" ~ T. Marshall "What this country needs, is a decent 5W Amp!" ~ P. W. Klipsch The box arrived on our doorstep a few days earlier than we had figured - it had taken less than a week.  I had been in multiple IM sessions with Scott Bingaman, the President of Deer Park Distributors (The exclusive distributors of Crosley Turntables to the US and Canada), who had indicated that they were onto something big, something that was a real step up for them from their traditional retro-styled products. "This won't be sold at Target or Urban Outfitters.  It'll be primarily sold online, at indie record stores and high end dealers - targeted at a younger audience looking to move up," Scott said.  After I had asked how much better it would be, given the reputation Crosley has in au...

Crimson Electronics in our room, serving up some serious excitement and music! Note:  This is a long overdue article.  We demoed the crimson gear in late 2014, wrote up the outline of the article, and then life intervened in the way that life does.  I want to extend an apology to the guys at Austin HiFi for my tardiness in writing this up.  And honestly, after borrowing the cables and amps, I really do feel that I wanted to get the word out!  And for clarification, they generously offered the set to us for evaluation, and we based this review upon that evaluation. ================================= "We feel most audiophiles are focused on the wrong things ..." I was calling the friendly folks at Austin Hi Fi after a complimentary email to me about the blog, and we were talking about Crimson Electronics, the pre-eminence of canines in our lives, and Audio Philosophy.  And I'd have to say that not only do they have a friendly way about them, but th...

We were looking over the end of year reports from the RIAA and others, and one thing is clear - the traditional CD album - is in decline, and streaming services are on the rise.  We have been on the tip of that wave - being longtime subscribers to Pandora, Spotify, and others - and are happy with them.  The one thing that has stopped them for being anything other than a casual/background listen is the compressed nature always fell short of spinning a CD, or even playing a FLAC file for musical enjoyment.  The holy grail, in our book, would be a high resolution streaming service (preferably something on the order of 24/96) that could give us a reliable, high quality sound that wouldn't sound like a compromise for convenience's sake. But streaming services c2013 weren't there.  Even at the highest offered rate of 320kbps, there was a small amount of lost ambience and detail compared to a silver disc spun in our CD player (not to even broach the subject of an LP whic...

This is a quick note to talk about how truly spectacular I am finding the Cardas EM5813 "earspeakers" are when I am on the road. One of the things that struck me is that I keep reaching for them, despite that they are breaking a few "audiophile rules" in that they are not tonally as accurate as the Etymotic IEM's I had also packed for the trip.  There is something that is big, spacious, warm and lifelike with the way they handle the music they are given by my trusty PMP. It is clear that the headphones capture the life and emotion of the performance, dynamics and transients are just about perfect.  Tonality?  It's on the warm/dark side of the spectrum, but unapologetically so - the subtractive loss is not large, and the benefits are so amazing, that these have become my "go to" headphone when I am not actually on a airplane (the Etymotic, while less captivating, win due to their superior sound isolation). For acoustic instrument based music th...

The Koru's understated yet solid front face Cue music playing of the Elton John Variety "Will you go get it?" "No, you go get it!" "It's all the way over there, I don't care enough to get it." Thus ends the Mancave's statement about album art and liner notes.  For those keeping track, it was "Funeral for a Friend" and how silly is that to fuss over? No, we don't read liner notes, or gaze lovingly at the album art.  If this makes us overly honest, or philistines, I couldn't tell you.  I am skeptical that lot of people pour over it at all, and find people listing this as one of their favorite things about vinyl, are either overselling it, are crazy and actually do it.  But in reality, we spin disks and stream files for no other reason but the music - and for us the closer it sounds to what was actually laid down, the more we enjoy it - good liner notes, or not. This attiude not only keeps us vinyl fans, i...

Pure silver stranded wire ... the last inch to sonic nirvana, or hokum ... opinions abound, and all too common is that people don't actually trust their ears ... Cables are some of the most hotly contested and infuriating aspects of our hobby.  You can easily spend the price of a component on a single cable if you aren't careful.  People will have opinions, but sometimes the right cable or cables can and do help maximize the money you spent.  And complicating things is the varying quality and levels of electronics - with, generally, better speakers and electronics benefitting the most from high end cables. A rational discourse about cables of the "Does it/Doesn't it" variety ... The same can be said for speaker placement and room treatments, too, but I think the so-called "debate" over cables is probably the most emotionally charged.  And yes, and the arguments go something like this:   "I tried out XYZ cable, and found the sound ...

The Wisconsin Chair Company, decided to start a recording company, Paramount Records , to help sell phonographs they were marketing.  If this sounds familiar, this is not entirely unlike Apple launching iTunes in order to sell their iPods over a decade ago.  From 1917 until 1932, they were recording and releasing a lot of inexpensive records, but they were most famous for the so-called "Race Records" - which was early Jazz and Blues performed by African-Americans.  They may have recorded 100,000 78's by the time they stopped, and most of the artists are obscure, though Louis Armstrong, "Jelly Roll" Morton, and others got their starts with the label.  The recording quality, even for 78's, was never high, but the rarity and the excellent music make them a bit of a holy grail for people who collected 78's. A few years ago, a few collectors, including Jack White (of White Stripes fame, and currently the head of Third Man Records ) decided to put toget...