Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

It's been several years since we have posted anything to this blog.  There were a couple of false starts and we can't guarantee this won't be another one of them. But we can say that Life throws a few curve-balls once in awhile that sometimes has you placing things on a shelf for awhile.  Like this blog.  We are hopeful we can pull this back down, dust it off, and put a little more out there as time permits. New England-i-est part An Update on the Mancave! First thing, we are no longer located in Western NY, but on the North Shore in the Greater Boston Area.  An unlikely series of events, involving joining a startup, successful acquisition of said startup a few years later (in startup speak ... the "exit"), serious soul searching about what sort of career one can do after working at a startup, various family things all lining up (nest definitively emptying, loss of one of our mothers), and a very blurry confusing time, now marveling that we now are livi...

We live in a world where distraction and interruptions are normal, politicians talk in 30 second sound bytes, and music is present nearly continuously.  People complain about shorter and shorter attention spans, and more and more interruptions.  We feel that the enjoyment of music is also a victim of this. Before we discuss how this could be the case, some background on the type of attention spans that have been documented: Transient attention span is about 8 seconds long, and is typically something that attracts/distracts - think ads & pop ups when browsing.  With broadcasts the rule of thumb for dead air on FM, half the remaining listeners would flip to another station every 7 seconds in a long decay  (AM, was about 30 seconds for the same thing).  People will listen to under 7 seconds of a song to see if they will like it before finding another one.  I wouldn't be surprised if a typical Social Media post gets about this level of scrutiny be...

Ever wonder how we existed before?  In the last century we have gained the ability to listen to music nearly 24 hours a day if we so chose.  First with radio, now with internet streaming.  And the catalog and services allow us to find whatever subgenre, however narrow, to base it upon (or indeed widely general, too).  Some folks initially referred it to "music discovery" style, but in reality it's a carefully curated musical stream and for most people it stops there (meaning they won't buy the music but continue to stream it either paid or unpaid).  It's been a revelation when we stream and can fill the day.  A lot of ink has been spilled on how cool this is, in essence.  And some people deride it as "sonic wallpaper."  I think it's an apt description of it, though I mean no offense by it.  We can now have musical entertainment when we do any kind of mundane activity.  No performances to attend, no records to flip, you don't even have...

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...

If you follow this blog, you'll have noticed the posts have dropped off to nearly nothing.  I suppose it's the effect you get when the talk is more about gear and sound, and less about the music is plays.  We've strayed from our mission of encouraging people to let the whole family enjoy the fruits (music) of a good stereo, and started doing the easy thing.  Reviewing gear and posting opinions. So, we're also thinking about our focus in this avocation.  The importance of quality music reproduction won't be abandoned, but we plan on pulling in more music, and focussing more on how to jump in to the fun.   Stay Tuned.

By Guest author:  Darren "Clickbait" Vogue (A parody of recent events by shameless journalists) There was much applause at the wildly successful campaign to raise money to bring the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to most metropolitan areas.  From the efforts by fans of all stripes funding "The Orchestra" it was going to be possible to give away free tickets to an orchestra so everyone can have the joys of live music. It was to end the debate about what live music was going to sounds like, and what gave the most realistic sound by bringing reality to every man woman and child that wanted it in the United States. It was said on the fundraising page “Everyone who’s ever heard The Orchestra will tell you that the difference is surprising and dramatic,” they wrote. “They tell us that not only do they hear the difference; they feel it in their body, in their soul.” Famous musicians react to the Orchestra sound they’ve just heard. “That music made me feel go...

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...

If you can't hit it with a hammer and easily replace it, leave it at home ... There is an old story about two guys sitting at a bar.  One wearing a Rolex, and one wearing a cheap Timex.  The guy with the Timex, after a couple of beers, asked the Rolex guy "I bet my watch can do something yours can't" "That cheap Timex?  It cost what, $25?" The Timex guy took off the watch and placed it on the bar with a nod, pulled out a hammer and smashed the watch. "I can go and get another one easily." Touché.  And so it goes for portable audio ... ===== While there has been a resurgence in consumer electronics around portable audio - that has reached and created genuine high end products for it, the acid test for such devices is while you are traveling. I have some simple principles that I use when selecting what to take: Fiio X5 ... the heart of my road warrior kit It has to be light, have long battery life, portable, inexpensive enough...

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...

Crimson at night! We sent back the Crimson Audio gear ... The guys at Austin Hifi were generous to let us borrow the Crimson Amps and Preamps with a set of their crazy Good cabling . We made the trek to send back the giant Pelican cases happy that we heard it and with a tear in our eye.  While we're gathering our thoughts for a review, we'll say that this is a truly magnificent, transparent, fast and realistic sounding set of gear and we were happy to have tried it out.  We sent it back with a sad farewell, but hope we'd be able to make it a permanent part of the mancave at some point.  Stay tuned for a review ... We had a network filled weekend ... Cat7 ... shields and shields ... kill that RFI dead! We spent a good chunk of the weekend upgrading the wired side of our home network (going from a mixture of Cat5, 5e and 6, and 10/100 switches) to Gigabit and Cat7 where possible.  We noticed that even when not using streaming services, it seemed like...

I would be a liar if I claimed that we didn't love the Beatles catalog.  We have a large collection of pressings on vinyl, the stereo and mono CD sets released a few years ago, and they are in regular rotation.  Their music is timeless, and the enjoyment spans the generations in our house. The Beatles were late to the digital game, and only recently allowed their taped to be converted to digital .  After lengthy legal negotiations with all the estates and remaining band members, they ripped the tapes to 24/192, but for some reason, only 24/44.1 downsampled has seen the light of day.  Now we own and love the stereo box set.  Given the difficulty of locating an affordable copy of a quality pressing of their stereo albums, this was a godsend to many.  But ... purists complained (they always do!) that since it was rumored to have been mastered from those 24bit/44.1kHz digital files - the Vinyl fell short of expectations.  We had hoped the release wou...

This was supposed to kill our sound and save our amp.  It made our sound (and sleep) better! "You know ... if you use a surge protector you will ruin the sound" I had bought into this idea, plugging in the amp right to the wall, since instantaneous power delivery was supposed to be compromised wheever anything was between the wall and power cord, and therefore the sonics compromised.  The only give-back I had, was utilizing a Chang Lightspeed powerstrip to handle sources and our preamp (low current stuff). For things well outside of the sonic pathway we still have a long extension cord to another plug with a standard (inexpensive) filtered powerstrip that the motors, and dirty digital stuff (Logitech Squeezebox Touch, Sonos, the cool Philips Hue products, and our Lava Lamp). But ... every single time there was a thunderstorm rolling through, we got nervous - with visions of a smoking carcass of that amp (making us unplug the amp) - and that we aren't exactl...

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...