Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

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...