Jim Alfredson

I just ordered this as I've recently gotten into Brand X. I've been a lifelong Genesis fan and I enjoy a lot of Collins' solo work (mostly the early stuff) but I never bothered with Brand X until stumbling across Moroccan Roll on YouTube a few months ago. Listening to that album, it became obvious that Brand X had a very distinct influence on Collins' subsequent work with Genesis and his solo career. This boxset seemed the most cost effective way of acquiring some of their catalog. Anyone else have it? How is the sound quality? The album art is damn atrocious but I don't care about that. http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Burn-Brand-X/dp/B00O9K8WS4

Why is Resonance so reticent to put samples on their website? All you have to do is put 1 to 2 minute clips up on Soundcloud and embed the player. It's easier than ever these days.

It's been a dream of mine to create a media server with FLAC rips of all my CDs (I probably have 4000 at least... I lost count a long time ago) and use a software that can auto-convert them to mp3 on the fly so I can stream them to my phone on long drives, etc. And of course also stream them uncompressed via my wireless network to any audio system in the house. I'm slowly ripping my CDs but at this rate I'll be done when I'm dead. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It's the reason why I've spent several hours over the last few weeks repairing my old Commodore 64 computer and floppy drives, investing a small amount of money into the project and even buying a modern interface so I can transfer files from floppy to my PC and vice versa. The C64 is obviously obsolete technology but loading up those old games and playing with my kids is fun and a nice trip down memory lane. But it is better than an iPad or modern tablet? Or even my iPhone? From any objective criteria it is not. Yet I enjoy it, much to the chagrin of my wife. I think the same is true of vinyl. It's fun, it's tactile, it's nostalgic. And that's fine.

Here's a sample up on Soundcloud.

Hope you get a sale! Good luck and nice to see you here.

It's an inside joke. Essentially a few years ago while on an East Coast tour, we picked up a copy of JazzTimes and noticed that almost every musician in there was wearing a scarf. We joked that in order to take our music to the next level, we needed to wear some damn scarves.

Another tune from our upcoming album(s).

I've pre-ordered through Amazon. Looking forward to hearing it.

I changed the topic title to make it easier to find (assuming that the search engine works... ) I just picked this up today and I'm listening now. It's a great sounding recording, mastered by the one and only Ron McMaster. How could you not be a mastering engineer with that name? Nice playing by all involved. It's great to see Dr. Lonnie back on Blue Note. Did anyone catch him on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon? He was playing a Hammond SK2 with The Roots. It was pretty damn cool.

A good question and after I wrote that post I spent some time comparing my down-sampled 16bit/44.1kHz masters to the original 24bit/88.2kHz files and I couldn't hear a difference. I keep wanting hi-res to sound better but I can't say that it does if I'm honest with myself.

Right now I'm listening to an album I mixed and mastered by Michigan State University jazz guitar professor Randy Napoleon with Rodney Whitaker on upright bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums (soon to be released on the Detroit Music Factory label). It was recorded by my good friend Glenn Brown in 24bit / 88.2kHz, with all the players in the same room, balancing off each other. Glenn has an impressive mic collection and is a fantastic engineer so the mixing was quite simple. And it sounds fantastic. Would it sound better on tape? Well, I'm using a tape emulation plug-in in the mastering chain and it provides a nice overall glue along with a weight to the low-end. Would it sound better on vinyl? Nah. The 88.2kHz master sounds really amazing. I hope they release it in hi-res as well.