Kevin Bresnahan

I don't see any Mosaic boxes listed. Is there some trick to see them?

God, that Hot Stamper guy is a insane, isn't he? I still can't believe people fall for his shtick. Sometimes, I swear he sells on the Steve Hoffman forums as Cassius.

I still have my original LP of this title. It was one of the few LPs I kept when I dumped all of my vinyl in the 90's. It shouldn't have been too hard to find. They sold almost 10 Million copies in the first two years of release.

See what I mean about misinformation? There is no algorithm dictating whose posts are shown and whose posts are not shown. You set the priority of stuff you see. If you don't set it yourself, Facebook will then run some algorithm to show you your friends posts in the order they think you want to see them. And if someone posts shit you don't want to see, you can unfollow anyone and once you do, they no longer show up in your feed. You do have control. You just have to exercise that control. This "Facebook won't show me posts from Xxxxx Yyyyy" meme is totally false and every time I see someone post something like, "Please read and comment here so that you will continue to show up in my timeline" screed, I usually tell them that it's total BS. Just like the posts that state, "With this post, I deny Facebook legal rights to my photographs" blah, blah, blah. No. You post a picture on their platform, they "own" it too. You agreed to that when you signed up. You don't want them to have access, don't sign up. Also, you can't display it on your screen if they don't have it on their server, so they have to have access to it. Some people are just clueless about how computers & servers work.

Probably November 3rd.

Grant, my man... you are only 49. This look... I would guess 65.

I get some of the "Facebook is evil stuff" but for what I use it for, I don't really care. I use it to keep in touch with old classmates, on-line friends and distant friends in a way that was never possible in the past. I post a picture or two of me having fun somewhere. A nice sunset. A good bottle I drank. Nothing embarrassing so no biggie. If someone repeatedly posts stupid shit, I "unfollow" them and their stupid shit doesn't show up any more. If FB wants to know what bottles I drink, more power to them. They aren't going to tell me what I can and can't do, so no skin off me. Sure, they know your every want and desire and track where you go, but they are not alone in this. If you are on the web, someone is watching your every move. Whether it's Google or Apple or Yahoo! or CNN or Amazon, they all track every click when you are there and they store and use this info to line their pockets. If privacy is your thing, you're better off staying off the net completely. If you read the privacy policy of every website you visit, you'd know that this is true. My biggest pet peeve about Facebook is that they allow complete loons to have a voice. Back before the internet, if you walked down the street and some lunatic was raving about how the Newtown shooting didn't really happen, you could just walk around the guy and leave him to his rants. Now, you have these loons ranting away and one of your friends gets wooed by his siren song and the next thing you know, they're posting some stupid meme about pizza joints and child prostitution. "I read about it on the Internet," should not be given the same weight as an encyclopedia entry. Facebook is a font of misinformation and is used by many unscrupulous people to negatively influence normally good people. If Facebook went away, I would not shed a tear but while it's here, I will continue to peek in and see how my old friends are doing. And stay away from those basements of those Connecticut pizza joints!

Nah, he didn't want politics here. It got too ugly when he did. I think he was right to do it too. I got pretty disgusted with this place when it had the political forum and that was before Trump.

Jim is actually much more active on Facebook than he is here. In fact, he rarely comes here at all these days. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he can post his political views there and can't here.

My internet mysteriously just came back on. No idea what was going on but it was clearly Spectrum and not my modem, as they were trying to tell me.

You need to be a Facebook member to join a group but the group can be "open" or "closed", which would allow the admin to only let in those he or she wants in the group. The admin can also turn on approval for all posts to the group, so if we really wanted to make this a group just for notification of when things here are broken, the admin could limit all posts except for posts about this and this alone.

First off, I think the topic needs to be changed to "open an organissimo group", not a "forum". Facebook does not support forums. And for those unaware of how groups work, they can be as active or inactive as one wishes and you'll only hear about it if someone posts there. and as mentioned, posts are not easily grouped together or searched. Facebook is the opposite of a forum. For instance, I'm a member of the "JC" group, which is a private group made up of former members of the Jazz Corner forum. Every now & then, someone will post something there and all of us members get notified. When Ron Thorne died, I posted this there and it allowed me to let a lot of people who used to interact with him on the Jazz Corner to hear about it. Secondly, no one needs permission to start a group. Mike, or anyone can start up a Facebook group and no one can force anyone to join it. BTW - if someone was a member at the Jazz Corner and wants to see if someone you knew is on this Facebook group, check it out: https://www.facebook.com/groups/139125146149678/

My modem appears to have died today. It was working this morning and then about 5 hours ago - nothing. I am logged onto my neighbor's router now. The big pain is that I bought my own router to save on the monthly rental so now the cable company is saying they can't do anything. If I buy a new cable modem/router and it doesn't work, they probably still won't send anyone out to check my wires because they'll continue to claim that it's my equipment.

At least today you don't have to worry about PAL vs NTSC.

Thanks for the reminder. I ordered up a vinyl copy of Walter Smith III's latest: https://waltersmithiii.bandcamp.com/album/twio

Thanks for bringing this up. I ordered a copy myself.

A Sony STR-D365 (Manual here: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/W001/W0010459M.pdf) is rated at 100 Watts/channel, which is more than enough power for most normal audio settings. These older Sony amps can sometimes sound bright, but that's not what you're describing. Looking at the specs, you might need to check your step-up voltage transformer to make sure that it can deliver ~200 Watts (~1.7 Amps). Some less expensive step-ups might not be able to "keep up" with this amp if they can't supply that current quickly. However, I still don't think this is your problem because you are probably not cranking up these small bookshelf speakers... which brings me to... I still think your money would be better spent on upgrading your speakers. If the sound is fine for Jazz combo or Classical chamber music but can't seem to reproduce the full spectrum of an orchestra, you probably need an additional driver for the mid-range. I would recommend auditioning some larger speakers, maybe even a nice 3 way speaker, by bringing the orchestral piece that you want to hear. See if you can find an affordable pair of speakers to replace these fairly-inefficient (90 dB) 2-way AR15's. BTW - bigger, 3-way speakers does not mean louder. Yes, in general, they can produce louder sounds, but you shouldn't have to crank them up to get the better frequency response that you're looking for. But that brings up why you should audition speakers before buying. Go to a shop and listen at your normal listening levels. Some larger 3-way speakers sound fine at lower listening levels and some don't. One of the dumbest speaker purchases I ever made was a pair of Klipsch Fortes. These speakers could really "crank it up" but didn't sound very good at normal listening levels. I don't miss them at all. Unfortunately, I know how true this can be. Thanks for nothing, Foghat. My ears didn't work right for 3 days after that concert.

Your speakers likely have more to do with your sound than your amp. If you list the specifics of your system, i.e. Sony model number, Cambridge Audio model number, Speaker make/model number, we could better understand the interactions between these items. For instance, if you have very large, inefficient speakers and you're trying to drive it with an underpowered amp at high volume, you're probably not gong to like the result. Also, yo need to tell us what it is you don't like about your playback. Too little bass? Too much treble? Not enough of either? The more specific, the better. And I would not necessarily recommend the SH forums for audio advice. That place has a lot of snake oil salesmen who couldn't build an affordable system if their life depended on it.

CJ - pressing details aren't the thing here... the original poster is asking for a sealed original pressing. "Pressing details" in this case is, "Well, I bought it new sometime near when it came out". The only way to know if it is a first pressing is to open it and look at the dead wax. Look, I'm into pressing details as well anyone else and I do look for certain pressings. But I'd be the first one to tell you how hard it is to get a certain pressing when you crack a sealed record, particularly one that was so popular when it was released. It's a little like buying a sealed pack of 1986 Fleer basketball cards and hoping to find a Michael Jordan rookie card in there. BTW, I've played this game before. One time I was in Stereo Jack's and he got in a batch of older sealed Blue Note LPs. He was selling them for a very reasonable price so I bought about 5 of them, hoping I might hit the "Blue Note lottery". When I got home and opened them, they were all late-70s pressings. Even worse - there was not one RVG pressing in the bunch.

What kind of seller do you think is going to remember that he or she bought a certain LP during it's first production run... 45 YEARS ago? I think you're expecting way too much here. I was buying a lot of records in 1975 and I can't remember what records I bought much less when I bought them. And again, with nearly all sellers, once you buy a sealed record, you own it. So if that seller's recollection is faulty, you're not getting your money back.

Can I ask how you will know that a sealed LP is from the original press run? You can't see the dead wax info through the cellophane. Do yourself a big favor and go to discogs and buy the highest graded opened copy of the pressing you want. That way, you know you have the right pressing and you also know that the record isn't warped from being stored in a shrink-wrapped LP sleeve for the past 45 years. You should also know that most (all?) sellers will not take back anything they sell sealed once it's opened. So if you open that sealed LP and find that it's a newer pressing, you won't be able to return it.

If this is for the CD set, I would think that an original 1984 release, either US or Japanese, would be in a longbox, so you should try to find a collector that is offering sealed longbox versions.

Either way, this will be a tough one to find... The chances of finding someone with a sealed LP from 1975 or a sealed original release CD from 1984 are very very slim. There aren't a lot of sources for stuff like this. BTW - buyer beware with older sealed items. Back in the old days of vinyl, unscrupulous sellers would re-seal records to sell them as new. There was growing market for shrinkwrap sealers for a while in the late 70's and i can imagine with the growing market for old vinyl, this may rise up out of the ashes.

There are a couple of copies for $24 on discogs: https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/2173500?ev=rb

Dammit, I forgot I have a King copy of "The Collector". Now I have 3 versions on LP too. I agree that the Tone Poet of "ETC" is much better than the LT LP, as I did a listening comparison when I got. Unfortunately I now add the caveat that my hearing isn't the best days, so take this with a grain of salt, especially if my "winner" ends up have way too much treble, which is what I don't hear as well these days. I have to say that with the exception of Andrew Hill's "Black Fire" and Lee Morgan's "Cornbread", these Tone Poet LPs sound great. Hill's record has that warbly piano that I just can't get by and the Morgan was not much better than my old Liberty RVG pressing. But the rest, particularly the Kenny Burrell & Lou Donaldson's "Shing-a-Ling", are very good. I wish they weren't so damn expensive. And now I have to go get that Lonnie Smith.