Kevin Bresnahan

What cartridge do you use? I have found that some cartridges handle scratches better than others. I will say that my Ortofon 2M Black is pretty impressive at playing through pretty large scratches. I believe it has to do with the shape of the stylus.

Terminating these wires with the Sewell bananas is pretty easy. All you really need is something to cut off the vinyl jacket from the wire and little patience. Wire strippers or a box cutter works but the box cutter requires a lot more caution. This page has a description of what you have to do: https://sewelldirect.com/sewell-deadbolt-banana-plugs-6-pair?stm_type=ppc&stm_source=adwords&product_id=SW-29863-6&campaignid=410148363&adgroupid=25857622683&creative=92183573763&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5q3Cq-m02gIVxo2zCh0M7gv4EAQYASABEgJQM_D_BwE There's even a video, which I'll put down at the bottom of this post. Now to the nitty gritty. I've terminated many speakers wires with connectors like this and it's always been easy but I've learned over the years that there are a few things to be aware of to get the best connection. First off, when you cut off the jacket, take off only enough that you can spread the individual wires out over the rim. You do not want bare wire sticking out of the bottom of the connector! Also, be very careful when spreading the strands of copper wire out over the rim. Make sure each wire is a single strand and try to evenly distribute it around the entire rim. Why? Well, if you accidentally have 2 wires still entwined going over the rim, your final hard connection will probably be just those two wires because they stick up higher on the rim. The rest might not even touch the cap you screw on. Also, if you don't spread them out evenly, in my experience, the screwed-on cap (the banana) will loosen with time and use. You do not want these to loosen! Bad things can happen if it gets too loose. By spreading it out evenly, you'll get the tightest connection possible. One last trick... After you screw on the banana cap, try unscrewing it. It should be difficult. If it's easy, you're not tightening it hard enough. For very heavy gauge wire with thick single strands, I've actually had to use padded pliers. Pad the pliers to prevent the gold getting scraped off. These are very lightly gold plated, not solid gold. The video - note that he does not seem to evenly distribute the wire over the rim. Maybe these connectors are better than some of the ones I've used.

Did it work?

I bought "Live!" directly from Harry Allen at one of his recent appearances at the Sahara Jazz Club in Methuen. The Amazon listing is here: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Scott-Hamilton-Harry-Allen/dp/B01BIMDJIS/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523303647&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=harry+allen+scott+hamillton I'm looking forward to Harry's next swing through Jocko's club in September.

I don't think I've ever seen this one before. It appears to be a Japanese-only release. I have two of their other release, "Live!" and "Heavy Juice". They make a great team.

Horace Silver's autobiography, "Let's Get To The Nitty Gritty".

Never with a new release, but I have accidentally re-bought a title I already had on the shelf. As the years go on and the collection grows, this has happened more & more.

These are all gone. I may post a few more in the next few days.

I've thought about it. I still use my old iPod for portable music and I worry it may die on me. I don't use it that often - mainly for when I'm working out or for when I'm running it into my Bose Soundlink Color II on my back deck. Truth be told, i often use my Samsung Galaxy S8 for the Bose Soundlink. Sacrilege! My car doesn't have a CD player so I've had to resort to Sirius/XM and music on a thumb drive plugged into the USB port. The world is dragging me, kicking & screaming into the new technology. I'm resisting but I feel like I'm up against the Borg. Hey, at least I haven't connected my turntable to my Bose Soundlink yet! Hmmm... how could I do that? BTW, I did order a another Oppo Digital UDP-203. It's such a great player that handles any disc I've thrown at it. The audiophile model, the UDP-205, is already sold out and it's fetching big bucks on Amazon.

I'm coming around to that for music but I can't do the same for video. Bluray and UHD discs look so much better than streamed video. Passive 3D on my OLED is incredible. Even the soundtrack (surround) is better off of disc. I realize that movies will likely be shifted to download only someday but it'll just make me feel that much older. I still have a landline too. Get off my lawn!

Oh, don't get me wrong - I stream Netflix and Amazon Prime too. I just can't seem to throw out my physical media just yet and I've only recently picked up a few UHD discs that look absolutely fantastic on my LG 65" OLED screen. I also have several 3D Blurays that I would always play before I'd stream the 2D version.

For SACDs (only), yes, it still does an extra conversion. It converts the DSD on the SACD to PCM to send it out the back of the player via any of the digital outputs. Also, your Adcom GDA-600 DAC is only capable of converting PCM to analog. It cannot decode DSD as it does not have a DSD converter in it. BTW, for CDs and other media, you are bypassing the internal (PCM) DAC in the player with your current set-up.

Thanks for the news on Oppo. I hadn't heard that. I may have to go buy a second UDP-203 for my house. It's a great 4K DVD player and *I* still have a use for media even if today's generation doesn't. Man, am I feeling old these days...

The Sony player converts the DSD digital on the SACD to PCM digital so that it can output the digital stream on the HDMI cable. If you use the RCA stereo connections, there's a DSD-to-analog converter in the Sony player. You skip the DSD to PCM conversion going that way. And again, I'm not saying it WILL sound better, but it's pretty simple to set it up for a fast A/B listening test. All you'd need is an RCA stereo cable from the player to an AUX or CD input on your pre-amp/receiver and switch between the two inputs while playing some music.

I used up bunches of old US postage stamps when I was in my 20s. I was a stamp collector in my youth and somewhere in the 80's, Scott's value guide, the bible of stamp values, suddenly devalued every stamp in their catalog by 20%, claiming that they were now showing the real values since everyone took the Scott's value and discounted it by 20% anyway. Well, everyone still took that new discounted value and took 20% off to get the "buy" price, rendering many US stamps' value at less than face.

For stereo SACDs, I think you you can use the RCA audio outputs straight to your pre-amp. No need to run it through the HDMI cable to your DAC. For SACDs, you're adding an extra data conversion step that you don't need. However, if you do hook up these stereo outputs and it works that way, switch between the 2 playback modes and stick with whatever sounds better to you. There's no technical reason saying you HAVE to use those audio outputs. Switching should be as easy as selecting the different input on your preamp.

Is this BH Photo price good for the X5ii? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1249200-REG/fiio_x5_ii_black_x5_2nd_gen_portable.html

On the door: Welcome back (Arnett?). I assume Arnett sat in the front seat for the parade and Clifton "King Bee" Smith, who appears to have been a DJ for Houston radio station KCOH back in the day, sat in the back seat with the Colt 45's public relations person? I wonder if this is the PR rep or Clifton Smith?

BTW - if you do have the Sony BDP-BX37 and you're still using the HDMI connection for SACD playback, you should try hooking up a pair of audio RCA cables to the stereo output on the back of the player (run it to an AUX or CD input on your preamp/receiver) so that you can compare the two DACs (the one in the player vs. the one in your external DAC that you're running your HDMI cable to). The results might surprise you. The reason I say this is that if you are using the HDMI for SACD audio, the player is converting it to PCM and then your external DAC is converting that PCM to analog. The stereo outputs will probably be straight DSD to analog.

It also says that you have the ability to turn on downmix, but I still think that should be done only if you can't switch to the stereo playback sector of your SACD.

Which Sony player do you have? At the least, it should have the ability to downmix to stereo. Also, if the player has multichannel capability, it really, really should have a setting somewhere to have it default to the stereo sector on the SACDs. Not everyone has a surround setup but most have at least stereo one. From your previous posting history, it looks like you have the Sony BDP-BX37. On page 25 of the owner's manual ( https://docs.sony.com/release//BDPS370_BX37.pdf ), it says that there is a setting to change the SACD playback from multichannel to stereo.

Part of me always wondered if that solo, 2 days after the crazy stuff in Paris that got hundreds to boo & walk out, wasn't partly a "fuck you" to Miles, who might have told him to not repeat what he did in Paris. I mean listen to how he starts that solo... almost bored. Then he does all that weird blowing in the middle there... very odd. It's probably one of Coltrane's weirdest solos.

http://www.downbeat.com/digitaledition/2018/DB1805/default.html Pages 104-105 (ad) and 108-109 (listing)

I have had playback issues on car mp3 players that were being caused by long "song titles". I use quotes around song titles because the problem I was having was almost always associated with songs that were buried in multiple levels of folders. For instance, I file my music files under folders for genre, then artist, then album. For example, if I play a song like Mingus' "Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul" from the album "Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus", the song being played is "'Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul" and the actual file name is simply "05 - Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul.mp3", but in reality, the filename is really "Jazz\Charles Mingus\Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus\05 - Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul.mp3". Some players lose their shit when filenames get past a certain length. Solution: move all music files to the root level (get rid of all folders) I've also had problems with some music files where I somehow managed to embed multiple versions of the album art into the header. This problem was a lot harder to de-bug and it mainly caused some songs to get a little bit of the beginning of a song clipped off. Solution: Download an mp3 editor and delete redundant (or all) artwork from your music files' headers. NOTE: this is very time consuming and shouldn't be undertaken lightly.

"Kind of Blue" is definitely not an SACD that was ever issued with only a multichannel mix. I didn't mean to imply that. I can't think of the title right now, but I thought that there were a few classical SACDs that didn't have a stereo mix... wait... thinking about it more, I may be confusing this with several DVD-A discs. For instance, Natalie Merchant's "Tiger Lilly" DVD-A does not have a stereo mix on it.