Kevin Bresnahan

The old TV that this LG OLED is replacing is an 11 year old 46" Mitsubishi 1080p LCD TV that has done very well by me. It's likely to move up into my daughter's room as a gaming monitor. I'm pretty amazed that it's lasted this long since they were notorious for power supply failures. I still have my TC-58AX800U 58" Panasonic 4K LCD TV in the living room upstairs. I'm not giving that up.

When I posted about Roy's recent trouble here in Boston, it was not about "Don't Mainline And Drive". It was about "Don't Mainline And Die". From what my friend saw, he's not doing well along these lines. I hope we aren't reading his obit soon.

I already have an Oppo BDP-80 and a BDP-103. Unfortunately, the BDP-80 doesn't play 3D. Oppo makes great decks.

I've debated posting this but just in case someone here knows Roy or knows someone who knows Roy, I think that they really should try to get the guy some help. A good friend of mine went to Roy's 2nd set at a Boston club back on January 21st and he said Roy was completely out of it. As in, he could barely stand, much less play. He said if he had to guess, it was probably heroin. He came out and sat in a chair for most of set, staring around glassy-eyed. From what my friend said, it was pretty bad for his band too. I've seen Roy many times and he always puts on a great show. I hope he's around to continue to do so far into the future. Get yourself well, Roy.

I've been drooling over LG's OLED TVs for several years now and it looks like they've come a long way with regards to burn in. When they announced their new 2017 OLED line up, noticeably absent was 3D capability. Now I had to decide - did I want 3D OLED or not? Then things got easier. With the new 2017 OLED models coming soon, they started drastically discounting the 2016 3D-capable OLED models. Now where to get the funds... Due to an unexpected windfall last month (thanks mom), I decided to buy the LG OLED 65E6p. Wow, what a beautiful picture! It's so lifelike. I am very happy with this TV. The only drawback I've seen is that the screen is very reflective so it might not be the best TV for a bright viewing area. But I have it down in my finished basement, or what the wife calls my "man cave", so I am OK. Best part about this set is that I've seen no burn-in (so far). Fingers crossed on this. I did see motion blur while watching football but found that all I had to do was turn off "Tru Motion" and it was gone. BTW, if you don't need 3D but want to watch this in a bright room, go for the B6 model, which has the OLED panel mounted to a matte plastic screen as opposed to the E6 & G6 models, which have the OLED panel mounted to glass. The B6 and C6 (curved screen) are much cheaper with pretty much the same picture but lesser sound quality. I would have gone for one of these if they had 3D. Next up, I am looking at an Oppo Digital UDP-203 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player. It's a truly universal player, capable of playing UHD, Blu-ray, 3D, DVD, DVD-Audio, SACD and CD. But that will have to wait for the funds to recover after this TV purchase.

Isn't this more of the Atlas material?

This hits hard. I saw Steve at many of the shows I attended around Boston and he sat at my table quite a few times. I also ran into him many times at Stereo Jack's, where the discussions would range far & wide. He was such an incredibly nice guy. I'll miss him. Funny Steve story... I go to a show at the Regattabar and as was sometimes the case, Steve's at my table. We get to chatting when the waitress comes over to take our order. Steve orders a drink of some kind and when he goes for his wallet, he realizes that he forgot it at home. Even worse, he got dropped off at the club and was planning to take a taxi home. Luckily, I had just gone to the ATM and had some cash so I offered him some. I told him he could pay me back at the next show. He insisted on getting my mailing address so he could mail it to me. He included a couple of CDs in the envelope with a check and a thank you card. As I said, a really nice guy.

Well, for one thing, we're talking about 33 RPM Music Matters LPs that were cut fairly recently, versus Acoustic Sounds SACDs that were mastered and issued many years ago, so there's no way that these Acoustic Sounds SACDs were done at the same time as the current 33 RPM Music Matters LPs that we're talking about here. Now, if you're talking about the Acoustic Sounds 45 RPM LPs and SACDs that were issued concurrently, I was told by a member of that team that there were 2 passes with the master tape to do this. One pass for the LP cutting and another pass for the creation of the DSD master. It made sense to me since the LP is EQ 'ed in the analog domain, which is not something you would normally do for a DSD master. If Steve Hoffman is saying otherwise, I can't argue that. I can only tell you what I was told when I asked how it was done. Again, Music Matters did not issue SACDs. Acoustic Sounds did. Acoustic Sounds only licensed 25 titles for SACD. They licensed 50 titles for LP. I specifically asked if Acoustic Sounds made DSD masters of all 50 titles, hoping for another batch of SACDs in the future, and I was told by the same member of the team a flat, "No".

I have been told that the LPs and SACDs were not cut at the same time. While it is true that the SACDs were made by the same team, it was different pass on the master tape with different EQ settings. You have to EQ the master to overcome vinyl's shortcomings (the needle would jump out of the grooves if you don't sum the bass). You don't have to do that for DSD. I don't even think the two were done in the same mastering studio. Also, not every MM LP was released on SACD, so they did not create a DSD master for every MM LP they cut.

Are the track timings listed anywhere? Sometimes, soundtracks yield truncated performances and I wonder if that's the case here.

Is Davis still active at 86? I don't think I've ever seen him in the 27 years I've been going to gigs in Boston.

Connelly/Bosch did turn me onto one of Art Pepper's recent Widow's Taste releases in one of his last books, so he does have some good recommendations.

I just finished Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch book last night, "The Other Side Of Goodbye". It was one of his better efforts. It was not easy to figure out who the criminal was this time. One complaint is his continuing pushing of Grace Kelly as some great Jazz musician, especially since he continues to push her as a saxophonist. She's really become a singer who occasionally plays a sax solo.

After all these years, I still haven't found a reasonably priced set. One of these days....

Yes, Ron was the lead guy for this series. As far as I am aware, Don Was didn't have anything to do with the Music Matters reissues. Am I missing something here?

Lesser known titles most likely would not sell in the quantities needed to make their business model work. I believe they license a title for 3,500 copies but it might even be 5,000 copies. I don't know what their break even point is, but it's probably more than 1,000, which is likely the most copies they'd sell of some of the more obscure Blue Note titles. A lot of the obscure Blue Note LPs are obscure for a reason. No one bought them. And by the way, according to Michael Cuscuna, most of those old sales trends are still valid today. There are a few exceptions but in general, if it didn't sell well when it was originally issued, it won't sell well today. To get an idea of what I mean, look at this reissue program. They released the "standard" big sellers, i.e. "Blue Train", "Soul Station", etc. Boring, right? They sold out of these "standard" titles! That's how you make money in this business. It's not by selling 600 copies of some Don Cherry LP. It's by selling out of all of your inventory.

Interesting posting name - Joe Louis. Hmmmm, the first name of the guy I used to get these sessions from was Louis. I wonder if it's him? If so, it would be very surprising considering how closely he used to guard these session tapes. Maybe he's just getting to that age where he realizes that he won't be around forever?

His widow Patti seems to have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/patti.migliori You could try to use this to contact her to see if she still has the master or if anyone ever issued the music on it.

The Planar 3 isn't a bad choice but I'd recommend a Ortofon 2M Red or Blue over the Shure.

I'm with you on direct drive but be aware that direct drive tables are an either or proposition right now. They're either entry level or super high end. There are no "middle of the road" direct drive turntables any more since Denon exited that niche. I'm not with you on moving coil though. They're much harder to match to the preamp and some MC preamps have too much gain for some amps, causing distortion. I've yet to run into a problem like this with any MM cartridge I've used.

A total budget of $750-1,000 makes it tough. Most nice cartridges cost >$500. Check out The Needle Doctor's on line store. Looking there, I would look closely at the Pro-Ject Xpression Classic for $999. It comes with an Ortofon 2M Silver cartridge. I have the 2M Black myself and I think it's a great cartridge. Unfortunately, I would think you'd have to look into the used market to get something really nice for under a grand. The Marantz TT-15S1 is a very nice mid-level turntable to consider. It's made by Cearaudio for Marantz and comes with a Clearaudio Virtuoso Ebony Wood MM Cartridge, which retails for $900 by itself. Too bad it's $1,500 at most places so he'd have to stretch his budget for it. BTW, what preamp does he have? Does it have a built-in phono preamp? Does it accept both MM as well as MC cartridges? That may limit his choices as well.

I can play all songs in order or shuffle them. I can also hit the "Browse" button and sort by genre or artist. I can also drill down to individual albums. So if I want to to hear "Soul Station", I just click Browse>Artist>Hank Mobley>Soul Station. I can play all the tracks in order or I can shuffle them. BTW, the only way that I can get the tracks to play back in album order is by naming the tracks "01 - Remember", "02 - This I Dig Of You", "03 - Dig Dis", etc. Most players play back in alphanumeric order. Starting the track name with a number takes precedence. Be sure to use 01, 02, 03, etc. If you use 1, 2, 3 instead, track number 10 will play after track 01. Also, the reason I drop in individual tracks instead of keeping them in their perspective folders is because of filename length restrictions. Some car players limit filenames to 72 characters. You would think that is enough. But if you put Dexter Gordon's track "Until The Real Thing Comes Along" from the album "A Swingin' Affair" onto a USB stick in folders, the actual track name the player sees is "Dexter Gordon/A Swingin' Affair/01 - Until The Real Thing Comes Along", which is 70 characters.

Yes. I used to use Q2 but I switched to Q1 a few years ago. Both are indistinguishable from the CD used to create the file to 99.9% of listeners.

From http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME#VBR_.28variable_bitrate.29_settings VBR (variable bitrate) settings VBR: variable bitrate mode. Use variable bitrate modes when the goal is to achieve a fixed level of quality using the lowest possible bitrate. VBR is best used to target a specific quality level, instead of a specific bitrate. The final file size of a VBR encode is less predictable than with ABR, but the quality is usually better. Unlike other MP3 encoders which do VBR encoding based on predictions of output quality, LAME's default VBR method tests the actual output quality to ensure the desired quality level is always achieved. Usage: -V <number> where <number> is between 0 and 9, 0 being highest quality, 9 being the lowest. (Note: The "V" has to be a capital letter.) Example: -V Q2 Fractional values out to three decimal places are also accepted, with 9.999 being the absolute lowest quality. Example: -V 2.75 Note: The switch --vbr-new, which enabled a superior VBR mode in LAME 3.97 and some previous versions, is no longer needed with LAME 3.98 and higher, as it is now the default VBR mode. However, if you're still using LAME 3.97 or older, you have to add --vbr-new to your command line to use that mode. The target bitrate and actual typical bitrate for each VBR quality level is shown in the Technical details for recommended LAME settings section below. If you need a predictable bitrate (in a streaming application, for example), use ABR or CBR modes, described below.

I convert all of my music to mp3 at VBR Q1. I don't mind that the files are a bit bigger, I just want the best sound. I don't like the sound of the cymbals on many Jazz mp3s encoded at lower bit rates. They sound weird - all swishy and unnatural.