Kevin Bresnahan

Oh well, maybe because you should treat people how you'd like to be treated yourself? Do you do this sort of thing when you're out with friends? I'd like to see you walk into a store, walk up to a customer waiting in line to buy a few high-priced collectibles and say in a loud voice, "Hey, why don't you go across the street to that store over there? They have those CDs for a lot less". Some stores might not let you out of there without a limp. Your attitude shows you appear to be clueless as to how to act among peers.

Thank you. Far out man.

If you have Windows XP, look around the web for bootvis. It's a Microsoft program that will optimize your boot. Also, check how fragmented your C: drive is and if it's got a lot of red, defragment it, even if the tool says not to. Lastly, get 2 GB of RAM. It's cheap and it will speed up *everything* your PC does, not just boot. Kevin

Southern New Hampshire should be renamed Northern Massachusetts. A majority of its inhabitants are transplanted MA people. We all moved here for the affordable real estate. A majority of us work in Mass and pay our Mass income tax. Which reminds me, whatever happened to "no taxation without representation? Now *Northern* New Hampshire is another thing! I think a property's value is increased by the number of cars you have up on cinder blocks.

Jim, I hope you have an easier time of this than I am. My Dad and I worked on our motorcycles together. Fixing things was how we bonded. When he died, my Mom gave me a whole bunch of his tools. Every time I pick one up and start to work with it, I think of my Dad. It really makes it hard to get the work done sometimes. But I will tell you this, our Dads would want us to use those tools. My Dad was proud that I could fix things like he could. Sometimes I think he was more proud of that than anything else I did. Kevin

There's a sometime-poster here on the boards (who frequently posts on the Jazz Corner board) who goes by the name "Dr Dave" who recently relocated from South Boston to Ashville, NC. He loves it and recommends it highly. I may consider it as my working days start to dwindle. Great cultural scene. Relaxed atmosphere. Decent weather. I would definitely recommend checking out Ashville.

When I talked to Michael Cuscuna about this, he said that the tapes are fine and that as long as normal care is taken, they will remain that way. When I asked him about Horace Silver's "Song For My Father" and how it sounded stretched, he said that it didn't sound that way until someone did something wrong with it. Most of them were damaged from improper use. In order for Classic Records to get these tapes, they have to insure them for big bucks. Hoffman was saying that the "Blue Train" master tape was insured for $100,000 or $500,000, I forget which. No matter, Classics knows that if they screw the tape up, they are on the hook for some big dough.

All of these EU public domain releases were expected and they were the main reason I was shocked that Concord paid as much for the OJC labels as they did. I wonder if that deal will be worth it? The only thing that might save them is when those Beatles sessions start hitting public domain. The next few years will tell.

This unit comes with a non-replaceable cartridge. Only the stylus can be swapped. It's OK, but if they made the cart swappable, it would be much better. Denon sells a re-badged version, the DP-29F, which I have. I swapped the stylus for an upgraded one at lpgear.com. and it's a little better. Looking around the LP Gear website, they sell an upgraded Audio Technica AT-PL50 turmtable for $99. That is probably a better deal for most of us. You get a new TT, not refurb'ed, and it has the upgraded stylus. BTW, it has a built-in phone pre-amp, so it's not necessary to have a receiver or pre-amp with a phono input. Kevin

What white van did you buy that from? Is it really a Sony Bravia or a Sonny Brevia? Sony has never made 41" LCD.

Jim, it was almost 2 years ago (already) that my Dad left us and I still think of him when I do something he taught me. You won't forget him. Like Jack Woker said, going the way your Dad did was better than a long painful disease. That's what I keep telling myself about my Dad's heart attack. I hope you find some solace in that. Kevin

The funny thing is, I really can't help you any more! I bought my Mitsubishi back in late '06 and really liked. I kept following the threads in the AVS forums to see if I could get any useful tweaks. After a while, all I was seeing was people complaining about this TV or that TV. There is also the annoying fact that next year's models will probably be better than this year's AND will cost hundreds less. Why torture myself with that!?!? I will say that my sister bought a Sony W3000 series LCD a few months back and loved the picture... until it died. They are putting in a new panel under warranty but that's still scary. I still love the picture of the Pioneer plasmas that I've glimpsed at the local Best Buy. However, if you're thinking Pioneer, be aware that this year and part of next year is it for Pio glass. Pioneer is buying their glass from Panasonic starting next year. If you want a "Pioneer" plasma, buy one now, otherwise, it'll be a Panny plasma TV with Pio electronics (which may or may not be a good thing). Kevin

A good addition to the Connoisseur list would be to add a notation for the titles that were released simultaneously on LP. I am often asked that and I don't remember.

Almost every auction is this way now. EBay did this to make it impossible to find out who is bidding on an item, ostensibly to prevent other eBay users from contacting auction losers to offer the same product "off the system". It's all about eBay's take. Money. What they fail to realize is that it makes it impossible to ferret out shill bidders. It used to be when someone started bidding up an item beyond it's expected value, you could check the bidder's other auctions to see if he/she had a history of doing that. If you found someone who usually bought Beenie Babies bidding $200 for a Jazz CD, you could be fairly certain you were getting shilled. Now, shill bidders are hidden. Caveat emptor.

Sorry, but I don't see clarke68's posting as "bad manners". If you are referring to his last sentence, it clearly reads as sarcasm. However, maybe clarke68 should have added a

Needs more cowbell!

jazz1, what cable manufacturer do you work for?

Well, considering that there have been many psycho-acoustic studies that demonstrated that human acoustic memory is only about 10 seconds, you would be a supreme human specimen to hold an acoustic memory for as long as 120 to 200 amp conversion would take.

I work in test laboratory. We measure microwave devices, many of which are used in your cell phones. A lot of these tests are done at or below the noise floor of the test device. We have to use the best equipment, tweaked and amplified with the best electronics or our measurements are incorrect. I have had to swap out AC power cords many times, whether it be switching benches or changing set-ups. Never in my 22 years of doing this has a power cord change made any difference in the noise floor and the resulting test data was the same. To put it bluntly, I think these AC cord manufacturers are ripping people off. Any amp or CD player or turntable that actually can be influenced by a minute change in resistance (maybe) or capacitance (maybe) or inductance (maybe - but at audio frequencies??) is VERY poorly designed. And let's be completely honest here - IF (and that's a big IF) an AC cord maker intentionally adds resistance or capacitance or inductance, why would you want that particular tuning network for every piece of gear in your system? Why would it improve the sound of every piece of gear? It also should be noted that many high-end equipment manufacturers charge exorbitant amounts of money for their products, selling them as "the best there is". If these AC cords did anything to improve the sound, these same high-end companies would be all over this. It would allow them to make even bigger claims of audio superiority. But they don't. Why is that? It's because they know there is nothing to it. The emperor has no clothes.

I cannot recommend www.vinyl.com because I have not used them. For titles like "Out To Lunch", if you already have the CD, stick to that, because the LP at vinyl.com is made from the digital master that was created for that CD. You are basically getting an LP copy of the CD. If you have the cash, Music Matters is coming out with a 45 rpm version of this sometime in the next year. While it will likely sound great, it will have one tune per LP side (about 10 minutes). I am not buying any of these. 33 rpm maybe, but not 45 rpm. Kevin

BTW, the ripping command that I use now (that does not produce timing errors) is: -V 2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d --ignore-tag-errors That last one is a good one to know. If you stick in a CD and the pre-defined genre isn't recognized by the LAME encoder, it barfs. Using --ignore-tag-errors stops this. FWIW, a lot of the stuff we rip has "odd" genre tags, mainly because people don't have any idea how to classify it. Kevin

I had that happen when I used the wrong ID tag command in EAC while ripping a VBR mp3. VBRfix did not work either. I had to re-rip the files.

No such animal. There are a couple of SACD/CD changers (mostly, if not all, from Sony) but I would not consider them well built and I doubt they'll sound that great. For a quick and dirty fix, order an Oppo Digital DV-980H. It isn't a changer, but it can hold you over until you find one. About $180 delivered. Don't worry about the DSD>24/96 PCM conversion. I don't know anyone who can hear it.

Get "Relentless" next. It's a great record and (GASP) better than any Barney Kessel snoozefest.

I'm going to see Eddie Izzard tonight at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. I've wanted to see him for a while now, ever since someone gave me a few mp3 files of some of his stand-up routines. I've now heard all of his CDs and I just had to get tickets when they announced it. Should be good. Recently, I caught a couple of shows at Boston's Comedy Connection. The best was Maine's own Bob Marley. Wicked pissah. Tony V was hilarious too.