Kevin Bresnahan

I placed an order for one of my overseas friends from our community tonight and it was 5860. My order last Wednesday afternoon was 5559, so a little over 300 orders in about a week. Seems like most of those literally would be from this community. I posted a link to this at an audio forum and that generated some orders. I bet that there are many others ordering besides the fish in this little pond. I posted this sale over on the Steve Hoffman forums and it looks like Concord got quite a few sales from that place too.

My 30 are on the way!

Order Number : 5541 Placed : 07/12/2006 11:47:01 CDT 30 CDs at $2.98. I paid $15 shipping. Still no second e-mail, but in their defense, someone else who uses my yahoo account (she who shall remain nameless) may have emptied the "spam" box and that's where the first e-mail went. Kevin

So as a result of this lawsuit, what are BMG's current S&H fees? Have they reduced them? I'm on the fence as to whether or not I should mail them anything. It seems that it would just give them fodder to start barraging me with "Come back to the club" mailings. Kevin

FWIW, if it's really dead and you need a cheapie alternative in the future, I just installed and set-up an Oppo Digital DV-970HD universal player at my sister-in-law's house last weekend. This thing works like a charm! Best bang for the buck ever. Yeah, it converts DSD to PCM, but who cares if it sounds good? $149?? For $149, it's a very good "second system" player and a perfectly good one for most of us. Kevin

Sony's gaining some noteriety for their SACD players failing on hybrids. Knock on wood... I've yet to have any failures on my Denon. Kevin

I'm not a big fan of Berliner Weiss. The local German place offers three kinds of syrup in it, with the recommended one being maple. "Slightly sour" hefe?? I don't think I've had one of those and I've had a lot of 'em. And Weizen, that bottle looks like it says "Schultheiss Berliner Weiss". I've never heard of that maker or seen this one. I never even knew that Berliner Weiss was a beer style. The only one I've seen looks very different from this one. Kevin

I think it used to be Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", but today, it's probably a Britney Spears CD.

Eeeeeewwww! Ein Radler Mann!!! Zat's vhat I buy for mein frau!!! Yeah, that's what my German friends say too... "Radler? That's for girls". Well, you know what, I don't care what they say, I ain't getting tanked at lunch and the stuff tastes good. Prosit! Kevin

I just called and not only would they not take the $15 shipping charge off of my order, they are removing the free shipping for orders over $100 on this sale. So, if you haven't pressed "Place order" yet, DO IT QUICK! I think the free shipping on this sale will be gone very soon. Kevin

I'd like to know where this "lemon wedge in Hefe-weiss" stuff comes from. Go to Germany and they don't stick lemon wedges in your beer. They serve it straight-up, just the way I like it. My favorite German restaurant always serves hefe with a slice of lemon. They stopped bringing the lemon to my table. FWIW, when I'm in Germany, I drink radler at lunch. It's half beer, half lemonade. Even the Germans don't consider it "beer" but more a "beer flavored drink". However, it is very refreshing and generally tastes pretty good. Ahhh... 4:00. Almost time to head home and pop open a nice cold Erdinger. Later, Kevin

I just ordered 30. Ouch. I called my wife (who balances the household budget) before I hit the "Place order" button and she gave the OK with a caveat: No CDs for 3 months! Double ouch. You guys are killing me. Some great CDs winging their way to me though. Later, Kevin

Any mp3 player has to go through the whole disc before starting playback. Some players are better at it than others. Also, be careful when making mp3s. Many mp3 encoders create large track "tags" that include everything, including the kitchen sink... well, maybe not the kitchen sink... but a lot of extraneous stuff. Seriously, after you are done creating the mp3 files, make sure the track tag doesn't include the artwork. This not only uses unecessary space, some players choke on this added data and create long delays in playing back any track. I always remove any album art from my mp3 track tags. It really speeds up initial playback. Kevin

Who reads liner notes? Maybe every now & then, but usually I just put the disc in the player and judge the music on my own. I don't need a liner note writer to decide if I should like a date or not. I think anyone who avoids this reissue because they don't like the producer is cheating themselves out of some great music in much better sound than any other version ever issued. If you don't have this version, the version you have sounds inferior. If the extra stuff bugs you, do like Big Al and make a CD-R of just the concert recordings.

This is one instance where modern-day digital did some good. They merged two mono recordings into stereo with incredible results. I highly recommend this. Unfortunately, there are some annoyances on this two CD set, like those "pause tracks", but the sound, when it's coming out of your speakers is heaven-sent. Wait to you hear Gonsalves' solo... it's actually on mike.

Read the write-ups on Wilen's "Auto Jazz". A very unique recording. Some have wondered where the "Jazz" part of the title comes in.

They probably have sex with their eyes closed too.

All PCs list files in alphanumeric order. If you want to burn them to the CD-R so that they play back in the right order, make the file names track number - track name i.e. 01 - Free For All. To better differentiate, make a separate folder for each album. All players I've encountered to date can handle folders. Myself, I use Artist>Album>T# - T_name. For example, I have a folder named "Art Blakey". In that folder is another folder named "Free For All". In that folder, there are 4 files. 01 - Free For All, 02 - Hammer head, 03 - The Core & 04 - Pensativa. There could also be another folder under Art Blakey called "Buhaina's Delight". You get the idea.

The Super Jewel Box has been used to house most retail SACDs for many years. It is far more robust than the standard jewel case but replacements are far more expensive. Quite frankly, I'd be more worried about the "Basic" packaging mentioned in the article. As the article states: "Basic – for older albums, offered in a new, streamlined slide-pack CD case, designed for "just the music" with minimum packaging – comparable to paperback books". To me, this sounds like every Jazz release will be "basic". Jazz rarely sells enough to justify "deluxe".

Close... Gambit - part of the same Disconforme family of labels though. I refuse to support these labels. Not that Blakey's family would see any money from a legit release, just because these labels are scum.

Hmmm... I will have to think about this one. I have the single CD comp from the early 90's, but that's missing 4 tunes. Is it worth the upgrade?

And they couldn't prevent Jack from being happy.... la la la la la la. Happy Birthday Jack.

That depends on the mp3 encryption rate used. I personally use CDEX with "VBR new" and "quality 3" which supposedly equals out to approx. 192 kbps. At this rate, it takes about 1.2 MB per minute of music. A blank CD-R can hold 700 MB, or approximately 583 minutes of mp3 music at this rate. FWIW, if you use the "default" 128 MB mp3, that uses about 1 MB per minute and the CD-R would hold about 700 minutes of mp3 music.

Be aware that if you use WMP to convert mp3s to wav during the burn, it futzes with the levels, performing equalization by default. The results are rarely pretty. FWIW, I think you're better off burning them as mp3s, as others have said.

I think that two thousand dollar machine is probably the result of several oven experiments. I thought someone here tried it. Was it Lon? Deep? Someone I know has definitely tried it.