Kevin Bresnahan

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I figured maybe this thread needs some air to remond people of Jim's thoughts on this topic.

Has anyone ever played "Dark Side of the Moon" while watching "The Wizrd of Oz"? That, to me, would be a real Pink Floyd fanatic. Of course, by my own definition, I would be excluded. I've often wondered how stoned one would have to get before all the "coincidences" between the music and what Dorothy does became apparent? I imagine if I got stoned enough, I could play any album and it would match up weirdly with the flying monkeys. BTW, does anyone know what song lines up with the flying monkeys? Kevin

All this talk of illegal boots... am I the only guy who's never bought one? Every one I've ever heard sounded like crap. I'd much rather spin the real stuff. Kevin

Are you sure they're Connoisseur LPs? Many of those titles have been showing up in stores around my area but they're not Connoisseur LPs but rather new reissues from the Scorpio pressing plant. They run around $10. Check the catalog number on the cover. I am almost positive that most Connoisseur LPs have different catalog numbers than the original LPs. The Scorpio LPs use the original catalog numbers. If they are Conoisseur LPs, $11-13 is cheap. They listed for $16-17 (same as the CDs) back in the day. Later, Kevin

"Wish You Were Here" is a great rock and roll album. Time hasn't diminished my enjoyment of that disc. I have always liked it more than "Dark Side of the Moon"... sacriledge, I know. "Animals" is a different story entirely. I used to get totally stoned and listen to this album with headphones until all hours of the night. I don't get stoned any more, I really don't feel like listening with headphones and god forbid that I see "all hours of the night" unless I'm sitting on the toilet. I doubt I'll ever be able to get into "Animals" too much any more. I always loved the Lord's Prayer in "Sheep". He lays me down to die. He hangs from hooks in high places. Later, Kevin

It is being reported over on Jazz Corner's Speakeasy that John Stubblefield lost his battle with prostate cancer and died yesterday, July 4th. I will always remember the joy he had on the bandstand. I saw him twice with the Mingus Big band and both times, he was the highlight. RIP John. The pain is gone now.

I leave my machine on 24/7. Always have. I shut off the monitor when not in use. It could be because of this or I could be just lucky, but I've never had a hardrive fail. Of course, I frequently back up my data too. It never pays to ignore the possibility of something failing. I have read that the rapid movements that the hardive's mechanisms do during boot are the most stress it gets. Minimizing this by leaving the machine running may help increase the life. Kevin

I was in the Media Play store in Enfield, CT yesterday, and I was walking by this huge section of 99 cent CDs. It's all crap... I've wasted my time plowing through these huge piles before and it's never gotten me anywhere. Well, as I walked by, I see the name "James Clay". Hmmm, I wonder if this is that Clay date everyone was talking about on Organissimo? For 99 cents, why not. James Clay's "I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart". Excellent use of 99 Cents!!! I've spun it a couple of times. What a rhythm section! I can't understand why Antilles chose to not list them on the outside of the disc. It probably would have helped sales if people picked up the CD and saw Cedar Walton, David Williams and Billy Higgins listed there. I might have jumped in the air if I saw them listed. After finding this disc, of course I went through the entire section. It took me about 30 minutes. The only other Jazz disc was a weird Sonny Stitt called "Just Friends". No info. I played it and got intrigued by the 3 tunes with a bone player. Turns out it a Catalyst date with Frank Rosolino that was issued under the name "I Remember Bird". I gotta get that CD. The other three tunes were from the Catalyst session with Red Holloway. I already had those. So one hit, one miss. But at 99 cents each... very good. All in all, a pretty good day. I also found an oop James Williams Sunnyside CD called "Progress Report". Happy 4th of July everyone, Kevin

Jazzhound is such a poor advocate for solid state amplification... Oh hounded one, even though I agree with you that solid state sounds better than tubes, many people do not agree with us. Why not just let them like what they like and leave it at that? BTW, the initial premise of this thread, that a pre-amp blew a speaker, sounds plausible to me. It doesn't matter whether that pre-amp is solid state or tubed. If it blows and sends a large spike to the amp, that amp could send it to the speaker. It'd likely blow the amp in the process too, as is the case here. BTW II, Linn amps are usually pretty reliable. I would definitely get your pre-amp checked out before hooking your system back up. You might find that the reason your amp blew is because of the pre-amp. Later, Kevin

Robert, for any editing of music files, you have to copy them off the CD and onto your hardrive. It's usually called "extracting" the files. If you simply copy them onto your hardrive, you'll wind up with .cda files that are about 2 kB each, not .WAV files that are about 50-100 MB each. You have to have a program that will do this. I use EZ CD Creator. As someone else pointed out, Exact Audio Copy http://www.eac.de can do this too. However, EAC is very poorly documented and it is a chore to use. When you get it working, it's great. However, I have found it takes a long time to extract .WAV files off of CD-R discs. Kevin

Audacity is pretty simple for what you're trying to do. Highlight the chunk of the audio you want, then click the "Edit" menu and click "Copy". Next, open a new window in Audacity and then hit Edit>paste. It's as simple as editing a word document. After you paste that music into the new window, do a file "Export as wave", give it a name. Done. I found Audactiy to be simple to use. I used it to create some mp3 ringtones for my cell phone. I made one from the intro to "So What" and another with Shorter's solo on "Free For All". Kevin

Colin, I tried warning you... this place just doesn't have a lot of people who dig high rez formats. They have great appreciation for the music, but the percentage that own a high rez player is probably down in the single digits. I think you're beating a dead horse. Personally, I hear immense benefits when I listen to SACD. My favorites are the Analogue Productions titles. Great music with "you are there" sound. I'm baffled why more people here don't dig it (DrJ excluded... him & I have discussed this and his reasons are his reasons... we don't have to agree). However, I am resigned to the fact that the lack of support for high rez, for whatever reason, have likely killed them for all but small, esoteric labels (just like LPs). I'll still buy 'em, but I expect the releases will stop. It'll be a sad day when it happens. BTW, one thing I've noticed about your writings here is that you use irony & sarcasm. Neither of these is obvious in written word. You could avoid misunderstandings if you use those dreaded smiley faces. You might get a warmer welcome. Later, Kevin

I usually see about 10 MB per minute. So a 37 minute "track" should be about a 370 MB file. As I said in my earlier post, with a file this size, be sure you have a lot of RAM. In order to create new tracks out of this big track, you'll have to open the big one, cut & paste part of it into another file, which will also be large, and then save that new file. If you don't have >768 MB of RAM, you'll likely be in "swap mode" and your system may crawl. BTW, I use EZ CD Creator to extract the .WAV files to my hardrive. EAC is good but it can be extremely slow on CD-Rs. Kevin

The shareware program Audacity will allow you to do this. However, you will be manipulating rather large files so I would make sure you have a lot of RAM and try to kill any un-needed processes. You'll be doing huge cut & paste operations. It works well. As an added feature, you can add additional silence if you want. www.download.com had Audacity the last time I looked. Kevin

I've been using a CD/mp3 player for years. I burn a CD-R full of mp3 files and I can listen to that single disc for almost 10 hours. I have a portable, a boombox and a DVD player. The boombox unit is great in the summer. I only need one disc for the whole day's music. The DVD unit is nice when I have a party. No need to keep swapping CDs. Kevin

Ooooo, unless you have a very different version of Musicmatch, this is a very bad way to go! Musicmatch only records using compression algorithms like mp3. Sure, Nero and EZ CD Creator can create a CD-R from .mp3 files, but that means that the analog signal goes to compressed digital and then gets converted to .WAV. There's an extra, un-needed, lossy step in there. Switch to a different recorder. There are freeware recorders out there that won't compress the signal. Otherwise, everything else sounds fine. BTW, I use Audacity for the fades/edits. It's freeware. Kevin

Colin, as I said, the main reason I convert LPs to digital is to listen to the music in my car. A small, secondary reason is to send it to a friend. CD-R is the modern-day equivalent of the cassette tape. I can send a CD-R to anyone, and I know that they'll be able to play it back. There are free computer applications to record, de-click and burn the music. It works for me. I think that CD-R captures the vinyl just fine. If you look around here, you would realize that many of us just want to spend our music budget on software. And for the record, I'm a gadget freak. I try everything. I am absolutely positive that I will try a high rez recording. However, I will be sure to convert the high rez over to CD-R and have my good buddy over for a listening test. I like to try to hear the differences. I would never assume that one is better than the other. Kevin

Quite honestly, I used the link and found the info there lacking. Like for instance, is 7677X DIVIDER, ADJUSTABLE "EGGCRATE" the dividers for these units? How many of these 7677X DIVIDER, ADJUSTABLE "EGGCRATE" units are need for each two or three drawer units? It wasn't clear at all from what I clicked. Also, while they list a 7674 CADDY FOR STORAGE CABINET, they do not list a counter top. The Can-Am counter top is very nice. All in all, these look like a less-expensive Can-Am. I made up a "chest of drawers" consisting of a three-drawer unit and a two-drawer unit. Assuming I would need two 7677X DIVIDER, ADJUSTABLE "EGGCRATE" for this set-up (which I find unlikely... I'm thinking I'd need more), the price would be $720 incl. shipping. At Can-Am, this would be $962 incl shipping. I don't know if this price difference would get me to switch. I like my Can-Ams a lot. Later, Kevin

From the Cedar Audio website, it appears that they several products. They are grouped into catagories. One of the catagories, called "Restoration Modules", lists Dehiss-3, NR-4, Declickle, Debuzz, Declip and Phase Correction. Mosaic only uses Declickle. They don't use the other modules at all. Declickle sounds like an impulse analyzer that allows the user to decide how big of an impulse (or click) that will be reduced. The write-up on Declickle is found here. FWIW, there seems to be quite a few users of Declickle that still refuse to use anything that could be called "noise reduction". It seems as if the users of Declickle use the Bill Clinton definition of noise reduction. "I only de-clicked it! I never used my noise reduction on that tape. I had to use my declicker because the tape was over 21 years old!" Kevin

I asked Mosaic about their use of Cedar noise reduction and the answer I got back from them was: "We own a Cedar de-clicker and use it judiciously on disc transfer material where it does some good. WE DO NOT USE IT TO THE DEGREE THAT IT EATS INTO THE FREQUENCY RANGE OF THE MUSIC. We never use Cedar or Sonic noise reduction as these processes are too invasive to the sound quality." The gist of the whole E-mail was that the Cedar de-clicker program was OK, noise reduction programs are not. This is what I thought Mosaic told me a while ago. They do not use any noise reduction on their sets today. BTW, the E-mail also included a reference to someone saying that they could hear noise reduction on the Sarah Vaughan Mosaic set. I searched all over for this post to let the person know that this is absolutely false. There is positively no noise reduction or de-clicking used on the Sarah Vaughan Mosaic set. Kevin

I have yet to hear a commercially-relased CD with CEDAR noise reduction that I thought sounded "good". Most sound as if they were recorded with the band underwater. CEDAR is particularly brutal on drummers. Cymbles disappear. It might be poor engineering as Allen says, but that would mean that there are a lot of bad CEDAR engineers. Quite honestly, as good as Allen says he is with CEDAR, if he wants to sell the resulting CD, he should stop using it. Not using CEDAR won't help make a sale but using it will definitely make quite a few potential buyers avoid it. There are a lot of people who will not buy a "CEDAR-ized" CD. That's a fact. I believe Mosaic stopped using it on their reissues because of customer complaints. Later, Kevin

Norman's sells re-wrapped used CDs as new. You pay new prices and when you open them up, it's clearly a used CD with scratches and fingerprints all over the disc. Norman's also knowingly sells stolen goods. I got into a big argument with them when they were selling piles of sawcut Mosaic boxes that had been stolen from Mosaic. Also, one time my good buddy went in there and found Leo Parker's "Rolling With Leo". He went up to the front desk to check out and they refused to sell it to him saying it wasn't supposed to be on the floor... even though it was priced. I just don't like that place. I won't buy anything from them anymore. However, right around the corner on St. Marks are a whole bunch of cool little shops, so it is worth the trip down to that area. Kevin

Colin, As I mentioned in this thread, the Steve Hoffman forum is a good place to get a nice healthy conversation going about this topic. Just yesterday, this thread showed up and it's about making your own DVD-Audio discs. There is some confusion about how to do it and your insight might be helpful. Kevin

Chris, I did not say that there are trolls over at Steve Hoffman's forums!! There are some great posters over there and trolls would get the boot very quickly. There are some major trolls over at the Audio Asylum boards however and it is rather insane, hence the "Audio Asylum". It's actually gotten so bad that I rarely go there. It has denigrated into a bunch of fanatics screaming at each over which high rez format is more dead than the other. Follow my link and read a few threads... nasty stuff going on there. However, Colin's experimentation with DVD-Audio may get a few good posts. Later, Kevin