Kevin Bresnahan

Andrew Hill - Passing Ships (Blue Note). Listening to Side 1 to see if my turntable/cartridge can pass the torture test that is "Plantation Bag". Apparently, this track presents tracking challenges to some turntables. On first listen to this, they really did a nice job in the mastering studio in creating a lively analog master tape to cut with. Well - my turntable failed that miserably. Weirdly, it wasn't Farrell's sax solo that got me. It was the piano solo near with the trombone/bass clarinet fills distoring like heck. Sounds like crap.

Did Bird actually make that gig? He was supposedly pretty unreliable by then.

Look at that old digital watch - it's huge. I wonder if it's one of those red LED watches where you have to push the button to turn it on or an early LCD where there was a button to turn on a light behind it?

Although I never got a chance to see & hear him live, I do enjoy this one:

I just received this on vinyl. I hope to spin it soon.

Yes, I am an engineer and a self-professed nerd, but even I have to ask questions sometimes. I am new to this world of the Raspberry Pi and I am trying to learn as much as I can so bear with me. Connect the RPI to the internet - Check. I am using an Ethernet cable. I don't want to use this as I'd rather go wireless, but I think I'll have to at first. Control it using VNC Viewer - What is VNC? (quick Google search ensues - ahh, there it is) and how do I control my RPI with this app? Do I log into my RPI (get out that HDMI cable I didn't think I needed) and install VNC on there or do I install it on a laptop on the same network? From my Google search, I see how I would do this on my laptop but no one has shown me how to install anything on my RPI. I am very familiar with sudo apt-get, as I have been using Linux Ubuntu & Mint desktops for many years. When I logged into my RPI a few days ago, all I got was a command prompt. I assume if I need to install anything, I am in sudo apt-get land? Edit: VNC Connect appears to cost $3.39/month. I'm not planning to use this RPI music player that much so I am not looking to pay $40/year for an access program. Set RPI to a static IP - How do I do that? Do I have to use VNC? What is the reason for this? I get that if I don't set it to a fixed IP address, it can change every time I turn it on, but Volumio seems to find the RPI automatically so the IP can change, can't it? Use pi OS from JRiver - I have looked into JRiver for years now. Many years. The cost has always kept me away. Is IdPi free? (Google search ensues - no it's not). It looks like they only sell it imaged onto a micro SD card... can't I just download an image and flash my own card? Does this require a fixed IP to work? Is the phone interface easy to use and is it fast? Does JRiver offer a cell phone app (search the Pay Store - ahh, there it is). But is it faster than the Volumio app (which is dog-slow)?

Wow, is Volumio slow. I don't think it ever completely built my library before it stopped responding. I had to reset it several times before I could get a list of all of the artists and albums in my library. I may have to switch over to Moode if this is it for Volumio. Sadly, I would rather boot up the Linux laptop than use this set up as it now stands.

Success! Playing music through the Raspberry PI as I type this. The Samsung app is slow as hell though. I hope it's just because it's just been set up. If it's this slow, I may go back to Moode just to see if that browser GUI is faster. BTW - I did hook up that mini HDMI to HDMI cable and booted the RPI to a login screen. It does not appear that I was able to do anything there except command prompt stuff. To do what I am doing, I don't think I needed this cable.

I wonder if I got a RPI card with a bad wireless chip? The Volumio network keeps popping up and then disappearing. I'll probably have to bring it up to my router and hook it up via ethernet. EDIT - now I get it. The RPI has to be connected to the internet. Your phone needs to be connected to the RPI. Confusing. I will take it up to the ethernet connection and see if that works.

First attempt with headphones... I attached my external hard drive and all I get is the spinning dots. I wonder if I'm stuck in a loop? I'll try re-booting after another 2 or 3 minutes. Not a great first try. This thing gets pretty warm. Not hot, but warm.

I didn't realize that Blue Note had messed with this cover so much over the years until I saw this. Font styles and font colors change. For the CD cover, the sidemen are all deleted. No matter - what a great date.

I was wondering how the headphone jack would work... I have never really gotten good results from a headphone jack into a line in on a preamp. I've seen this happen in the past when I hooked any headphone jack from a walkman type player to a line in on my preamp. They never seem to sound "clean" when you turn the volume of the walkman up to the max. I think it has something to do with the headphone jack's output impedance not matching what your line in "wants". Most preamp line in jacks have an input impedance of 1.5 to 3 kilohms. The RPI headphone jack output impedance is 69 Ohms. That is quite the mismatch. I hope to avoid that by driving my DAC input via USB. If you are thinking about adding a DAC HAT, look at the HiFi Berry cards. Good "bang for the buck". Try this card: https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/boards/hifiberry-dac2-pro/ They also sell cheap cases to accommodate their card/RPI combo. Here is the case the offer with the DAC2 Pro: Black is $2 cheaper.

Do you have a copy of Click Repair? I don't even know if it's still available, but I remember it worked very well. I used it on a couple of needle drops with a lot of noise and I could barely tell they were there after I was done. It leaves the music behind too. I'd have to look to see if I still have a working copy.

Isn't a MyBook hooked to a Linux PC simply going to show up as a storage device? I think you'd have to run JRiver from the RPI mini-PC (as GregK mentions above) but I would think that you could make it work. I would ask GregK if he thought it could work for you. BTW - since I started this thread, two new things happened. One was Mother's Day, which killed this past weekend for trying this new system out. The second was that after investigating Moode Audio further, the interface is a web GUI. I decided to switch to Volumio, which runs from an app. On my phone, I'd rather run an app than have to open Chrome every time I want to access it, especially since I may want to use Chrome for tther things while playing music. I hope to try it out later this week.

Well, at least I know what "illness" caused him to have to pull out from that Javon Jackson gig. It seems that "having your leg amputated" is a bit beyond an "illness" though.

I ordered that Hill LP. Not my favorite Hill session but I don't have the CD and I'd like to hear what Addey did here so...

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/10/995507160/curtis-fuller-leading-trombonist-of-jazzs-detroit-wave-dies-at-86

I know it's not from Belgium and I know it's not blonde, but if you like smooth Belgian beers "on the East Coast" (of the US I assume), you should try one of these:

The master tape (or tapes?) for "Passing Ships" was done using an 8 track recorder. I've read that it was one Van Gelder's first attempts at multi-track recording. There was an incomplete stereo master tape in the vault and originally, Michael Cuscuna thought the multi-track tapes were lost. When he found them, he had Malcolm Addey digitally mix them down to stereo for the 2003 CD. I believe that Andrew Hill approved that final CD mix. Addey re-mixed these 8 track masters in the analog domain to create a new analog stereo master tape specifically for this new Tone Poet LP.

I have this record but haven't spun it in a long while. I look at this cover and remember that when I initially saw it while flipping through the bins, I thought it had an egg on the cover.

A great beer that is very hard to find here in the US. Be careful with that stuff... if I remember correctly, it has very high alcohol content.

Blue Note actually had Malcolm Addey go back to the original analog multitracks to re-mix this to stereo in the analog domain for this LP, so it should sound different just because of that.

Several musicians on Facebook are reporting that Curtis Fuller has died. Curtis was the leader at the first Jazz show I ever attended. I was big into Coltrane's "Blue Trane" then and Curtis was the last living member of that band so I had to see him. I was lucky to have caught him live many times over the years. One of the best times was when an edition of the Jazztet came to town. Him & Benny in the frontline was something special.

RVG did remaster a few of those Superbit Jazz Classics too.

I've read a few stories of people having their micro SD cards dying after a year or two. It seems to be a good idea to boot from an external SSD instead of a micro SD. Are you considering this? I am actually thinking about formatting a second micro SD with a Volumio system image so that I can compare Volumio & Moode as well as having a backup ready in the case of failure. I've wanted to go with JRiver for years but I just can't justify the cost. There are so many free player apps. I suppose if I wanted to use JRiver's ripping capabilities, it might be more worthwhile, but Exact Audio Copy has served me well for years.