Kevin Bresnahan

Billie & DeDe Pierce - New Orleans - The Living Legends (Riverside/OJC)

I think you could access the NAS with the RPI. It has network access like any PC and you can also make it a WiFi hotspot if you wanted to connect it directly. I thought about hooking up one of my external SSD drives to my D-Link router as sort of a "half-assed NAS", but that would still require a PC. Turning on the PC every time I want to play some mp3s is a PIA. I have a Roku on my TV and I often find myself using the Sirius/XM app with the TV speakers before going through the trouble of booting the whole PC setup. I also have a large micro SD full of music on my Samsung Galaxy phone and I use that out on the back deck with a little Bose Soundlink Color II blue Tooth speaker. But the sound is just eh - or, in other words, "Good enough for sitting on the back deck sipping a drink". If that Allo Boss2 wasn't so damn ugly, I think I would've gone for one. Their DAC cards are supposed to be the best. Unfortunately, to get that "best" sound, you need to buy a $150 dual power supply. Ouch. If I got the Boss2, I think I would've just gotten the single supply and taken the small hit in SQ.

Stash was such a weird label. Cheesy/amateur artwork that was instantly identifiable as "Stash" but often great music inside.

I am going to bump this up again. How about $25?

Bob Belden's "Karu" This is an unissued session that Bob gave me years ago. I think he made it for (or was commissioned by?) a Miami nightclub of the same name. It's more of an ambient/trance/dance type of recording. I once asked Tim Hagans if he was the trumpeter on this but he never got back to me. It does sound like him. It looks like it was intended to be a full album: Karu 5:59 Ramsey 5:39 Ocean of Sorrow 5:34 Beach 5:07 Kinsey 5:09 K2 6:04 Floodplain 5:44 Man From Mars 3:16 Smooth 5:14 Trip 6:16

Sorry - I am an engineer. I sometimes write wordy posts. If this is TLDR, I won't mind if you skip it. For the past 4 or 5 years, I've been using an old HP laptop running Linux Ubuntu with an external hard drive that has my music library (in VBR mp3 format) on it with playback via the GMusicPlayer app. While I do like this setup, it is rather inconvenient. I have to boot up the PC, turn on my TV, switch to the HDMI input to bring up the PC desktop, grab the wireless keyboard & mouse, make sure the laptop is set to output the audio via the line out (not via HDMI) and then I click through my library to find music to play. To make matters worse, my daughter's rescue dog is fascinated by the mouse moving across the screen, so she whines and barks the whole time the TV is on. Lately, I've been intrigued by the new(er) Raspberry PI 4 "mini PC" (RPI for short) for use as a digital music streamer. Looking into it, I can use this mini PC without any DAC, as my Marantz PM-7005 integrated amp has a USB input for it's built-in DAC. It even comes with an Ethernet port and WiFi built-in. It really is a mini PC. I ordered an RPI 4 card (4GB version) for $68.91: a Fliirc case (best thermal case out there) for $15.95 A generic 5.1 V, 3 A USB-C power supply with built-in on/off switch ($9.99) And then, just in case, I ordered a mini HDMI to HDMI cable so that if I have to, I can use this with my TV. Maybe even just to make set-up a little easier. It was $11.99. My music is stored on a 1 TB Samsung T7 SSD external hard drive. It's one of 3 that I use. I have 2 others as backups for my backups. I have to have backups with so much music on there. I cannot lose this library as it would take years to recreate. I am planning to run the RPI 4 with a Moode Audio operating system and control it using my Android (Samsung Galaxy S7) phone to access & play my music. I already flashed the Moode Audio operating system to a Micro SD card I had in my pile of memory cards. I may eventually switch over to have it boot from an external SSD hard drive due to longevity concerns with micro SD cards. I'm going to run a USB cable to my DAC input on my Marantz so no DAC card needed for the RPI. If I needed a DAC, I'd look at either a HiFi Berry card or a Allo Boss card. My expectation is that I'll be able to turn on this RPI mini-PC, turn on my Marantz amp, set it to the external DAC input, open the app on my phone and be playing music in seconds (with no dog barking in the background). Fingers will be crossed. BTW - if someone wants a more "turn key" RPI media streamer, this (rather ugly IMO) Allo Boss2 player is supposed to sound great and comes ready to go: BTW II - if you stream audio, this setup works well for that too. In fact, more people use this set-to to stream music from places like Spotify, Qubuz & Tidal than from an external hard drive like I will be doing. As I said, it has hardwired or wireless internet connections. If this works, I am planning to build another for my office at work. The company I work has employed software that encrypts all external media and this encryption software corrupts my music files (Digital Guardian is shit software).

Steve Grossman/Cedar Walton/David Williams/Billy Higgins - Love Is The Thing (Red Records). I forgot I had this one. I was rifling through the LP rack to find something to play and said, "I have a Steve Grossman LP?" Grossman doing his best impersonation of Coltrane at times. Why did Red Records go with such flimsy card stock for their LP sleeves? Bassist David Williams is the only one left from this date now. It just doesn't seem that long ago that I was seeing this rhythm section backing Jackie Mac.That either means I'm getting old or senile.

https://harmonicsdb.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/larry-young/

It is strange that these two events happened back to back like this. It's been many years since I've had any problems... maybe even a decade or more. On the positive side, if this discogs seller stiffs me in a way that PayPal can't give me a refund, it's not a lot of money.

I had my second Phizer shot and thought I avoided any side effects because I still felt fine ~24 hours after the shot. Then I suddenly didn't feel so good. Tired, body aches & and a low-grade (100.5) fever. Drank a big glass of water, took some ibuprofen and napped on the couch. About 6 hours later, I was back to normal.

I assume Mike has that but he has always told me that if I ever find that Discovery CD, pick it up. If he didn't have it in his hand once (he didn't buy it unfortunately), I would not believe that it was even produced due to the lack of any evidence of its existence.

So I messaged the seller twice, once to ask if they could confirm that the CD actually shipped on April 5th and again to ask for the USPS tracking number. No reply for 4 days so I had to open a ticket. Discogs actually suspends the seller's account until they respond.

I have been looking for a Discovery CD of Shorty Rogers "Return to Rio" for decades for a board member. He says that he had it in his hand but no CD version has ever shown up on eBay or discogs.

I inquired and asked when these CDs were shipped and my response was a full refund. It does not appear that this seller was going to be able to get these CDs in stock. If I had known that they were selling these without any stock, I wouldn't have wasted my time. That Blakey HQCD has been out of print for about a year.

If that's the case, I am just going to wait a few days to see what they say and just request a cancellation. These two CDs are out of stock everywhere so there is no way this seller is going to get any.

I never saw that "Pre-order" down in the body of the item description but no matter - the seller is claiming to have it in stock. It still says "8 Available" even now. You should not use the term "available" unless it is in stock. Maybe a Japanese seller is unaware of that? Also, when I first bought it, it said expected delivery "Thu, Apr 01 - Fri, Apr 16". If it said "Wed. Jun. 2 and Thu. Jun. 17" I would not have bought this. As it is, I'm only picking it up because I found a copy of the HQ-CD of Vol. 2 and I thought it sounded better than the Ron McMaster and RVG CDs. It's not like I have to have this. Regarding the Dexter Gordon CD, I already got in Vol. 2 from CD Japan (ordered a week after this I might add) and it's not going to make my "favorite Dexter Gordon dates" list any time soon. If this seller eventually cancels my order, and his feedback seems to indicate that happens frequently, I doubt I'll be ordering this elsewhere... certainly not at the aftermarket prices I've seen.

On March 2nd, I ordered 2 CDs from an eBay seller in Japan. The estimated delivery was April 2-15. I just went to contact the seller and the estimated delivery has now been updated to June 2-15. WTF? Am I being scammed? I have ordered CDs from Japan recently and while they did take longer than usual, it wasn't 13-15 weeks. BTW - the seller is still listing more copies of these same two CDs, so it doesn't appear to be a stock issue. 10 Available: https://www.ebay.com/itm/274584294281 8 Available: https://www.ebay.com/itm/352917591156

Ordered a single CD from disogs seller. It supposedly shipped via Media Mail on April 5th. Still haven't received it, 3 weeks later.

Barney Kessel - Kessel Plays Standards Volume 2 (Contemporary). 10" record with the red cover that looks mint but plays like a bowl of Rice Crispies. Nice mellow record. This is one of those sessions that I always wanted to buy (on CD) but never got around to.

@bertrand just recommended this livestream on Facebook and I am enjoying it so far.

I would consider the Denon DCD-1600NE. It seems to be a nice player. See if you can listen to one at a local dealer.

Wynton Kelly - Piano Interpretations (Blue Note). I haven't played this in years. Recorded when Kelly was only 19, it shows that even at that young age, he was quite the player.

Vinyl has had its fans since the cassette days. It'll likely be the top nostalgic format for as long as I'm alive. The only reason I'm back into it is because it's fun. I like the big album art. I even like the rituals... sometimes. Other times, I'm too friggin' lazy to bother. I tell you what though - I don't miss all the shortcomings of vinyl, especially the iffy pressings. Even worse, now that I'm buying old Jazz vinyl, I'm finding a lot of those Jazz labels used shit pressing plants. I once found a mint Prestige LP with bits of paper labels ground up and embedded in the surface. I find a lot of oddball Jazz pressings with visible bubbles in the playback surface. I have a mint-looking Status (Prestige's budget label) that plays back like it's pressed on sandpaper. Mint CTI LPs almost always have crackle. I really don't miss that stuff.

When you take a full digital recording and cut it to vinyl, you're not going to get an LP that sounds like an analog master tape cut to LP. You're going to get a digital master tape with some EQ/level changes with added LP playback artifacts like surface noise, wow & flutter, rumble etc. You are certainly not going to be able to render the full dynamic range nor reproduce the full frequency spectrum of that digital master.

I think that double CD set of "State of the Tenor" sounds very good. In fact, Blue Noie reissued them in the Tone Poet vinyl reissue series and although everyone on the Hoffman forum raves about the sound, I think those CDs sound very similar. I regret spending the money on those expensive LPs.