ironbut

Wow,.. what a great mini meet! I look forward to seeing more from you guys.

I had a great time listening and yakin' to friends old and new. So good in fact, that I'm heading up there again today. Highlights for me were Marutani Consulting who were getting great sound from the Magicos. Also Bob Hodas' room was getting fantastic sound (even though I wasn't crazy about the speakers). I really went to listen to some cartridges and didn't really come to any solid conclusions. Maybe today?

Cool Grahame and thanks for the heads up on the tickets. Hope to see you all on Saturday.

Hope to see you there Al. Bummer you won't make it on Saturday Mikey.

Just wondering if any HC folks are planning on going to the California Audio Show next weekend? I'll be there on Sat for sure (Sunday's a maybe). I'm going to hook up with some of the Tape Project/Bottlehead folks at the Marutani Consulting room at about noon. If you happen to be there for the show on Saturday, come on by and maybe we can all go out for lunch.

I made friends with one of the miners that hangs out in the tunnel that the Denver airport tram goes through. Maybe he can lend a hand chasing that bear away!

Looking forward to hearing it in Denver in a few months.

Yup,.. that pretty much sums it up for me too. But, even if I hated him (which I certainly don't), that wouldn't factor into whether I attended a great audio party or not. When it comes right down to it, what I'm really looking forward to is hangin' with the usual suspects before, during and after the show. So who cares who's on first? Let's get together and git in some trouble!

I'm going to try and make it this year (famous last words!). It's usually just a week or two after the Monterey Jazz Fest so I'm too burnt and/or broke. This year, it's almost a month after so that shouldn't be a factor. I haven't been in several years but I always enjoy it.

Hey you guys. Here's a great trick for cooking corn on the cob. Just boil your water, put the corn in the pot. Cover, and turn off the heat. Remove the corn from the hot water in 15 minutes. This way, it's still nice and crunchy and it avoids getting starchy.

Damn! I shoulda skipped the extended warranty and spent the money on a high priced "Ho"!

Here's an article that goes into a little more detail. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110512/en_nm/us_pinkfloyd

Hey Nate, I gotta pair of Qinpu MG-2 speakers from Fang as a bonus when I bought my pair of Jades from him. I have to confess that I've only peeked at them so I have NO idea what they sound like. I've been cleaning out my house and I'd be happy to give them to you for the cost of shipping. Here's the linky; http://www.head-direct.com/product_detail.php?p=44 If you're interested just PM me.

If any of you guys are considering picking up any Black Treasure tubes, a good place to order them from is GD-Audio in China. Much cheaper than Grant Audio or the other places I've seen. Several folks from the Tubes Asylum (including me) have bought from Clark (hmm,.. I wonder what his Chinese name is Peggy?) and the service is very good. Shippings kinda steep but he sends tubes "Express Mail" so you get them in under a week (and the less time in the shippers hands, the better IMHO). I have 8 KT88z tubes in my CJ speaker amp and so far (with about 250-300 hrs) I'm lovin' em. Can't say how the 300b's are since that's usually apples and oranges. http://www.goodcomponent.com/

Looks like a killer rig jp! Enjoy!

Killer first episode! I can't get the way they did the credits at the beginning out of my head. Those maps with the towns that "geared up" was inspired IMHO!

Yeah, they use Ontrac here in San Jose. I can't say that I've had any more trouble than UPS or USPS (if that's saying anything), but they sure do look like a rinky-dink outfit. The guy shows up in a beat up old van with an "Ontrac" sticker stuck to it. Every time I see them pull up, I check for recent Amber Alerts.

Yup, I'm hooked. I really dig the other AMC series too.

I sure an glad I didn't have any bets out there this time! I don't think anything could surprise me for the rest of this year!

Well, hopefully today is a little better! At least you can hide from it all at the office. Happy B day buddy!

Thanks for the heads up. There's some very cool stuff there so far. Here's a direct link; http://davidlynch.com/

Yeah, these are from the DSD masters (probably 1 bit 5.6MHz) generated from the tape masters. I don't think that any of the Stones recordings could be considered "reference quality". I believe that a lot of the sound quality issues are on the "session tapes". Once these guys got big, they didn't spend a whole lot of time together in the studio. In fact, Richards had the mobile studio at his villa in the south of France and some of his tracks were recorded there. That isn't to say that there was anything wrong with the gear/engineering that was done in that truck, but it's kinda tough to get another take in those kinds of situations. Anytime you end up with tracks recorded at different times/places, there's extra processing that has to be done to get some continuity to "glue" the tracks together. Well, anyway, for some material like this, I'm pretty happy with it sounding "not bad". I love the songs enough that the only "deep listening" I do with them is to figure out what the engineer is shooting for.

Just a heads up,.. There's a 15% discount code (on that other site) for the Rolling Stones hi rez downloads that HD Tracks are selling. I guess I could just paste it here but somehow that doesn't seem right? Whatever,.. all you have to do is visit that site and copy and paste it to the "discount code" box when you're checking out. If you're like me, I'm just grabbing the "Through the Past..." and waiting for "Let it Bleed" and hopefully "Sticky Fingers" latter on. I haven't got anything but the original vinyl of this stuff so don't ask me to do comparisons! If I can't hear a difference without A/Bing it,.. it isn't significant in my book.

Sound great! I look forward to hearing what you come up with. One thing that might not be immediately obvious regarding these pro audio boxes, the needs and priorities for them are different and as a result, the devices used are almost never the audiophile approved ones. One of the main concerns that studios have is the number of times a signal is sent through the digital and analog section. Say, if you record a session with 8 microphones, each signal is routed to an ADC but you need to apply an analog limiter after a digital eq to the 3 drum feeds and an analog compressor after a digital delay to the vocals. That means that 4 of the signals need to be converted back to analog, sent through the outboard processors and back into the box through analog returns. They in turn need to be sent through the ADC again to be mixed and recorded in the digital realm. That mix must be monitored in the analog world where we all live. The resulting digital, multi track file will be tweaked and adjusted in post production where more of the channels could be sent and returned to other outboard analog processors. So again, another trip in and out of the box. This is about the point where the mixing engineer will finish his work and send the digital files off to be mastered. Once in the hands of the mastering engineer, this whole process will need to be repeated again and even more trips through a different box. The results need to be predictable and consistent no matter how many times the signal is sent through a these devices. Slight colorations in op amps that make them pleasing to the ears may not be so nice if you had to go through that same device 10 or 20 times. As a result, it seems like designers for studio gear tend to be conservative and use devices that aren't the latest and greatest but rather ones who've been proven to work when layered endlessly and are compatible with a large variety of studio gear. This probably has nothing to do with your current project, but I thought I'd throw that out as a point of interest.

Hey Mark, The unit I have is an different from jp and Al. Mine is an earlier version called the ULN-2+dsp. I know that a pal of mine has been inside of the ULN-8 and I'll be visiting him in a couple of days up in Wa state (DocB). If I can remember, I'll ask him which converters it uses. In the meantime, here's some pic's of the guts of mine a while back (bear in mind, mine was designed back in 2001 and is 24/96). http://img842.imageshack.us/i/img0172it.jpg/ http://img571.imageshack.us/i/img0171l.jpg/ http://img822.imageshack.us/i/img0173l.jpg/ http://img571.imageshack.us/i/img0177e.jpg/