Craig Sawyers

Yeah - I use Tidal HiFi too. But that is a fragile technology. Digital streaming services can go bust, are prone to cyber crime and warfare, or new technologies based on human embedded augmented intelligence (maybe 10 years off) or similar might cause them to go phut as a business. But you know something really funny - I have all this digital shit - and now 80% of my listening is to vinyl.

I ripped all mine to a NAS drive, so I can instantly choose what I want. Took a month or more, using dbpoweramp https://www.dbpoweramp.com/ . But I have no intention of getting rid of the CD's. Audio is littered with defunct media - cartridge, cassette, VHS, Betamax, quadraphonic (in two varieties) and others. So I keep the CD's, and CD player(s) too in the event that (a) the NAS goes phut (the horror, the horror) or (b) the whole digital storage paradigm is superseded.

A good run indeed - RIP Uncle Bob.

Happy birthday! Have a spectacular one.......

Wow. That is no age to go. RIP Margot

Case ready pierced. All the connectors. Two circuit boards and all the bits. Pass's choice of switcher supply. $317 seems like a bargain for what you *physically* get. Now yes - the distortion looks lousy and power is low. But Pass's philosophy is that linear distortion is not the be all and end all. And the distortion increases politely with power level. I have no idea what it will sound like - but if you go for it, you'll need efficient speakers to make sense of a handful of watts. (note that the power supply is uni-polar, so there is an output capacitor of 3300uF. That is something that I have not seen since the 1960's in things like the Quad 303, and is a typically quirky Pass thing)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday Shelly! Steve reckoned cake or pi - but I guess you might have preferred -exp(i.pi)

Apart from that it would dissolve the Good Friday Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement which was the basis for a lasting peace following decades of sectarian violence. Merging Ireland would renege on this, and sectarianism would take hold again, really opening Pandora's Box. It is little wonder that the EU is concerned about the border in Ireland.

Well N Ireland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU 56% to 44%., so maybe giving N to S is perhaps not a bad idea.....

Nuff said....

Meanwhile in the UK And here is typical Brexit stupidity. One of the main issues is the Irish border - because Southern Ireland will be in the EU, and Northern Ireland, post Brexit, won't. I'm sure that the typical Brit thinks of a border crossing with some sort of customs post. But there are 300 road crossings along the border. That is more than every road that links the whole EU with neighboring countries. There are farms and houses which straddle the border (so you come in your front door in post Brexit UK, then walk into your garden and it is in the EU). And that does not count many hundreds of paths that cross the border. So the whole thing becomes smuggler's paradise. Insanity.

Ikea introduce a turntable and sound/light system https://www.insidehook.com/nation/ikea-teenage-engineering-frekvens-audio-lighting-equipment

That is what NEDCC do, but they use imaging of the groove pattern, and then recover the audio from that. This is an archival process for recordings which could be damaged by regular playing. Called IRENE https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/irene

Happy birthday!