Dusty Chalk

Wandering around a bit -- last night was listening to the new Swervedriver which is outstanding -- I need to go back and listen to their older stuff, but offhand, I think everything has improved -- the songwriting, the playing, the production, they even started doing those slow whammy bar bends that I associate with My Bloody Valentine and makes me weak at the knees no matter who is doing it. Now listening to Knucks' last set. Will probably listen to Ólafur Arnalds' Broadchurch soundtrack after that.

Thanks, listening now. And: sorry -- Friday nights are really hard for me for some reason.

With a capital 'mixed'. I like the haphazard nature of the presentation. It looks like how I pile things on my plate at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

No idea. Click the link. DEW ET. No, seriously, it's this bizarre, muscular cross between shoegazer (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, et al) and grunge (Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, et al), with this astoundingly strong ear towards songwriting -- if that sounds appealing, then give it a try.

New Swervedriver fucking rocks. It's like a time machine that takes one back 17 years. Slow guitar bends still slay me.

Black Mirror Season 2, Episode 1 Had me weeping twice already, and I'm not even halfway through, what an emotional roller coaster. Shelly, you might want to skip this particular episode for now.

WTH? I got confused guy, too, and when I googled "Ikea Lack", a couple of the google links sent me there, too. WTFF?

Agreed on the straw-man, I didn't spend a whole lot of thought on it. Perhaps a better example is the enclosure of headphones. It leads to distortion, sure, but you can't ignore it. You have to work with it. Someone like who you're describing would never work with anything other than an entirely open headphone, and there are certainly plenty of those, but not everyone who tries to accomplish anything with closed headphones is doing so for marketing purposes, they're doing so because it's a challenge, and neither engineers nor artists can resist a challenge. I think there are four categories, not two: if you're a physicist, you'll minimize the variables and then ignore them (I think these people wouldn't last long in the speaker designing industry); if you're an engineer, you'll minimize the variables and then account for them in the final design (most everyone else, to varying degrees of success); if you're an artist, you'll just tune them by ear; and if you're a salesperson, you'll make whatever you can get people to make, and then spin-doctor the snot out of it (RSA comes to mind -- I don't consider him an artist, that's an insult to artists). I think all companies do varying amounts of each at a corporate level.

On the contrary, the holistic approach is to take the entire box into consideration, not just the driver. But if you want to ignore the box, by all means, good luck with that. It's like trying to make the room entirely dead vs. trying to integrate the speaker with the room for the best sound. Anyone will tell you that an anechoic chamber makes for a horrible listening experience.

Well that didn't take long. I still have it virtually earmarked to obtain. Will get around to it. Finished Sparrow Hill Road -- superb yet again. Will probably get around to Symbiont at some point, got a Christopher Moore book to read, and need to find where I was with Jim Butcher/Dresden.

He's totally right. However, I personally put great value in lack of doubt. It's purely psychological, but if you think it will be an improvement, then that's $900 well spent ... DEW ET.

It's just two different approaches. The "magical resonance" thing is almost universal in the luthier business. Personally, I'm with you, which is why I prefer Parker guitars. It's harder to quantize resonances and establish metrics as to exactly which ones work and which ones don't. But also, it's not that black and white -- there are middle grounds, one can choose a certain amount of inertness and minimize resonances and then still work with them. I personally think that's what Spendor does, because the S3/5 that I had for a while wasn't "loosey goosey". It felt fairly stable. And it's Spendor, not Splendor.

You know, I noticed that, but that that rigorously (only subconsciously). :/

Looks like they also did Free Fall, but not Dregs of the Earth, the one with which I'm most familiar. Alas. We could always get Louis to remaster them for us. Or I could remaster them myself.

I think it's going to be a Dregs kind of day. Starting with Dregs of the Earth.

Happy belated birthday! (sends party favour noise back in time)

Lollers @ penis This.

Happy birthday! (party favour noise) 90 minutes of Grateful Dead

They also did speakers against the big 3-way BBC design monitors (BC-1) that was pretty spectacular (SP-1). Standmount, not floorstanders. I just didn't have the room for those, was looking for a nice tight 2.1 system.

Blacklist

Talk to me about marinades, Jacob. I rarely see you using anything acidic, which was my understanding was the primary purpose of marinades (tenderizing), after "adding flavor".

Spendor never named their designs based on the LS3/5A after the LS3/5A -- there was the S3/5, S3/5R, S3/5SE, etc., for some reason, they always dropped the L. I have a feeling their variant was significantly different from the LS3/5A (perhaps they used more easily sourced drivers?) that they didn't feel comfortable calling it the LS3/5A. Or perhaps it was pride -- the name evoked its heritage, but it was its own speaker. Absolute Sound reviewed the first iteration (the one I bought, perhaps simply named the S3/5) and called it the best sub US$1K speaker on the market at the time. This was why I was even at that store, so the fact that they were playing it just reinforced that opinion. But yes, it was entirely a direct descendant of the LS3/5A, so my ears prick up any time I hear that as a reference. I have a fantasy of designing an omnidirectional speaker based on the LS3/5A "sound". KEF's current LS50 speakers pique my interest similarly.

I think I would have liked to have posterized that, if it weren't for the glaring typo. Ah, okay:

It was a Jolida integrated (JD102B) and Spendor S3/5? speakers -- my first audiophile system. I added my own subwoofer, because I was too cheap to buy theirs (I think theirs was a Bag End Infrasub, mine was a Sunfire Sub Jr., which worked just fine when it was between the CD player and the integrated, plus tiny room). But honestly, I think it was just that my old system had deteriorated so radically, and it was such a large step to a full-frequency-bandwidth system. Plus, the recording was fantastic -- I think it was some straight-to-two-channel jazz thing. Plus, tubes.

First thing I put on was the radio, and it was all brimstone and fire -- in terms of how strongly they were warning us against going out and driving in the snow -- looked outside, it wasn't snowing yet, so immediately went and ran the one errand I needed to run today. By the time I got home about an hour later, one couldn't see the streets or parking lots -- the ground was cold enough from the past two days of single digit temperatures that it started sticking immediately, even when being driven on. And I was skidding all over the place, so went straight home and am staying here. Will cook some, clean some, practice some, and laze some. Started with the lazing.