Dusty Chalk

That's some nice wood. (wiggles eyebrows)

I, too, am toasting Naaman's safe return with a beer (Smuttynose pumpkin ale).

Hurray!

(performs bad imitation) [phil]Wooo-oooah![/phil]

Uninterestingly, I, too, am listening to The Klezmatics' Jews with Horns.

Nailed it in one. I think that if anyone can pave the way for higher resolution format, it'll be Apple. So I can't personally wait. But I agree that many (especially the top sellers) won't know what to do with it, and it won't be worth the increased resolution. But I bet the Porcupine Tree, Opeth, and King Crimson downloads will sound awesome.

It's for everything -- unlike you, I have a very compact space, and also very little need for speaker listening. So largely, it'll be for those few times I don't feel like putting headphones on, video when I want surround, and audio when I want surround (I do want to get around to hearing the Katatonia disk, the King Crimson disks, and the Porcupine Tree disks in full surround). In other words, it's for those few times when I want speakers over headphones, and when I want to listen to surround. Why no center channel? Because I don't feel the need. I also feel it solves a couple problems. I followed the professional side of surround for a while, and there just never seemed to come to any consensus. Some of them mix the center channel as a fully separate channel, some of them mix a little bit into the front lefts and rights, and some of them mix quite a bit into the front lefts and rights. If you "phantom" the center channel, these all get "equalized" (in the non-frequency sense), which actually is a better solution, IMHO. There's also the height positioning issue -- you can't get it at the same height as the front lefts and rights without some sort of compromise. Phantoming solves that problem, too. These would be fine for non-video audio, but since I do intend to also do video... And invariably many people get different center channels than their fronts, and you can then never quite match the voice. That wouldn't be an issue with you or me, obviously, since sound is sufficiently important that we wouldn't make that compromise, but...you'd be surprised. And then there's amping -- do you know that the only difference between most players and a pre/pro is level control? You can usually do all the rerouting including phantoming and the whole "large"/"small" (include sub frequencies/don't include sub frequencies) on most players? So then you would only need two stereo amps (and if you didn't have level control, two stereo preamps), which are fairly easy to match. I know it sounds kludgy when I say it like that, but I really don't see the point in the decoding circuitry being in both the player and the pre/pro or receiver. You end up never using the stuff in the player, most of the time. In which case one should just have gotten a BDP-80. Which actually is another option -- just a BDP-80 and a receiver for speaker/surround listening, BDP-95 for headphones, and take the BDP-83SE to the office.

Propagandhi, Supporting Caste -- borderline emo vocals, but the music rocks. Hard. Not that familiar with their other material, but from what I recall, this might be the best thing they've ever done.

(makes non-English sounds of mesmerization and envy) That is almost exactly the system I intend to put together. Only difference being I intend to go either 4.1 (4 stradas and a sub) or 4.2 (2 Stradas and 2 Reference 3.5's). I do thoroughly approve.

You know, there is such a thing as having it too good. I think you need a hobby. Besides golf.

Happy Birthday, Cognoscenti!

I am envious. I really need to follow her concert schedule so that I can see her live.

orange juice

Ditters and titters.

That sounds right.

"Wow, there's a note of...of...I can't quite put my finger on it..." "Febreeze?"

If you like that stuff, you would love the work of Tsunehisa Kimura.

Too many nested levels?

Was: Weggy Ebby Is: Faux-rizona

Started Woken Furies (Takeshi "Micky" Kovacs book 3), Richard K. Morgan and Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire (same author as Feed). Totally loved the Weekend at Bernie's scene done cyberpunk from the former.

I wanna say Twiggy, but I know that's not right.

Yes. And yes. Companies pride themselves on the software they use to do all the digital filtering (which is what the conversion is, essentially), dCS in particular. One of the guys from Wadia used to post a lot on head-fi. We had many a discussion on upsampling (which is another form of processing done before the actual D-to-A conversion). But yeah, all the work in the world can be undermined by a mediocre analog output stage.

Isn't Zombie Dust technically people?

No linux.

I have to admit, some of the most comfortable I've ever been is sleeping on the floor with not much more between me and it than an exercise mat. Of course, it was embarrassing that the guy who ran the fitness center had to wake me up.