morphsci

I’m with Kevin on this, Koss Pro4a

Happy Birthday, Peter!

Thanks for the birthday wishes. Pretty low key birthday. I don’t teach non Tuesdays but I had two meetings right in the middle of the day so I did not do anything much. Went for a nice Sushi birthday lunch on Wednesday in Montpelier. Today we are heading up near Jeffersonville to do a little fly fishing before they weather starts getting colder.

At my age, I am happy if I don’t bust anything.

So if you have been in the Drinks 2024 thread (where I live) you know that we had three University events on Thursday and Friday. One was the Women Kicking Glass Gala where Karen and I had to wear our Prom outfits

AGREED! I will stick with my iPhone 14. Yo Apple! You are becoming Microsoft.

RIP to a great talent.

Saw this on a new Ford Bronco and never knew it was a thing. They actually sell these on Amazon I discovered.

Done!

So I finally received my 5m RCA cable so I got the KEF subwoofer hooked up to the LSX ii's It took a bit of moving stuff around as well as doing other shit like updating software on my two NAS. But this seems like a good initial location. I will definitely be moving it around over the next few weeks. I am also very much more impressed with the KEF Connect app. It made setting up the sub very good and provided initial crossover points and the crossover curve. All it required was the name of the specific KEF sub I was using. It does allow for changing all of those which I may end up doing later. Definitely makes the miniDSP less important at this point. The only thing I do not have is the measurement ability in my specific room. I guess I will use my ears for tweaking for a bit. EDIT: Actually the hardest part of the setup was finding a place to store the shipping box.

Agree with all of the above. It’s great when good things happen to good people.

Berlin was good. Lots of good beer and we both like German food. It was a work trip and that part also worked out well so overall the trip was good except for the last leg.

So we finally made it home from Germany this morning. Brent must have had a huge biscuit this weekend. So we were supposed to fly out of Berlin to JFK on Saturday morning around 11 am Berlin time. Shortly before we were to board the flight was cancelled. It seems the plane we were to take to JFK arrived from Amsterdam the previous evening and sucked a bird into one of the engines on its landing. The plane landed fine but they needed to check the engine internals for damage. There are only two ways to do this. Tear the engine apart and then put it back together or use an endoscope designed for the task. Unfortunately the nearest endoscope was in Amsterdam and was set to arrive later that day. So the flight was cancelled and they put us up in a hotel until we could get another flight out. Unfortunately the Delta website and app was not operating very well and it took us most of the day to get a flight booked for Sunday. We finally boarded our flight and made it to JFK where we remarkably landed on time, which was 2:45 pm NY time. However we had to sit on the runway for over two hours since we did not have a gate as no planes were permitted to leave their gates because of thunderstorms. We finally got to our gate, got through customs and got to the Delta lounge where Karen had several beers and I had a Bloody Mary and two Martinis as well as some food. We had a fairly long layover as our flight to Burlington was not scheduled to leave until about 11:00 pm. At approximately, 9:30 pm Delta canceled our flight due to weather. At least this time they scheduled us for another flight to Burlington on Monday morning. At this point we had no confidence that Delta could actually get us home so Karen called her sister, who lives in Forest Hills, to see if we could borrow her Jeep Cherokee and drive home to Northfield. We took a taxi from JFK, picked up the Jeep and drove home arriving here around 2:00 am this morning. Delta was not finished with us, I actually canceled our flight this morning on the way driving back to Northfield. I received a boarding call for the flight on my app this morning. So I say, “Fuck you Delta Cunts” and again I blame Brent.

My parents were friends with Gene Krupa and I saw him play at various events when I was a wee lad.

OK, that pushed me over the edge.

That is exactly where I am at this point. I have until December to decide. I also agree about Roon support. My longest running problem was getting Roon Arc to work for me. To be fair it was basically a network configuration issue so not sure they could have done more for me than the few clues they provided. My other disappointment is that they only have IOS and Android versions of Roon Arc, not even an iPad version so I do not get to use the screen real estate on it. Pretty minor for me but still the lack of support is a negative point for many. The community is pretty helpful though.

I kinda like Roon Poon. I would probably buy one just for the name.

So I bought a pair of Edifier S1000W Wireless Speakers for our rec room, which we call, “The Lodge Room” for obvious reasons as seen below They use the wireless network and connect through Roon using airplay2. Pretty easy setup. Plugged the speaker in and connected the other pair, turned them on, downloaded the Edifier Home app to my ipad, connected the speakers to my network using the app, opened Roon, renamed the speakers, set them as the audio output zone and we now have music in the lodge room. Not exactly audiophile quality, but for their purpose, background music for gatherings and while I am puttering around downstairs, they work pretty well. A question: How do I rename this topic to just “Roon”? Edit: Dan, thank you for an excellent renaming.

Last night, a sashimi dinner and two orders of uni

After moving to Vermont, I have a new appreciation of Newhart, especially with my neighbors Larry, Darryl and Darryl. RIP Bob.

Yes to what Doug said. If you have a digital library then Roon is very useful. So the Nucleus One acts as my server, you tell it where your digital files are and it aggregates those into a library for you. You also tell it what services you have, which includes Tidal and Qobuz here in the States, and also makes those libraries available to you in Roon. You can use any Windows, Mac or Linux computer as you server as well as several different NAS systems. When you are listening you can also call up Lyrics, songwriting and performing details, etc. and you can then branch out from a particular song to listen to other similar style music within your library or services. So what you listen on can be any zone within your area. So my current zones include the Oppo and then my KEF LSX speakers. The reason they are set up separately is that the Oppo also connects to my Headphone amps. I control the Nucleus One output from one of my computers which also are running Roon or from my iPad which runs an iPad version of Roon Remote. I could also run Roon remote from my phone but I am old and benefit from a bigger screen and keyboard. There is also another program, Roon Arc that allows me to access my Roon server (the nucleus one) from outside my local network. So I have been able to access my Roon library from my iPad at work, airplaying to my office speakers as well as listening in my car while tooling around VT on my phone using Roon Arc on Carplay. Roon Arc is still a bit primitive as it is only available as a mobile IOS or android app. They do not even have a separate iPad OS version. So if you have a digital library, Roon works well and allows you to access your digital library easily from anyplace on your local network as well as from off network as long as you have a network connection. I am in no way an IT guru so I consider it a pretty good testament to its effectiveness. Most streamers are Roon capable at least and you can use a Ropiee appliance or any number of commercial products such as the Pecan Pi’s to make any DAC Roon capable. Anything you have connected to a computer you are using to run Roon automatically becomes a Roon endpoint.

In its present configuration there is no advantage in having the Oppo connect via Ropiee directly to the network. However, the Oppo will eventually be replaced with a minDSP SHD so I can use Dirac Live since I now listen mostly with speakers. The Oppo will be moved down to my bedroom so I can listen via headphones at night. The network connection will make its move totally seamless.

So I have been running Roon as my go to audio software for listening to my digital library and integrating it with Tidal and Qobuz. The software works very well and they have kept upgrades. I have been using a 2018 Mac mini to run my Roon server and it has worked very well though not without a few hiccups in keeping it running on a continuous basis. A picture of that setup is below. It consisted of the mac mini and a 10 TB USB disk to hold my library and Roon backups, a 27” monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse. The previous generation of Roon nucleus appliances were quite pricey compared to the Mac mini so I never really considered buying one. However when they announced the Nucleus One for $499 that changed everything. The nucleus has an advantage over the Mac mini as you can install an additional drive internally to hold your library so even with my $600 8TB SSD the price was actually less than the Mac mini and external USB drive. Obviously the Mac is capable of doing more than the Nucleus but I was only using it as a Roon server. So the primary goal was to simplify the setup and hopefully provide a more stable platform with higher up time. Replacing the Mac with the Nucleus One allowed me to get rid of the pieces below. This is all now doing duty as an additional workstation in our guest room. The new audio system is below. It has been very reliable and has been running continuously as long as power and the network is up. It also comes back up with absolutely no intervention when power/network connectivity is restored. It has also motivated me to reconfigure my network as we have both a personal network as well as the University network. Prior to this last week neither my Ropiee devices nor Roon Arc worked. But after a weeks worth of network reconfiguring and port forwarding hell, everything works correctly. I now have the Oppo attached directly to the network via a Ropiee device and I was able to use my iPad to connect to my Roon server from work using Roon Arc. I am happy with the purchase and most people with standard home networks should be able to get everything working in a day. The longest part will be transferring your library to the internal disk if you decide to go that route. It does have two USB ports on the back so you can also use an external disk. EDIT Note. Corrected price of Nucleus one from $599 to $499

Hah! That last one was my High School, but I was long gone by 1982!

Happy Birthday redux, Jose!