Good to see ya' come round'. Sit back, pour a drink and download some music
my friend ~ little readin', little Rock N Roll... What you are looking at
is simply the the hands-down, most 'tell-it-like-it-is' Audiophile site on the
web, consisting of Music, Band info'
including touring schedules, Audio / Video hardware / software, technology,
reviews, new products and crazy, random shit I throw in for kicks. All
music is free & legal 'promo' material supplied by bands & labels.
Not all of it is Canadian, that's just a name I picked as the site is based in
Canada :-)
May 12th Wow! What a great weekend, I think I'll celebrate by booking off Wednesday! My gal and I spent Friday / Saturday / Sunday hiking in the mountains in and around the valley, mapping out single-track trails for the backcountry trail book we're working on. Here is a sample of what the area offers; very nice country we have here! Me & My Pooch, My Gal, The Valley looking NW, Flora, Trails. Lets kick off this workweek with a taste of The Secret Machines - Nowhere Again. (Curious stuff ~ kinda' 'Power-Pop' or some such thing...)
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May 12th As an addendum to me previously mentioning W.A.F. and loudspeakers, but with an added twist: outdoor tunes ~ seeing as it's summer everywhere in Canada, except Alberta... Niles Audio has an interesting line of incognito planter and stone loudspeakers. All of their kit comes with a lifetime warranty to boot - you won't see that every day!
May 12th Amazon's CreateSpace Puts Out-Of-Print Music Back On The Market. CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com, on Monday expanded its print-on-demand CD publishing service in an effort to put an end to the concept of out-of-print recordings. Amazon, Sony BMG, and EMI Music said that they will make hundreds of out-of-print albums available on Amazon's Web site through CreateSpace's Disc on Demand service. Some of the titles that have been restored to availability include Hatari Soundtrack by Henry Mancini, Earthquake Weather by Joe Strummer, Motorcade of Generosity by Cake, Telepathy by Bill Stewart, Foreign Intrigue by Tony Williams, and Carryin' On by Grant Green.
May 12th This is cool; the Yanks are working on legislation which will allow 'modern folks' to legally use (however they may), orphaned works of all forms. Lets hope our government catches onto this gig:
May 12th A one-time fee of a hundred and fifty bucks gets the UK a set-top box, dish and access to 80 high-definition audio and video channels via satellite! WTF? Why can't we have this in North America?!
May 12th Ok, nuff' outta' me; its late and I'm dog tired. Crank up some Redwalls - Universal Blues
May 9th Friday, bloody Friday... its a beautiful thing! Since I've been sitting around the shop listening to Bluegrass most of the evening (anyone remember the Goose Creek Symphony?), I think I should lay some on ya' as well! Earlier this year I pointed you in the direction of the curiously named United Steelworkers of Montreal. A visit to their www site brings us a whole shwack more of their quirky take on the genera. The tunes are faded off just before the end of the actual track length, and the bit rate is not exactly perfectionist to say the least, but the sounds emanating from your PC speakers should be enough to set your foot a tapping. Check out this trio: Life Bearable In Texas, 77-87 and The Promise. If you like your grass this shade of blue, check out their label's homepage where you can pick up any either of their two LPs for a measly $8.88.
May 9th Here's an interesting one: Endless Highway - The Music of The Band. In a nutshell ~ 17 bands cover the music of the one, the only: The Band. Hmm, I guess its an ok concept; cover tunes, as you know, don't always tickle my fancy, but in this case, the music is so damned fine, I can't imagine anyone being able to mangle it too badly. The link above will take you to the main site - click in the music link atop the graphic and check out the actual tunes. They are streamed and spooled as MP3s into your Temporary Internet Files folder...
May 9th (very), slowly, but surely ~ Blu-Ray players supporting the '2.0' specification are appearing on the market. Panasonic just announced the impending release of it's DMP-BD50 to the market "some time in late spring". This will be the first deck, aside form the PS3, which supports the full 2.0 spec', including Ethernet port and bitstream-to-receiver.
May 9th Picked up a new Blu-Ray deck and TV and wanna' get a line on what's available in the new format? Check out the cats at Blu-ray.com - from what I've seen in my wanderings around the Net', they seem to have one of the most comprehensive grasps on what's doing down in the industry, as well as what's available on the market.
May 9th I've posted links to these two in the past; they are curiously interesting, at least they're honest / no cable-bullshit here: HDTV & Home Theatre's PodCast #274 - these cats cover a lot of ground; you can preview the contents of this Cast' on their website.
May 9th Lets wrap it up with a classic rock blast from the past. Airbourne sounds like they collected AC-DC and Krokus LPs in the basement during the 80's and never left the era. If nothing else, get half-corked this weekend and I suspect you'll find yourself playing air-guitar and acting like a juvenile delinquent... aint that something to look forward to :-) Running' Wild
Have a great weekend, stay the hell away from work!!
May 7th Wednesday Muthas! Lets get down to some (hilarious) parody music - free & legal style - care of Flight of the Conchords - Business Time
May 7th The Police Announce Last Show Ever -
The Police and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg today (May 6) announced at
a press conference in Times Square the band's final concert ever, to be held in
New York on a date still to be revealed in August. This final concert -- for
which ticket and venue information have yet to be announced -- will be a
fundraiser with proceeds benefiting the production of arts programming for
public television stations Thirteen/WNET and WLIW New York. Tickets will be
available nationally online via the Thirteen/WNET and WLIW Web sites.
Additionally, Sting and the Police announced that they will contribute $1
million to Mayor Bloomberg's 'Million Trees NYC' initiative -- a gift the city
will match -- to plant trees all over New York City. At the press conference,
held in Times Square, Sting commented: "Some people may be surprised to know
that the greatest single contribution to greenhouse gases is deforestation. We
all want cleaner and cooler air, and planting trees is the best way to achieve
that. "We have a long history in New York," he added. "We came here first in
1978. We want to leave a gift that will last for decades."
The contribution by the Police to the 'Million Trees NYC' initiative -- which
aims to plant 1 million trees by 2017 -- will fund the planting of 10,000 trees
across all five of New York City’s boroughs. Mayor Bloomberg commented: "We hope
the donation by the Police will inspire many more people to get involved.... A
lot of people make a lot of money, spend a little bit of it, and don’t give any
of it away. So these guys are role models." Source Billboard
May 7th Neil Young Plans To Release Music Archive on
Blu-ray Discs -
Neil Young plans to release his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs, a sign
that the discs' capabilities are building appeal among musicians as well as
movie studios. Young revealed his plans Tuesday at a Sun Microsystems Inc.
conference in San Francisco. (Santa Clara-based Sun makes the Java technology
that gives Blu-ray discs their interactive menus and ability to accept updates
over an Internet connection).
The first instalment of Young's archive will cover the years 1963 to 1972 and
will be released as a 10-disc set this fall on Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.
Young said the archives will be released chronologically and include some
previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other
memorabilia, in addition to the high-resolution audio that Blu-ray technology is
known for. Fans can download more content like songs, photos and tour
information directly to the Blu-ray discs as the content becomes available.
Musical artists such as AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen and Destiny's Child released
concert videos on Blu-ray discs, but Young's support of the technology for his
ambitious archive project demonstrates more fully the capabilities of Blu-ray as
a music medium. Earlier technology didn't offer the ability to browse archive
material while listening to songs in high-resolution audio, Young noted.
"Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises," he said in a
statement. "I am glad we waited and got it right." Source: Associated
Press
May 7th
May 7th A Downside to Digital TV - Here in Canada we'll be facing some interesting challenges in 2012 when the CRTC kicks us over to Digital Broadcasting. The Americans are all over it in short order; about ten percent of the Canadian population will be scrambling at the last second (if every tax season is anything to go by), to acquire conversion box's for 'over the air' sets. I'll be posting everything I get my eyes on until then.
May 7th Tasked with hiding your audio-passion from the wife? Here are ten cunning stunts that'll help you along the way...
May 7th Pocket-protector time again lads: In case you missed the memo - there's a new release of Linux available for download, I know... I've mentioned this to death over the past few weeks :-) I'm a fan, what can I say... At any rate, Ubuntu Hardy Heron ships with a new core audio infrastructure (hey, Vista got one, so I guess it was about time for Linux too). For those interested in the 'behind the scenes' techno-jargon of the new Pulse Audio system; start here.
May 7th A few weeks back I noted that CAM actually sported a pair of intelligent audio posts (!!!) - which were of course, soon buried and forgotten beneath the 'same old same old'... The posts were regarding a project for D.I.Y Quadratic residue diffusers. I dig the look of said room-tuning tools and thought I would provide a direct-link to a location on the Web that folks could visit in order build their own. When constructed utilizing quality grain wood, cut and sanded to an aesthetically appealing level of craftsmanship, these units make an attractive discussion-piece while assisting in the acoustic transformation of one's listening room. Without further ado, here's the document.
May 7th You may have noticed my predilection for punk rock over the past couple of years... what can I say, my youth seems to have stuck with me in some small corner of my psyche; SNFU / DOA / DK and the DayGlo's were at the pinnacle of their peculiar form of audio terrorism and I was a wild and crazy teenager! IndieCan.com has an interesting interview with none other than Joey Shithead - enjoy, over and out! Speaking of D.O.A - they are currently on tour across Eastern-Central Canada supporting a new LP. Check out their homepage and 30th anniversary tour schedule.
May 5th Wasn't that just a kick-ass weekend! I was lucky enough to spend loads of time with several of my best friends, my gal and even my pooch! There was food and alcohol a-plenty for the partaking and loads of fun aboard my trusty mountain bike above the valley in our local mountains. I think we should kick off the workweek with a upbeat, punkish little number from New Jersey's Steel Train - I Feel Weird to celebrate being alive!
May 5th As a fan of the "all-in-one/when-in-a-pinch" surround-sound systems (AKA: Sound-bar), I thought I'd add to the information I've provided on the site in the past. Mythos is marketing their own solution to the 'surround-sound on an aesthetics budget' with their SSA Series.
May 5th Pretty much everyone reading this likely has an idea what the AudioEngine speaker system is, if not; check it out. The cats who brought you the A.E. are now making an equally innovative device available: the AW1 Wireless Audio Adapter.
May 5th Sony launches free music service: Don't get too excited, its not quite that straight-forward. They've partnered with upstart we7 to offer around 250000 tracks in a semi-hi-fi streaming service. The streamed files could potentially be captured, but I'm sure none of you would want to try that... At any rate, the site has since gone down due to overload... I suspect that it'll be back by tomorrow; its worth a look.
May 5th This next one was brought to my attention by the cats on Hydrogen Audio Forums in their discussions about audibility of different sampling rates. The free (open-source), r8brain software application allows you to perform high quality sample rate conversion of WAV files. Those who are truly curious enough to try it out rather than yammering away about what they can or cannot hear should give it a go.
May 5th I always like to hear the point of view from
the other side of the control board. Electronic Musician (online
magazine), offers up words of wisdom from three professional sound engineers:
Andy Heller has dealt with a gamut of bands and situations over the past ten
years while running Location Digital, his live-sound and recording operation.
Andy Lipnick, a 14-year veteran of live music, performing arts, and
broadcast, does the sound at John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room in San Francisco
and directs the Theater Sound and Lighting course at Ex'pression Center for New
Media in Emeryville, California. John Karr, a seasoned San Francisco
sound engineer, mixes at venues all over the city, including the Great American
Music Hall, the Fillmore, and the Bottom of the Hill.
The minds of audio engineers are always more interesting than the yarns of
audiofools...
May 5th Those of you curious (or frustrated enough at the Windows Operating System's gravitational pull of virus's / worms / trojan's and malicious spyware), enough to have moved to the Linux O.S. will have no-doubt noticed that support for T.V. tuner cards under Linux is lacking. As usual in the Linux world, someone has come up with a solution - for free - under the GPL. (don't cha' just love GPL?!). Myth TV is available for free download here and now.
May 5th Those of you lucky enough to subscribe to The Documentary Channel; be sure and tune in on Sunday, May 11th at 10pm for the Seven Ages Of Rock (more info here). Wish I would have happened upon this one sooner, like at the beginning of the 7-part series for instance... But like all things on TV these days; It'll be repeated. At least now you know what you're looking for.
May 5th That's it for me; I am writing a book on the local cross-country trail network and have, oh, about ten thousand hours of work ahead of me there, not to mention my regular job and life... so will bid you farewell till' humpday. In the meantime, drop in on Wolfgang's Vault for a live taste of thousands of artists. (any email address / username / password gets ya' in!).
May 2nd Love that Springtime weather ~ dig the fact that we're headed into another weekend even more! You know, as much as I love what I do for a living, and I really do: I just can't get enough of goofing off with my best buddies :-). I debated this next one for all of 30 seconds before I decided to post it anyway... Ya, it sounds more redneck than your uncle Jeb, buy it kinda' grows on ya' after a few plays! Another fine Canadian band The United Steel Workers of Montreal - Small Town Banks
May 2nd Further information on the DSD vs. PCM front: (SACD and DVD-A) from the Audio Engineering Society (Convention Paper number 6086). In summary: These listening tests indicate that as a rule, no significant differences could be heard between DSD and high-resolution PCM (24-bit / 176.4 kHz) even with the best equipment, under optimal listening conditions, and with test subjects who had varied listening experience and various ways of focusing on what they hear... Check out the paper DVD-Audio versus SACD - Perceptual Discrimination of Digital Audio Coding Formats.
May 2nd Flaky kit aside... I have always been a fan of Bob Carver's work. His companies have come and gone, leaving a wake of fanatics who worship his genius as well as his stubborn / 'against the grain' attitude toward the industry norm. Hell, it was Bob who was actually honest enough to publicly state:
"“What I'm going to say will fly in the face of what most people believe. I believe that you can take two solid-state amplifiers, and provided neither one is overloaded in any fashion, they'll sound identical. Provided the amplifier has flat frequency response and sufficiently low distortion, both of which are trivial these days, and provided there are no interface problems, the differences will always be the subtle differences associated with overload, either momentarily, like slew-rate limiting or clipping, or just running out of drive current.”
I dig the honesty, as such, continue to support him... even after having to fix my M1.0t several times...(!) What am I getting at here? Well, check out the latest from the mind of Bob.
May 2nd I made mention of "the coming of" this device a few months ago, so I guess an update is in order: LG has released their GGW-H20L Blu-ray HD DVD combo drive for PCs. A measly $250.00 dollars with enable read / write of Blu-ray format disks, and if your PC has an HDMI interface... ya man, big-screen fun from the PC!
May 2nd What are the real goods on the whole question of standard television resolution vs. 720 vs. 1080 etc? Until I read this article from HDTV Solutions.com, I wasn't quite clear on the whole story. It puts the answer into perspective in a manner that leaves no stone unturned. Speaking of which; the main website itself is quite informative, check it out.
May 2nd Speaking of big-screen TVs: (and if your situation warrants having the very latest in high-resolution / specification), I stumbled upon a pretty amazing HDTV deal in an email flyer sent to me last week by Tiger Direct: Olevia 747i LCD HDTV - 47" 1080p, 1,600:1 Contrast Ratio, 8ms, HDMI, ATSC Tuner - $1200.00 Cdn. I've dealt with Tiger Direct quite a bit over the years, they've always been fair with me, I have an issue with the speed, or lack thereof, regarding shipping - but the prices have always been right.
May 2nd You know, once in a while I just dig some of the heaviest shit out there ~ must be a holdover from my youth as a long-haired, leather-jacket freaker :-) In most cases this lust for heaviness comes from a craving for ultra-raw riffing: case in point Weedeater - Potbelly Sure, most of you out there are going to really hate this track, but what can I say; you've been warned! Free & Legal track care of SXSW and the band. (free kick in the butt to the first person who can actually make out what the hell these cats are going on about :-) By the way, the feed for this sucker is a measly 56 Kb/s (!) MP3. Can you believe that one can even use such a pathetic bit rate, and yet still get something that roughly approximates music?
May 2nd Slate Online Magazine is running an interesting perspective article titled: The Music Industry's Extortion Scheme. In it, they suggest that if musicians as a whole are not properly compensated "it'll leave our culture a little less vital and a little less fun". I don't know; reflecting on how much absolutely freaking horrid music I audition every day in order to find something I feel good about posting on the site, I think that the music industry could use a little pruning, make that a shitload of pruning! What can I say; its always been my feeling that rock stars should earn their keep the same way that the rest of the world does it: by working! They should sell their music online and at concerts, they should also use a collection of freebee tracks as a way to get people interested in their work, which will in turn bring folks to see their live shows. What so fucking difficult about that concept?
May 2nd Ya, ya... nuff' outta' me for one day; lets close this session with a track form The Weakerthans - Sun In An Empty Room Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 track compliments of the band and SXSW. Have a great weekend my friends - do some great acts of humanity today, cause you might be worm-food tomorrow :-)
April 30th End of the road of April 2008 boyz': hope you had a blast and did some cool shit / cause' it aint coming round again... Its bloody late, I have just finished ploughing through a pile of paperwork and am simply too damned tired to post on the site; as such, you'll have to settle for a taste of what Joe Perry's (of Aerosmith fame) kids have whipped up: TAB the band - Secretary's Day. Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of SXSW and the band.
April 30th Shit, wait - I do have one more. This might not seem directly related to A/V, but in fact it is. Many (very many, unfortunately), is the time you'll read some cat online telling you about how he hears an 'impossible to measure' subtle audio nuance. These same folks will always go on to insist that people should simply "trust their ears" in cases where science cannot explain (according to them), the audio phenomenon. Well, for these crazy cats - the ones who "trust their ears" so much, please allow me to entertain you with some demonstrations of our other extremely acute faculties - being made an outright fool of: 77 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena. Still think you should just "trust your ears"?
April 29th Spring-cleaning of sorts going on here: thought I'd post a few items that I've acquired over the past couple of years, mostly to conduct audio evaluations:
PSAudio HCA2 Power Amplifier (black) $700.00 (mint - OBM)
Roksan Kandy III Integrated Amplifier (black) $700.00 (mint - OBM)
ASUS Xonar PCI Sound Card (internal) $140.00 (mint - OBM)
If you check what any of these items is currently selling for, I'm sure you'll note that the prices I'm asking are more than fair. All are a loss compared to what I paid! Shipping is at face-value / where-ever an item goes, no 'up-charges'.
April 28th Wow - another Fun with Bro's weekend! Saturday was filled with kayaking the local lakes with good friends and sipping cold beer with good eats in the evening; Sunday was consumed mountain-biking and working on amazing trails, deep in BC's forests - with more cold beer afterwards. Lets groove into the workweek with a taste of The Switches - Drama Queen. It reminds me of the carefree tone that Cheap Trick used to take 'back in the day'.
April 28th One of the first computer review sites that I ever visited was Tom's Hardware. Years ago, Tom was pretty much the only game in town when it came to getting the no-bullshit facts on PC kit being foisted upon an eager market. Tom 'spoke to us' directly in a candid, no-nonsense manner that one could trust. Its been years since I last hung on Tom's words, and I see that he has since hired on a clutch of writers / editors. It appears however, that Tom's underlying philosophy of "No-Bull" remains. Check out their wireless headphone review: Bluetooth Headphones: Music Sans Tangles
April 28th Who hasn't enjoyed the smooth, clear recordings of Walter Becker... (who?). Yes, you've all heard his work, but under a more familiar moniker perhaps: does Steely Dan ring a bell? Walter has just released a 'solo' work titled Circus Money, and you can sample a bit of each track with this little script player (direct link). Just in case you're curious where 'the Steely Dan sound' is going these days...
April 28th I never cease to be amazed by the cool A/V sites I stumble upon: check out Big Picture / Big Sound's FAQ site. Editor Chris Boylan answers a litany of tough questions, many of which I'm sure you've had yourself.
April 28th One of the most fun, approachable and fulfilling projects one can tackle as an amateur A/V hobbyist is that of building loudspeakers. I've posted a seemingly endless list of information on the topic in these pages over the years, but I don't think one can ever have too much information on the topic. Thus, I bring you HiFi Speaker Design. Most, but not all, of what he comes up with is solid, I'll let you sort the wheat from the chaff.
April 28th Thats it for me boyz' - I'll leave you with a slightly odd-ish number from Summerbirds In The Cellar - Wicked World. Learn more about the band and hear entire concerts on NPR's All Music Considered. Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 25th Its the Habs in Game 1, Round II! What an unlikely scenario: Philly takes a penalty with less than a minute left and the Canadians pull Price for a 4 on 6... and score to even it up! Then Kostopoulos blasts one over the Flyers netminder 48 seconds into OT - love that 'Good Old Hockey Game'! Lets groove into the weekend with some folksy rock from Stanton Meadowdale - Came Feel The Same (seems to have a wee bit of Mick and the boys in there doesn't it?). Oh, and before I leave the hockey rant: the IIHF, under-18 Canadian junior boys team didn't seem to get much press the other day - kicking some serious Russian ass in the gold metal game: Canucks 8 - Ruskies 0. Stick that in you're perogy and smoke it :-)
April 25th Well, its finally arrived - but holy crap is it expensive! Sony's new OLED TV: 11" display / 3mm thick and a million to one contrast ratio - at a whopping $2500.00. You 'early-adopters' with deep pockets and a hankering to impress your friends can check out your locals Sony-Store to pack home one of these bad-boys... For the rest of us; give it a year or so to gain manufacturing momentum and a bit of industry-wide competition - A quick look into my crystal-ball, er.. ok, my belly-button, reveals a forecast of OLED TVs at prices competitive with LCD / Plasma in 16-18 months.
April 25th This aught to give the RIAA pause for a hernia: a radio which captures music in real-time, cuts out advertising and DJ's, converts it to MP3 tracks and saves it to a memory stick... automatically! Imagine what the recording industry does when the Intempo Rebel starts capturing digital radio broadcasts...
April 25th Pocket-protector time: actually, a light version thereof - compared to some of the stuff I've posted here over the years. For those inclined towards the slightly geekier side of A/V, I present Maintaining Audio Quality in the Broadcast Facility. It covers the obvious stuff as well as some interesting ground that A/ V cats will be interested in, especially those who might be interested in setting up PodCasts some day. 263Kb Adobe PDF formatted document.
April 25th Not so much to do with A/V as computers, but hell, its my stock & trade... The best Operating System out there (which just happens to be free) - has released in it's latest incarnation: Ubuntu 8.04 'Gold' is ready for download hot off the Net'! Hate spyware / virus's / worms / trojans etc? To hell with Mac / Win - grab a copy of the Sherman Tank of Operating Systems today! For the A/V inclined, it ships with everything you'll need to work with pretty much every A/V file out there, right out of the box!
April 25th So you think you know a thing or two about the whole Blu-Ray landslide which is overtaking the marketplace? Explain BD-Video and BD-Live profiles? What firmware updates are available for BD players, drives and recorders? What is a Total Hi Def disc? The definitive answer to all of those questions and more is available at The Authoritative Blu-ray Disc (BD) FAQ.
April 25th More music maestro! SubPop has posted Wolf Parade's latest effort Call It A Ritual. As I've mentioned before, SubPop tends to move their linked files to a backup repository rather quickly, so if you want this Free & Legal track, download and save it today. The 192Kb/s MP3 track takes a few listens to groove to (at least it did for me), but once you 'get it', you'll be reaching for the volume control!
April 25th Fuckin A', I'm outta' here ~ tap at you lads in the new week; until then, get ye' to your local record shop or live show and immerse yourself in a whack of your favourite music - life's too short to worry about work on the weekend! Here is a really smooth 'Pop tune' to help you unwind as closing time approaches today... Band Of Horses - No One's Gonna's Gonna Love You (more than I do) 192Kb/s Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SubPop Records.
April 23rd So the Calgary Flames lost their chance to grasp the cup - but our local Vees kicked ass! The almighty Camrose Kodiaks got their collective butts kicked tonight in the Memorial Arena - what a classic bit O' hockey! Lets lead off with an equally energetic little number from Indonesian rockers The S.I.G.I.T - Clove Doper - No, I haven't the foggiest idea what they're screaming in the chorus, but it sure seems to get em' excited :-) Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 23rd Often on A/V forums you'll come across banter by wise-guys who figure that they are the bastions of truth with regards to the dye color on CD-ROMs. To clear things up a bit, I would like to offer up an excellent summary (albeit, longish), from the knowledgeable cats at Adaptec. Check out The Truth About Media Color.
April 23rd Little pukes! They're everywhere, keying your cars, breaking into your homes, selling you 'audiofool' power cables and yes, stealing you're guitars! Harlequin keyboardist loses gear in break-in. If you see or hear anything about this nasty bit of work, get in touch with your local Five-O.
April 23rd HDTV Magazine (online) offers up their usual great work for free: this time around its A Comparison of Movie Download Services. If you have any interest in what's brewing in the coming age of 'Blockbuster Online' (so to speak), then dig in for a look-see...
April 23rd Here's a curve-ball outta' left-field:
Retail Report: Is Blu-ray Really The Wave Of The Future? (by
Timothy Sprinkle tsprinkle@mediabiz.com).
Sure, the high-def format war may be over, but that doesn't mean success for
Blu-ray is a foregone conclusion. In fact, according to a report released
Tuesday by market research firm ABI Research, widespread adoption of high
definition DVD still faces some significant hurdles.
For starters, there's that pesky issue of upconverting. Rather than replacing
their DVD collections with BD titles, many customers are choosing to simply
upconvert their existing disc to high-def output. And that could mean trouble
for BD makers down the road.
"We are starting to see an increase in the number of DVD players with built-in
upconverters, and the video processing is getting better with each new
generation," said ABI analyst Steve Wilson. Today about 35 percent of standard
DVD players include upconversion features, and ABI expects that figure to reach
60 percent by 2013.
In addition, the firm is worried that the Blu-ray market is focused too heavily
on Sony's Playstation 3 game console, which includes a built-in BD player. As of
2008, about 85 percent of BD players on the market will be found in PS3s, ABI
said, with standalone players lagging behind until at least 2013.
And I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that these aren't the only
hurdles facing widespread BD adoption.
Like Microsoft's Bill Gates said last year at CES, I expect digital distribution
will surpass high-def DVDs in the next few years, rendering this long format war
effectively moot. Why? Because it's simple, because it's convenient and because
it's, from a hardware standpoint, effectively free to the end user. It can also,
the software folks tell me, be made more secure than disc-based content, which
is something for which the studios have been pushing for years.
Now that's a "wave of the future" I can get behind.
April 23rd Here's the "Random Audio/Video link of the month": High-end. I dig it because of the D.I.Y. loudspeaker / subwoofer plans, but there is a great deal more to the site as well. They seem to be focused on tweaking one's room - which is always a better idea than spinning off into LaLa land of cables and audiofool tweaks...
April 23rd Lets blow this joint with a groovy little track from London (UK's) Son Of Dave - Devil Take My Soul. Check out the band's www site for more info' Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 21st Ya, kinda' blew off the Monday post today; am up to my tits and beyond with paperwork! Will drop a line or two today, but the rest will have to wait till' Wednesday. Above all, as usual, comes music: dip into a little of Sia's Electric Bird. 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of SXSW and Sia.
April 21st Many is the time that I've heard folks on our forum as well as others mention that they would like to put together a 'music-swap club'. Generally speaking, after a short blast of trading, its forgotten and falls between the cracks - such is life. However, a group of cats put, and kept together - a club called Title Trader which, well - I'll just provide you with their intro' and you can take it from there: Welcome to TitleTrader, the most effective book, movie, and music swap club on the internet. Titletrader is a free service that allows users to exchange books (paperback and hardcover), music (CDs), and movies (DVDs and VHS) with other community members from anywhere around the world. We have a large selection of titles and the inventory is growing daily, thanks to our users. We invite you to join this exciting free book swap service for free.
April 21st Its going to be 'Earth Day' in a matter of hours, and we all know that having a planet to live on is a hell of a lot more important than anything else (yes, even Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll), so I thought I'd share a link to one of my modern-day-hero's latest efforts: Al Gore's brand-new slideshow presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.
April 21st Short-shift: That's all today, if you're feeling musically brave, do check out my latest addition to the 'Out Of The Ordinary' listings: Cloud Cult - When Water Comes to Life
PS: How bout them Habs!? Their goalie is just a kid - he could very well be playing in the Junior A division in your local hick-town team!
April 19th Not one of my usual 'posting days', but I had to slip this in: today, April 19th 2008, is 'Record Store Day' (cue the cheesy sound effects). Additionally, Prince George, BC's Meow Records has been voted as the best independent record store in Canada!
April 18th Ya man - say it with me: F r i d a y ! Its about bloody time! Next week I'll be sure to book it off ahead of time so I won't have to wait so damned long for it to arrive :-) Got something a little off the wall for ya' today: Johnathan Rice - We're All Stuck Out In The Desert. More from JR on his www site. His band comes off (on this track anyway), sounding a little like Tom Petty, an artist who's' music I dig, perhaps that's why I like this tune.
April 18th What better than a stick in the eye | kick in the butt? Why, another forum chock-full of folks rabidly discussing A/V like it was the most important thing on earth of course! This time round' its the Martin-Logan speaker forum. Seriously though, I'm a big fan of planar magnetics / electrostats', and you should be too! :-) they offer the some of the best mechanical transducer sound representation on the market. So what if they take up as much space as a small refrigerator, they make up for it in sound. The wife?, oh, she'll come around...
April 18th For the legion of Zappa fans who read this site: Zappa Plays Zappa (Frank's kid, doing 'covers' of his work), will be released as a Double-DVD with 'bonus' CD on April 29th. A tour follows, including three Eastern Canadian dates in July; starting on the 4th in Kitchener at Elements | the 5th of July in Ottawa at the Ottawa Bluesfest and the 6th in Quebec City at the Quebec International Summer Fest: Be there!
April 18th If you're reading this; you're obviously reading it on a computer of some sort. Hell, if you're on this site its because you dig music more than the average Joe, want even more of it and likely store a shitload on said computer. As such, here's a heads-up that'll give you the lowdown on the best way to store all of that music! One of may favorite sites, the "tell it like it is" The Register.uk offers: Four, one-terabyte hard disk drives under evaluation - which is the best of the big-boys for media storage?
April 18th Now here's an interesting bit: a Canadian Government funded study which appears to find P2P users actually buy more CDs because of P2P. Ya... um, I'd have to go with "only a government backed study-group could fuck up data evaluation so badly".
April 18th Just when you thought the tombstone had been placed and the crowds faded over the horizon: Samsung has announced that they'll soon be releasing a series of laptops and computers with drives capable of reading the abandoned HD-DVD format disks! The reasons no-doubt, revolve around attracting / absorbing clients with significant HD-DVD collections - and I suspect that a license to produce kit which supports HD-DVD is worth less than coffee money these days... Read on
April 18th Shit man, I almost forgot - its Friday, to hell with technology, enjoy a little 'World Music' care of The Ruby Suns - Tane Mahuta
April 18th Wow! Here's a thumper of a post: a free, 12-hour course titled Revolutions In Sound Recording, there's a shipload to it - here's the blurb; Since the invention of the phonograph in 1877, the recording and playback of sound has been a key element of life in the western world. This unit traces the technology and characters of the sound recording industry as it advances from Edison's original phonograph to the formats we know today.
April 18th Ok, nuff said, hell, that last link along aught to keep you going for a hell of a long time! I'll close this session with a blast of heaviness from Sasquatch - The Judge. Free & Legal MP3 compliments of SXSW and the band. (reminds me of a heavy version of Coldplay)
April 16th How about them Habs!? Oh how the mighty Bruins are humbled by a junior-league gate-keeper! I'm loving the playoffs - and on that note, I think it calls for a love song of sorts: The Redwalls - Summer Romance Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 16th Here's an interesting recap of the audiofool madness from your grandpa's era to yours: The Endless Quest for Fidelity: A portrait of the early audiophile. While much of Jeffrey Tang's ramblings (Ph.D Candidate. Dept. of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania), are well-known, there are a few tidbits thrown in that are of interest. (Link to an Adobe file, 80kb)
April 16th Historically speaking, I've never be much for cover songs. I suspect it stems from a few bad episodes of hearing the work of my musical favorites brutalized at the hands and tongues of amateurs. As time goes by however, I'm getting more and more of an open mind to other artist's versions of classics. Take for instance Bodies Of Water and their version of on old REM track Everybody Hurts. Ya', its a little weird, but the more I listen, the more I like it. (Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of B.O.W.)
April 16th Its nice to see a 'warm' story every now and then; more so when it directly involves music, don't cha' agree? CBC's '60-Minutes' television program has in interesting article titled El Sistema: Changing Lives Through Music - here's a snippet to when your appetite: In the world of classical music, the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra is unique. The musicians, kids mainly, are not graduates of some conservatory or music school: they're alumni of the school of hard knocks in the slums of Venezuela. And their orchestra is about the exuberance of youth.
April 16th I make no bones about the fact that I dig the work done on Audioholics; they offer a generally balanced look at the world of A/V, and time after time, hammer home the idiocy of the audiofool myth-machine. Today's foray into Audioholics territory finds them investigating what an A/V hobbyist can expect to pick up with a (fairly) measly $3500.00 (hell, that's merely the price of some of the audiofools cable-setups!). The $3500 Balanced AV System (ya, that includes cables :-)
April 16th The man - the legend - the icon of our Canadian music scene: Leonard Cohen - is unleashed in the East come May. If you have the opportunity to get your sorry buts down to one of his shows, I can only envy you - ya' lucky buggers! Here is the most recently published schedule of his East Coast Tour:
May 11 Fredericton
Playhouse
May 12 Halifax Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
May 13 Halifax Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
May 18 Charlottetown Confederation Centre
May 20 Glace Bay Savoy Theatre
May 23 Moncton Capitol Theatre
May 26 St. John's Holy Heart Auditorium
May 30 Saguenay Auditorium Dufour
June 2
Kitchener Centre In The Square
June 6
Toronto Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
June 7
Toronto Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
June 23 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
June 24 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
June 25 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
I was unable to find any Free & Legal 'Retail' Leonard Cohen tracks for your enjoyment, however, I was able to locate this collection of (very rough) live tracks from a fan site. As far as I can tell, they are legit - perhaps the labels are leaving them alone due to the roughness of the recordings...? One of the 'better' tracks is Bird On A Wire - surely a classic among his repertoire of benchmarks. If you're a Cohen junkie (like me), then do check out The Cohen Files site and maybe even pick up a copy of his Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man (2006) DVD.
April 16th That's it for me this fine Hump-day - over and out with a track from The Decemberist's vocalist on a live solo gig. Free & Legal MP3 compliments of Download.com and Colin Meloy. We Both Go Down Together
April 13th How about those Calgary Flames! Down three goals in 3 and a half minutes of the first period (!) and they come back and win the game 4 - 3! Damn right we're gonna' have a few Canadian teams in the final rounds of the Stanley Cup. This deserves a kick-ass classic Rock & Roll tune in celebration: The Parlor Mob - Everything You're Breathing For. This is the second, completely excellent track that I've feature from this band on Cdnav.com. Any group / label that is willing to put up two excellent tracks for free download should be supported the the utmost - Here is where you can purchase the full LP and here is their concert schedule (US tour - check back for Cdn. dates), Free & Legal track compliments of Roadrunner Records and the band.
April 13th Due to recent controversy on many Internet forums with regards to operating systems affecting the sound of files ripped / played-back on them, I decided to create a set of evaluation files to test the many theories. It never ceases to amaze me how participants of audio/video forums are more than willing to participate in mindless, heated arguments for hour upon hour, day after day - but almost no one is willing to sit down and create a simple set of evaluations files that can be used in ABX trials. Much head-shaking is in order! So - if you want to get to the bottom of the "does Windows Vista 'sound-better' than Windows XP?" once and for all: hook up a decent set of headphones to an outboard DAC or headphone amplifier - or - burn the tracks to CD and play them on your home-CD player on 'shuffle'. Then spend some time with each file using your favorite ABX program (WinABX is here), and I suspect you'll find the answer to this question. I'd like to see more folks take the time to create their own files, on their own audio equipment, and post said files with links. Heck, I'll host em' for you free of charge. You can always provide feedback on this topic in our Cdnav.com forums. Full details of the hardware / software employed for these evaluations is available on Hydrogen Audio in the 'Audio Quality And Vista' thread. (I chip in with the actual evaluation material on Post #76)
April 13th More answers to yet another point of endless A/V forum banter: Do Men & Woman hear differently? Well, it just so happens that a group of non-audiophiles at the National Center for Biotechnology Information got together and answered that one some time ago, factoring in age. The answer is yes, but the details aren't likely what you would expect.
April 13th Prepare to be amazed by a young lad with a big guitar. All I can tell you is that it appears to be from France and the music is a contagious sorta' swing. Check out the amateur You-Tube video clip and prepare to be blown away! Members who can pitch in with details about this prodigy please do so in the forums.
April 13th Here is some funny shit that really drives home the point of how utterly unreliable large, established reviewers really are. The Huffington Post dissects Rolling Stone's review of R.E.M.'s latest release. Trust me lads - this goes for every review you'll ever read in one of the many Hi-Fi magazines as well as online rags. Truth is this oblique thing that everyone dances around with insightful elucidations - but no one wants to touch for fear of pissing off past, current or future advertisers. Ya' gotta wonder: why must mass-media be so absurdly corrupt?
April 13th Lossless AIFF, FLAC and lossy 320Kb/s MP3 downloads / DRM-Free sound good to you? If so, I suspect you're going to want to drop bye HDTracks soon. Renowned audio pioneers David and Norman Chesky offer up thousands of titles across a multitude of musical genres as well as in-depth information about the artists and albums.
April 13th Disney's Pixar movies moving to 3-D format. The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday its Pixar animation studio is committing to 3-D and will release all of its movies in the format beginning with "Up" next year. This is cool - I've always dug the format! Hopefully the next project is creating 3D glasses that are actually comfortable and don't give some folks headaches!
April 13th For all you Rolling Stones fans out there (I'm with ya' man), check out the trailer to their Martin Scorsese produced Shine A Light video. If its anything nearly as cool as The Band's The Last Waltz - which Scorsese also produced, it should be another one for the collector's shelf. Anyone seen it yet?
April 13th Monster Cable Sues Blue Jeans Cable. "Monster Cable has issued a Cease-and-Desist order to Blue Jeans Cable (Tartan Cable) over analogue cable connectors. In particular, the design of the Tartan component, composite, coax digital and stereo audio cables supposedly violates Monster Cable's design patents". Read more about this belly-slapping bit of nonsense here.
April 13th I'll close Monday's post with some more more music - cause' that's what A/V site are suppose to be about anyway. In the timeless words of John Cleese: "And now, for something completely different" - Christopher Rees - Bottom Dollar. I generally don't post nearly enough music in this genera on Cdnav.com; my mistake - enjoy! Free & Legal MP3 compliments of SXSW and Christopher.
April 13th Those of you into 'something a little different' musically, might want to check out the latest addition to the Out Of the Ordinary link... Bodies Of Water - Weird yes; but (according to me), very nice.
April 11th Shit man, I'm almost starting to believe that crap about "the older you get, the faster the weeks seem to go bye"... It really does seem like last weekend was just a day or two ago! Hell, lets celebrate getting older and hopefully wiser with a track from The Presidents of The United States of America - Love Everybody
April 11th An interesting corporate amalgamation has occurred in the Canadian Hi-Fi / Retail Sound market: Audiotronic has joined forces with A&B Sound ~ can't say I saw that one coming!
April 11th More news or more music: Easiest decision I've made all day! Chuck Prophet - Freckle Song. Reminds me somewhat of a Lou Reed track (sorta' kinda')
April 11th There's a really really funny discussion happening over on the Head-Fi A/V forum: a fellow took apart his Virtual Dynamics 'High-end' power cable - only to discover that it was assembled from dirt-cheap, "available at the local hardware store" components... A humorous, 69-page (at time of writing), 'discussion' ensued - partly because Virtual Dynamics is an advertiser on the site... I chipped in on post #662 and offered to fly the nearly 500 Km to Calgary (any excuse to take in a Flames playoff game and see a few friends!), in order to help setup an unsighted audition between a generic computer power cable and the manufacturer's uber-expensive power cable - on his turf / with his audio kit and choice of music. In fact, I offered every possible benefit and advantage to the owners of the company, but they've chosen to ignore my offerings. I wonder why? :-) Afterall, he stands to publicly humiliate me and stand-behind his products at the same time - should his megga-dollar power cables turn out to be audibly different than a generic PC cable! I guess that we'll have to leave the reasons I've been given the cold-shoulder to your imagination. That makes two manufacturers who refuse to stand behind their claims now; Grant Fidelity smiled and nodded.. hoping I'd go away late last year. If it were me, I'd want to publicly stand behind my products, but hey - that's just me...
April 11th File this under: "Shit man, now that's cool!" SpeakerCraft has just released a technology that allows one to control their home theatre, multi-room audio system and every iPod your family owns! Their MZC Control for iPhone technology sounds like it has a lot of potential for expansion and a built-in market.
April 11th Just when you thought that the market was saturated with televisions: what, with LCD, Plasma, OLED and projection television out there ~ move it on over; Mitsubishi has just announced their first Laser-HDTV.
April 11th Nuff' outta' me lads: I'm gonna' crank this weekend with as much fun as I can possibly cram in! Lets celebrate our collective freedom with a track from (of all places), Ames Iowa: Radio Moscow - Mistreating Queen. If you were ever a fan of core 70's guitar-driven Rock N Roll - you're gonna just love to crank the hell outta' this one!
April 9th Lazy Wednesday, midway to that tasty bit O' juvenile delinquency known as 'The Weekend'! Lets just groove on in with a bit of great, steel-guitar laden rock and roll: Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands - Forest Fire
April 9th Oh, now here's a breakthrough - someone in the mass-media finally caught onto the truth and published it - the same bloody thing I've been saying for the past five years: Calls for action as study reveals 95% of youngsters are illegally copying music. No shit Sherlock! And what, I ask, are 'they' going to do about it? In a world of networks, BitTorrent, P2P and ISPs who refuse to co-operate - the only recourses are A:) Make music dirt-cheap and easily downloadable or B) Throw in the towel and realize that the days of rich rock-stars on drugs are headed the way of the Bush Administration and music releases as a whole are are only good for spreading your name and attracting folks to live shows!
April 9th In the same vein as above: Three Record Companies Team Up With MySpace for Music Web Site. Add to that, a move within Facebook to partner with majors in flogging tracks via iLike on their site. I just noticed this one the other day when I logged into my Facebook account and had the opportunity to add an 'iLike playlist' to the site. Not only that, but a number of the tracks were free for download - as in 'Free & Legal' kinda' free. I took the opportunity to download a couple of Black Keys tunes (10am Automatic and Girl Is On My Mind). I suggest that you check out the iLike add-in for your Facebook account if you have one - very cool!
April 9th As you've seen so many times in the past - what, with all my completely off-beat posts, this site isn't all about A/V: pause for a moment and have a laugh over this one...
April 9th In Limited Release, a Small-Screen Newcomer With Big Promise and a High Price. Sony continues to push O.L.E.D. screens, albeit, more or less in the same form automotive manufacturers roll out prototypes - but I like what I'm seeing thus far. Lets hope that they manage another coo akin to Blu-ray and provide us with 'The Next Big Thing' instead of Beta again.
April 9th In the same way that Jack White and Co. get under your skin: ultra-raunchy / stripped-down blues ~ Vancouver Canada's The Pack A.D.'s - All Damn Day Long deserves a meaningful bit O' crankage!
April 9th Heck, its been what - weeks since I last flashed out another A/V forum for your perusal? Ok, then - dig on into Madisound's discussion group. It looks to be very driver-speaker-cabinet centric, but that's not a bad thing - considering that loudspeakers are one of the single largest contributors to a good sounding system!
April 9th A while back I made note of an interesting (excellent) study which highlighted a massive / comprehensive - series of blind auditions between High-Definition music CDs and standard 'Red-Book' CD. I believe that Kraut first highlighted it in the forums. I've just read a recap / summary of that scenario and thought I'd share it with you. Mix Magazine's The Emperor's New Sampling Rate. Hint: Any 'differences' are only to be found in the Mix / Mastering dudes!
April 9th In the category of "one of those things I never really though about" comes the USB cassette Deck! Well, if you're not one of the 95% of folks who are getting their music off the Net' :-) and have a substantial collection of cassettes sporting music that hasn't been released in CD or re-released on vinyl - then I guess this might be a trick to look into. Firebox Ion USB Cassette Deck
April 9th In closing today's post, I thought I'd share one of the free tracks I downloaded using iLike's new legal download / FaceBook plugin. Its from The Black Keys new Live EP - and, as always with bands who are cool enough to give away a track or two - I strongly encourage you to go and see their shows / buy their swag while you're there. The Black Keys are currently on tour across the States - no Canadian dates appear to be imminent - however, check out the schedule and you'll note that they're damned close to the border on several stops. Given that this band is completely kick-ass, I'd say its worth the trip! Crank the 11's outta' 10am Automatic
April 7th Wasn't that an excellent weekend!? Here in small-town British Columbia we packed in the joy of life cheering on our favourite junior hockey team (Vees!), who showed up big-time, outplaying last year's defending champions in back-to-back games Fri./Sat., in our old arena 'The Barn'. Got up Sunday, shook off the wine from the night before and joined my two best friends in a 'first of the summer' bike ride into the local mountains. Life kicks ass! So too do the members of Canadian band; The Perpetrators. Check out what I mean by cranking the crap outta' their free & legal track - Baltimore. Dig those raunchy blues! Learn more about The Perpetrators and download / crank, several more free tracks from their www site. MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 7th I guess you'd have to hide under a rock to not know that the Juno Awards went off in Calgary this evening; hardware was handed out, and backs were slapped, Canadians across the globe smiled and nodded. All well and good, but not exactly my taste... If you wanna recap of the goings-on, here is it...
April 7th Geeks rejoice - I haven't forgotten you! Check out today's dose of 'geek de-jour' care of Bob Zulinski, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Michigan Technological University. His paper entitled: Electronic Applications - An Online Text, gives quite a detailed overview of, among other things, Power Amplification Systems. Never believe another audiofool online / spoutin' theories; refer to folks with actual first-hand experience and knowledge! (Adobe PDF document - 1.6MB)
April 7th Noted in this weekend's local paper that Alice Cooper, of all people, will be playing in the nearby city of Vernon, BC. What a flashback - I saw Alice's act way back in the early 80's, playing a large concert-hall in Winnipeg Manitoba. It was simply over-the-top amazing. Alice employs some of the most jaw-dropping stage-showmanship in the business - what a blast! Alice and Co.'s Fall 08' tour schedule across Canada looks like this: (Be there!)
19-Sep-2008 - Vancouver - Centre In Vancouver For Performing Arts
20-Sep-2008 - Vernon - Vernon Multiplex
21-Sep-2008 - Kamloops - Interior Savings Centre
23-Sep-2008 - Prince George - The Crystal Centre
26-Sep-2008 - Red Deer - EnMax Centrium
28-Sep-2008 - Lethbridge - EnMax Centre
29-Sep-2008 - Calgary - Jubilee Auditorium
01-Oct-2008 - Regina - Conexus Arts Centre
02-Oct-2008 - Saskatoon - TCU Place
04-Oct-2008 - Thunder bay - The Community Auditorium
06-Oct-2008 - Hamilton - Hamilton Place Theatre
07-Oct-2008 - Barrie - Molson Centre
08-Oct-2008 - Oshawa - General Motors Centre
10-Oct-2008 - London - Centennial Hall
11-Oct-2008 - Ottawa - Civic Centre
14-Oct-2008 - Kitchener - Kitchener Centre In the Square
15-Oct-2008 - Montreal - St. Denis Theatre
17-Oct-2008 - Halifax - Metro Centre
18-Oct-2008 - Saint John - Harbour Station
19-Oct-2008 - Moncton - Moncton Coliseum
21-Oct-2008 - St.John's - Mile One Centre
22-Oct-2008 - Cornerbrook - Pepsi Centre
Oh, and while we're on the topic of fossil-acts: Bob Dylan will be on a mini-tour this spring out east:
19-May-2008 - Saint John - Harbour Station
20-May-2008 - Moncton - Moncton Coliseum
21-May-2008 - Halifax - Metro Centre
23-May-2008 - St.John's - Mile One Centre
24-May-2008 - St.John's - Mile One Centre
April 7th Saw this
one on my favorite A/V discussion forum (Hydrogen
Audio), the other day, and thought it was an interesting idea. DAE
Quality - It is mainly for (online) magazines and interested users and
professionals that want to know which drive has the best optical system, and how
a drive performs on error correction and error concealment.
Check it out.
April 7th Time for a little more music. Been listening to this pop-rock band more than a few times, wasn't sure it belonged here or not, but I was damned sure that it wasn't weird enough to make the new 'Out Of The Ordinary' list :-) .The People's Revolutionary Choir - Do You Feel Like I Do? Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band
April 7th I love it! Another case (albeit, a little dated), of an authority looking into shady advertising practices and doing a little bit of "hey you - show us that this is real". Creative Labs has been told that they must produce evidence that their 'Creative X-Mod' device can produce sound from MP3s that is 'better than CD'. [One small leap for mankind...] Now if only we could have some of this sentiment in Canada! A few days ago I provided you with a number of links to government and NGOs who are responsible for advertising standards in Canada. Come on you guys, get off your duffs and fire off a few emails! There are more than enough examples of advertisers laying the shit on thick in Canadian magazines. Pick one outta' the latest edition of UHF for instance! See Roksan - Page 2 / Eichmann - Page 17 or even their 'Audiophile Store' section ("we put a high-quality plug on our kettle and the boiling time dropped by 90 seconds")... Sure, lots of Canadians are farmers - but does that mean we wanna' eat this kind of manure? Be part of the solution, write to Advertising Standards Canada today!
April 7th That's it for me today; may your Monday pass by like the wind - Over and out with a little Country Music ditty from Laura Cantrell - Love Vignettes. More on this lovely voice on her www site - check out the 19 (!!!) other free tracks she's made available here. I love it - support this little lady by going to her live shows and buying her merchandise at every opportunity!
PS: Be sure to check out the 'Whopper Of A Bonfire' link in today's forum - wow!
April 4th If ya' gotta' work for a living - you have to live for Fridays! I really dig finding a massively crankable track to share with you folks ~ on a Friday no less. I know I've one on hand today that you're gonna love - and wanna' crank the living shit out of! Drop the hammer on The Parlor Mob - Hard Times Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW. Learn more about these East-Coast rockers on their MySpace Page. (The link I've provided is 160Kb/s - if you want a 320Kb/s version, visit RoadRunner Records P.M. website - middle of the screen 'Download Now' button - its not 'hot-linkable' or I would have connected you with it directly...)
April 4th Wow - I thought that the day would never come: The headline reads "Warner Music seeks to offer 'all you can eat' digital music broadband customers will soon be able to download unlimited music from the major labels as part of their monthly contract". It looks like there are 'strings attached', but its a massive leap in the right direction!
April 4th Lemme take ya' back, wayyy back to Grandpa's era for a bit O' audiophile history: The History Of Sound Recording Technology. Not much more explanation needed here...
April 4th Never one to sit still when it comes to innovation, Dolby Labs has rolled out yet another technology (I've highlighted many of theirs here over the past few years). This time they are taking on the video side of things with the introduction of a High Dynamic Range LCD technology - no word on availability.
April 4th Ok, so today’s the day I spill the
beans on which of the power cables from the previous two ‘online auditions’,
is which. There are actually two answers as there were two evaluations offered –
the first on January
24th and the second on
March 12th.
I’ve been getting all kinds of impatient requests from folks, asking “so, which
is which, tell me now, I won't tell anyone...” as well as offering me their
opinions of which they picked for Cable A vs. Cable B, and the reasons why.
As such, here it is:
The January 24th ‘shootout’. There was no shootout! The
files posted were in fact, the exact same file, posted twice with a different
file name! Ya, ya, “what a prick” for pulling that ‘oldest trick in
the book’… Fact of the matter is, I really had to – it was the only way
to demonstrate to your folks that you were imagining things with your guesses on
which was which. I actually did record waveforms / .wav files on both
cables (generic computer cable and high-end D.I.Y. cable), but the results, as
you might expect, were completely identical, so I thought I'd take the
opportunity to teach folks something. Go ahead and download
and look at the two file(s) (links) provided if you like. You’ll note that they
are in fact the same size and same creation
date / time-stamp. I received all kinds of folks writing me with reasons why they
thought the generic PC cable was Cable A/B or why the D.I.Y. was Cable A/B.
Again - there was no difference possible in any way, shape or form - because
there was only one file posted, just two links to the same file, under two
different (file-names). Both
lossless .wav files were Cable A (the basic PC cable). Sorry for the
slight of hand - but now at least you'll 'get it' with regards to how easily we
humans can fool ourselves. Point made. I did however, get a kick out
of the guy on the Stereophile forum who was not only abusive, but adamant that
"audible difference were easily obvious, but he wasn't going to bother to point
out which was which to me"... :-)
The March 12th ‘shootout’: The cable labelled 'Left' was
the expensive PSAudio Prelude - and the cable labelled 'Right' was the
old computer cable that I had pretty much destroyed. As with the
January 24th 'evaluation', I received a great many 'guesses' with regards to
which was which. Folks were tossing hunches all over the map - which
should also drive home the point that power cables aren't a factor in PC audio
system performance. Consider it for a moment: if a power cable is slashed,
spliced, re-slashed and re-spliced, scotch-taped, ground in dirt, left to
corrode, the prongs pounded with a hammer and bent with a pair of pliers to
bugger up the connection, and then mutilated by having a length of thin speaker wire added to two of the three
leads - and it's not audible vs. a very high-quality, very well-built power lead
- do you really think that power cables make an audible difference in
stereo equipment...? I’ll do one more power cable evaluation in the near
future. This time I’ll use a generic 'Dell-PC' power cable and put it up against
the PSAudio power cable – and employ Adobe Audition III for the recordings - as
per listener suggestions. I'll also try to get my hands on a very high-end
'Professional Level' sound card - something in the $500 to $700 range.
Stay tuned folks! In the meantime, if you truly want to get to the bottom of
these Power Cable Shenanigans yourself, just create some of your own recordings,
its incredibly simple. Its no use you bitching and complaining, whining
and wailing “your equipment isn’t good enough / you should have used such and
such music / etc." - You'll never learn anything aside from the art of whining
by doing so. Instead, just get off your duffs and record a few tracks with
your own equipment, in with your own homes, with your own choices of sound-card,
software and music – and then burn them to CD and audition them on your main
system or use a PC to ABX them with a decent set of headphones. You’ll
very soon come to realize that I’m 100% on target here: cable manufacturers and
audiofool magazine editors, as well as many of your fellow audiophiles online -
are, at the very least, deceiving themselves - or at most, completely full of
shit – when it comes to them telling you that “power cables make an audible
difference to the sound of an audio system”. Never mind those who proffer
that “power cables made my TV look better / PC run smoother”. Such folks would
be wise to seek employment driving the local ‘honey wagon’!
April 4th Always to be taken with an eye towards entertainment - not education - Affordable Audio has just released their April 2008 issue to the web - free as usual. Now, you know how I feel about the vast majority of what these kinda' rags push; most of it is bullshit, but there are small grains of truth to be had here and there. Also, as noted at the outset - there is a certain kind of twisted 'National Inquirer' entertainment value to be had with these zines'. Have at er' - 11.4 megabytes / Adobe PDF formatted document.
April 4th Not A/V related - but being an outdoorsman myself, I really dug news of this new - potentially life-saving - electronic device. Any of you who've ever gotten off the beaten track will be more than familiar with the fact that your cell phone coverage pretty much peters out when you make that turn off the pavement and onto back-roads. So what happens when you need to communicate with the outside world? Drive back 100 Km to civilization for a simple "I'm ok" message? Very damned few of us want the extra expense of satellite phones, and until now - have had no way of taking advantage of omnipresent satellite communication. Check out Spot's Personal Satellite tracker. Very nice, I bet it won't be too many years before we start seeing these pop up as inexpensive, integrated chipsets in cell-phones / cameras! (Watch the commercial)
April 4th You know the drill: Its Friday, get yer' ass outside and do some cool shit man! But before you go, crank the living bejeeseus outta' The Black Label Society's Blood Is Thicker Than Water. Over and out! Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and RoadRunner Records. Old-school, strait-ahead melodic Rock N' Roll all the way.
April 2nd Whadda' ya' think of that; I resisted the urge to use April Fool's Day in order to mock audiofools! Geez', must be gettin' old... So there we have it - another month of life on the planet down the tubes! Hope you did some cool shit with your time these past four weeks, cause' you'll never get a shot at March 2008 again! What say we kick off this fine April day with a taste of the Decemberists - Shiny MP3 compliments of Hush Records.
April 2nd More info' on how you can help in the fight against advertising bullshit in the A/V industry: I've been put in touch with Advertising Standards Canada and have filed my first (of many) reports to them on the sordid state of the mess we call 'A/V Advertising' here in Canada. Some of the completely insane advertising that passes for 'truth' in the pages of UHF for instance, makes me shake my head in disgust. I've picked UHF specifically because they are Canadian (oh, shame for us), and print / publish within our borders. Have you seen the latest issue? Check out the loads of bullshit which pour forth from it's pages...
April 2nd Studio Sparks and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra present nine symphonies in nine days. Always a fan of 'Classical Music', I thought I'd let you in on this CBC special broadcast: Beethoven's 9 symphonies in 9 days, with the 10th day given over to the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 and the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. The daily Beethoven Symphony will begin in the second hour, just after 1:00 (1:30 in Newfoundland.) On the 10th day Studio Sparks will play the two major concertos, and broadcast other Beethoven concert highlights during the first hour. More info' here I realize that I'm a couple of days late with this one; I just got wind of it this evening.
April 2nd Just when you thought you'd seen them all: yet another A/V forum! Talk Audio appears to focus mostly on automotive A/V, and is based in the UK.
April 2nd The world's first recording - an a 'phonoautograph' device April 9, 1860. This unit only prints the sound it captures, but it can't reproduce it, (Edit: is that anything like audiofools who hear things, but can't reproduce any factual data to back up their claims?). The overall sound of this thing however, is a damned far cry from what we would consider 'legible'.
April 2nd Since I missed out on shit-talking April Fools Day, here is a filler: "Hi-Fi sense of direction": Long-time member 'Lou' was kind enough to point this one out to us the other day: New Scientist, first five paragraphs. Loved the response when asked where the measurements were to back up their statements! (Thx. for the chuckle of the day Lou!)
April 2nd Anyone not under the proverbial rock knows that there is generally a marked difference between the audio level of a television program vs. a commercial. What I didn't realize however, was that, through the Complaints & Inquiries Department of the CRTC, something is actually (albeit, slowly), being done about the current state of the 'TV loudness war'. While you're there, check out the F.A.Q., There is sure to be something of interest to you therein.
April 2nd Ok, that's all the shit and abuse from me today! Lets wrap this one up with another amazing track from fellow Canuck NQ Arbuckle and his craftsmanship on X O K This is an excellent track, one that deserves to be cranked! Free & Legal MP3 compliments of NQ' and SXSW. If you want to here more from the man, check out his www site for sales and general info.
Visit the [Massive] post archive - April 06' to March 31st 08'