Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

Getting our ducks in a row for CES

We are close enough to drive – it is about a 12 hour trip – so we always have this tension between driving with all the equipment to the show, perhaps renting a bigger vehicle or taking fewer things… and shipping it all. Or mixing and matching.

We are taking everything for two rooms – so that adds up, cubic footage-wise – but it is so much safer to use mike & neli shipping incorporated than the alternatives. At least, we hope it is 🙂

You know, in the last few years, places like C|Net and engadget have started covering CES big time. They really overwhelm the internet so it is hard for little guys [like us!] to compete in some ways. Have to figure a way around that 🙂

in Audio Note / CES 2010 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

December coming right up…

[Hmmm… that last post had a crazy title for awhile – sorry about that]

Next month’s issue will feature a ‘Best of’ section.

Now, this is not the roll the dice, smoke-filled back room, KMA, what-were-they-thinking kind of best of the year kind of section. You can see those elsewhere. In fact there’s an epidemic of those.

The people most harmed by those types of lists are the people who buy gear every 5 to 10 years and look at these lists to decide what to buy [been there, done that].

And it is not even going to be a REAL Best Sounding Gear of The Year feature – which we could do but, seriously, the people who really care about good sound already know what sounds good. The may not be able to afford it [right now] but they pretty much know what to listen for and to.

No, our list will answer questions like:

Who has the coolest remote control?
Who has the fattest cables?

… and many more

You are invited to vote on these important questions, and many more – and add questions of your own – just post your votes or questions in a comment to this post.

Enjoy! 🙂

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Humor / Sounding Off / Spintricity 0 comments
 by Michael

Finally working on the home page…

Neli has been bugging me about the Audio Federation home page for awhile, and although I do update it a little once in a while… [well, kind of] I am now starting to updated it for reals.

We have a ways to go – but it is both fun and a little scary – don’t want to break the ‘vibe’ that we had with that page. Took forever to get it right – and it will take only an instant to ruin it [like many things in life :-/]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

Loricraft Record Cleaner

Finally.

Finally sold our demo PR3 and now can order our PR4 or PRC-4 Deluxe [I like the idea of cleaning records in both directions. Then again, I am the one too lazy to do the Walker Prelude 4-step process :-)].

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo handy. I mean, I have taken a million photos over the years – but finding one when I need it. Ha!

Our PR3 was [is] really quiet and it is kind of shocking that so many people clean records with record cleaners that damage their ability to hear music – at least in the short term.

Kind of like vacuum cleaning the house with your ear down there by the floor and the screaming motor.

It is not like any of us like to vacuum, especially [tho some people do it for relaxation]. We even sold our Royal vacuum cleaner – a great cleaner, but it was too darn noisy.

So why would someone want to clean their records with one hooked up to a wet hair brush? Maybe because they do not know about the Loricraft?

OK, here is a stock photo:

Loricraft record cleaner

It cleans records by applying a very, very strong vacuum at just one tiny area – much more effective than the wide area approaches – using a continuously spooling, always new, piece of thread to aim the suction and suck up that awful crud from way down deep inside the groove as it vacuums up whatever fluids you are cleaning/soaking/scrubbing the record with.

That is a long sentence huh?

But that is what it does. The fluid ends up in the mason jar on the right that one empties every so often. Not very often for us, but Kevin is the one who cleans records like a maniac 🙂 We, we try and clean them before we use them – and sometimes right after we buy them and are all excited about them – but we are too undisciplined to carry out a well-formed pan of attack on the Sate of the Dirty Record Collection in a kind of preemptive strike like Kevin does.

Cleaned records not only do not have crackles and pops – they actually sound better in terms of micro-dynamics, soundstage, dynamics, harmonic detail… in many ways that have surprised us. The shootout with the Walker Prelude was conclusive – you can do a quick little cleaning, or you can suffer wondering whether you are hearing more dirt than vinyl – then a few pops and crackles and then you know for sure [ah, the life of an audiophile :-)].

Anyway, we’ll have more to say and photos when we agree on what we are getting [*sigh*] and get it here.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Loricraft 0 comments
 by Michael

The Economy is Baaaack

Well, at least some of is – and this is a good thing.

And now that the press is talking about how bad unemployment is… that is about to get better as well. We all KNOW that the press is always late to the party.

So what does that mean in high-end audio?

That means the bargain basement deals on Audiogon are drying up.

That means that dealers and manufacturers are selling things again.

That means that CES attendance might be up by 150 to 200% over last year. [don’t ask me how I know. OK, I was looking at the AVN conference (Adult Entertainment Expo) next door to CES to see how hard it is to get in as press to THAT show and they said registration is WAY up by about this amount. No, I think I would be too embarrassed to take 100 close-up shots of the porn star celebrities at that show. Or… am… I? :-)]

Sure, we are all still a little scared and some losers are preaching doom and gloom [ever notice, these kinds of people NEVER preach BEFORE the disaster, it is always in hindsight and to kind of add their own special sauce to an already bad situation.]

So, with more or less full recovery around the corner [well… yes, even for audio] what should we be doing?

Many say we should be repositioning ourselves now – why things are slow and their is time, and while the prices are not quite as stiff as they might be soon. I do not know if this is wise advice or not.

I think prices were too low for the ‘out with the old’ which had to happen before ‘in with the new’. So as some life comes back into the marketplace – expect to see one hell of a madhouse as people sell all their equipment and buy what they think will be better – after all, there has been almost 2 years of pent-up-demand building and building…

So the dealers and manufacturers who will make out are the ones who can handle lots of traffic, lots of orders, because if the hesitate – someone else will get the sale.

And for audiophiles, you have to be quick on the uptake because some things are kind of rare and will not appear on the market very often – and this will be an opportunity to get just about anything you ever thought about buying.

And, by the way, this is true for the Art market and Housing market as well.

No, it won’t ‘over stimulate’ the economy – the doomsayers always like to poop on the party. I do not think a lot of people will be making money as there will be much more swapping for things of about equal value as opposed to everybody emptying their bank accounts to upgrade their lifestyles. But still, with 2 years pent up demand, there will be plenty of people buying new things as well.

I could be wrong – but think about it.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

A Hybrid Review Approach…

… mixing the subjective and objective…

Essentially it uses a subjective analysis of objective aspects of the sound of a component.

Even more essentially, the listener gives it the old ‘college try’ and guestimates how good a component is in several pre-determined and STANDARDIZED categories.

See, if the categories are well-chosen and are standardized, and a number from 1 to 10, say, is assigned, then components can be compared.

Anyway, in the most recent Spintricity article:

Towards a Hybrid Subjective Objective Review Process

… we attempt to come up with some categories that we, at least, use here [tho in the past we have not been so disciplined as to assign a number to score a component’s performance in each category]

The idea is to create a list that we can print out and then enter or circle a number of something so that the review process can be raised up out of the muck and mire.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Reviewers / Reviews / Spintricity 0 comments
 by Michael

The fastest browsers…

As you all know, Spintricity is a more modern magazine than your typical audiophile fare… Here is the latest chart, posted this Halloween, which makes it clear why we recommend all browsers EXCEPT Internet Explorer.

We still support IE, but we figure that everybody will have a fast browser soon [and IE may catch up eventually], just like we were the first [and still only?] site to put large photos in our show reports, figuring that most people were going to have broadband sooner or later and most of us want to SEE what is in the photo, not just get a hint or two.

And with the magazine, we figure people want to ENJOY their audiophile addiction, not just research it to death reading long-winded treatises trying to find the one or two WORDS about how it sounds and the subtle HINTS embedded here and there about any problems encountered…

I’m just saying

Not that there are any Audiophile magazines out there like this.

Nope.

😉

Somebody told me a few days ago that they saw each and every page of the 1800 page RMAF report. He uses the Google Chrome browser. I figure it takes about 10 minutes to cruise the entire report, less time than it takes to cruise most other reports: where you have to click on a page, scroll down down to the bottom, click on the link to the next page, wait, wait wait for it to load, scroll down down down to the bottom, click on the link to the next page…. of many other reports.

Since it only takes him 10 minutes, he can stop and zoom in on a photo, click on a link to visit a particular manufacturer’s site, and enjoy the process of seeing EVERYTHING that was at the show [course, this will make it take LONGER than 10 minutes to get through the report, but this will be spending that time the way HE wants to spend it].

Personally, I use FireFox most of the time, and sometimes Safari and Opera, sometimes Chrome. But IE? Might as well go back to dial up!

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Spintricity 0 comments
 by Michael

The Daily Audiophile has changed it's format

The Daily Audiophile has changed its format to just show the titles of articles and a couple of dozen high-end audio websites/mags/blogs.

Surprised that many have RSS/Atom feeds now. Either that or someone sure keeps busy over there!

There was a page like this on Speshy.com [currently in mothballs. But it… will be back] and think these pages are useful.

Of course, we wouldn’t mind if Spintricity and this blog were a little closer to the top 🙂

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments