… and hopefully it will also be easier to get around in.

The photos at the top here are short cuts to the various systems / showrooms categories. These categories are the place where we can describe each system, its sound and evolution, in greater detail than we have before. It is unclear to me at this time whether we might modify this from Showrooms to Systems so that we might talk also about systems on ‘standby’ – because we swap in and out systems configurations (e.g. speakers) quite frequently when special requests are made to audition this or that component / speaker. This way one can read about, say, the Kharma Mini Exquisite-based system, which is not currently hooked up at this time.

Yeah, I think we will make that change… [ or maybe not ].

Anyway…

We have expanded the Category section over on the right —> to include a large number of subcategories, so that posts on specific components or topics might more easily be located. Yes, we still have the HiFi’ing Magazine page which does largely the same thing – and there is always Google – but this may be more convenient for some people. Here we may also make a modification – to the Shows category primarily in order to break it up a little into the specific shows that the individual posts are referencing.

This was tested with both IE and Firefox – which bothb work although FireFox will not have the blue swatch at the top of the Blog – this is because CSS sucks and was designed by people who cannot tell the difference between appearance, geometric and automatic layout properties (and with CSS 3, include behavioral properties in that list as well). And because of this confusion the implementations of CSS from browser to browser vary becuase it is needlessly complex and only serves to create another generation of people who get paid for doing nothing more than learning to work around the idosyncratic bugs.. I mean features… in each and every browser and its plethora of different versions and across the several different platforms. Oh, but I digress.

We have been in the process of breaking-in a lot of equipment lately: The Acoustic Zen Adagio loudspeakers, the Soundlab loudspeaker’s upgrade, the Audio Note M10 linestage, and the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers.

[I know, some people choose not to acknowledge their experiences that the sound of equipment changes (usually for the better!) after is has been played for several hundred hours and often end up selling their equipment before it is broken in ‘because it does not sound good’. Others just enjoy hearing their equipment change a lot when it is new, and some people are just plain masochistic. We, we just like to ignore the fact that a piece of equipment exists here until we think it has settled- and broken-in sufficiently].

For the M10 linestage, a lot of the break-in (25 – 30%?) can be accomplished by just leaving its power turned on for an extended period of time.

But for the loudspeakers, music needs to be played.

This is where the ‘repeat’ function on most CD players comes in REAL handy.

Yes, we COULD plop in a new CD every 45 to 70 minutes – but we have a tendendcy to, well, SPACE OUT, and there is lots of time between CDs that nothing is being played because we forgot to put in another CD.

And there is also the hours when we are asleep.

So, CDs on repeat.

The question arises, which CDs on repeat will not drive us batty(er)? And much more important, NOT make it so that we will never, ever want to hear that CD again because we are so darn tired of it.

In our experience, it is CDs without any recognizable melody, especially without any singing, that we can tolerate for long periods of time.

Unfortunately, we made a mistake with Rachmaninov’s 2nd and 3rd – it has too recognizable of a melody [but since we used it mostly to burn in things near MY office, only I am tired of it, Neli still loves it. Can you just imagine the wealth of opportunities, the glorious potential for some interesting discussions here re: placing this particular music near a player in the future?], but in general Jazz and Classical music works really well, especially Jazz.

The Jazz we are listening to lately is out of the box set: The Kenton Alumni Series “Live at the Royal Palms Inn” (Thanks TeeJay!)

It is just nice straight ahead Jazz and everytime I catch a few minutes of it or sit and listen it is just so enjoyable … the musicians all seem like they are having a really good time and the music is unfamiliar and has a nice improvized feeling but without any seeming effort on their part… nor are they trying to ‘shock’ the listener with something weird (which sometimes I like but sometimes I don’t, if you know what I mean – sometimes I just want to enjoy music, not be challenged by it)

This CD is here somewhere having fun being lost

We also play a lot of an Ocean Waves CD that more or less consists of a rhythmic white noise with some bass when the waves crash and some tweeter activity when birds fly by on the CD and say hi. But we are starting to burn out on this CD as well – we have used it for 5 years – but lately we have had to burn in so many speakers this way… But it is still THE CD to play while we are asleep.