“One of the hazards of being an audiophile is being honest about the sound of your own system. Some times it is hard to assess and, often, we make up things. The way we feel about our systems is almost always relative to what else we have heard. I am satisfied until I have the chance to hear something better. It’s not easy, and you have no idea where it’s going to end…”

“I was contemplating how to continue to address the ongoing events at the CBC with respect to changes to Radio 2, when an email arrived that summed up events so far so well, that I decided to quote from it at length. The release comes from Peter McGilllivray, radio2@petermcgillivray.com, as he says, “representing a group of people that were ticked off enough at the Changes at CBC to join a Facebook group to try and organize some action to stop it all…”

“My system (see OxBox 2) is sounding better than ever. There are three reasons of which two make sense. Number one continues to be the op-amp modification (see OxBox 1) of the Aurum Integris CDP which is my CD player, preamp and phono section all in one…”

“2007 has been an eventful year for all of us at AIG. The transition from print publication to expanded online presence has occupied quite a bit of it, and I am both delighted and relieved that it has been accomplished with only the expected growing pains, for the most part. Aaron called upon some more expert help than himself to get it all done, and you may have read about it in our earlier post on the subject, so I won’t go into specifics about it here…”

“I want to tell you about my system. I have to, so that you will have some frame of reference as you read what I say in my “OxBoxes” about hardware, software, and listening to both. Let’s start with the weak link, my turntable. Please brace yourself: I spin my vinyl on an ancient Kenwood KD-500, a slotting, cogging, direct drive. All I can say is, it has survived a period when I thought I would never again listen to anything but CD (and heaped scorn on Stereophile’s Michael Fremer as he kept the vinyl flame alight), to the time when I came to realize there is gold in them thar grooves…”

“At my daughter’s wedding in May 07, after polite greetings, the first thing one of the other principal parents said to me, “My God, what’s gone wrong with CBC Radio Two all-of-a-sudden?” Of course, having worked there for a number of years in the 70s, I was thought to be something of an expert. I have kept in touch with friends inside, but quite a few of those folks have retired, or fled, like I did, in disgust….”

This is my first collection of ideas and observations about our obsessively engrossing avocation on the newly re-launched Audio Ideas Guide on the web. During AIG’s print life I was a regular contributor, mostly writing record reviews. The greater flexibility of the web will let me talk about many things to do with both sound and music. I will still be writing formal disc reviews and the very occasional equipment review. I am excited.

“While most autobiographies concentrate on the highlight reel, Chronicles is spent almost entirely on the practice field. And it makes sense-that’s where Dylan feels safest, away from prying eyes, labels, and questions. Notorious for ignoring the press and the extroversive demands of his fans, Dylan maintains this stance by concentrating on internal, personal moments rather than the infamous events that the public (via the press) cling to…”

“It was all but inevitable that later ninetheenth-century French composers would become interested in the Symbolist poets. The Symbolists sought to duplicate in literature the effects of music by using vague images, elusive syntax, and fleeting ideas”, says Jonathan D. Kramer in liner notes for this recording. The famous Prelude was written as a musical equivalent of Mallarme’s poem, Afternoon of a Faun, while Nocturnes evolved from a violin concerto written for virtuoso and composer Eugene Ysaye that was never played…”

“The piano is quite prominent in this 1974 recording, but what playing! I think I can forgive the Philips engineers for putting Stephen up front and miking the piano to be quite wide. The orchestra is well heard, with a big soundstage and good depth, typical Philips of the period. The string sound is excellent, with a nice texture on violins, violas, and cellos…”

“This hybrid SACD features lovely playing, with quite brisk tempi throughout, and a lack of the kind of rubato and general tempo variety offered by my favourite interpreters of this music, the Chamber Orchestra of the Saare under Karl Ristenpart. It just seems a little preoccupied with momentum rather than musicality. But if you don’t know these Suites well, you�ll probably enjoy this recording with its excellent sound quality. The Ristenpart recordings may have been rereleased on CD, but mine are from LP…”

“Some of us thought that HDTV sets would come ready to make the best of all images, and I assumed this when I acquired my 64″ Pioneer Elite PRO-710HD rear-projection TV a year or more ago. It has been superseded by newer, less expensive models in the same size, as HD prices have rapidly come down. The buzz these days is around the larger plasma sets (up to 60″), which can be hung on a wall…”

“This new SACD is to my ears the best Mahler recording ever. Zander’s reading has passion and impulsion, and the sound is simply amazing. The louder you play it, the better it sounds, and I didn’t have the advantage of discrete multichannel, listening through the Pioneer Elite DV-AX10, which preceded 5-channel SACD. However, I’ll take state-of-the-art 2-channel over mediocre multi any time. By the time we finally got to the “hammers of fate” in the finale, I was totally immersed in this immense symphonic conception…”

“So much for entry level. With a combined price approaching seven grand, not to mention 7.1 surround channels on tap, “small” was no longer part of the equation. Now I needed speakers. Lots of speakers, as it turned out. Ever since hearing that Edge Audio was one of the first adopters of the Diaural crossover developed by Kimber Kable I’d wanted to review their speakers. A trip to their website revealed two things: First, that they had changed their name to Aperion Audio, and second that they had packaged systems ranging up to 7.1 channels: Just what the doctor ordered…”

“If we are to predict and perhaps guide the progress of today’s new digital audio formats, it may be useful to ourselves seek the guidance of history. And there’s lots of that when we look back at audio and video formats that have succeeded or failed, or, more likely, limped along mired in conflict and confusion for years until superseded by technology that clearly appealed more to the consumer…”

“After the AES Seminar in May I hunkered down with some DVDs and SACDs (I’ve been collecting the latter for over a year) and started to listen critically to both formats. Multi-channel SACD has only been demonstrated at shows, and players and discs do not yet exist for consumers, but will soon, to the dismay of those who bought 2-chennel players (myself included). DVD-Audio, meanwhile, is trying to be all things for all channels (well, 5 of them at least), and some old 70s masters are being remixed to sound fresher for the new millennium…”

“Grant Green was a jazz guitarist who recorded as band leader and side man with the majority of musicians who passed through the Blue Note doors during those special years between 1960 and 1965 (see footnote below). His name appears on over one hundred albums, including thirty under his own name, making him Blue Note’s most recorded artist. Later in the sixties and early seventies he created some of the coolest and hottest rare-groove and small ensemble jazz-funk there is. Some critics even elevate him to the status of forefather of acid jazz…”

“In 1987 a large German research and development organization called the Fraunhofer Institut started work on a perceptual coding scheme for use with Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). The most powerful algorithm they developed eventually became standardized as ISO-MPEG Audio Layer-3, or, as now abbreviated, MP3 (Layers 1 and 2 are essentially less efficient versions of the same algorithm). The goal of the algorithm was to drastically shrink the data size of digital audio with a minimum subjective loss of sound quality; something which could not be done by merely reducing sample rate and bit depth..”

“… For those of us hoping and waiting for a high-resolution replacement for the CD, however, the situation has recently become even more complicated. While the electronics behemoths were striking committees and issuing press releases about DVD Audio and SACD, the masses have gone right ahead and chosen the next major audio format all by themselves. If the success of DVD-A or SACD was a dubious proposition before the meteoric rise of MP3, it seems like a serious long shot now…”

“…Well, I didn’t see all of it, and I certainly liked a lot of the things I saw and heard. I also have reservations, though I’m not as irritated and angry at Burns as some seem to be. I don’t think he knows a lot about the subject matter, but he knows how to create a series of interesting images and some good conversation on a rudimentary level. Comparison with Leonard Bernstein’s Norton lectures, which were later turned into TV lectures (mostly about Beethoven), is ludicrous…”