curmudgeon

You have probably already heard that Amnesty International, as a fundraiser, is to release in late January 2012 an album of some 70 covers of Bob Dylan pieces. You can now listen online and pre-order here: http://www.facebook.com/amnestyusa?sk=app_115392725211599

The 4 CD collection is $24.99, with digital downloads ("high bitrate" MP3s) for $19.99. I will be ripping my CDs to FLAC, thank you.
...

Okay, everybody else does this around this time of each year. You will soon get sick of such lists, I suspect. Anyway, my kids and I play this little game of naming our top ten albums (non-classical and non-jazz, those to be worked up later) of the year. This, just off the top of my head in a few minutes, so I'm bound to have overlooked something (and haven't even checked out all of these on the latest iteration of the Cherished-But-Modest Chez Curmudgeon Sound System):

Beirut: ...

Man 'stabbed himself to death' after Them Crooked Vultures gig gave him tinnitus
.... went the screaming headline from a few days ago. For a moment, I thought it was some sort of Onion-esque black humor, but it was apparently very real. And very tragic.


FLASHBACK #1 - OCTOBER 14, QUITE A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO

The early morning sun cascades through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my art studio loft and across my bed. But I am already awake, with a sudden ...

Just wondering if anyone out there has heard the new 24/96 offering from HDTracks of Glenn Gould doing the Goldberg Variations?

While I already have a number of variants of the Variations (on vinyl or ripped to 16/44) done by not only Glenn Gould, but Angela Hewitt, Andras Schiff, Igor Kipnis, et. al., as this is perhaps my single most favorite work by Bach (or is it the Cello Suites? or the Mass in B Minor?), I am curious about feedback on this one, especially in light of how controversial ...

She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed has something of a penchant for using just about any holiday as an excuse for doing something ... decorative (not to be confused with decorous). Partly because our kids were reared to respect others' cultural and religious traditions, partly because she just likes to have this kind of fun. So almost anything goes, whether it represents the jewish, christian, islamic, kwanzaa, whatever traditions. Of course, that means that I occasionally find speakers that are festooned ...

The Album of the Evening thread (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Album-Evening) has turned out to be one of my CA favorites as it helps me discover new music amd reminds me to revisit some old.

In that latter category, my latest Album of the Evening was Sympathique, the debut release by Pink Martini, a group I discovered in the mid- or late-90s. (This recording, by the way, has been always been a sure-fire gifting expendient for anyone on my Christmas or birthday lists ...

Around eight years ago, a small package appeared in my mailbox. Inside was a CD from my niece, featuring a band I had never heard although the cover artwork looked familiar. Turned out that the art was done by Edward Gorey, whose work you may know from the animated illustrations that accompany PBS-TV's Mystery series. Gorey had lived near my niece in her Cape Code neighborhood until his then-recent death. His legacy includes many ...

Last night ...

Album: Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 11
Artist: Arthur (Artur) Rubinstein & New Symphony Orchestra of London [appears to be a 1961 performance; re-issued in 1999]

This was my first listen to an album recovered from floodwaters. Following record-breaking torrential, sustained rainfall in our community, we happened to look in at a neighbor, a 92-year-old widow whose steep hillside house took on six feet of water and a good deal ...

Last night, I heard something that I otherwise would have posted to Chris' Album of the Evening thread (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Album-Evening) -- but it was not digital. I had my first listen of a LP, dated 1963, that I picked up last weekend from a garage sale for the princely sum of fifty cents.

Album: Beethoven Piano Sonatas No. 11, 19, 20
Artist: Sviatoslav Richter

The condition was remarkably good, including cover and inner sleeve, and ...

So we learn from the British press this morning that Amy Winehouse's death was by alcohol poisoning. Characterized by the Brit coroner as "death by misadventure." (Can't help but also think of Janis Joplin ...)

I listened to my own CD-ripped 16-bit version on the Sansa while walking to work but here are a couple of video clips to give you a taste of her stunning Back to Black, higher-def versions of which you will want to hear with your best rig. A quick Googling shows ...

Enough dealing with tweaking, testing, fiddling, dithering, pushing, moving, aligning, reacting to WAF-thwarts (see Jim Smith Tip #64), reading Jim Smith, and other busy-ness for a bit. After all, I have been rushing home from work every night this week to work on this NAD/PSB project. Further fine-tuning the new system can wait a while; I have a backlog of music to be heard (not to mention several books from the library to read). So I'm just relaxing and getting to the new (probably a month old ...

Just hooked up my iMac, running Snow Leopard, for use with the new spouse-friendly NAD/HRT Streamer II/PSB system I have previously mentioned. Did it via 100 megabit ethernet, figuring it would be a little more stable than using wi-fi (and more consistent with Jim Smith recommends).

Played a few tracks with Audirvana (it had worked well previously with my MacBook via wi-fi, and I am very much an open source supporter) but in the softer passages I heard clicks or ticks similar to, ...

(With apologies to the creators of Rumpole of the Bailey, the old BBC TV series about the feisty but aging barrister who feared nothing – except his wife, Hilda, often referred to by Horace Rumpole as "she who must be obeyed…")


Jim Smith (whose Get Better Sound is making more sense to me all the time) speaks of the need to take WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) into account.

UPDATE: I just discovered Chris' great post and must-read comment thread at http://www.computeraudiophile.com/co...ending-Fortune. ...

Before we go any further, you probably want to know whether you should spend any more time with this blog. I need to introduce and explain myself.

First, the executive summary version:

I am not, by my reckoning, an audiophile. I'm not really expert at much of anything. I do love music, always have, always will. Bring it on.

I am increasingly interested in good-sounding music because my hearing is fading (after all, I am over 70 years old and have ...