BobH

My quote, the third sentence down, the one enclosed within speach marks, was copied from 'Miska's' post. But thank you for your input on his behalf.

with an open mouth and a heavy heart. It is beyond high time I gifted you gentlemen with the benefit of my years of accumulated wisdom and knowledge. It is with resect to the following statement that I feel so compelled to enjoin : "If you cut out attack parts from sound of an acoustic guitar, it becomes much harder to recognize the instrument." To this I say - "Bollocks". Thank you and goodnight. ps. :) - in as much as I mean you to not take offense. Not in that the statement is not total bollocks, because it is. Attack, in music, is the force with which a note is created. I have played guitar for nigh on fifty years. I have played harmonica, bagpipes, banjo, keyboards and paper and comb. I should happily discern them all from even the softest of touches. All this willy-waving drivel is one thing, have a nice day, knock yourselves out, whatever. Can I ask you to please not misappropriate musical terms in pursuit of your arguments? Please! Music is all the rest of us have left, don't start on that as well!! I probably shouldn't post this. I should probably just take a deep breathe, delete the link to CA and get on with the rest of my life. Ah, what the hell.......

SACD's are widely available in the UK, along with indoor flushing lavatories, the internal combustion engine, telephonic communication and smallpox. Indoor cold running water is standard for most, with hot running water being rolled out nationally to members of the Conservative party. (It was deemed unnecessary for members of the Labour party, as they simply need to open their mouths in order to rid themselves of bodily waste). It is rumoured that when the Greek government gives us our money back, we are going to invest in a network of super fast interwebclouds. However, the House of Lords has also put a bid in for some luxury yachts so we will have to wait and see. The UK is, as ever, at the cutting edge of Victorian technology and we should be rightly proud of that. Unfortunately, when it comes to the downloading of high resolution, smega bit rate, unsmeared usb cables we are sadly lacking and will probably have to hobble, caps v2 in hand, to the White House. But we do have SACD's!

wicked, I may even suggest that the downsampling/upsampling Julf has suggested has a much better fit, for real (retail?) life, than Chris' 'virgin' recordings suggestion. But I'm not feeling that wicked. :)

Completely off-topic, but if you fancy an iPhone on pay as you go, in the Uk, then almost all of the networks will oblige you. To say nothing of the supermarkets and other re-sellers. Sorry about that folks, just felt it necessary to tighten up a little on the misinformation.

As I write this I am 'airplaying' WKAR radio into an Airport Express. This is feeding a Nad C326BEE which is electrocuting a pair of el cheapo Acoustic Energy floorstanders. This is my second system into which I can choose from my blu ray player, internet radio, DAB radio and, via airplay, anything on either my iPad or my entire iTunes library, via library sharing on the iPad/iMac. All of it is, in my opinion, much better quality than the Sony, Aiwa, Philips and Panasonic 'stack' systems I owned in the past. Even taking into account the better speakers in my current set-up, it is still ahead by some considerable margin. As far as music accessibilty and quality of replay is concerned I, certainly, have never had it so good. I think Apple has played a major part in that both in terms of innovation and in dragging the rest of the market with it. When it comes to portable music devices I think it's now fair to say that 'iPod' is the accepted term everyone understands, in the same way that 'googling' means using a search engine and 'hoovering' means using a vacuum cleaner. Apple now finds itself in a position where it feels comfortable offering studios 'advice' on how to master their product for sale in the iTunes store. A company doesn't arrive at that point by bringing to market rubbish nobody wants.

"I didn't start it"...... Absolutely classic!

I think the word 'accurate' is the obsession of the digital classes and should not be foisted on the reproduction of audio as a whole. The are are a great many analogue components in all of our systems. Each and every one of them can be designed and/or constructed in a multitude of equally valid ,but differing, ways. The design and construction of these components will have necessitated a great many, (hopefully!), carefully considered compromises. I do not believe that chucking money at these compromises will make then go away. So, the most expensive system in the world is still going to be a carefully considered amalgam of compromises. Its sound will differ to that of its next lowly brother by virtue of the differing design choices made as much as the lower amount of money spent building it. Accuracy in Hi-Fi is best left in the digital domain, where it belongs, it my opinion. Assembling an enjoyable system is not about accuracy at all, it is about the synergy between the listener, the room and the components. Which is about as inaccurate as it gets, I reckon.

Always look on the bright side, then Like I said, with a library of high res files sitting there all we need is for Apple to see a viable business model in providing them to us and it's job done! They may not see a good business reason to compete with HD Tracks, but then again, they may not see a good reason not to!

"Provide High Resolution Masters To take best advantage of our latest encoders send us the highest resolution master file possible, appropriate to the medium and the project. An ideal master will have 24-bit 96kHz resolution. These files contain more detail from which our encoders can create more accurate encodes. However, any resolution above 16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our encoding process. Don’t upsample files to a higher resolution than their original format. Upsampling won’t recover or add information to an audio file. Don’t provide files that have been downsampled and dithered for a CD. This degrades the file’s audio quality. As technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping the highest quality masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future improvements to your music. Also, though it may not be apparent because there may not always be a physical, tangible master created in LP or CD format, the iTunes catalog forms an important part of the world’s historical and cultural record. These masters matter—especially given the move into the cloud on post-PC devices." That seems quite clear to me.

I think the overall tone of the report and its stated aims makes for very encouraging reading. If Apple get their way and the studios play ball, then they will end up with a library stock of well mastered, 24/96, files. You never know, somebody might make the decision to start selling them to us!

First, and I hope you don't mind me stating the obvious, would be to make sure the Touch firmware and the Server software are up to date. Do this from the Server software interface on your main computer. Second, I know it is a very well respected app, but I always had a lot of trouble with iPeng, one way or the other. There was always something, it seemed. I now use Squeezepad to control my Transporter and it has been flawless for me. Logitech have their own apps out for both the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch - I haven't tried either of them but they get good reviews in the app store, from those that have. If the Touch still crashes after that, then I would say it is probably faulty.

I loved that he also did a lot of work on thermal noise in electric conductors. Sort of like the noise level of hot air?

above, Mark. Go for it!

...sorry all, here's the next question. He was born in Sweden and died in Texas. He got a Ph.D fom Yale and an award from the Franklin Institute, honouring his life's work. He was also interested in noise, of a sort!