This site should truly sort the music lover from the hi-fi lover. Register for free on www.wolfgangsvault.com and listen to a choice of a huge amount of live recordings of great bands from years ago. So far I’ve listened to Elton John, Black Sabbath, Little Feat and Grateful Dead.
April 2009
The two subjects of CD Ripping and Computer Audio seem to be the most contentious around in the world of audio now. Theory one, is that it’s possible to get good sound from a computer feeding a DAC. The debate tends to be as much around whether a Mac is better than a PC as a source as which DAC is ideal. The general feeling seems to be that a Mac Book with a DAC costing around a £1k is cable of delivering better sound that a serious or very serious CD Player. I agree a Mac and a DAC is cable of delivering a very good sound – but not a great one.
Now it seems that Mac owners downloading and installing pirate copies of iWork 09 and possibly Photoshop 4 are also installing some malware.
Yesterday, I decided to move the PS555 to a newly created spare level around 30cm lower. Unbelievable: the upper bass thickness that I had been trying to sort for a couple of months went away, the system opened up and became a real joy to listen to. But the change wasn’t just on playing from HDX it was on vinyl, FM and CD.
The experiment was to move the PC outside my listening room and then to use a 5m Chord HDMI and 5m USB cables to control and monitor the PC.
The worry was running a good monitor at 1920 by 1200 over a 5m HDMI cable. Would the image quality be reduced? The image was absolutely fine and so much so that I temporarily tried a 10 m cable which worked just as well.
Elbow’s award winning album The Seldom Seen Kid is available on vinyl. It’s heavy, split onto two records and is 45rpm.
Having found and downloaded FestivaLink presents Hot Tuna at MerleFest 4/28/06 and Rasing Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss both in 24/96 from www.hdtracks.com I started to look around for more Hot Tuna live material. I found www.hottunatunes.com.