Last year I did a “My Top Albums of 2012” blog and thought I would do another one for 2013. Picking the top albums of 2013 was interesting when comparing to the prior year. In 2012 picking the top albums was easy given the three albums I picked were heads and shoulders above the rest in my mind. In 2013 there were many great albums, but it didn't have the same sort of standouts that 2012 had. This made my job a bit more difficult. I resorted to an Excel spreadsheet with a ranking system to
As mentioned in my last post I needed to reduce the size of my hi-fi to make my home office into, well an office. After careful consideration I decided to go with a head-fi setup. Trying to demo gear turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. At least where I live there are not a lot of places that carry high-end headphone setups. A lot of time was spent online researching options and trying to narrow down my choices. I was fortunate to find nice people that were willing to help me.
It is a sad day in the household. All of this time my listening room had been shared with my office. Due to a job change for both me and my better half, it needs to become more of an office. This means I need to downsize my Hi-Fi. The good news is there will still be Hi-Fi, just a smaller version. Good things can come in small packages, at least that is what I keep telling myself.
This also means I start the unfortunately process of selling off my current system so I can afford new st
In the recent issue of Metal Hammer they reviewed many of the staffers top album picks for 2012. This prompted me to look back at my collection come up with my own list. In Metal Hammer they choose to do a top 20 but I am going to limit mine to top three.
The Devin Townsend Project - Epicloud
Devin Townsend has been around for years making music with various bands, and Epicloud represents his 15th album. Epicloud builds upon the framework that started in other Devin Townsend Project alb
I recently made a change to my audio setup and was running through tracks to see if there was an appreciable difference. My process is to go through the same set of tracks that I use to audition and test everything. After this, I continued to select different tracks to continue to look for differences. Eventually I came to a track that I had not listened to in some time.
This track is Never Give All The Heart by the Chieftains off the Tears of Stone album. Anyone familiar with Jim Smit
It has been about a month since I updated everyone on this undertaking. In that time there has been a lot of trial and error.
The Heat Issues Concluded
To summarize, I was not able to make the Wesena ITX7 work with regards to heat during long rips. Even moving things around and trying an SSD drive, the heat always reached 90+C which is too close to the chip set max for my comfort.
I switched to the Wesena E5-B case to provide more room, and use the dual fans. The case shipped with four
Let me start with a little background on my current setup. For my hi-fi listening I have an Auraliti PK90 with a portable hard drive directly attacked supplying my music. For the rest of the house I have an older MacBook running iTunes streaming to three Apple TVs. Right now I am in the process of ripping all of my DVDs to iTunes and would eventually like to get my Blu-Ray movies as well.
My current backup solution is twofold. I have a 1TB USB hard drive attached to the MacBook that has t
I work from home and always have music in the background when I am not on conference calls. Until recently this was more background music. Over the past few months my system has undergone a significantly evolution. Recently I am finding I get distracted from my work by the music. It is not uncommon for me to be nose down in my computer and then my ear catches something in the music and the next thing I know I am no longer working but rather getting engaged in listening.
I can’t tell if t
Background:
A few months back I was bitten by the upgrade bug. Since then I have spent some time adjusting the current setup and tweaking the placement / room. Finally, I felt that I had maximized on what I had and it was time to look at new components.
I went to a local dealer and they recommend moving up to that next level, specifically Naim and Linn. Since I am only into computer audio it was the Naim Uniti and Linn Majik DSM.
I went home and did some budgeting taking into account
