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Old Ideas

The Guardian is now streaming Leonard Cohen's forthcoming album, entitled Old Ideas:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/23/leonard-cohen-old-ideas-stream?intcmp=239   As a long-time Cohen fan, I will almost certainly be springing for the properly-rippable CD release when it arrives in a few days, but this preview stream may be useful and entertaining in the meantime.  

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Etta James, RIP

Legendary blues singer Etta James has passed on. Read more here:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/arts/music/etta-james-singer-dies-at-73.html   Particularly remembered for her terrific "At Last", one of my personal favorites was "I'd Rather Go Blind".   Here are YouTube links for some of these performances:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADDigK8LwyE   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goz07feA54Y   [video=youtube

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Rethinking the Computer Enclosure

Some people regard the appearance of a "computer" in an audio system setting as inappropriate and ugly. My wife does. I don't end up seeming to care that much, particularly as I am frequently swapping the things around, but I can surely appreciate the fine touch of someone like Jeffrey Stephenson. See some of his stunning work in wood at http://slipperyskip.com.  

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Listening to the Ocean

Sometimes, to combat my tinnitus, I just listen to white noise for background. I have found an intriguing substitute with LIDO (Listening to the Deep Ocean environment). LIDO is a website that presents realtime and archived seafloor acoustic observations around the globe in a scientific effort to evaluate bioacoustic factors and identify geo-hazards that affect marine life and the ocean environment. And you can listen in "low quality" or "high quality"!   Check out the site: http://listento

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Lioness ...

This was my Album of the Evening last night.   http://www.amazon.com/Lioness-Hidden-Treasures-Amy-Winehouse/dp/B0061JPYX2/   Guess this one is a bit controversial (was it a posthumous exploitative cash grab or the real deal treasure trove?). For me, as a big Amy fan, I knew I had to have it -- and it came to me as a Christmas gift -- but I'm still digesting the thing in terms of both music-ness and sonic pleasures. My Foobar2000's Dynamic Range Meter shows only one track at DR 10, with the

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Amnesty International and Bob Dylan

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.   And here's the complete tracklisting: http://www.nme.com/news/bob-dylan/60580

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

A Curmudgeonly Top Ten for 2011

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: The Rip Ti

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Hearing What's Not There

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 deaf-making level of pounding

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

A Question of Bach and HDTracks

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

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Christmas Music That Doesn't Suck

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

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Looming Large

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 who even re

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

The Gorey (not a typo) End

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 books and illustrations, mostly dealing with the delightfully

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Analog, Again

Last night ...   Album: Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Opus 11 Artist: Arthur (Artur) Rubinstein & New Symphony Orchestra of London   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 of mud. When we arrived,

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

(Analog) Album of the Evening

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 the performance was very in

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Death By Misadventure

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 me that there are 24

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Hysterical

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 o

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Audirvana ... Ouch!

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, but a bit

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

She Who Must Be Obeyed

(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/conten

curmudgeon

curmudgeon

Booting Up

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 some tinnitus at that) and not so

curmudgeon

curmudgeon




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