Richard Dale

If you are starting with lossy AAC 320 Kbps bit rate compression, all you are doing by converting them to WAV files is making the files bigger. You can’t get the missing resolution back.

I thought Apple’s music player on the iPhone now plays FLAC. I use the Onkyo HF Music player on iPod Touch and that certainly plays FLAC as well as Hi Res formats.

I've got that then.

What exactly are you trying to defend? There are most certainly a lot of very technically capable people who still post on this site, such as Miska, that never feel the need to be rude to people who only post comments about their subjective opinions.

You don't appear to have noticed that the 'objectivists' insults and continual bickering were poisoning this site.

Of course you can think the sort of measurements John Atkinson makes as part of hs Stereophile reviews are more or less important than the subjective part of the review. And I'm sure we can get on just fine on that basis. But I do object to being called insulting terms such as 'deluded audiofool', and if you feel that you are a second class citizen on this site because it is no longer acceptable to insult people like myself with that sort of thing, then I don't agree with you obviously.

Maybe there should be a FAQ on this site about 'How to be an Objectivist' (or ideally not). The great thing being an Objectivist is that anyone can do it as it doesn't actually involve any knowledge of science, being an experienced listener or even HiFi. It is mainly about learning the various styles of Objectivist putdowns as originated by the late unlamented Arny Krueger. For instance, I have about 45 years experience of listening to speaker cables, but if I describe my experiences of listening to my latest favourite, all you have to do to put me down is to say things such as 'it was expectation bias' or 'it was a placebo effect' or 'the audition was not performed under double blind test conditions'. Objectivists very rarely perform worthwhile double blind tests as it is actually incredibly difficult to do. Note that at no point does our budding Objectivist need to have listened to my latest cable as the point of the Objectivist vocabulary is to take out HiFi listeners reporting their subjective impressions without needing to have any actual knowledge of any sort - scientific or engineering, subjective or anything else. Hence, when there is an article on a mainstream non-audiophile site, such as Slashdot, almost everyone can join in attacking audiophiles even with zero practical experience. My opinion is that the so called 'Objectivist' mindset is simply a direct attack on the the HiFi hobby, and the poisonous people who have left this site are part of that attack. I don't miss them.

Interesting you didn’t get on with the sound of Duelund cable. I use Duelund DCA16GA as speaker cable with a low power tube amp and efficient speakers, and I think it is a great match. What amp and speakers did you try the Duelund cable with, and which speaker cable were you using before?

I actually get the list of my albums out of MPD on Linux. But I've just been playing with some AppleScript to extract albums from an iTunes collection in a text file. This a script called 'extract_albums.applescript': #!/usr/bin/osascript tell application "iTunes" activate set results to (every file track of playlist "Library") repeat with aTrack in results log "Artist: " &(get artist of aTrack) & " Album: " & (get album of aTrack) end repeat end tell Open the terminal app, run the script on the command line like this: # Make the script executable $ chmod +x extract_albums.applescript # Write the sorted list of artists and their albums to stdout $ ./extract_albums.applescript 2>&1 | sort -u # Write the list of albums to a text file that you can upload to your phone $ ./extract_albums.applescript 2>&1 | sort -u > my_albums.txt

This is my 'Future Fi' system. All active. No equipment stand, and no equipment other than the speakers. More spent on acoustic treatment than the system itself. There are three GIK Tri-Traps along the left hand ceiling. A stack of three Vicoustic Super Bass Extremes topped with a Tri-Trap at each corner. Two GIK Scopus Tuned membrane bass traps at floor level on right hand side front. The diffusers on the front wall are black Vicoustic DC2s with GIK Gotham Quadratic diffusers painted black above them. The other panels are GIK Alpha series and Gatsby from the Impression series. KEF LS50W speakers with KEF R400b subwoofers. KEF Performance stands with IsoAcoustics Gaia III footers, IsoAcoustic subwoofer stands. MCRU No 75 mains cables, Chord subwoofer cable in inter-speaker ethernet cable. The rear of the listening room showing the 120x120 cm panels on the ceiling and another couple of GIK Tri-Traps at the rear corners:

Here is my Klipsch RP600-M based system: Top shelf: Gyrodec/SME V/2M Black Second shelf: Allo USB Signature powered by an iFi USB Nano/2Qute Third shelf: Magnum Dynalab FT101A Bottom shelf: Glow Amp One/Tisbury passive pre/EAT e-Glo Petit Cables are Nordost Heimal 2 phono and USB. Duelund DCA16GA speaker cables, and Duelund DCA20GA with KLE Absolute Harmony plugs for interconnects. Isotek mains cables and Finite Elemente Pagode equipment stand. The rear of the room with a Vicoustic Super Bass Extreme on my desk, and more bass traps under the desk. Vicoustic DC2 diffusers and another Vicoustic absorber panel directly behind the listening position:

I use Duelund DCA16GA for speaker cables, and DCA20GA with KLE Absolute Harmony plugs for interconnects. I agree they are amazing for a lot less money than well known fancy cables. I twist my Duelund though.

I owned an AR turntable too, and I think it is a classic. My arm didn’t stick, and worked just great with something like a Stanton 500E. The motor on my deck didn’t cog, and the spring suspension worked just fine to isolate the deck. The AR design has influenced many designs, such as the Thorens 150 or Linn Sondek that came after it.

Yes, I wouldn’t disagree with that. If you don’t go to a dealer whose job it is to narrow down those choices in the light of their experience, then it is very hard for a beginner to make sense of the over whelming storm of internet opinions that are all over the place.

I did own an AR turntable and AR amplifier back in 1974, so call me a fan. But today we have more products that are easy to set up and sound great than ever before, as well as very expensive high end components for those who want more.