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December 25, 2007 - 7:56am
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Did anybody get any Hi Fi presents? How about some vicarious thrills for the rest of us?!?!
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No hi-fi presents yet, but the Erik Bobeda Turntable Fund is getting a kick in the pants.
I rebuilt my MFA phono preamp (separate phono preamp box, full sized, octal tubes, etc) last night!
Front or back?
Words can only hint at how jealous I am of skills like that!
Any pics?
Kudos.
The only hi-fi gifts I get are the gifts I give myself. Nobody I know can either appreciate or afford to give a lavish gift like that. So, my past b'day gifts included a Cary SLP-88 preamp, Rega Planet 2000 and it looks as though this year, I will be giving myself Magnepans 3.6.
Go to DIYAudio,and do a search for lumi preamps. You'll find images so big....you'll wish they were images of women who looked like they were interested in you.
No new pictures. Secret stuff! And all that.
Alex: sounds like fun. I love maggies. Make sure someone (one guy-one speaker) holds them up for you, so you can know that you've truly arrived.
(What am I talking about? Only audiophiles who know maggies know what I'm talking about. )
My wife's sister came through for her husband. She asked about iPod earphones and we sent her out to listen to some Shures. She decided that the SE310 sounded better than the lower budgeted models and sprung for those!
She's not into Hi Fi at all, she just shopped with her Discman and decided which pair she liked.
Gold star for her!
no hardware, i buy that myself, but my youngest daughter got me a nice copy of Fleetwood Mac's Mystery to Me at the used record store. what a kid.
tom
I got some new music to listen to: a couple of salsa comps, the new Fiery Furnaces, The Bird and the Bee, the Little Ones. And I bought myself some salsa, boogaloo, and bomba on vinyl.
My sister got an iPod Nano, and two of my cousins got iPod Touches. I was totally jealous.
I gave them the MP3 talk.
Boogaloo?? Is that like what Ricky Ricardo sang on "I love Lucy" - Ba-ba Loooooooo
Boogaloo, shing-a-ling, jala jala, pata pata. Dance music. It existed before salsa in NYC, and was basically a mix of 50s and 60s soul, jump blues, doo wop and rock, performed by Latinos. It's interesting stuff, often with lyrics sung in both English and Spanish.
We got my 17 year old niece the Monitor Audio i-Deck, and also had the MP3 talk!
I also used an old Nakamichi receiver/CD player and low end B&W speakers to try my new tweak invention on, and they all heard it without being prompted.
(No ingestibles required.)
Boogaloo Joe Jones? One of the Kings of Acid Jazz? Try that. Awesome stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Legends-Acid-Jazz-Boogaloo-Jones/dp/B000000ZF2
I got a new leather listening chair and foot stool. Two my sons found it comfortable on Christmas Day listening to Led Zeps new Double CD Mothership.
My non-musical sister got me a really cool book.
http://www.oliversacks.com/musicophilia.htm
Might be a bit of a stretch to call it an audiophile gift, but it is relevant to the end of playback chain (from musician's intention to what is received by the listener).
It is a series of essays on the neurological processes involved in comprehending and performing music, written in a non-technical manner.
From the perspective that every link in the playback chain adds some colour or degradation, and given that audiophiles are concerned with getting as close as possible to the original source, this part of the chain is at least as critical as any earlier link.
There are so many more factors in making sense of music than I previously considered. While I haven't had an "aha moment" that highlights why audiophiles tend to fall into subjectivist and objectivist camps, there is such a variety of things that contribute to the musical experience, its pretty much a given that some listeners will get one thing, others a completely different thing from processing the same musical experience.
Definitely food for thought!
Triple Threat- Thanks for the link. I'm always fascinated by music savants. This looks very interesting and covers more ground than you get on 60 Minutes.