Hi-Fi Audio Ultra-Fi DIY Headphile Blog - Stereo-Untypical

Curse Of The Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia)

Technical achievements 9.0
Merit purely as a film 5.0
Overall enjoyment 7.0

This is quite an interesting film. We watched it in Blu-Ray on the Playstation 3 which has recently come into our home for evaluation. This film is visually stunning, no question. The details, colors, set design and costumes must be some of the best ever commited to film. The palace of the Forbidden City is amazing, it’s like the 8th wonder of the world. I can’t even imagine what kind of budget this film had; just the costumes and flowers must have run in the millions. It’s absolutely gorgeous. In Blu-Ray on a big 1080p display there are some scenes where the use of CGI is too apparent, but it’s never distracting - not nearly as bad as Spiderman 3, for example. Mostly you just sit watching mesmerized by the orgy of visual cues on screen.

The story revolves around an empress (Gong Li) who is slowly being poisoned by her recently returned husband. She becomes aware of the plot and attempts to rally her sons against him in revenge. As far as the action scenes, they are very well done - the problem being there just isn’t enough of them. The story of treachery and deceit builds very slowly, I think many people may become bored by the first half of this film. Only in its’ final act does this feel like it may be an epic. It does build up to quite a climactic (and tragic) ending, but along the way it gets a bit too domestic and tedious…and there are enough holes in the acting and plot that you have to admit this does not rate so well against the (recent) best films of this genre.

Director Yimou Zhang has perhaps overshot the mark with this insanely ambitious undertaking, and the result is more Heaven’s Gate than Apocalypse Now. It’s by no means a terrible film, but it falls short of expectations. It must be said that Chow Yun Fat is superb as the deplorable emperor. But the supporting cast is rather weak, and the screenplay often feels contrived. Again, this is still a good film, but whereas Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or indeed Yimou Zhang’s own Hero or House Of Flying Daggers would each merit a 9.0+ rating (all near-perfect films and each for their own reasons), I can’t really give Flower more than a 7.0 rating. Definitely worthwhile for the hi-def movie buff.

Tags: HD Films // Add Comment »

It was bent already, from a mishap a few months ago. But after realignment it was still working well. So this week I went to perform some mods - denuding, and possibly the ‘Uwe clone’ wood body. But I didn’t get far. I was able to denude the cartridge pretty easily; which left it looking like a Lyra with a very bent looking cantilever. So I got greedy and tried to bend it back ever so gently. I heard (or felt) a tiny ‘pop’ and thought, “uh oh…”. It looked ok still - to the naked eye - but sure enough, after a bit more handling, it just snapped right off.

Sometimes vinyl is just one frustration after another.

Live and learn…..

Tags: DIY, Turntables, Vinyl // Add Comment »

This all began about 7 years ago as a ‘group buy’ DIY project, led more or less by Chris Brady and Thom Mackris. The concept was to design and build a high-end turntable based on the following components: a large, finely machined stainless steel main spindle bearing in a brass well, using a steel ball bearing and Delrin thrust plate; an outboard, belt drive motor assembly with an optical strobe speed control; and a massive, two-inch thick acrylic platter. Additional components were eventually offered that made up the Teres “kit”, these included an acrylic armboard and a Delrin record clamp.

Eventually Chris decided to take this work commercial, and the result is Teres Audio, whose turntables now span numerous models, and no kit offerings. In early 2002 I purchased a motor/controller assembly from a Teres user, and a platter and bearing (and clamp) from Teres. I mounted them on a homemade Cocobolo (rosewood) base, along with my Fidelity Research FR-64S tonearm. The sound of this analog front end was pure magic - it had weight, resolution and musicality…in spades. I eventually settled on using a Denon DL103D cartridge and RS Labs RS-A1 tonearm with my Teres.

Unfortunately the time came when I needed to rationalize my system, and I sold the Teres components to a friend, who has been enjoying them ever since. I still miss “my creation”, which is listed as Teres #34 in the ‘hall of fame’.

Tags: DIY, Turntables, Vinyl // Add Comment »

Released 2006 on Lost Highway Records.

This is my favourite pop album of 2006. Another Fine Day is the 4th release from the loose collection of musicians known as Golden Smog. And it’s the first one I’ve really enjoyed, to be honest. With eight years elapsed since the last one, there probably was more curiosity than pent-up anticipation…lol.  Well, AFD proves that the group survives and lives. Nowadays the Smog is more or less led by Gary Louris, Kraig Jarret Johnson and Marc Perlman (all former Jayhawks), with Dan Murphy and bits of Jeff Tweedy rounding out the current personnel.  (Tweedy leads Wilco and Loose Fur… busy guy)

There is hardly a weak song among the 15 tracks presented here. The tunes are fairly adventurous, ranging from upbeat power pop numbers like ‘Corvette’ and ‘Hurricane’, to mellow folk-rockers, like ‘Listen Joe’, ‘Strangers’, and ‘Think About Yourself’. Other gems, like ‘Beautiful Mind’, and ‘Cure For This’, are harder to classify…let’s call them “excellent”.  This record just works.

Tags: Favorite Records, Music // Add Comment »

This is quite remarkable!

Dmitry Medvedev: The man who would be president

news.cbc.ca 12/17/2007

Deputy Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev looks on during a meeting with doctors in Rome, June 19, 2007. (Associated Press)

He is a 42-year-old law professor with a passion for Led Zeppelin music who has never held elected office.

But if the stars align right — and it is hard to see how they won’t — Dmitry Medvedev is very likely to be Russia’s next president after the ballots are counted in March of 2008.

Officially nominated on Dec. 17, he has the support of Russia’s ruling party United Russia as well as three smaller pro-Kremlin parties — A Just Russia, Agrarian Party of Russia and Civil Force Party. More importantly, he has the backing of the outgoing and still wildly popular President Vladimir Putin, who is likely to become prime minister, once his two terms as president are over.

If he is successful in his bid, Medvedev will be the country’s youngest president ever elected, which raises a question.

Who is Dmitry Medvedev?
Born in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, in 1965, Medvedev is the son of two university professors. He was a top student who went on to receive a law degree from St. Petersburg University in 1987 and then completed a PhD in law in 1990.

Shortly after graduating, he married his school sweetheart Svetlana and they have a 12-year-old son, Ilya.

He is a devoted fan of hard rock and cites Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin among his favourites. These bands would have been on the state-issued blacklists during Medvedev’s Soviet-era schooldays, but he has said he had taped copies, perhaps from bootleggers. Today, he collects the bands’ original vinyls and said in an interview with Russian magazine Itogi that he had amassed all of Deep Purple’s recordings.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Tags: Music, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Once in a while a piece of writing on some music-related topic will come out of left field and knock you flat on your ass (case in point, Dylan’s Chronicles).  Today I refer the reader to Harvard grad student Dave LaFontana’s paper “You Say You Want a Velvet Revolution?”, published with permission on the Beatles Ottawa website.

This is a really fascinating read. It addresses the Beatles’ cultural and political influence during the Cold War, mainly from the point of view of those on the Soviet Bloc side. The paper does a nice job of shedding light on many parallel events, opinions and figures, while remaining readable and relatively compact. Very worthwhile.

The “Lennon Wall”, Prague, Czech Republic

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Head-fi’ers: I’ve set up a forum here, for those of us “going nuts” due to Head-fi being down the past 15 days. I felt there was a need for a meetup spot/forum, even if it’s temporary. HF is such a big site, no doubt hundreds of us had deals going via PM, and so on.

http://stereo-untypical.com/temp-fi

This is meant to be only temporary, while Head-fi.org get its’ problems sorted out.

UPDATE: Looks like HF is back this morning 11/25!   YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Some great deals on the first-gen Microsoft Zune 30 MP3 players these days — I picked up a brown Zune 30 for $79 and a black one for $99 for my daughter, on the Woot.com daily deals. These were refurbished units with full warranty — both arrived mint, like new. I am pretty picky and honestly I couldn’t tell they were refurbs at all. 30 gigabytes of storage is great; these DAP’s also play video, and have a big bright 3″ LCD screen. Video frame rate is very smooth, both music and video playback have been flawless. Microsoft has just released the new Zunes and the new firmware and Zune software. Zune is now the best selling DAP after the iPod. Oh, they have FM tuners included as well.

They’ve been seen at similar prices since then on Buy.com and Amazon, but you may have to dig around to find them at that price. Check it out….very nice machine and makes a great Christmas gift!

Tags: Digital, Portable // 1 Comment »

For a simple, inexpensive plug’n'play solution focused on sound quality (not features), this offering from Pro-ject is certainly worth considering. That’s $299 for a brand-new unit with a warranty, fully assembled and ready to play vinyl - all that’s needed is an appropriate receiver and speakers.

From Needledoctor’s blurb:

“The Pro-Ject Debut includes a pre-mounted Ortofon OM-5E moving magnet phono cartridge and is an excellent choice for the audiophile seeking a cost effective vinyl playback solution. A felt-covered steel platter mates to a chrome plated stainless-steel axle running in a brass bearing housing for exceptional speed stability and accuracy. The aluminum tonearm employs inverted hardened stainless-steel points for superior tracking with the supplied phono cartridge. A silicone-damped armlift is supplied.”

This is not going to “blow away” a good digital playback chain, but it will sound good and allow you to play those LP’s. And that’s the whole point. For someone in need of a complete system, the Pro-ject, with an HK 3485 receiver, and AV123 x-ls bookshelf speakers would be a complete system of separate components at just over $700, brand new.

Tags: Turntables, Vinyl // 1 Comment »

For a good 7-8 years Listener held court as the only really excellent audio print journal, IMO. Other magazines have done well in some respects, but Listener broke the mold. From its’ creative photoshopped covers to its’ most offbeat columns (Dr.Gizmo!), it broke the conventions of audio journalism, and made the hobby fun again. It made readers ask themselves tough questions. It put the focus on the music.

And it was a sad day in mid-2002 when we learned that the magazine would be folded.

I credit editor/publisher Art Dudley with turning me on to the joys of triode tubes, DIY’ing, Lowther speakers, and more. Fortunately, his ramblings can still be read in Stereophile - and to their credit, they make his column available online at no charge.

I have all my Listener issues (nearly a complete set), and I’ll never part with them. If you missed out on this great mag, check eBay from time to time, or put a wanted post up on Audiogon or AudioAsylum. You’ll be glad you did.

R.I.P. Listener, you are missed.

Listener vol.5 no.3 cover depicted a ‘crop circle’ made with vacuum tube schematic symbols. Brilliant.

Tags: DIY, Industry News, Music // 2 Comments »

Kill To Get Crimson, Mark Knopfler (2007, Warner Bros)

It’s been a good year for new pop music, with excellent releases from Wilco, Interpol, The White Stripes, Feist, Ryan Adams, Radiohead and many others. At the top of my favorites pile sits this disc from an old master, the venerable Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame.

And it’s at once both strange and understandable that one has to qualify him with those 4 words. While Knopfler has never enjoyed the Straits’ level of commercial success in his solo work, he’s been far from obscure. Performing alongside stars like Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris over the years, MK has long been respected as a musician; at some point while we weren’t noticing, he’s also evolved into a songwriter of quite compelling stature. Kill To Get Crimson is just the latest in a string of very fine work.

Like Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, it took me a few listens to get into it. There’s nothing flashy about this record. It sets a plaintive, folksy-electric tone, with Knopfler mixing major and minor chord progressions effortlessly as always. The musicianship is excellent, as you’d expect. And the patient listener is gradually rewarded with more and more ‘gold’, as these beautifully crafted songs slowly unfold to reveal a remarkable depth and layering. No overhyped guitar work, no shouting. Knopfler is so understated, he’s the epitome of cool. Yet when his songs call for vocal passion (Let It All Go, In The Sky), he delivers it in spades. When heartaches and regret bear down like a weight (True Love Will Never Fade, Behind With The Rent), he’s able to convey the sadness with his signature voice - which has aged extremely well. Other standouts (We Can Get Wild, Heart Full Of Holes) are so good I won’t even attempt to redux them.

For me, a near perfect record…very enthusiastically recommended. I will update this review when I’ve received the vinyl copy, mastered by Stan Ricker.

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I’ve ordered 4 x 0.1uF Jupiter caps to replace the radial box MKC’s in my Baby amp. I’ll report on the results as soon as I have them installed and given a few hours to warm up.

I would like to spring for the V-Caps, to do a full comparison, but they are just too expensive for me right now.  I’ve had some decent, though not staggering improvements with Auricaps in the past.  I’m hoping for ‘more’ from the Jupiters.

Related link: Comparison of crossover and signal coupling caps

Tags: DIY, Headphone amps // Add Comment »

I picked up my used Baby amp about two months ago and I’ve been using it in several contexts. On my desktop, it drives my old B&W V201’s (90dB 4 Ohms) quite well; in my main system it powers my Silver Iris 15 Open Baffle Coaxials; and alternatively, my Audio-Technica ATH-W1000 headphones - yes, directly from the speaker taps using a 10 Ohm resistor in parallel accross each output. My Baby has the upgraded binding posts, and a pair of Western Electric 396A’s doing input tube duty.  The Baby really is compact, and moving it around is not a big deal. Nice and versatile.

This amp is a winner. It retails for 799-899 in the US, but can often be found on Audiogon in the 350-400 range. For that kind of money this is a tough amp to beat. With 4 x 6P1T Russian output tubes in a push-pull configuration, it makes about 10 watts per channel. Using efficient speakers with a benign impedance curve is advisable to get the best performance out of the amp.

Listening to it direct with reference-calibre headphones really highlights the amp’s resolution and dynamic abilities. By using the 40 Ohm headphones with a 10 Ohm resistor in parallel, the amp sees a constant 8 Ohm load….very nice. I can hear previously unheard low-level details on many discs, not just breathing and the usual studio artifacts, but even harmony vocals that were obscured before. Dynamic capability is pretty decent also, though the amp can sometimes be overtaxed by complex music. Most of all this is a very musical tube amp, but with no trace of euphonic tube distortion. The sound is clean and balanced.

Very recommendable as a great used amplifier value.

Tags: Headphone amps, Single-Ended Triodes (SET) // Add Comment »

Released in 2006 by True North Records.

Speechless: The Instrumental Bruce Cockburn. This CD has 15 superb instrumental tracks; 3 of which are new, and one which was previously only released in Japan. That track, Rise And Fall, is one of the standouts, and is a great test of bottom-octave bass response. Cockburn was a music major, and has been making records since 1970. His status is iconic in Canada, where he lives and works. As a songwriter, Cockburn is never at a loss for something to say - and his instrumental compositions bear this out also. His guitar work breathes and lives; the tunes are original, diverse, and memorable. They convey a broad spectrum of color, from dark and ethereal, to bright and joyful. Cockburn is a folk singer/songwriter, but as a musician and composer he’s quite unbounded by categorization.  You’ll hear styles as far ranging as ragtime jazz, ECM 70s-era guitar jazz, and most everything in between.  All played with heart and gusto.

A wonderful set of performances, in excellent sound. The production work is very good on this disc; despite the recordings spanning four decades, the songs share a similar sound signature, and the album is cohesive and works as a whole.

Tags: Favorite Records, Music // 1 Comment »

(Re)discovering WILCO about a year ago has had a bunch of positive effects on me. Apart from the pure enjoyment of devouring the rest of Wilco’s remarkable catalog, I’ve gradually become interested in pop music again..! Meaning (for me), a lot more catching up to do, finally discovering artists like Stephen Malkmus, Ron Sexsmith, Feist, Golden Smog, The White Stripes, Interpol, Ryan Adams, and Ray Lamontagne. It’s been a great year. I even started writing some music reviews for the Owl and Bear site.

My hats off to Tweedy: through many lineup changes, label difficulties, personal issues, and the demands of a young family, he’s not only continued to bloom as a songwriter, but along with remaining founding member John Stirratt, has maintained Wilco’s ethos and vision- while allowing the band to grow. I truly believe Wilco is the finest American rock band since The Band. They’re at the top of their game, and have a rabid following of devoted fans. Wilco have also been forward-thinking in encouraging show taping and music sharing/downloading….leaking their last few records to fans in advance of their release (what a concept). They’ve also supported vinyl by releasing most of the albums on LP.

If you don’t know their music - all of their albums are streamed in decent quality on their web site. I’d suggest starting with the stunning live disc Kicking Television, which features the current lineup, or with their seminal 2003 release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Wilco’s insanely gifted lineup now includes guitar virtuoso Nels Cline, and avant garde percussion whiz Glenn Kotche - both very accomplished musicians with vibrant solo careers of their own. Wilco just wrapped up a 6 month world tour in support of the excellent Sky Blue Sky, and after a 3 month break will finish the loop with shows in Japan and Australia. Let’s hope they tour here again in 2008.

‘The finest rock band in the world.’ Independent On Sunday

‘One of the best live bands in existence.’ Q

‘Wilco are among the best live acts in the world. When this band are on stage, wonders really do never cease.’ Financial Times

Tags: Music // Add Comment »