Good to see ya' come round'. Sit back, pour a drink and download some music
my friend ~ little readin', little Rock N Roll... What you are looking at
is simply the the hands-down, most 'tell-it-like-it-is' Audiophile site on the
web, consisting of Music, Band info'
including touring schedules, Audio / Video hardware / software, technology,
reviews, new products and crazy, random shit I throw in for kicks. All
music is free & legal 'promo' material supplied by bands & labels.
Not all of it is Canadian, that's just a name I picked as the site is based in
Canada :-)
June 27th The long weekend is upon us and here in British Columbia our beloved premier has tossed us all a $100.00 bone: partly because our neighbors in Alberta have been doing it for years, and partly because they are hoping to buy some votes from the dense. Folk it all: Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping - Free & Legal MP3 compliments of Elvis!
June 19th Ghosts... just ghosts around here lately. I've been spending a lot of time writing the single-track book and ignoring this site - as much as I lived it for a few years strait. Am really enjoying my time with the writing; I've found my niche away from the geekiness of my career! The more time I spend up in the mountains, the more I understand the meaning of "man, this is cool" :-) I've become completely disillusioned with the whole bullshit audiofool / audiophile industry money machine. As one crazy personality once said: "Its all Crap!". What this site is about, more than anything; what's its always focused on above all - is music. I seem to be on a bit of a 'Bob' theme, so here is another classic that'll make you Bob fans smile: Joe Pug - Hymn #101.
June 11th Ya, been away a while - mostly riding my ass off with a GPS, cell-phone and camera, mapping out the seemingly endless mass of trails in our area. I'm enjoying it a lot; I get to mix several of my passions all together in one shot; riding my Mt. bike, being up in the mountains, writing and taking pictures. Tell ya' what lads - it beats the hell outta' most things in life! Don't have much to share with you this evening as I'm up to my proverbial tits in paperwork - however - I think you'll enjoy this rendition of old Bob's tune: Sean Costello - Simple Twist Of Fate Free & Legal track courtesy of SXSW and Sean.
June 4th Funkn'A - we made it! Wednesday falls upon us in a wave of "we're almost there"... (Friday that is). I've been busy as all get out thus far in the week; am taking Friday off as usual (my 'new usual'), and looking forward to a whole lot more of 'getting the hell outta' here'. Speaking of which, a local dude, just 29 years of age, got the hell outta' here big-time today; he was riding his Mt. bike on the edge of a very steep canyon (near the same area that I was hiking a few days ago), and accidentally launched himself off the cliff! Poor bugger, what a shitty way to go! Weird huh, one never knows how or where you're gonna' "Check-out"... I dedicate this mellow little Rock N Roll tune to the Mt.Bike dude who launched off the planet: Spoke - Riddles for Roses Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band & SXSW.
June 4th Universal Music Group Masters Unharmed In Fire Contrary to online reports, "thousands of original recording masters" from the Decca, MCA and ABC labels were not destroyed in a fire on the Universal Studios lot in Los Angeles over the weekend. More info' here...
June 4th Its not too damned often that an American rock musician chooses to move to Canada and forge a career North of the border! Such is the case with none other than rock and roll legend Ronnie Hawkins (there's a tasty tidbit for that section of your grey-matter which houses "useless trivia"). The Hawk has just released an album featuring his very earliest work with none other than (what became) The Band - We're talkin' late 50's on up - I think that this'll be a real treat and look forward to getting my hands on a copy!
June 4th Boston; you remember Boston right? [Foreplay / Long Time, Rock & Roll Band, Smokin'?]. Shit man, if not; do yourself a favor; immediately go out and purchase the LP "Don't Look Back" - its a classic among rock and roll classics! I, and many of you, grew up with this stuff cranked on the stereo; we partied to it, attempted to get into the girls' skirts to it and generally annoyed the neighbors by cranking the living shit outta' it! You may recall that lead vocalist, Brad Delp, took his life a few years back (silly man), and 'that was it' for the band - until the remaining members stumbled upon... and here is where I'll let you read the rest of the amazing story...
June 4th Shit, today's post is starting to read like an obituary! In case you haven't heard; Bo Diddley is Dead. RIP Bo Diddley, and lets all celebrate his life with a taste of some of the man's best tracks; (note to the RIAA - ease off man, its a tribute thing). I was going to do this, but someone beat me to it and made this MuxTape in honor of the old dude.
June 4th And that's it for me; I may, or may not... pop back in over the weekend - depends how much I've had to drink, er, I mean, "how busy I am" Remember "don't feed the audiofools - they're a lost cause". Instead, sit back, crack a cool one and crank up Bo's Muxtape (above).
June 2nd June is upon us - Summer has finally arrived!. Had a great long-weekend of hiking / biking / partying at a cabin in the woods with my gal and a pile of great friend's, even snuck into the stinky city for a test-ride on a brand new motorcycle. Yup, I'm gonna' get my butt back onto a motorcycle in the near future; this week perhaps. Been spending a lot of time researching lightweight, dependable, street-legal dirt-bikes and here's what I've found. Doesn't have the flat-out balls of other bikes I've owned, but it's perfect for exploring back-country roads and trails - which is exactly what I'm looking for in a bike at this point. Lets ease on into the new workweek (you guys really should follow my lead and start working 4-day workweeks: this rocks!), with a little ditty from Amos Lee - Ease Back.
June 2nd Big companies: Little minds... Staples Inc. is set to release the industry's latest version of 'self-destructing DVDs' next month. Not that the last few attempts failing were enough to dissuade it that this was a foolish concept... someone obviously needs a tax write-off.
June 2nd Oddest speaker yet? Sony's Sountina speaker might be one contender for the throne.
June 2nd Another new digital file format; but what makes this one interesting is that it splits musicians up into 'tracks ' (for lack of better description), enabling end-users to switch vocals / instruments in or out of overall playback in seconds. The new format has a file extension format of MT9 and a commercial title of Music 2.0.
June 2nd Short one this evening lads; its late, I have a stack of invoices to finish up and send out, a heap of work to do on the book I'm writing and, well, I feel like listening to some music while I work; If its early in the morning when you're reading this; then crank up this next one and I'm sure it'll invigorate you to no end! Mudhoney - I'm Now!
May 29th Dudes, its almost upon us: er, its almost upon me :-). I've made a vow to take Friday's off from this point forward till' the snow fly's! As such, Thursday is my 'Friday' from now on! Its one of those "life is far too short to work so damned much" things. Lets face it; in my trade (computers), there'll never be a shortage of work, but there'll always be a shortage of life :-). Kick off the weekend with a track that I discovered care of Fingertips music (simply the largest Free & Legal music site on the Internet as far as I know), Rebel Side of Heaven - Langhorne Slim
May 29th Ok, so maybe its just that I'm a jaded or curmudgeon, but tell me the following doesn't sound like it should be on the front page of The Onion. "Dickey says the customer, a married man in his 50s, saw the TV on the Internet, and simply knew he had to have it. “He wanted the thinnest TV in the world,” he explained. “He had a 42” plasma on his wall for the past year-and-a-half, and said it was too thick". Oh, ya - the bit about the TV: at 1.5" thick, Hitachi's new unit is the current reigning champ in Keeping up with the Jones's.
May 29th The cats over at Audioholics sit down with Dr. Michael Rudd, Chief of AV Architecture at THX Ltd. for some strait-talk regarding the new THX Certification Display Program. I've always enjoyed the no-bullshit style emphasized on their site, I suggest you read much less typical audioidiot www sites and spend more time at places like Audioholics; it'll alleviate much of your frustration with the sea of sewage which currently engulfs the A/V media...
May 29th In the "hey, that's pretty freaking cool" department: Wireless (and) rechargeable / battery-operated loudspeakers for the back yard (or bush party :-). Check out SoundCast's various options; they've been getting some good buzz' round' the Net'.
May 29th With that I bid you ado adieu till' Monday. Over and out with another Free & Legal track from Wolf Parade - Language City (192Kbps MP3 compliments of Sub Pop Records). If you dig this track, be sure to check out the Call It A Ritual track I posted April 25th - its on my "all time favorite" list...
May 27th Ya, I know, been a while... spent my time away from the site writing the back-country book I mentioned earlier. Its amazing how much there is to a project like that: bloody massive! I may not be posting here as much as I have in the past, as the aforementioned project, not to mention work and having a life, is taking up a lot of time, but at least I'm loving every minute of it! Oddly, I've 'known' that I was going to write a book at some point in my life since my early childhood - its just always been appealing, and here I am at 41, finally fulfilling my muse. Here's an odd one for you to cool your heels to American Music Club - Ladies and Gentlemen. If that ones a bit too odd for ya', check out Micah P. Hinson - Beneath The Rose
May 27th Adieu to the true audiophile? C-Net has posted an article that some might find interesting. My two cents worth; when it stopped being about great sound and started being all about the 'ego-in-ownership' / 'lies and deception' - then that's the day that the hobby died. Most "true Audiophiles" I've met have been utterly full of themselves; deluded, simple-minded market-followers rather than actual music-junkies. If that's the kind of people that this 'hobby' generates, fuck it', let it die...
May 27th Speaking of audiophiles: Peter Gabriel's new audiophile subscription site is online and it'll be interesting to see how this Gabriel-B&W marriage works out in this day and age of iPods, computers and a prevailing mentality of "as much music as I want, whenever I want, without limit, (Gabriel's site only offers one LP per month download). Good luck with that one Pete...
May 27th Steve Winwood is back with new album, opening for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Cool, sounds like a great pairing, hope the tickets don't cost an arm and a leg. I've auditioned a few of the new tracks on Winwood's homepage and have to say, its as good, if not better than much of his previous body of work.
May 27th That's it for me, back to the book and some office paperwork. I'll leave you chillin' out with Steve & Co. Goodnight!.
May 23rd Now that's more like it; a four-day workweek, Friday here before you know it! I'm looking forward to kicking back with my friends and family, avoiding anything even vaguely resembling responsibility and cranking' some tunes... something like this: Electric Soft Parade - If that's the case, then I don't know. (pretty-much the epitome of pop music isn't it?). Free & Legal MP3 compliments of Better Looking Records Inc.
May 23rd Sorry Lou & Seth, but try as I might, I just can't get the Jazz-bug... For those of you with a taste for the sublime however, The New Yorker has created the 100 Essential Jazz Albums list. They've also gone a step further and linked to Amazon's music site, thus allowing you to audition each and every album. Lend an ear.
May 23rd I recall this being a bit of a hot-topic a few years ago - well; its back under a slicker moniker: Hypersonic Sound Technology (but with the same potential to mess with your mind!) After more than a decade of development, technology that directs a beam of sound straight into a person's eardrums is ready for primetime.
May 23rd Wow... adjust your pocket-protectors oh geeky readers: The effect of fabric coverings on the acoustic performance of modular absorbers. This one throws more math at cha' than your grade 12 homeroom teacher! If you want to cut to the chase and just read the summary, I won't blame you; check out page 11. Adobe PDF document - 1.03 MB.
May 23rd Man, after a bit of mindfunk like that, more music is called for! Crank up a little smooth Blind river Scare - Graveyard Sounds
May 23rd So who's on tour across Canada worth checking out? Rush; between the 23rd and 29th of May - kicking off in Winterpeg and travelling to balmy Vancouver on the 29th with stops in Regina (25th) and Edmonton (27th). These old geezers won't be around much longer, so it might be a good idea to go and see them if possible. Who else? Well, what about one for the metalheads! Iron Maiden is smashing and thrashing their way across the Canadian tundra starting June 3rd in Vancouver at the Pacific Coliseum, June 5th, in Calgary, at the Saddledome, June 6th in Edmonton at Rexall Place, June 8th in Regina at the Brandt Center, June 9th, in Winnipeg at the MTS Centre and June 21st in Montreal Parc Jean-Drapeau. I saw Maiden when I was a teenager and it was one of the most memorable stage shows of my life. If you have even the slightest interest in hard rock / heavy metal, do your brain a favour and check out one of these gigs- its definitely one you'll never forget. They're currently giving away free .wma (Microsoft's proprietary file format - with cursed DRM) of their latest Greatest Hits album on the Iron Maiden website, but the download process is utterly buggered and all but useless... what a shame, everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy cranking the shit outta' a few of those great, classic metal tunes...
Mat 23rd Hell. if you want the whole picture of what bands are where in Canada - now and in the near future, check out 'The List' (and get yer' ass out there to some live shows! (Its huge, thus takes a while to load)
May 23rd Well my friends; the televised event of the season begins this weekend: The Stanley Cup Finals! If you have any faith in computers (what, you foolish man!), and believe in computer simulations, you might be inclined to read through what was determined in 10,000 Stanley Cup Final computer simulations conducted by WhatIf Sports, a fantasy sports Web site designed to simulate games between past and present sports teams using real historical statistics... Go Pens Go :-)
May 23rd Baahaahaa! Forum reader UHF has recently posted an interesting bit from the UK's Advertising Standards Authority with regards to Russ Andre's bullshit power cables, its worth a read folks (if only more Canadians had the balls to complain to our country's advertising standards authorities, we wouldn't have to listen to so many of the liars, cheats and thieves that inundate our A/V industry). ASA Adjudications - Russ Andrews Accessories Ltd. (tnx UHF)
May 23rd You know, I was going to post a few more bits on audiophile, hi-fi equipment, new gadgets and shit... but decided "fuck it", music is far more important - especially on a weekend! With that I bring you some smooth, classic country-folk from Tulsa Oklahoma thanks to James Tally - Cherokee Maiden. (Ok, so I've got a thing for beautiful native chicks :-). Have a great weekend boyz', live it like it was the last one you'll ever see!
May 21st Hmm, so what'll it be tonight? How about a glass or two of Casal Thaulero Pinot Grigio, slightly chilled till' its smooth as velvet... mmm, the good things in life are so damned affordable! What's not so easy to find is a great Rock N' Roll track! Bloodyhell man, I must have sifted through a 100+ tracks searching for something good enough to post here tonight - there certainly are a shitload of really bad bands out there these days... Lets blast through the crap with some raunchy blues courtesy of Scott H. Biram - Blood Sweat & Murder Free & Legal MP3 kudos to the band and SXSW.
May 21st Netflix's first streaming box is finally here and it's brilliant. The box is 99 bucks, and designed by Roku. It's fanless / quiet; has HDMI and optical outputs; and is about the size of five CD cases stacked together. Any Netflix disc mailing plan over $9 gets you unlimited streaming of almost 10,000 titles. Unlimited!
May 21st For those of you out there with really deep pockets and patience for it to hit market: Samsung is currently demo'ing an 82", 2160p HD TV (four times the resolution of today's 1080p High-Def' TVs). Yup', soon you'll be inundated with marketing hype telling you that 1080p is old-school technology and you should upgrade... Check it out.
May 21st Panasonic intro's Internet enabled televisions with SD-card capabilities. Very cool, at the moments its being flogged as a way to get curiosities such as YouTube on the tele', but imagine what the future holds.
May 21st Those of you getting back into vinyl might find this interesting: A beginners Guide To Cartridge Setup (audiophilia). Or, if you wanna' geek-out on the whole thing; Analytic Treatment Of tracking Error And Notes On Optimal Pickup Design (2MB Adobe PDF File)
May 21st Blu-ray attempting to get cheap? (not yet cheap enough, bay far). Wal-Mart to break $300 barrier on Blu-ray players - With plans to sell Blu-ray players for under $300 this month, Wal-Mart will become a low-cost purveyor of the device, which has failed to gain traction among mass-market consumers largely because of their high price. Wal-Mart will sell a Profile 1.1 Funai player under the "Magnavox" brand with picture-in-picture functionality. Best Buy is expected to offer the player under the Insignia brand for about $350, beginning in July.
May 21st Lemme' leave you with The HD-TV Podcast guys, discussing Free, Over The Air TV.
May 17th A rare Weekend Post: Random shit on the
long weekend...
Been spending way too much time with my GPS these days, not much into the whole
audiophile thing, that shit gets old after a while... Discovered some of the
most amazing (free) software recently: GPS Visualizer. If any of you use
a GPS device, do yourself a favor and visit this site:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com
You can drop your GPS's KMZ files directly into
full-resolution Google Earth or Google Maps views. Very, very cool! Almost as
cool as Google Earth itself; if any of you out there reading this have yet to
grab a copy of Google Earth, stop what you're doing and go here to download /
install it right now:
http://earth.google.com
There, so how damned cool that? Its truly what I
would call a “killer app” (PC geek lingo’)
Anyway, the cat who wrote GPS Visualizer also wrote a few other apps',
http://adamschneider.net
I was reading a few of the entries in his
Dreambank.net app', they are funny as hell! I used to write down my dreams for a
couple of years, way back as a young lad. One comes up with some pretty wild
shit in dreamland and the longer you write your dreams down, as in ‘month after
month’… the more you recall each morning. Additionally, after a few months of
writing down your dreams each morning, you actually start to have a wee bit of
cognizance within the dream state. Far from lucid control, but somewhat of an
awareness of the fact that you are in fact dreaming while doing it.
The trouble is, after a while, you remember so bloody much each morning, that it
takes a half an hour or more of writing in order to get it all down when you
awaken. Eventually, it simply chews up too much time and paper!
Ok, final thoughts: Thanks to
Muxtape.com - I discovered another cool band this evening, between showings
of the IIHF World Cup hockey games - [Canada Rocks, we now play the Ruskies’ for
Gold]. Check out The Felice Brother's MySpace
page:
http://www.myspace.com/thefelicebrothers
Very funky old country / blues / folky music. I
really dig it!
Andrew D.
May 16th Ya baby; the long weekend is here! Kick some Canadian ass with Toronto's Shikasta - Fairweather. Fkn-A ~ Crank that shit up!
May 16th Talk about kickin' it old-school: The official University of California, Santa Barbara Library web page hosts The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project site. I've touched upon this topic in the past, and it bears analysis from another angle; check it out.
May 16th I always knew there was a reason that I'm a wino... as it turns out, the Globe & Mail ran an article today titled Of wine and song; A new study says music can influence the way wine tastes. Apparently someone funded a study where folks sat around and drank while listening to music and deciding which wine they liked best while listening to which tune... sounds like what I do every day, hell, I'm way overdue for that paycheck! Ok, so it wasn't quite like that, hell, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit, then again.... maybe I do drink and rock-on daily :-) Find out for yourself
May 16th From the "you've gotta' be shittin' me" department: ASIMO, the Honda robot conducted the Detroit Symphony through "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha." What next, audiofools who miraculously gain common sense? That little digital dude is just downright freaky! Imagine where the technology will be in two decades!
May 16th I'm outta' here till Tuesday; in honor of the band that got me into metal as a kid (even though they whimped out and produced a couple of crappy LPs of late...), I give you the latest interview with Metallica on Rolling Stone's www site. Oh, and since I have the "could this possibly be legal?" MuxTape website to piss around with; I give you my Metallica Mux' - Crankit.muxtape.com (the short version). I vote (Anesthesia) - Pulling Teeth as the best bass solo in the history of the instrument!
May 14th Welcome to your midweek existence! I'm going to take it easy today, do a wee bit O' work and then off to hike the hills with my pooch. We've just had the mildest intro' to spring that I can remember in some time, a bit of rain, warm weather, a bit more rain, sunny days... this fits perfectly with our next free & legal track The Great Outdoors - Spring Flower. If you dig it, they have a couple more tracks for free download on their website. Vancouverites might also want to check out one of their live shows coming your way.
May 14th Here's something interesting that Cdnav.com Forum member Goose posted the other day; Take a standard CD-ROM you don't want, engrave it with grooves and 'viola!', you have an CD-hybrid! Surely this must be what those audiofools are waxing poetic about when they discuss "CDs that have that treasured analog sound"... :-)
May 14th I never cease to be amazed at how 'portable' (258 grams including battery!), full-motion cams are getting these days, or how affordable. Sanyo has just announced the release of their Xacti VPC-E2 - if you're in the market for a 'handi-cam' this summer, this should be on your "check it out" list.
May 14th Now this is cool! Any of you reading this who were around back in the day when we made 'mix-tapes' on cassette... (yes, that long ago), will get a kick out of this online utility: MuxTape. I don't know how long they can sustain before the RIAA terrorizes them, but for the short term, its cool as ice! I'm enjoying some one's Bowie collection as I type this... Wired explains the concept and use of the main MuxTape site. If you Mux-one-up, please let us know in the forum and we'll all have a listen to each other's favourites! Damn I love this online music world! Many tracks are missing the ID3 asset tags, thus will display Unknown - Untitled after you upload them... Fix this by editing your ID3 tags before you upload the files - or - after you have uploaded them, navigate to MuxTape's 'Organize' option and use the _abc feature to properly title your uploads.
May 14th I'll close with some great Canadian content; but not what you might think :-) Be sure to while away the hours online tomorrow when you should be working, with this slick, live interface to tomorrow's Canada vs. Norway IIHF Hockey game!
Here is my 'MuxTape' (a work in progress this evening...)
May 12th Wow! What a great weekend, I think I'll celebrate by booking off Wednesday! My gal and I spent Friday / Saturday / Sunday hiking in the mountains in and around the valley, mapping out single-track trails for the backcountry trail book we're working on. Here is a sample of what the area offers; very nice country we have here! Me & My Pooch, My Gal, The Valley looking NW, Flora, Trails. Lets kick off this workweek with a taste of The Secret Machines - Nowhere Again. (Curious stuff ~ kinda' 'Power-Pop' or some such thing...)
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May 12th As an addendum to me previously mentioning W.A.F. and loudspeakers, but with an added twist: outdoor tunes ~ seeing as it's summer everywhere in Canada, except Alberta... Niles Audio has an interesting line of incognito planter and stone loudspeakers. All of their kit comes with a lifetime warranty to boot - you won't see that every day!
May 12th Amazon's CreateSpace Puts Out-Of-Print Music Back On The Market. CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com, on Monday expanded its print-on-demand CD publishing service in an effort to put an end to the concept of out-of-print recordings. Amazon, Sony BMG, and EMI Music said that they will make hundreds of out-of-print albums available on Amazon's Web site through CreateSpace's Disc on Demand service. Some of the titles that have been restored to availability include Hatari Soundtrack by Henry Mancini, Earthquake Weather by Joe Strummer, Motorcade of Generosity by Cake, Telepathy by Bill Stewart, Foreign Intrigue by Tony Williams, and Carryin' On by Grant Green.
May 12th This is cool; the Yanks are working on legislation which will allow 'modern folks' to legally use (however they may), orphaned works of all forms. Lets hope our government catches onto this gig:
May 12th A one-time fee of a hundred and fifty bucks gets the UK a set-top box, dish and access to 80 high-definition audio and video channels via satellite! WTF? Why can't we have this in North America?!
May 12th Ok, nuff' outta' me; its late and I'm dog tired. Crank up some Redwalls - Universal Blues
May 9th Friday, bloody Friday... its a beautiful thing! Since I've been sitting around the shop listening to Bluegrass most of the evening (anyone remember the Goose Creek Symphony?), I think I should lay some on ya' as well! Earlier this year I pointed you in the direction of the curiously named United Steelworkers of Montreal. A visit to their www site brings us a whole shwack more of their quirky take on the genera. The tunes are faded off just before the end of the actual track length, and the bit rate is not exactly perfectionist to say the least, but the sounds emanating from your PC speakers should be enough to set your foot a tapping. Check out this trio: Life Bearable In Texas, 77-87 and The Promise. If you like your grass this shade of blue, check out their label's homepage where you can pick up any either of their two LPs for a measly $8.88.
May 9th Here's an interesting one: Endless Highway - The Music of The Band. In a nutshell ~ 17 bands cover the music of the one, the only: The Band. Hmm, I guess its an ok concept; cover tunes, as you know, don't always tickle my fancy, but in this case, the music is so damned fine, I can't imagine anyone being able to mangle it too badly. The link above will take you to the main site - click in the music link atop the graphic and check out the actual tunes. They are streamed and spooled as MP3s into your Temporary Internet Files folder...
May 9th (very), slowly, but surely ~ Blu-Ray players supporting the '2.0' specification are appearing on the market. Panasonic just announced the impending release of it's DMP-BD50 to the market "some time in late spring". This will be the first deck, aside form the PS3, which supports the full 2.0 spec', including Ethernet port and bitstream-to-receiver.
May 9th Picked up a new Blu-Ray deck and TV and wanna' get a line on what's available in the new format? Check out the cats at Blu-ray.com - from what I've seen in my wanderings around the Net', they seem to have one of the most comprehensive grasps on what's doing down in the industry, as well as what's available on the market.
May 9th I've posted links to these two in the past; they are curiously interesting, at least they're honest / no cable-bullshit here: HDTV & Home Theatre's PodCast #274 - these cats cover a lot of ground; you can preview the contents of this Cast' on their website.
May 9th Lets wrap it up with a classic rock blast from the past. Airbourne sounds like they collected AC-DC and Krokus LPs in the basement during the 80's and never left the era. If nothing else, get half-corked this weekend and I suspect you'll find yourself playing air-guitar and acting like a juvenile delinquent... aint that something to look forward to :-) Running' Wild
Have a great weekend, stay the hell away from work!!
May 7th Wednesday Muthas! Lets get down to some (hilarious) parody music - free & legal style - care of Flight of the Conchords - Business Time
May 7th The Police Announce Last Show Ever -
The Police and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg today (May 6) announced at
a press conference in Times Square the band's final concert ever, to be held in
New York on a date still to be revealed in August. This final concert -- for
which ticket and venue information have yet to be announced -- will be a
fundraiser with proceeds benefiting the production of arts programming for
public television stations Thirteen/WNET and WLIW New York. Tickets will be
available nationally online via the Thirteen/WNET and WLIW Web sites.
Additionally, Sting and the Police announced that they will contribute $1
million to Mayor Bloomberg's 'Million Trees NYC' initiative -- a gift the city
will match -- to plant trees all over New York City. At the press conference,
held in Times Square, Sting commented: "Some people may be surprised to know
that the greatest single contribution to greenhouse gases is deforestation. We
all want cleaner and cooler air, and planting trees is the best way to achieve
that. "We have a long history in New York," he added. "We came here first in
1978. We want to leave a gift that will last for decades."
The contribution by the Police to the 'Million Trees NYC' initiative -- which
aims to plant 1 million trees by 2017 -- will fund the planting of 10,000 trees
across all five of New York City’s boroughs. Mayor Bloomberg commented: "We hope
the donation by the Police will inspire many more people to get involved.... A
lot of people make a lot of money, spend a little bit of it, and don’t give any
of it away. So these guys are role models." Source Billboard
May 7th Neil Young Plans To Release Music Archive on
Blu-ray Discs -
Neil Young plans to release his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs, a sign
that the discs' capabilities are building appeal among musicians as well as
movie studios. Young revealed his plans Tuesday at a Sun Microsystems Inc.
conference in San Francisco. (Santa Clara-based Sun makes the Java technology
that gives Blu-ray discs their interactive menus and ability to accept updates
over an Internet connection).
The first instalment of Young's archive will cover the years 1963 to 1972 and
will be released as a 10-disc set this fall on Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.
Young said the archives will be released chronologically and include some
previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other
memorabilia, in addition to the high-resolution audio that Blu-ray technology is
known for. Fans can download more content like songs, photos and tour
information directly to the Blu-ray discs as the content becomes available.
Musical artists such as AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen and Destiny's Child released
concert videos on Blu-ray discs, but Young's support of the technology for his
ambitious archive project demonstrates more fully the capabilities of Blu-ray as
a music medium. Earlier technology didn't offer the ability to browse archive
material while listening to songs in high-resolution audio, Young noted.
"Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises," he said in a
statement. "I am glad we waited and got it right." Source: Associated
Press
May 7th
May 7th A Downside to Digital TV - Here in Canada we'll be facing some interesting challenges in 2012 when the CRTC kicks us over to Digital Broadcasting. The Americans are all over it in short order; about ten percent of the Canadian population will be scrambling at the last second (if every tax season is anything to go by), to acquire conversion box's for 'over the air' sets. I'll be posting everything I get my eyes on until then.
May 7th Tasked with hiding your audio-passion from the wife? Here are ten cunning stunts that'll help you along the way...
May 7th Pocket-protector time again lads: In case you missed the memo - there's a new release of Linux available for download, I know... I've mentioned this to death over the past few weeks :-) I'm a fan, what can I say... At any rate, Ubuntu Hardy Heron ships with a new core audio infrastructure (hey, Vista got one, so I guess it was about time for Linux too). For those interested in the 'behind the scenes' techno-jargon of the new Pulse Audio system; start here.
May 7th A few weeks back I noted that CAM actually sported a pair of intelligent audio posts (!!!) - which were of course, soon buried and forgotten beneath the 'same old same old'... The posts were regarding a project for D.I.Y Quadratic residue diffusers. I dig the look of said room-tuning tools and thought I would provide a direct-link to a location on the Web that folks could visit in order build their own. When constructed utilizing quality grain wood, cut and sanded to an aesthetically appealing level of craftsmanship, these units make an attractive discussion-piece while assisting in the acoustic transformation of one's listening room. Without further ado, here's the document.
May 7th You may have noticed my predilection for punk rock over the past couple of years... what can I say, my youth seems to have stuck with me in some small corner of my psyche; SNFU / DOA / DK and the DayGlo's were at the pinnacle of their peculiar form of audio terrorism and I was a wild and crazy teenager! IndieCan.com has an interesting interview with none other than Joey Shithead - enjoy, over and out! Speaking of D.O.A - they are currently on tour across Eastern-Central Canada supporting a new LP. Check out their homepage and 30th anniversary tour schedule.
May 5th Wasn't that just a kick-ass weekend! I was lucky enough to spend loads of time with several of my best friends, my gal and even my pooch! There was food and alcohol a-plenty for the partaking and loads of fun aboard my trusty mountain bike above the valley in our local mountains. I think we should kick off the workweek with a upbeat, punkish little number from New Jersey's Steel Train - I Feel Weird to celebrate being alive!
May 5th As a fan of the "all-in-one/when-in-a-pinch" surround-sound systems (AKA: Sound-bar), I thought I'd add to the information I've provided on the site in the past. Mythos is marketing their own solution to the 'surround-sound on an aesthetics budget' with their SSA Series.
May 5th Pretty much everyone reading this likely has an idea what the AudioEngine speaker system is, if not; check it out. The cats who brought you the A.E. are now making an equally innovative device available: the AW1 Wireless Audio Adapter.
May 5th Sony launches free music service: Don't get too excited, its not quite that straight-forward. They've partnered with upstart we7 to offer around 250000 tracks in a semi-hi-fi streaming service. The streamed files could potentially be captured, but I'm sure none of you would want to try that... At any rate, the site has since gone down due to overload... I suspect that it'll be back by tomorrow; its worth a look.
May 5th This next one was brought to my attention by the cats on Hydrogen Audio Forums in their discussions about audibility of different sampling rates. The free (open-source), r8brain software application allows you to perform high quality sample rate conversion of WAV files. Those who are truly curious enough to try it out rather than yammering away about what they can or cannot hear should give it a go.
May 5th I always like to hear the point of view from
the other side of the control board. Electronic Musician (online
magazine), offers up words of wisdom from three professional sound engineers:
Andy Heller has dealt with a gamut of bands and situations over the past ten
years while running Location Digital, his live-sound and recording operation.
Andy Lipnick, a 14-year veteran of live music, performing arts, and
broadcast, does the sound at John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room in San Francisco
and directs the Theater Sound and Lighting course at Ex'pression Center for New
Media in Emeryville, California. John Karr, a seasoned San Francisco
sound engineer, mixes at venues all over the city, including the Great American
Music Hall, the Fillmore, and the Bottom of the Hill.
The minds of audio engineers are always more interesting than the yarns of
audiofools...
May 5th Those of you curious (or frustrated enough at the Windows Operating System's gravitational pull of virus's / worms / trojan's and malicious spyware), enough to have moved to the Linux O.S. will have no-doubt noticed that support for T.V. tuner cards under Linux is lacking. As usual in the Linux world, someone has come up with a solution - for free - under the GPL. (don't cha' just love GPL?!). Myth TV is available for free download here and now.
May 5th Those of you lucky enough to subscribe to The Documentary Channel; be sure and tune in on Sunday, May 11th at 10pm for the Seven Ages Of Rock (more info here). Wish I would have happened upon this one sooner, like at the beginning of the 7-part series for instance... But like all things on TV these days; It'll be repeated. At least now you know what you're looking for.
May 5th That's it for me; I am writing a book on the local cross-country trail network and have, oh, about ten thousand hours of work ahead of me there, not to mention my regular job and life... so will bid you farewell till' humpday. In the meantime, drop in on Wolfgang's Vault for a live taste of thousands of artists. (any email address / username / password gets ya' in!).
May 2nd Love that Springtime weather ~ dig the fact that we're headed into another weekend even more! You know, as much as I love what I do for a living, and I really do: I just can't get enough of goofing off with my best buddies :-). I debated this next one for all of 30 seconds before I decided to post it anyway... Ya, it sounds more redneck than your uncle Jeb, buy it kinda' grows on ya' after a few plays! Another fine Canadian band The United Steel Workers of Montreal - Small Town Banks
May 2nd Further information on the DSD vs. PCM front: (SACD and DVD-A) from the Audio Engineering Society (Convention Paper number 6086). In summary: These listening tests indicate that as a rule, no significant differences could be heard between DSD and high-resolution PCM (24-bit / 176.4 kHz) even with the best equipment, under optimal listening conditions, and with test subjects who had varied listening experience and various ways of focusing on what they hear... Check out the paper DVD-Audio versus SACD - Perceptual Discrimination of Digital Audio Coding Formats.
May 2nd Flaky kit aside... I have always been a fan of Bob Carver's work. His companies have come and gone, leaving a wake of fanatics who worship his genius as well as his stubborn / 'against the grain' attitude toward the industry norm. Hell, it was Bob who was actually honest enough to publicly state:
"“What I'm going to say will fly in the face of what most people believe. I believe that you can take two solid-state amplifiers, and provided neither one is overloaded in any fashion, they'll sound identical. Provided the amplifier has flat frequency response and sufficiently low distortion, both of which are trivial these days, and provided there are no interface problems, the differences will always be the subtle differences associated with overload, either momentarily, like slew-rate limiting or clipping, or just running out of drive current.”
I dig the honesty, as such, continue to support him... even after having to fix my M1.0t several times...(!) What am I getting at here? Well, check out the latest from the mind of Bob.
May 2nd I made mention of "the coming of" this device a few months ago, so I guess an update is in order: LG has released their GGW-H20L Blu-ray HD DVD combo drive for PCs. A measly $250.00 dollars with enable read / write of Blu-ray format disks, and if your PC has an HDMI interface... ya man, big-screen fun from the PC!
May 2nd What are the real goods on the whole question of standard television resolution vs. 720 vs. 1080 etc? Until I read this article from HDTV Solutions.com, I wasn't quite clear on the whole story. It puts the answer into perspective in a manner that leaves no stone unturned. Speaking of which; the main website itself is quite informative, check it out.
May 2nd Speaking of big-screen TVs: (and if your situation warrants having the very latest in high-resolution / specification), I stumbled upon a pretty amazing HDTV deal in an email flyer sent to me last week by Tiger Direct: Olevia 747i LCD HDTV - 47" 1080p, 1,600:1 Contrast Ratio, 8ms, HDMI, ATSC Tuner - $1200.00 Cdn. I've dealt with Tiger Direct quite a bit over the years, they've always been fair with me, I have an issue with the speed, or lack thereof, regarding shipping - but the prices have always been right.
May 2nd You know, once in a while I just dig some of the heaviest shit out there ~ must be a holdover from my youth as a long-haired, leather-jacket freaker :-) In most cases this lust for heaviness comes from a craving for ultra-raw riffing: case in point Weedeater - Potbelly Sure, most of you out there are going to really hate this track, but what can I say; you've been warned! Free & Legal track care of SXSW and the band. (free kick in the butt to the first person who can actually make out what the hell these cats are going on about :-) By the way, the feed for this sucker is a measly 56 Kb/s (!) MP3. Can you believe that one can even use such a pathetic bit rate, and yet still get something that roughly approximates music?
May 2nd Slate Online Magazine is running an interesting perspective article titled: The Music Industry's Extortion Scheme. In it, they suggest that if musicians as a whole are not properly compensated "it'll leave our culture a little less vital and a little less fun". I don't know; reflecting on how much absolutely freaking horrid music I audition every day in order to find something I feel good about posting on the site, I think that the music industry could use a little pruning, make that a shitload of pruning! What can I say; its always been my feeling that rock stars should earn their keep the same way that the rest of the world does it: by working! They should sell their music online and at concerts, they should also use a collection of freebee tracks as a way to get people interested in their work, which will in turn bring folks to see their live shows. What so fucking difficult about that concept?
May 2nd Ya, ya... nuff' outta' me for one day; lets close this session with a track form The Weakerthans - Sun In An Empty Room Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 track compliments of the band and SXSW. Have a great weekend my friends - do some great acts of humanity today, cause you might be worm-food tomorrow :-)
April 30th End of the road of April 2008 boyz': hope you had a blast and did some cool shit / cause' it aint coming round again... Its bloody late, I have just finished ploughing through a pile of paperwork and am simply too damned tired to post on the site; as such, you'll have to settle for a taste of what Joe Perry's (of Aerosmith fame) kids have whipped up: TAB the band - Secretary's Day. Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of SXSW and the band.
April 30th Shit, wait - I do have one more. This might not seem directly related to A/V, but in fact it is. Many (very many, unfortunately), is the time you'll read some cat online telling you about how he hears an 'impossible to measure' subtle audio nuance. These same folks will always go on to insist that people should simply "trust their ears" in cases where science cannot explain (according to them), the audio phenomenon. Well, for these crazy cats - the ones who "trust their ears" so much, please allow me to entertain you with some demonstrations of our other extremely acute faculties - being made an outright fool of: 77 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena. Still think you should just "trust your ears"?
April 29th Spring-cleaning of sorts going on here: thought I'd post a few items that I've acquired over the past couple of years, mostly to conduct audio evaluations:
PSAudio HCA2 Power Amplifier (black) $700.00 (mint - OBM)
Roksan Kandy III Integrated Amplifier (black) $700.00 (mint - OBM)
ASUS Xonar PCI Sound Card (internal) $140.00 (mint - OBM)
If you check what any of these items is currently selling for, I'm sure you'll note that the prices I'm asking are more than fair. All are a loss compared to what I paid! Shipping is at face-value / where-ever an item goes, no 'up-charges'.
April 28th Wow - another Fun with Bro's weekend! Saturday was filled with kayaking the local lakes with good friends and sipping cold beer with good eats in the evening; Sunday was consumed mountain-biking and working on amazing trails, deep in BC's forests - with more cold beer afterwards. Lets groove into the workweek with a taste of The Switches - Drama Queen. It reminds me of the carefree tone that Cheap Trick used to take 'back in the day'.
April 28th One of the first computer review sites that I ever visited was Tom's Hardware. Years ago, Tom was pretty much the only game in town when it came to getting the no-bullshit facts on PC kit being foisted upon an eager market. Tom 'spoke to us' directly in a candid, no-nonsense manner that one could trust. Its been years since I last hung on Tom's words, and I see that he has since hired on a clutch of writers / editors. It appears however, that Tom's underlying philosophy of "No-Bull" remains. Check out their wireless headphone review: Bluetooth Headphones: Music Sans Tangles
April 28th Who hasn't enjoyed the smooth, clear recordings of Walter Becker... (who?). Yes, you've all heard his work, but under a more familiar moniker perhaps: does Steely Dan ring a bell? Walter has just released a 'solo' work titled Circus Money, and you can sample a bit of each track with this little script player (direct link). Just in case you're curious where 'the Steely Dan sound' is going these days...
April 28th I never cease to be amazed by the cool A/V sites I stumble upon: check out Big Picture / Big Sound's FAQ site. Editor Chris Boylan answers a litany of tough questions, many of which I'm sure you've had yourself.
April 28th One of the most fun, approachable and fulfilling projects one can tackle as an amateur A/V hobbyist is that of building loudspeakers. I've posted a seemingly endless list of information on the topic in these pages over the years, but I don't think one can ever have too much information on the topic. Thus, I bring you HiFi Speaker Design. Most, but not all, of what he comes up with is solid, I'll let you sort the wheat from the chaff.
April 28th Thats it for me boyz' - I'll leave you with a slightly odd-ish number from Summerbirds In The Cellar - Wicked World. Learn more about the band and hear entire concerts on NPR's All Music Considered. Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 25th Its the Habs in Game 1, Round II! What an unlikely scenario: Philly takes a penalty with less than a minute left and the Canadians pull Price for a 4 on 6... and score to even it up! Then Kostopoulos blasts one over the Flyers netminder 48 seconds into OT - love that 'Good Old Hockey Game'! Lets groove into the weekend with some folksy rock from Stanton Meadowdale - Came Feel The Same (seems to have a wee bit of Mick and the boys in there doesn't it?). Oh, and before I leave the hockey rant: the IIHF, under-18 Canadian junior boys team didn't seem to get much press the other day - kicking some serious Russian ass in the gold metal game: Canucks 8 - Ruskies 0. Stick that in you're perogy and smoke it :-)
April 25th Well, its finally arrived - but holy crap is it expensive! Sony's new OLED TV: 11" display / 3mm thick and a million to one contrast ratio - at a whopping $2500.00. You 'early-adopters' with deep pockets and a hankering to impress your friends can check out your locals Sony-Store to pack home one of these bad-boys... For the rest of us; give it a year or so to gain manufacturing momentum and a bit of industry-wide competition - A quick look into my crystal-ball, er.. ok, my belly-button, reveals a forecast of OLED TVs at prices competitive with LCD / Plasma in 16-18 months.
April 25th This aught to give the RIAA pause for a hernia: a radio which captures music in real-time, cuts out advertising and DJ's, converts it to MP3 tracks and saves it to a memory stick... automatically! Imagine what the recording industry does when the Intempo Rebel starts capturing digital radio broadcasts...
April 25th Pocket-protector time: actually, a light version thereof - compared to some of the stuff I've posted here over the years. For those inclined towards the slightly geekier side of A/V, I present Maintaining Audio Quality in the Broadcast Facility. It covers the obvious stuff as well as some interesting ground that A/ V cats will be interested in, especially those who might be interested in setting up PodCasts some day. 263Kb Adobe PDF formatted document.
April 25th Not so much to do with A/V as computers, but hell, its my stock & trade... The best Operating System out there (which just happens to be free) - has released in it's latest incarnation: Ubuntu 8.04 'Gold' is ready for download hot off the Net'! Hate spyware / virus's / worms / trojans etc? To hell with Mac / Win - grab a copy of the Sherman Tank of Operating Systems today! For the A/V inclined, it ships with everything you'll need to work with pretty much every A/V file out there, right out of the box!
April 25th So you think you know a thing or two about the whole Blu-Ray landslide which is overtaking the marketplace? Explain BD-Video and BD-Live profiles? What firmware updates are available for BD players, drives and recorders? What is a Total Hi Def disc? The definitive answer to all of those questions and more is available at The Authoritative Blu-ray Disc (BD) FAQ.
April 25th More music maestro! SubPop has posted Wolf Parade's latest effort Call It A Ritual. As I've mentioned before, SubPop tends to move their linked files to a backup repository rather quickly, so if you want this Free & Legal track, download and save it today. The 192Kb/s MP3 track takes a few listens to groove to (at least it did for me), but once you 'get it', you'll be reaching for the volume control!
April 25th Fuckin A', I'm outta' here ~ tap at you lads in the new week; until then, get ye' to your local record shop or live show and immerse yourself in a whack of your favourite music - life's too short to worry about work on the weekend! Here is a really smooth 'Pop tune' to help you unwind as closing time approaches today... Band Of Horses - No One's Gonna's Gonna Love You (more than I do) 192Kb/s Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SubPop Records.
April 23rd So the Calgary Flames lost their chance to grasp the cup - but our local Vees kicked ass! The almighty Camrose Kodiaks got their collective butts kicked tonight in the Memorial Arena - what a classic bit O' hockey! Lets lead off with an equally energetic little number from Indonesian rockers The S.I.G.I.T - Clove Doper - No, I haven't the foggiest idea what they're screaming in the chorus, but it sure seems to get em' excited :-) Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 23rd Often on A/V forums you'll come across banter by wise-guys who figure that they are the bastions of truth with regards to the dye color on CD-ROMs. To clear things up a bit, I would like to offer up an excellent summary (albeit, longish), from the knowledgeable cats at Adaptec. Check out The Truth About Media Color.
April 23rd Little pukes! They're everywhere, keying your cars, breaking into your homes, selling you 'audiofool' power cables and yes, stealing you're guitars! Harlequin keyboardist loses gear in break-in. If you see or hear anything about this nasty bit of work, get in touch with your local Five-O.
April 23rd HDTV Magazine (online) offers up their usual great work for free: this time around its A Comparison of Movie Download Services. If you have any interest in what's brewing in the coming age of 'Blockbuster Online' (so to speak), then dig in for a look-see...
April 23rd Here's a curve-ball outta' left-field:
Retail Report: Is Blu-ray Really The Wave Of The Future? (by
Timothy Sprinkle tsprinkle@mediabiz.com).
Sure, the high-def format war may be over, but that doesn't mean success for
Blu-ray is a foregone conclusion. In fact, according to a report released
Tuesday by market research firm ABI Research, widespread adoption of high
definition DVD still faces some significant hurdles.
For starters, there's that pesky issue of upconverting. Rather than replacing
their DVD collections with BD titles, many customers are choosing to simply
upconvert their existing disc to high-def output. And that could mean trouble
for BD makers down the road.
"We are starting to see an increase in the number of DVD players with built-in
upconverters, and the video processing is getting better with each new
generation," said ABI analyst Steve Wilson. Today about 35 percent of standard
DVD players include upconversion features, and ABI expects that figure to reach
60 percent by 2013.
In addition, the firm is worried that the Blu-ray market is focused too heavily
on Sony's Playstation 3 game console, which includes a built-in BD player. As of
2008, about 85 percent of BD players on the market will be found in PS3s, ABI
said, with standalone players lagging behind until at least 2013.
And I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that these aren't the only
hurdles facing widespread BD adoption.
Like Microsoft's Bill Gates said last year at CES, I expect digital distribution
will surpass high-def DVDs in the next few years, rendering this long format war
effectively moot. Why? Because it's simple, because it's convenient and because
it's, from a hardware standpoint, effectively free to the end user. It can also,
the software folks tell me, be made more secure than disc-based content, which
is something for which the studios have been pushing for years.
Now that's a "wave of the future" I can get behind.
April 23rd Here's the "Random Audio/Video link of the month": High-end. I dig it because of the D.I.Y. loudspeaker / subwoofer plans, but there is a great deal more to the site as well. They seem to be focused on tweaking one's room - which is always a better idea than spinning off into LaLa land of cables and audiofool tweaks...
April 23rd Lets blow this joint with a groovy little track from London (UK's) Son Of Dave - Devil Take My Soul. Check out the band's www site for more info' Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 21st Ya, kinda' blew off the Monday post today; am up to my tits and beyond with paperwork! Will drop a line or two today, but the rest will have to wait till' Wednesday. Above all, as usual, comes music: dip into a little of Sia's Electric Bird. 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of SXSW and Sia.
April 21st Many is the time that I've heard folks on our forum as well as others mention that they would like to put together a 'music-swap club'. Generally speaking, after a short blast of trading, its forgotten and falls between the cracks - such is life. However, a group of cats put, and kept together - a club called Title Trader which, well - I'll just provide you with their intro' and you can take it from there: Welcome to TitleTrader, the most effective book, movie, and music swap club on the internet. Titletrader is a free service that allows users to exchange books (paperback and hardcover), music (CDs), and movies (DVDs and VHS) with other community members from anywhere around the world. We have a large selection of titles and the inventory is growing daily, thanks to our users. We invite you to join this exciting free book swap service for free.
April 21st Its going to be 'Earth Day' in a matter of hours, and we all know that having a planet to live on is a hell of a lot more important than anything else (yes, even Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll), so I thought I'd share a link to one of my modern-day-hero's latest efforts: Al Gore's brand-new slideshow presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.
April 21st Short-shift: That's all today, if you're feeling musically brave, do check out my latest addition to the 'Out Of The Ordinary' listings: Cloud Cult - When Water Comes to Life
PS: How bout them Habs!? Their goalie is just a kid - he could very well be playing in the Junior A division in your local hick-town team!
April 19th Not one of my usual 'posting days', but I had to slip this in: today, April 19th 2008, is 'Record Store Day' (cue the cheesy sound effects). Additionally, Prince George, BC's Meow Records has been voted as the best independent record store in Canada!
April 18th Ya man - say it with me: F r i d a y ! Its about bloody time! Next week I'll be sure to book it off ahead of time so I won't have to wait so damned long for it to arrive :-) Got something a little off the wall for ya' today: Johnathan Rice - We're All Stuck Out In The Desert. More from JR on his www site. His band comes off (on this track anyway), sounding a little like Tom Petty, an artist who's' music I dig, perhaps that's why I like this tune.
April 18th What better than a stick in the eye | kick in the butt? Why, another forum chock-full of folks rabidly discussing A/V like it was the most important thing on earth of course! This time round' its the Martin-Logan speaker forum. Seriously though, I'm a big fan of planar magnetics / electrostats', and you should be too! :-) they offer the some of the best mechanical transducer sound representation on the market. So what if they take up as much space as a small refrigerator, they make up for it in sound. The wife?, oh, she'll come around...
April 18th For the legion of Zappa fans who read this site: Zappa Plays Zappa (Frank's kid, doing 'covers' of his work), will be released as a Double-DVD with 'bonus' CD on April 29th. A tour follows, including three Eastern Canadian dates in July; starting on the 4th in Kitchener at Elements | the 5th of July in Ottawa at the Ottawa Bluesfest and the 6th in Quebec City at the Quebec International Summer Fest: Be there!
April 18th If you're reading this; you're obviously reading it on a computer of some sort. Hell, if you're on this site its because you dig music more than the average Joe, want even more of it and likely store a shitload on said computer. As such, here's a heads-up that'll give you the lowdown on the best way to store all of that music! One of may favorite sites, the "tell it like it is" The Register.uk offers: Four, one-terabyte hard disk drives under evaluation - which is the best of the big-boys for media storage?
April 18th Now here's an interesting bit: a Canadian Government funded study which appears to find P2P users actually buy more CDs because of P2P. Ya... um, I'd have to go with "only a government backed study-group could fuck up data evaluation so badly".
April 18th Just when you thought the tombstone had been placed and the crowds faded over the horizon: Samsung has announced that they'll soon be releasing a series of laptops and computers with drives capable of reading the abandoned HD-DVD format disks! The reasons no-doubt, revolve around attracting / absorbing clients with significant HD-DVD collections - and I suspect that a license to produce kit which supports HD-DVD is worth less than coffee money these days... Read on
April 18th Shit man, I almost forgot - its Friday, to hell with technology, enjoy a little 'World Music' care of The Ruby Suns - Tane Mahuta
April 18th Wow! Here's a thumper of a post: a free, 12-hour course titled Revolutions In Sound Recording, there's a shipload to it - here's the blurb; Since the invention of the phonograph in 1877, the recording and playback of sound has been a key element of life in the western world. This unit traces the technology and characters of the sound recording industry as it advances from Edison's original phonograph to the formats we know today.
April 18th Ok, nuff said, hell, that last link along aught to keep you going for a hell of a long time! I'll close this session with a blast of heaviness from Sasquatch - The Judge. Free & Legal MP3 compliments of SXSW and the band. (reminds me of a heavy version of Coldplay)
April 16th How about them Habs!? Oh how the mighty Bruins are humbled by a junior-league gate-keeper! I'm loving the playoffs - and on that note, I think it calls for a love song of sorts: The Redwalls - Summer Romance Free & Legal MP3 compliments of the band and SXSW.
April 16th Here's an interesting recap of the audiofool madness from your grandpa's era to yours: The Endless Quest for Fidelity: A portrait of the early audiophile. While much of Jeffrey Tang's ramblings (Ph.D Candidate. Dept. of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania), are well-known, there are a few tidbits thrown in that are of interest. (Link to an Adobe file, 80kb)
April 16th Historically speaking, I've never be much for cover songs. I suspect it stems from a few bad episodes of hearing the work of my musical favorites brutalized at the hands and tongues of amateurs. As time goes by however, I'm getting more and more of an open mind to other artist's versions of classics. Take for instance Bodies Of Water and their version of on old REM track Everybody Hurts. Ya', its a little weird, but the more I listen, the more I like it. (Free & Legal 192Kb/s MP3 compliments of B.O.W.)
April 16th Its nice to see a 'warm' story every now and then; more so when it directly involves music, don't cha' agree? CBC's '60-Minutes' television program has in interesting article titled El Sistema: Changing Lives Through Music - here's a snippet to when your appetite: In the world of classical music, the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra is unique. The musicians, kids mainly, are not graduates of some conservatory or music school: they're alumni of the school of hard knocks in the slums of Venezuela. And their orchestra is about the exuberance of youth.
April 16th I make no bones about the fact that I dig the work done on Audioholics; they offer a generally balanced look at the world of A/V, and time after time, hammer home the idiocy of the audiofool myth-machine. Today's foray into Audioholics territory finds them investigating what an A/V hobbyist can expect to pick up with a (fairly) measly $3500.00 (hell, that's merely the price of some of the audiofools cable-setups!). The $3500 Balanced AV System (ya, that includes cables :-)
April 16th The man - the legend - the icon of our Canadian music scene: Leonard Cohen - is unleashed in the East come May. If you have the opportunity to get your sorry buts down to one of his shows, I can only envy you - ya' lucky buggers! Here is the most recently published schedule of his East Coast Tour:
May 11 Fredericton
Playhouse
May 12 Halifax Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
May 13 Halifax Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
May 18 Charlottetown Confederation Centre
May 20 Glace Bay Savoy Theatre
May 23 Moncton Capitol Theatre
May 26 St. John's Holy Heart Auditorium
May 30 Saguenay Auditorium Dufour
June 2
Kitchener Centre In The Square
June 6
Toronto Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
June 7
Toronto Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
June 23 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
June 24 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
June 25 Montreal Montreal Jazz Festival
I was unable to find any Free & Legal 'Retail' Leonard Cohen tracks for your enjoyment, however, I was able to locate this collection of (very rough) live tracks from a fan site. As far as I can tell, they are legit - perhaps the labels are leaving them alone due to the roughness of the recordings...? One of the 'better' tracks is Bird On A Wire - surely a classic among his repertoire of benchmarks. If you're a Cohen junkie (like me), then do check out The Cohen Files site and maybe even pick up a copy of his Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man (2006) DVD.
April 16th That's it for me this fine Hump-day - over and out with a track from The Decemberist's vocalist on a live solo gig. Free & Legal MP3 compliments of Download.com and Colin Meloy. We Both Go Down Together
April 13th How about those Calgary Flames! Down three goals in 3 and a half minutes of the first period (!) and they come back and win the game 4 - 3! Damn right we're gonna' have a few Canadian teams in the final rounds of the Stanley Cup. This deserves a kick-ass classic Rock & Roll tune in celebration: The Parlor Mob - Everything You're Breathing For. This is the second, completely excellent track that I've feature from this band on Cdnav.com. Any group / label that is willing to put up two excellent tracks for free download should be supported the the utmost - Here is where you can purchase the full LP and here is their concert schedule (US tour - check back for Cdn. dates), Free & Legal track compliments of Roadrunner Records and the band.
April 13th Due to recent controversy on many Internet forums with regards to operating systems affecting the sound of files ripped / played-back on them, I decided to create a set of evaluation files to test the many theories. It never ceases to amaze me how participants of audio/video forums are more than willing to participate in mindless, heated arguments for hour upon hour, day after day - but almost no one is willing to sit down and create a simple set of evaluations files that can be used in ABX trials. Much head-shaking is in order! So - if you want to get to the bottom of the "does Windows Vista 'sound-better' than Windows XP?" once and for all: hook up a decent set of headphones to an outboard DAC or headphone amplifier - or - burn the tracks to CD and play them on your home-CD player on 'shuffle'. Then spend some time with each file using your favorite ABX program (WinABX is here), and I suspect you'll find the answer to this question. I'd like to see more folks take the time to create their own files, on their own audio equipment, and post said files with links. Heck, I'll host em' for you free of charge. You can always provide feedback on this topic in our Cdnav.com forums. Full details of the hardware / software employed for these evaluations is available on Hydrogen Audio in the 'Audio Quality And Vista' thread. (I chip in with the actual evaluation material on Post #76)
April 13th More answers to yet another point of endless A/V forum banter: Do Men & Woman hear differently? Well, it just so happens that a group of non-audiophiles at the National Center for Biotechnology Information got together and answered that one some time ago, factoring in age. The answer is yes, but the details aren't likely what you would expect.
April 13th Prepare to be amazed by a young lad with a big guitar. All I can tell you is that it appears to be from France and the music is a contagious sorta' swing. Check out the amateur You-Tube video clip and prepare to be blown away! Members who can pitch in with details about this prodigy please do so in the forums.
April 13th Here is some funny shit that really drives home the point of how utterly unreliable large, established reviewers really are. The Huffington Post dissects Rolling Stone's review of R.E.M.'s latest release. Trust me lads - this goes for every review you'll ever read in one of the many Hi-Fi magazines as well as online rags. Truth is this oblique thing that everyone dances around with insightful elucidations - but no one wants to touch for fear of pissing off past, current or future advertisers. Ya' gotta wonder: why must mass-media be so absurdly corrupt?
April 13th Lossless AIFF, FLAC and lossy 320Kb/s MP3 downloads / DRM-Free sound good to you? If so, I suspect you're going to want to drop bye HDTracks soon. Renowned audio pioneers David and Norman Chesky offer up thousands of titles across a multitude of musical genres as well as in-depth information about the artists and albums.
April 13th Disney's Pixar movies moving to 3-D format. The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday its Pixar animation studio is committing to 3-D and will release all of its movies in the format beginning with "Up" next year. This is cool - I've always dug the format! Hopefully the next project is creating 3D glasses that are actually comfortable and don't give some folks headaches!
April 13th For all you Rolling Stones fans out there (I'm with ya' man), check out the trailer to their Martin Scorsese produced Shine A Light video. If its anything nearly as cool as The Band's The Last Waltz - which Scorsese also produced, it should be another one for the collector's shelf. Anyone seen it yet?
April 13th Monster Cable Sues Blue Jeans Cable. "Monster Cable has issued a Cease-and-Desist order to Blue Jeans Cable (Tartan Cable) over analogue cable connectors. In particular, the design of the Tartan component, composite, coax digital and stereo audio cables supposedly violates Monster Cable's design patents". Read more about this belly-slapping bit of nonsense here.
April 13th I'll close Monday's post with some more more music - cause' that's what A/V site are suppose to be about anyway. In the timeless words of John Cleese: "And now, for something completely different" - Christopher Rees - Bottom Dollar. I generally don't post nearly enough music in this genera on Cdnav.com; my mistake - enjoy! Free & Legal MP3 compliments of SXSW and Christopher.
April 13th Those of you into 'something a little different' musically, might want to check out the latest addition to the Out Of the Ordinary link... Bodies Of Water - Weird yes; but (according to me), very nice.
April 11th Shit man, I'm almost starting to believe that crap about "the older you get, the faster the weeks seem to go bye"... It really does seem like last weekend was just a day or two ago! Hell, lets celebrate getting older and hopefully wiser with a track from The Presidents of The United States of America - Love Everybody
April 11th An interesting corporate amalgamation has occurred in the Canadian Hi-Fi / Retail Sound market: Audiotronic has joined forces with A&B Sound ~ can't say I saw that one coming!
April 11th More news or more music: Easiest decision I've made all day! Chuck Prophet - Freckle Song. Reminds me somewhat of a Lou Reed track (sorta' kinda')
April 11th There's a really really funny discussion happening over on the Head-Fi A/V forum: a fellow took apart his Virtual Dynamics 'High-end' power cable - only to discover that it was assembled from dirt-cheap, "available at the local hardware store" components... A humorous, 69-page (at time of writing), 'discussion' ensued - partly because Virtual Dynamics is an advertiser on the site... I chipped in on post #662 and offered to fly the nearly 500 Km to Calgary (any excuse to take in a Flames playoff game and see a few friends!), in order to help setup an unsighted audition between a generic computer power cable and the manufacturer's uber-expensive power cable - on his turf / with his audio kit and choice of music. In fact, I offered every possible benefit and advantage to the owners of the company, but they've chosen to ignore my offerings. I wonder why? :-) Afterall, he stands to publicly humiliate me and stand-behind his products at the same time - should his megga-dollar power cables turn out to be audibly different than a generic PC cable! I guess that we'll have to leave the reasons I've been given the cold-shoulder to your imagination. That makes two manufacturers who refuse to stand behind their claims now; Grant Fidelity smiled and nodded.. hoping I'd go away late last year. If it were me, I'd want to publicly stand behind my products, but hey - that's just me...
April 11th File this under: "Shit man, now that's cool!" SpeakerCraft has just released a technology that allows one to control their home theatre, multi-room audio system and every iPod your family owns! Their MZC Control for iPhone technology sounds like it has a lot of potential for expansion and a built-in market.
April 11th Just when you thought that the market was saturated with televisions: what, with LCD, Plasma, OLED and projection television out there ~ move it on over; Mitsubishi has just announced their first Laser-HDTV.
April 11th Nuff' outta' me lads: I'm gonna' crank this weekend with as much fun as I can possibly cram in! Lets celebrate our collective freedom with a track from (of all places), Ames Iowa: Radio Moscow - Mistreating Queen. If you were ever a fan of core 70's guitar-driven Rock N Roll - you're gonna just love to crank the hell outta' this one!
April 9th Lazy Wednesday, midway to that tasty bit O' juvenile delinquency known as 'The Weekend'! Lets just groove on in with a bit of great, steel-guitar laden rock and roll: Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands - Forest Fire
April 9th Oh, now here's a breakthrough - someone in the mass-media finally caught onto the truth and published it - the same bloody thing I've been saying for the past five years: Calls for action as study reveals 95% of youngsters are illegally copying music. No shit Sherlock! And what, I ask, are 'they' going to do about it? In a world of networks, BitTorrent, P2P and ISPs who refuse to co-operate - the only recourses are A:) Make music dirt-cheap and easily downloadable or B) Throw in the towel and realize that the days of rich rock-stars on drugs are headed the way of the Bush Administration and music releases as a whole are are only good for spreading your name and attracting folks to live shows!
April 9th In the same vein as above: Three Record Companies Team Up With MySpace for Music Web Site. Add to that, a move within Facebook to partner with majors in flogging tracks via iLike on their site. I just noticed this one the other day when I logged into my Facebook account and had the opportunity to add an 'iLike playlist' to the site. Not only that, but a number of the tracks were free for download - as in 'Free & Legal' kinda' free. I took the opportunity to download a couple of Black Keys tunes (10am Automatic and Girl Is On My Mind). I suggest that you check out the iLike add-in for your Facebook account if you have one - very cool!
April 9th As you've seen so many times in the past - what, with all my completely off-beat posts, this site isn't all about A/V: pause for a moment and have a laugh over this one...
April 9th In Limited Release, a Small-Screen Newcomer With Big Promise and a High Price. Sony continues to push O.L.E.D. screens, albeit, more or less in the same form automotive manufacturers roll out prototypes - but I like what I'm seeing thus far. Lets hope that they manage another coo akin to Blu-ray and provide us with 'The Next Big Thing' instead of Beta again.
April 9th In the same way that Jack White and Co. get under your skin: ultra-raunchy / stripped-down blues ~ Vancouver Canada's The Pack A.D.'s - All Damn Day Long deserves a meaningful bit O' crankage!
April 9th Heck, its been what - weeks since I last flashed out another A/V forum for your perusal? Ok, then - dig on into Madisound's discussion group. It looks to be very driver-speaker-cabinet centric, but that's not a bad thing - considering that loudspeakers are one of the single largest contributors to a good sounding system!
April 9th A while back I made note of an interesting (excellent) study which highlighted a massive / comprehensive - series of blind auditions between High-Definition music CDs and standard 'Red-Book' CD. I believe that Kraut first highlighted it in the forums. I've just read a recap / summary of that scenario and thought I'd share it with you. Mix Magazine's The Emperor's New Sampling Rate. Hint: Any 'differences' are only to be found in the Mix / Mastering dudes!
April 9th In the category of "one of those things I never really though about" comes the USB cassette Deck! Well, if you're not one of the 95% of folks who are getting their