NJAS Wall Posting

NJAS Member Wall Postings and Comments

Shows how various formats are doing
2015 Format Results
See how your favorite formats and genres are doing in the world of music.

Acme fuse value I need is not available
I know Acme fuses have been praised by some of our members, especially since they are not expensive. Unfortunately, Acme does not offer a fuse in the value I need - T630mAL250V, SLO-BLO. Does anyone have a recommendation for me for other fuse upgrade brands that are not too pricey? Thanks!
Comments:
§ Oh, and the manufacturer of my preamp (McIntosh), in an email, "de-recommended" upgrading the fuse. Besides voiding the warranty (which has expired), they also say it voids the certification of UL and CSA. Also, they do not accept that a fuse can affect the audio performance of a component; only that it can either operate properly or not. Comments?
⤷ posted Mar 8, 2016
§
⤷ posted Mar 8, 2016

Check the video half-way down the page!
Israeli products at CES
Max! Can you hear me? MAX!!!
Comments:
§ Just another goof not understanding the need for silence.
⤷ posted Jan 19, 2016

Audiophile Bars
Comments:
§ 'Thereâ€™s something about the sharing of hi-fi experience that is miles away from the usual dry, technically-obsessed, overgrown boysâ€™ club of home â€œaudiophilesâ€'
Hey! I think the author is making fun of us!
⤷ posted Jan 19, 2016

From Ralph Glassgal
Hat tip to David Nemzer:

Message
1
New APP
Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:23 pm (PST) . Posted by:
"Ralph Glasgal" rglasgal
Hi,

I am happy to announce that there is a new addition to the growing
Ambiophonic family of loudspeaker binaural products. It is great that
despite the fact that there is no money to be made in producing these
products, they continue to appear albeit mostly in Europe and Asia.

AMTRA-PLAY is a high rez app for iPads and iPhones. It joins the other free
or low cost audiophile apps for PCs, Macs and Androids and the miniambio
2.0/4.0 components that allow LPs and CDs to be played back without
localization distortion. Specs and tutorials at www.xivero.com/amtra-play
and www.ambiophonics.org <http://www.ambiophonics.org/>

Ralph Glasgal

Second PC failure in 4.5 years
Small Green Computer
About 18 months after I purchased a Vortexbox Appliance from Small Green Computer (~$410), the hard drive died. Thank goodness for backup drives! Small Green Computer replaced the entire PC for about half the retail price, which was nice, although I had to pay to ship the dead one back, and then reload the Vortexbox software (not an easy task for computer novices like me).

This time, it might be the power supply. Rather than go through shipping the item back and being without my beloved server for a few weeks, I let my local computer guy take a look at it. I will post a follow-up. I dunno, maybe an Mac Mini is starting to look a little better to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/business/norman-c-pickering-refined-the-record-player-dies-at-99.html?emc=edit_th_20151129&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=6959821
Norman C. Pickering, an engineer, inventor and musician whose pursuit of audio clarity and beauty helped make phonograph records and musical instruments sound better, died on Nov. 18 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 99.
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His wife, Barbara, said the cause was cancer.

“I only do what I love to do,” Mr. Pickering told The New York Times in 1986, though that did not limit him much.

A man of intellectual energy and wandering curiosity, Mr. Pickering flew planes and designed solutions to help mammoth passenger aircraft manage vibration issues. He played the French horn because a baseball injury to his hand upended his aspiration to be an orchestral violinist. He studied the acoustical properties of stringed instruments, and he aided ophthalmologists by developing an ultrasound method for identifying eye ailments.

Record lovers, however, probably owe him the most. In 1945, Mr. Pickering, who enjoyed listening to records and was frustrated by the sound quality of recordings, developed an improved pickup — that is, the mechanism that includes the phonograph needle, or stylus, and translates the information in the groove of a record into an electrical signal that can be reproduced as sound.

Previous pickups were heavier and more unwieldy; styluses were made of steel, they needed to be replaced frequently, and the weight of the mechanism wore out records after a limited number of plays.

The so-called Pickering pickup (and later, its even more compact iteration, the Pickering cartridge) was introduced just as the favored material for records was shifting from shellac to vinyl, which had a lower playback noise level.

Originally designed for use in broadcast and recording studios, it was a fraction of the size of earlier models, and it replaced the steel of the stylus with a significantly lighter and harder material — sapphire or diamond — which lasted much longer and traced a more feathery path along the record. Because of it, records lasted longer and original sounds were reproduced with less distortion.

The difference “wasn’t just a little, it was magnificent,” Mr. Pickering recalled in a 2005 interview for an oral history program of the National Association of Music Merchants.

Norman Charles Pickering was born in Brooklyn on July 9, 1916. His father, Herbert, was a marine engineer who disapproved of his son’s interest in music.

“His father thought it was for sissies,” Mr. Pickering’s wife, Barbara, said. But his mother, the former Elsie Elliott, played the piano, and young Norman learned to read music sitting by her side on the piano bench. Her mother introduced him to the violin, starting his lessons at age 7.

As a teenager, Mr. Pickering hurt his right hand playing ball, so he turned to the French horn. (Its valves are played with the left hand.)

At his father’s insistence, though he would have preferred music school, Mr. Pickering attended Newark College of Engineering (now part of the New Jersey Institute of Technology) and after graduating went to Juilliard.

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In 1937, he joined the fledgling Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, playing three seasons in the horn section, and in 1940, he joined C. G. Conn (now Conn-Selmer), a leading manufacturer of musical instruments in Elkhart, Ind., where he helped design instruments, including a Conn model French horn that has been in wide professional use.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the C. G. Conn plant was converted by the Sperry Gyroscope Company to produce aircraft instruments, and Mr. Pickering spent the war years in a Sperry research laboratory on Long Island. The work sparked his interest in aviation and led to his vibration control designs for Boeing 707s and 747s.

Mr. Pickering, whose first two marriages ended in divorce, married the former Barbara Goldowsky, a writer who uses her maiden name professionally, in 1979. In addition to her, he is survived by a daughter, Judith Crow; three sons, David, Frederick and Rolf Pickering; two stepsons, Alexander and Boris Goldowsky; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

In 1948, Mr. Pickering was among the founders of the Audio Engineering Society, now an international organization that disseminates news and information about improvements in audio technology.

In the 1970s, he worked in a laboratory at Southampton Hospital in Southampton, N.Y., where he developed his ultrasound diagnostic technique for the eyes. After 1980, he turned to his first love, violins, studying their acoustics; serving as president of the Violin Society of America; consulting for D’Addario, a manufacturer of guitar strings and orchestral strings; and building violins and bows.

Oddly enough, given the musical pleasures for living-room listeners that Mr. Pickering’s pickup engendered, the inventor himself did not envision it as a product for wide use; his aim was to aid broadcasters and recording companies. But as high-fidelity equipment grew in sophistication and popularity, demand for his pickups ballooned, and by the mid-1950s, his manufacturing company employed more than 150 people.

“It was a big surprise to me that the public took to this device as they did,” Mr. Pickering said in a 2011 oral history interview for the engineering society. “It was never intended to be a consumer product. It was a professional transducer for people in the record business. So we found that we were selling them right and left for people who just wanted to play records at home.”

For all Audiogon registered users through 11/30/15
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Use code DIVASHD20 to save 20% off female vocalist downloads at HDTracks.com

Through 11/30/15

Submitted by Ivan Berger
The Cool Sound of Tubes
This piece, from 1998, is quite comprehensive. My brain started to hurt by the third page, but I am sure many of you will find this enlightening.

Early electronic music by Delia Derbyshire
The Delian Mode
Excellent documentary!

This is where that track comes from...
Okay, you've all heard this demo track by now, but here's where it all started!
Comments:
§ Is this the O-Zone Percussion Group? The O-Zone PG consists of selected percussionists at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Their conductor, Dr. Gary J. Olmstead is known as the "O" to many alumni. This track is Jazz Variants. O-Zone first released it on their La Bamba CD in 1996. The version of Jazz Variants we know is from the Manger Test CD and is a later recording.
⤷ posted Nov 14, 2015

Link to free music on Google Music
MP3s, but they are free.
Comments:
§ the free deal appears to be over (as of 10/23); songs now cost 99 cents or more
⤷ posted Oct 23, 2015

David Chesky's Jazz ensemble
Jazz in the New Harmonic at Lincoln Center
Dear Friends, Foes, and in between.

October 15th I am returning to Jazz at Lincoln Center with my band, Jazz in the New Harmonic.

If there is nothing good on TV that night I suggest making a reservation as it might sell out like last time. Also I have heard rumors via the grapevine that William & Kate are planing to attend, as they are big fans of the band, and the secret service took many tickets already.

http://www.jazz.org/dizzys/events/162700

Best
David