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  1. Phelonious Ponk

    Know any good places to sell vinyl?

    I gave away the majority of my vinyl collection many years ago, but I held on to about 100 of them for various reasons - cover art, rarity, sentiment... I no longer have a table to play them on, so I can't vouch for the sound of each record, but I had a pretty light-tracking Thorens from very...
  2. Phelonious Ponk

    JBL's strange upgrade path...

    When JBL introduced the M2, with it, they introduce a new wave form design meant to deliver even better, smoother, more consistent off-axis response. I love to see these things happen, then trickle down. But the new wave form jumped from the M2 all the way down to JBL's 3-series, skipping their...
  3. Phelonious Ponk

    The Active Advantage

    The discussion of active systems in The General Audio forum has quickly evolved into a standard audiophile argument -- "everything matters." Of course it does, it's a matter of how, how much, and to what effect, it matters in context. In the context of that discussion, the position is being...
  4. Phelonious Ponk

    Best DAC/pre under $500?

    I may have the opportunity to pick up a pair of Linkwitz LX Minis with the DSP, but I'll need a DAC with a volume control and optical out, and a couple of stereo amps. I'm probably not going much higher than an Emotiva Stealth DC-1, $400. Any recommendations in that range? Tim
  5. Phelonious Ponk

    A question for Amir

    You have friends at Harman. Do you know what is replacing the JBL LSR series of active monitors? I assume they're putting the new wave guide in something in that range with DSP, but I can't find anything on their site. Tim
  6. Phelonious Ponk

    An exercise in movie contrasts...

    Last weekend I went to Mad Max with my son. An incredible waste of cinematography, CGI and art direction. No plot. No character development. No redeeming value whatsoever. A perfect example of vacuous blockbuster. Tonight, I took in Love and Mercy. What an incredibly lovely, touching, artfully...
  7. Phelonious Ponk

    Happy Birthday Rudy....

    http://www.udiscovermusic.com/jazz-sound-hip YMMV, but I personally feel the quality of my listening owes more to this guy than to all the high-end hardware designers and companies that have ever existed... Tim
  8. Phelonious Ponk

    How I Spent My Tuesday Morning (recording attached)

    I've had Garage Band for ages, but just recently got around to getting a little digital interface that would allow me to just sit down and play into a couple of microphones, which is where I'm most comfortable. I need to record a bunch of these as demo material for a solo act...
  9. Phelonious Ponk

    What he said....

    While we examine what's dancing on the head of the pin in the hi-res "conclusive proof" thread, I thought it might be useful to take a look why nothing substantive will be done about it: http://www.cnet.com/news/sound-bite-despite-ponos-promise-experts-pan-hd-audio/ And why we should all...
  10. Phelonious Ponk

    Benchmark amp

    It will come as no surprise to many of you that, while I don't own any of their products, I'm an admirer of Benchmark's approach, which is at once pragmatic and uncompromising. Like their excellent DAC, I suspect this amp will be dismissed by many audiophiles as sterile, and it appears to be so...
  11. Phelonious Ponk

    Tim's pick of the day....

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/spread-it-heavy/id914179224 "Spread it Heavy" -- Porch 40 From quiet to...not. I don't know how to categorize Porch 40. Post modern Funk? Deep groove rock? Whatever, the energy and musicianship are high, the writing is clever, inventive and fun, and the...
  12. Phelonious Ponk

    Song Writers

    Songs and songwriters have, since The Beatles hit these shores singing songs of their own composition, driven my interest in music. My favorite performers have always been (IMO) the best songwriters. I can easily overlook, even learn to love a weak voice delivering great songs (big Bob fan). As...
  13. Phelonious Ponk

    Let's Help A Music Lover Make A Big Difference

    Over in Amir's Hi-res is audibly different thread, I've spent enough time sweating the small stuff and arguing over whether or not some untested listening protocol would reveal it to be bigger stuff than it appears to be. Let's talk about the stuff that makes a big difference, a big improvement...
  14. Phelonious Ponk

    I'm retired. :)

    This has been in the works for a while, I just haven't said anything. I just turned in my badge, my Pcard, my iPhone and my laptop, and walked out of that office for the last time. I'm now officially a ward of the welfare state, collecting Social Security, buying insurance through the ACA...
  15. Phelonious Ponk

    iTunes, classifications, and grumpy old men like me....

    I was just listening to Troubadours, from one of Van Morrison's several genuine masterpiece recordings, Into The Music. I'm a thoroughly modern guy, listening to a server, and I made a mistake. I clicked "info." Under genre, it says "Pop." Pop? Rock? Sure. Jazz? Maybe. Far more than your...
  16. Phelonious Ponk

    Snow Day

    Needed to get out of the tubes are God thread... Snow days are not what they used to be. VPN makes it too easy to keep working through the most amazing storms. And this is that. I'm in Charlotte NC, where we get a respectable accumulation of snow (which generally melts off in 48 hours or...
  17. Phelonious Ponk

    EQ Wars?

    A conversation with mep, about an old Wallflowers album, got me to thinking about this. I make "Learning Lists" all the time, of songs I'm working on with the band, or solo, or simply listening to in search of possible arrangements for either of those performance situations. I play along with...
  18. Phelonious Ponk

    Hey mep....Wallflowers

    I can't remember what thread this came up in, so I made a new one. I just listened again, to that Wallflowers first record, specifically to "One Headlight." That was the first radio song, if anything will be heavily compressed, that's it. First I listened to it by itself. The signature bass...
  19. Phelonious Ponk

    Bose

    So, this morning I bring my dad back from a doctor's appointment to his assisted living facility. When we walk in, someone is playing the place's grand piano...and I hear an organ...and then a woman begins to sing and really, the only thing that gave away the presence of a sound reinforcement...
  20. Phelonious Ponk

    Netflix Adventures in Science Fiction

    As some of you may have already heard me say, Netflix - either streaming or discs - is the only way I watch TV these days. I had a lot of time on my hands this last week as I was sick enough to be home much of it, but unable to sleep. So I browsed around and tried out some Sci Fi. Here's what I...
  21. Phelonious Ponk

    What was wrong with Apple maps again?

    Remember back when it first came out and there were some severe problems? What were they? Did they fix them? I ask because we took a family trip this weekend and, to make things easier, I entered all the street addresses of all the people we'd be visiting into my iPhone, so I could use Siri...
  22. Phelonious Ponk

    Anyone watching Under the Dome tonight?

    I'm hoping. Really, really, really, really hoping...for something as good as Lost. I know, or at least I've been told, that Walking Dead is really more about the challenges the survivors face in their new world, yadayada....but I just can't get past the zombies. I've tried. I'll be watching an...
  23. Phelonious Ponk

    I've fallen in love with this analog device...

    They're called Filtertrons, and are a type of "humbucking" guitar pickup designed the the Gretsch company in the 1950s. There are two basic types of electric guitar pickups -- single coils (think Fender Statocaster/Telecaster) and humbuckers (think all things Gibson, including the Les Paul)...
  24. Phelonious Ponk

    Samsung enters the tube audio arena?

    This is interesting: http://originus.samsung.com/us/2012-vacuum-tube-amplifier/#. It appears their marketing department has even embraced the standard audiophile misconception about square waves and round waves. Tim
  25. Phelonious Ponk

    Amplifiers perform audibly differently under different speaker loads?

    This is a common theme around here, and one we have very recently touched on in the epic Objectivist/Subjectivist thread. I'm not really even doubting that this happens, really, I'm just hoping, expecting, that it is much less prevalent acceptable than I think I'm hearing. It has, several times...
  26. Phelonious Ponk

    Something I'd like to try....

    I think about this from time to time. You all know I'm very much into active technology. I'm also a big believer in the 5 to 6 inch midrange driver. Get much bigger than that and I think I hear them struggling to stay coherent high enough to cross over to most tweeters. Last but not least, I'm a...
  27. Phelonious Ponk

    Did anybody see The Expendables?

    There's an Expendables 2. How does that work? How can you possibly make a movie that bad and get a sequel? Tim
  28. Phelonious Ponk

    Free medical advice?

    Not really. I know there are quite a few physicians on the board and I'm looking for advice on how to find the right clinic. Let me start with the basics -- I have colitis (moderate) and arthritis (getting worse), and I'm completely unsatisfied with the care I'm getting from my doctors. My...
  29. Phelonious Ponk

    Does the "high end" drive the progress of consumer audio?

    Please name the audio breakthroughs that have been made by "high end" manufacturers, then broadly adapted by consumer audio. Tim
  30. Phelonious Ponk

    What's Best in.....rocks?

    I got what I thought was a pretty unique Father's day gift from my daughter; whiskey rocks. Nine very dense stone cubes that hold cold very well, but don't let liquids in. Leave them in the freezer until they're cold as ice, drop a few in your whiskey (you could put them in something else, but...

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