Upping cd sound

Revisits, where much on the International current affairs front is up in the air which would make blogging on any one theme a struggle apart from the feeling we might need a break, is coming in this week after a change in the middle of 2022.

Physical media in 2026 seems to be back as streaming has dropped off a little, downloading outside of some more niche areas like classical music have dropped considerably from the mid 2010's.

From the "vinyl revival" where we are now seeing more classical titles new and older, "classic" accounts appearing on lp and deluxe popular editions and not from speciality labels such as Mobile Fidelity and Analogue Productions but the major labels.

Some artists are producing small runs of pre-recorded cassette and some better players are coming on to the market that had been dormant for like eons and even the cd, unloved in the last decade is making a comeback (and many used discs can be had for peanuts).

When in 2017 I acquired a sacd player having a fair number of hybrids - discs that have a regular cd and a super audio cd layer on a single surface - I had expected a steady stream of new releases in the classical field and a number of speciality popular releases. 

The classical numbers overall have decreased with only Bis issuing all its titles in that form, Chandos only issue a small number even though HD downloads for all are available and while Japan and HongKong see a good number of limited releases, they are hard to get and frequently very expensive when they have to be imported directly by you.

Toss in a shortage popular new(ish) titles and the fact you may have over 80% of your discs as regular cds the question arises "are we getting all we could from them" as early digital recordings of the same resolution often sounded at least as good if not better than the discs beyond the odd click?

We tried a SMSL external digital to analogue convertor in 2022 which as a bit better but when your 1987 all digital Depeche Mode album still sounds better on record than cd then it is well worth looking at other options.

Historically digital hifi products are at their lowest base prices thanks to volume production and many enterprising Chinese based companies and FiiO are one I've know from the earliest portable players of digital files in the mid 2010's that delivered amazing results for the money.

Much is made in audiophile circles about the type of circuit and chips used to decode the noughts and ones to sound and generally it was held the resistive ladder sort was best but they typically costs thousands and much less expensive "Delta/Sigma" chips tended to be used in the more affordable offerings.

The market in the last eighteen months has changed radically with those resistive "R2R" dropping in price and late last year FiiO introduced two inexpensive digital to analogue convertors that share a common aspect - a headphone output for computer desktop usage - and this R2R convertor.

The K13 is the second model down currently selling for around £280 which is peanuts really with a fairly full feature set so you can use it with Smartphones via BlueTooth, usb plus optical and coaxial digital inputs.

You can bypass the internal power supply for a higher quality one via a dc input that gives you an upgrading path and have options of using Oversampling or not which I didn't as I feel the sound is more musical without that.

This, when I plugged it in and give it a few hours "warm up", sounded really amazing bringing greater tonal colour, depth and projection than you have any right to expect at this price and demonstrating excellent low level linearity.

I haven't heard anything sound this good since I first experienced compact disc in 1986 and while higher resolution sources such as sacd's and HD Downloads can offer more "air" and improved sound-staging, given the shortages of them and that there exists a digital recording legacy where the sound is locked in 16 bit 4.1 or 48hkz forms for life, anything that can play it natively this well is well worth it. 

Tarun's review on "A British Audiophile" was spot on - you'd need to spend around four or more times as much for a real improvement so for £280 this was well worth doing.

That was the week that was

It's Friday and you probably feel you've been in the boxing ring with World Events this week although we never really know with a President who is so unpredictable and sometimes seems to revisit positions having flipped from the previous one days before.

We've been from an overt threat to annex Greenland by force to some sort of deal around security that doesn't include the United States owning and controlling it, threats of massive trade tariffs to countries in the EU, those out such as Canada and the United Kingdom who opposed what would of been an attack on another NATO country.

Beyond the whole issue of sovereignty, the utter rejection of the principle of self-determination - that is to say only the people of a country have the right to set their own future governance - was shocking just because he wanted it for security.

Yet that security could easily of been got by more people on the American base, greater use of exercises by NATO powers and increased joint surveillance at sea with maybe a lease for a defence system being negotiated that might of included rent. A win for all.

Instead we feel less secure, Russia and China are openly laughing at an alliance that is at war with each other undermining the very protection we've all enjoyed from both of those powers over the decades and even potentially emboldening them to consider naked aggression.

Thank you America!

In  this world you do feel like taking off with your teddies when the grown ups are anything but mature.

A Trump Failure?

 It was a week that started very much with snow outside being followed by really bad ice which I had a major battle with on Wednesday just trying very much to get as far as the local bus stop so obviously you do check on things such as the conditions in  your area but, if you're like most of us, we soon look into other things in the news.

This whole "story" is evolving so won't be exactly definitive but for the last week or so people were out in Iran protesting which isn't given that countries rule something you see much at all in fairly large numbers in large towns and cities.

They were protesting many things, the faltering state of that countries economy impact on peoples welfare and public services, the lack of freedom of expression politically as well as cultural and in terms of dress where you may be fined or beaten for breaching bans and generally the feeling the Religious and Political ruler since the revolution of 1979 that saw the Shah overthrown by a fundamentalist islamic leader who promise to remove corruption but take total control had really lost his way.

Gulf States whatever you personal beliefs might be have managed to mix a fairly strict form of Islam with some aspects of modern life and here things were going nowhere fast.

Hundreds of thousands protested, men, women who are more impacted by dress restrictions and children too, initially in a more token form before a few days ago going in literally all guns blazing resulting in over a thousand killed and a good number more with serious injuries.

World reaction split from relative silence in the Gulf States to condemnation across Europe and North America but of itself what does it achieve?

Another thing was President Trump had encouraged the protesters, which you can't argue with, but where was the support and my the middle of this week had condemned the loss of life saying "Help is on it's way" sounding more like the tag line of the second Beatles films poster than a promise of something tangible. 

To threaten sanctions to countries trading with Iran is fine, while risking further issues with China, a major trading partner of Iran what is needed more is reducing the ability of the regime in Iran to suppress and repress its own people by targeting communications, missile attacks on detection and interrogation facilities and using Stargate to enable Iran's to bypass internal media restrictions.

To just appear to backdown with a unverified promise not to execute those arrested is just inadequate in my opinion

Of Restorations and snow

Storm Goretti has struck at the dorm as I look through the window while putting my Pj's on as I write this having charged up my torch and cellphone in case of emergency as the phone goes over the internet so if the power is down everything stops.

Back to things that are still being worked upon, we're rebuilding the classical micro sd cards adding what was missing but for some material actually you don't need the cds you might have around but the HD downloads as from around the mid 1990's onwards albums were recorded in higher resolution than the regular cd format could carry.

As well, older analogue recordings were increasingly retransferred digitally to higher resolution than in the early digital era where they were issued on cd and often they are available as downloads too.

I have the record version of this which is a stunning account of John Williams's film scores and taking advantage of the classical music store Presto's January sales got the HD download used for the record.

This then new recording of all Mozart's Violin Concertos was one several sets issued in 2006 whose masters were in much higher resolution than the cd sets I bought at the time

Although issues with the Laptop such as having a faulty lcd caused some difficulties initially, we've made great progress restoring these two cards given much of the material wasn't backed up and one card had a high proportion of Mp3's that today had I of even had them, I would certainly redone over time as with better players and headphones you can hear the difference.

We're nearly done with the rock and pop cards and carefully tuned the output of the players to cut a slight "sting" in the top response and restore a bit of the low end that using my DT770 headphones on them would otherwise get.

The last year and welcome to 2026!

Twenty-Twenty Five has its issues both politically and personally so we'll look a bit at each in today's post.

Politically what were the three main parties, Conservative and Unionist, Labour and Liberal Democrat just ceased to be really relevant, showing little support in opinion polls and more critically elections, it may be the more cynical mood that's about but "Ever felt cheated" seems to sum up popular disenchantment with them.

We've switched from various incarnations of Conservative government to Labour but little seems to change, massive promises are made whatever you personal views on the ideas might be but very little gets done and significantly few feel any the better for it which after all why people voted for change not least in 2024.

And it hasn't happened.

Sometimes it seems Courts seem to set the rules rather than elected members rather than the system being held to account by the agreed rules

Thus people are taking chances on two relative outsiders, the popularist rightward Reform Party that favours lower taxes, lower spending and tight immigration control especially of illegal migrants and the Green Party that is more "open door" on immigration, favours environmental actions and taxes to as they would see it incentivize action sit feels would help deal with climate change and is broadly more public spending minded with a goodly amount of inclusion and minority actions. 

I suspect a number of us are somewhere between the two camps - we know long term spending needs holding back but worry about those most vulnerable and the impact pressures on energy and rents have on people even on what otherwise might be see as reasonable incomes - we feel the immigration system is neither efficient, fair or taking into account not just the rights of would be applicants but what they have to offer in exchange for being allowed to settle and the impact it has in the massive housing waiting lists however sympathetic we may feel toward individual cases. 

 And there ARE hard cases that truly deserve a second chance elsewhere.

Personally the year did see a challenge having damaged my left wrist and the bones just above and below it in a fall which fortunately seems to have recovered although cold mornings like today you can just feel them as I do on the upper right arm that was fractured in my teens,

Living with "The Grump" Tm has its issues - the tendency to over dramatize anything although some may well be painful or otherwise a concern connected with the stubborn refusal to look at the wider picture first "I'll do what I ___ want" approach followed by the admission as we're less capable the day before of "I think I overdid it yesterday...".

You do need to take a step back and consider things before rushing headlong into action. 

That means YOU have things to do that you wouldn't of and then they say they don't want to pressure you but when now't else is taking any of that load, being realistic you are as much as that person you're happy to help as its needed.

Turning to music, I did enjoy this years BBC Proms season with its broad range of music, mainly classical, encouraging younger people to explore different forms of music.

Major new popular albums for me included The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift plus a series of reissued by The Monkees and some limited vinyl restoration of titles from the 80's that originally I had on tape or cd.

Regarding classical, well we had a series of vinyl reissues, the DG The Original Source series that saw analogue recordings from the 70's remixed in real time from the multitrack tapes direct to vinyl bypassing using another stereo tape which previous issues didn't sound to good from.

The records turned out well with deeper bass and clearer mids sounding more modern.

Hyperion had started but with limited publicity a series of vinyl issues of highly regarded digital recordings from this century that never had a record release ever which were cheaper in more simple single sleeve packaging which sounded amazing.

The main thing was the rediscovery of Downloads, specifically 24 bit High Definition ones as a couple of cards and a player went M.I.A but I found where I had got them from so having got bigger replacement cards they were redownloaded.

But then HD files are big so you need a player that will take large capacity cards without slowing up or not showing when indexed. 

One TerraByte micro sd cards weren't a thing in the early 2010's, I mean 32gb cards were expensive enough.

This was one I bought, the equivalent of two Super Audio cds whose production has dropped to a trickle even from labels that were more committed to it such as Chandos so really in the future I can easily see more HD Downloads being bought and enjoyed played via that to the main amplifier or via the USB to coaxial connector of the Digital to Analogue convertor in the system that deals with DAB radio and regular cd.

Happy Twenty Twenty Six

It's almost here

 

Christmas is almost upon us  six days to go by my counting and we might be almost ready for Christmas aka CatMas with just a few food related items to get beyond the usual food shopping that got a bit disrupted with various issues earlier in the week.

Cards have been up as they have arrived, the trees are up as I decided to get a small table top tradition green tree with decorations as that was more fitting in with my recollections of Christmas when we used to have a tall Pine Tree in the house - and you could smell the needles - and everyone gathering it to decorate and put the lights on it.

Back then we had paper streamers up, tinsel around the doors and numerous card holders festooned across the front room and dining room.

Seeing this time of year is rather busy with me - the original worker bee - we'll be pausing the blog this week and doing something across the Christmas period ready for the New Year whatever that might bring.

Happy Christmas followers!

Moving toward that time of year

We will pause next week until after CatMas/Christmas as things will be really rather busy, not that we haven't had a complication or two along the way so far with various things but at least Mary and Joseph are out as is the tree and some cards have been written.

In many areas Trees are up and like this weekend here Santa will be making his round spreading christmas joy often aided by Girl Guilding, Scouts and organizations like the Round Table riasing funds for charity which is needed as much today at least as in the recent past.
 

That's something I definitely looking forward to.