Memory....

 

My diary is apparently in my Tote bag with bits of notes and that scrawled across daily entries but sometimes the more hot off the press stuff tends to be in either chat streams or on blogs written usually on the rebound of a series of emotions.

Sometimes as with Tuesday it was a point of having been pushed emotionally to the edge at the weekend I just turned around and said "there are limits" as the Grump tried to blame me for him being late to get ready to go out as he hadn't told me anything and he tend to talk to himself saying things like "I'll do this later" but that's not stuff you write into your memory as its not addressed to you.

And my short term memory is atrocious - borderline non-existent at times - with no retention relying on making notes but requires being asked to so you know it's important - and I'd run out paper writing down everything he says.

Thus on Thursday I discovered the Tiger Baguette  was unsliced and not put in the freezer cos with all that going on it had gone totally out of memory so just left out in the kitchen.

That's just how things get at times.

Shopping!

Not the best of weeks here with issues and yet more issues with the legendary Grump but as things on the more current affairs front (no one's investigating affairs with a current!) are very up in the air we'll get down to more everyday things.

Shopping. Yeah the pain in butt that is the Grump does that Monday's - an old routine that's a bit unneeded as "big shops" are a thing of the past being both carless and since Mom's death three year ago on Saturday rather less on paper at least is needed.

That's before you consider the store he goes to is not well run in a marginally less grotty part of the district.

Day and place could better as in better run stores, less menacing types about and even cheaper prices.

I usually shop Wednesday just outside the district where there everything from "fill to the brim on stop shop" shopping to bespoke butchers and cheese stores all co-existing so you can mix and match rather being stuck with just one stores whole range.

Friday's I join him  but leave him to go around Iceland as I've got what I need from there in pop into smallish Morrisons which isn't the quite last word in shopping but does often have useful stuff in and bargain offers apart from newspapers, a legacy of the store being for former newsagent that went into sell bits and bobs of food before being taken over as most of the group was in mid-Cheshire.

Fresh ingredients are available in a way some places are deserts of with only packaged highly processed food available that just  isn't that healthy.

I'd rather the Grump moved his monday shopping somewhere better!

The sinking ships...

Only one thing that's really been talked about much across the week and it's all subject to in real life split second changes but the Epstein scandal sees Andrew Mountbatten-Window banished to Wood Farm Sandringham while repairs are being undertaken to his his considerable smaller future home as his and Sarah Ferguson's public lives are in tatters.

But it doesn't stop there.

The matter of Lord Peter Mandelson, former America Ambassador, revealed to kept very close relations to Jeffery Epstein after his conviction for paedophilia took a sharp nose dive when it was revealed he was leaking Government matters of financial interest given Epstein an advantage resulted in him resigning from the Lords and a set of questions Keir Starmer, Britain's Prime Minister struggles to answer regarding knowing the continued relationship between Mandelson and Epstein, he nonetheless approved the post.

And it's not going away.

Performance on Wednesday Parliamentary Question was decisively wobbly with openly expressed anger at his poor judgement and questionable advice from his advisers.

A week ago it had seemed he'd seen of a challenge from Andy Burnham, the Elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, preventing him from standing for the Gorton bye-election that would of given the chance to challenge from within the Parliamentary Labour Party,

Today it's less than clear of Keir Starmer will survive.

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.