kon-sûrt

So I just got back from a Mike Doughty concert and let me tell you it was fantastic. Was the sound from the PA system crappy? Yes. Were there a lot of college kids around me that had just finished finals and were talking a lot and acting generally rambunctious? Yes. (Hey, I was on their campus and it was a free concert. I can cut them some slack.) Would I always choose to listen to Mike Doughty live rather than a recording? Absolutely. One of the greatest things about music is that it brings people together. This works on two levels. One is the shared experience of the audience coming together to listen to an artist perform. The other is the interaction between the performer and the audience. Both of these were in full effect tonight. I feel that it is that shared experience, the interaction of all parties involved that makes music so amazing. One of the definitions for concert in my dictionary is: "To act together in harmony" and when everyone involved does this, I believe music is at its best.

Hey, It's Not My Birthday!

Well, it isn't. But today is the one month anniversary of this blog. It has been a lot of fun for me, and I hope it has been at least somewhat interesting for you.

I have not had an opportunity to do a whole lot in the area of hi-fi hardware recently, though I hope to remedy that soon. So instead I will just talk briefly a bit about one of the recordings I have been spending a lot of time with recently, Burn to Shine by Ben Harper. I have been enjoying this album quite a bit recently, it has quite a variety on it. My favorite track is Show Me A Little Shame, a very soulful number. Though I do wish Harper would give us a bit more growl in his voice with in the chorus. With that, I think the track would be just perfect.

Quality Over Quantity

I read an interesting article today over at one of my favorite audio sites, 6moons.com, in which the author talks about how much power we really need from our amps. He wanted to debunk the "more power is always better" myth. To demonstrate his point he used a solid state amp that he had reviewed earlier that delivered a whopping 10WPC into 8ohms. He hooked this amp up to his Gallo Ref. 3.1s, basically the same speaker that my friend Ben has, and Ben has 2 amps totaling approximately 600WPC. Quite the difference. Of course the single amp that Srajan, the author of the article, uses costs at least as much as both of Ben's amps put together. Srajan goes on to state that he is quite happy with the sound produced and never clips at sane listening levels. He does work hard in the article to qualify his statements saying that this is all in his room at the levels he likes with the kind of music he prefers. His point: this will not work for everyone. I especially feel that this would not work for Ben as he likes the hard hitting bass of techno and electronica while Srajan prefers a good flute and acoustic guitar. In any case I found the article, and the review of this 10WPC solid state amp (which is linked from the article), to be quite fascinating, and an interesting reality check. One should really think about how much power one really needs, and look at getting less watts of a higher quality. If it suits one's purposes.

Less is more?

In my new quest to find audio gear that is a bit more affordable, I came across this product from Jolida. It is basically a passive line stage pre-amp that has remote volume control. Jolida built it to provide their amp customers the ability to add a remote volume control if the customer wants it without adding the cost to the amp for everyone. I think this is a neat idea on their part, plus it is a very affordable ($250) passive pre-amp with remote control for anyone who just needs a pre-amp. I have been reading a bit about passive pre-amps recently, and as something that (supposedly) neither adds anything to nor subtracts anything from the signal it could be very cool. This would in theory provide for a more "pure" sound coming from the source. The main article I read about passive pre-amps was here and was quite interesting. Now I have not been able to listen to any Jolida products, but I have read many good things about them. So I do not have any idea how this pre-amp would sound, but the idea of an un-colored pre-amp coupled with the small price tag has me quite intrigued.