If JLH lived there it must be my spiritual home? You are 101% right. What you might like is it is still mostly 1970 there. You might see the odd good modern thing which is nice to have.
JLH made some highly respected kit amps in the 1980's. Nothing like the simple design 10 watt class A. A man who grew with the times. I suspect he listened to them as they were far too good to be measurements only. Sophisticated and still minimalist. I remember one seeing off a Naim amp. Not too difficult you will say. Well Naim had some nice qualities and prejudice tends to favour the famous. Salisbury where Naim is will be 20 minutes drive.
JLH made some highly respected kit amps in the 1980's. Nothing like the simple design 10 watt class A. A man who grew with the times. I suspect he listened to them as they were far too good to be measurements only. Sophisticated and still minimalist. I remember one seeing off a Naim amp. Not too difficult you will say. Well Naim had some nice qualities and prejudice tends to favour the famous. Salisbury where Naim is will be 20 minutes drive.
That's worth answering. It was special transformer by Holden and Fisher Glasgow. It was wound so as to resemble something larger in terms of DCR. They were by the standards of then considerably larger than other design. Fast transistors and all NPN output stages. Rather beautifully made also in a way that was not like anything else.
Unfortunately, that was way back then, but not any more.
Unfortunately, the French company Focal now owns Naim, so we'll see how they fare under the new management.
MOST unfortunately, one less truly British audio company, now as British in name as the Mini is British, with all that BMW technology underneath and in management.
Unfortunately, the French company Focal now owns Naim, so we'll see how they fare under the new management.
MOST unfortunately, one less truly British audio company, now as British in name as the Mini is British, with all that BMW technology underneath and in management.
Julian. I remember the day I persuaded him to make a CD player. I doubt either of us thought he should. My statement was regardless what we thought of CD he could make the best in the world. After about 10 seconds he said " that wouldn't be so difficult.". Then turning to Paul Stephenson he said " you know we didn't think FM was any good until we built our own". I am convinced that was the moment. Paul and I never got on very well after that. Perhaps it wasn't for me to say it. Julian was in deep depression that day and Paul had warned me off. Linn and he had fallen out over USA importation. This was connected with Linn's atrocious amplifier. My Australian friend Martin Renwick was with me, said to be 30 years ago when Martin visited last summer. I think it was less. Martin sold a Naim system that might have been over $400 000 to the Hare Krishna's using George Harrison's money. It had 32 electrical supplies with 32 meters going to 32 connections under the street. Much of the work I do today was Martin's work. He can not remember as he had a massive cycle accident and was dead for some minutes. When I said thank you he said " that very sweet of you Nige, I don't remember a thing of that". To be honest I only did those tests as a friend helping another friend. In 2003 I got a job based on it. Martin had no technical training but was an obsessional listener. I never met anyone like him. Not quite right to be like that although what he found was correct. It shouldn't be so intense.
Dejan I listened to Naxi Serbia classical. Not bad.
Dejan I listened to Naxi Serbia classical. Not bad.
They are all right, but there are better stations to be heard. I switch between City Radio at 102.2 MHz and Karolina at 106.3 MHz. Of course, I can since I'm using the traditional air waves and because my reVox B 760 tuner is all but bullet proof regarding classic forms of FM performance. Despite very similar specs, the Philips Black Tulip AH 180 tuner simply does not cut it.
That reminds me I have a Revox tuner to fix for my friend Terry.
I have a Sony STR 3950. It is the peak of mid priced excellence. It is be a small margin my least good tuner. The Short-wave is exceptional. Music is rather good if signal is stable on SW. Kenwood KR750 , Armstrong 625 , Quad FM3 are the others. If I am honest the Kenwood is the spacial one. I have used the Marantz Model 10. It is without doubt special. It doesn't sound like a valve design. However the insights it gives says it is. That's when valves work properly. When not shouting "I am a valve". My big shock is how good my $30 Nokia phone is as a radio. I guess it has excellent RF engineers working on it. I put some good Sennheisers on and have to say most hi fi shows are worse and we are talking the expensive stuff. We know why as the hotel room is not ideal. All the same it is significant. That Nokia far out performs the iPhone I don't use on anything. I realized the other day I text without looking. The buttons are superior to my TV remotes that last a year. The Nokia even has a half descent camera. It was sold off half price as no one wants Nokia. Wake up people what your friends think isn't the criteria. Also the Nokia fits in the small jeans pocket. Cars keys, phone, wallet, specs. That's me ready for the world.
The sad thing is my statement about MP3 doesn't hold up for these stations from around the world. All the same it is the tissue thin problem rather than harshness. Obviously what I call MP3 used in TV is a better standard. Venice Radio uses the same bit rate and sounds better. Perhaps the original quality at some stations is lower and is still the problem. USA niche broadcasts were the worst as they were playing material that needed care. Romania FM was a giggle, like a fairground.
I have a Sony STR 3950. It is the peak of mid priced excellence. It is be a small margin my least good tuner. The Short-wave is exceptional. Music is rather good if signal is stable on SW. Kenwood KR750 , Armstrong 625 , Quad FM3 are the others. If I am honest the Kenwood is the spacial one. I have used the Marantz Model 10. It is without doubt special. It doesn't sound like a valve design. However the insights it gives says it is. That's when valves work properly. When not shouting "I am a valve". My big shock is how good my $30 Nokia phone is as a radio. I guess it has excellent RF engineers working on it. I put some good Sennheisers on and have to say most hi fi shows are worse and we are talking the expensive stuff. We know why as the hotel room is not ideal. All the same it is significant. That Nokia far out performs the iPhone I don't use on anything. I realized the other day I text without looking. The buttons are superior to my TV remotes that last a year. The Nokia even has a half descent camera. It was sold off half price as no one wants Nokia. Wake up people what your friends think isn't the criteria. Also the Nokia fits in the small jeans pocket. Cars keys, phone, wallet, specs. That's me ready for the world.
The sad thing is my statement about MP3 doesn't hold up for these stations from around the world. All the same it is the tissue thin problem rather than harshness. Obviously what I call MP3 used in TV is a better standard. Venice Radio uses the same bit rate and sounds better. Perhaps the original quality at some stations is lower and is still the problem. USA niche broadcasts were the worst as they were playing material that needed care. Romania FM was a giggle, like a fairground.
George
Nigel, most of the time is not the mp3 to blame. It is the processing they do (limiters, bass boost, volume normalisation ect).
If you listen to classical music, try this station: ????? ????????? live | ??? ???????? ?????????? ???????? ??? ?????????
George
Nigel, most of the time is not the mp3 to blame. It is the processing they do (limiters, bass boost, volume normalisation ect).
If you listen to classical music, try this station: ????? ????????? live | ??? ???????? ?????????? ???????? ??? ?????????
George
Poor ol' compression cops another whack, 
... it's going to go away in the end, because there will be enough storage and bandwidth to mean there's no need for it anymore ... and, people still don't get it: MP3 and the like sound bad so much of the time because a) the compression rate is far too severe, or b) the encoding was done in a crappy, thoughtless way, but mainly c) the quality is often severely degraded at the time of playback because the processing to decode the track creates another level of interference to the audio electronics.
From my own experiments, uncompressing beforehand, and even upsampling 'restores' decent quality ... a decade ago, my first experience of MP3 sound was a CD burnt with WAV files, derived from MP3 source. I didn't realise this until after listening a bit, and thought, isn't MP3 supposed to sound "bad"?? Even with close listening I didn't really have problems with the sound, back then - so now I don't have the normal prejudices ...
... it's going to go away in the end, because there will be enough storage and bandwidth to mean there's no need for it anymore ... and, people still don't get it: MP3 and the like sound bad so much of the time because a) the compression rate is far too severe, or b) the encoding was done in a crappy, thoughtless way, but mainly c) the quality is often severely degraded at the time of playback because the processing to decode the track creates another level of interference to the audio electronics. From my own experiments, uncompressing beforehand, and even upsampling 'restores' decent quality ... a decade ago, my first experience of MP3 sound was a CD burnt with WAV files, derived from MP3 source. I didn't realise this until after listening a bit, and thought, isn't MP3 supposed to sound "bad"?? Even with close listening I didn't really have problems with the sound, back then - so now I don't have the normal prejudices ...
When we have 16 terabyte SD cards everyone will be listening to DSD-Wide.
"just because"
That's what I have thought for some time now. Radio Venice Classical is great so it can be done. I heard a bit of quantization. I suspect that was because it just avoided buffering? If so that's not MP3 doing that.
Yeah, it was from the time Marantz was designed in USA. The last series to be so made was the 1978-1980 series, after that they progressively became just another Japanese company.
You just take good care of it John, they are awful hard to come by these days. And none too cheap, either.
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