CarlSeibert

Anybody else having trouble getting the new MOG app to work? It does a wonderful job of navigating my MOG favorites. It just won't actually play anything. Returns an error that says it couldn't open the file.

This guy was on NPR this morning. Interesting. http://mog.com/m/track/59072755

Excellent! I'll grab it as soon as I get home.

OK. Cheery post. Went to a bar association luncheon that featured the novelist Michael Connelly being interviewed by Jonathon King (another great mystery writer and former co-worker) It was a chance to feel decent about this profession for a couple hours. The backstory is that our attorney is the president of the local bar assoc. She works out of her car, like Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer. Bonnie and I had introduced her to Michael's books and then to Michael. She somehow talked him into doing this lawyer lunch gig.

This scares me a little. Reminds me of a story. (What doesn't?) Keep us informed. i hope he turns up in good shape and soon.

Wow. First off, thanks for reminding me that Debbie Harry was/is a major babe. Who can sing. I'll have to dig out an old LP or two. I liked her back in the day. Half a dozen pages ago, Grawk said that if Tyll can trash a piece of gear in a review, some random schmuck should certainly be able to. Gotta disagree. Tyll CAN trash a piece of gear. He has the expertise and the reputation to say that something blows and back up his point. The best (or worst) some random clown like, say - me - can do is say we didn't like something. Or that we liked part of it and didn't like some other part. It's totally subjective. Some extreme cases aside, you can't really peg something as awful without making some technical judgments. It's way presumptuous for some amateur clown to go there. <rant-within-rant> And it burns me up, BTW, when somebody without the background to do so tries to make technical arguments about subjective observations. I hate that.</end sub-rant> So, I would argue that amateur clowns of good will, honesty and reasonable intelligence will usually write favorable reviews because they really aren't qualified to do otherwise. Then there's motivation. I would imagine the first instinct of the non-douche amateur would-be reviewer would be to tell his or her friends about some wonderful discovery. That's another filter that favors positive reviews.Then ego steps in and said person wants to be the first to break the news, the loudest voice in the chorus and whatnot and before you know it, amateur reviewing becomes a hobby in it's own right. Then it's a slippery slope. People who don't have the inhibitions and responsibilities of the pros find themselves in the payola-filled universe the pros live in without the background to deal with it as well as the pros do. (which isn't quite spotlessly, shall we say). Vendors would have to be nuts not to take advantage. Yeah, if I was really confident in my product, I'd risk a shot with Tyll and the guy from that other magazine. They have credibility and authority. Do well there and you'll move some product. But I'd make damn sure I hedged my bets with some of these amateur guys. For all those reasons, I take all that stuff with a huge grain of salt. While we don't want the noise here on Head-Case, I guess it's fine where it's fine. For me, if Vicki (to unfairly single out one person) says she likes something, that's all she's got to say, because I know she can hear and I know she usually hears more or less the same stuff I do. If a stranger is talking, and he wants to exert more influence than some random voice in a crowd, he better be a stranger with some authority and a track record. Which usually describes a professional. I just read Skylab's review. it all seems reasonable enough, but I just don't trust his ears as far as I can throw them with the rest of his body attached. Tyll and JP are gaga over the 'phones in question.Them, I trust. And Tyll is in fact a professional. So there. It's just an artifact of the internet world that we have hobbyists trying t take the place of pros. It's up to us to apply the grain of salt and it's up to them to realize they're gonna get trashed just like the pros if they take themselves a little too seriously.

This makes sense. I didn't think of it that way, but I did note that I perceived the high frequencies as quiet, detailed and of high quality generally. They just seemed rolled off a bit in comparison to the other DACs. Maybe there's a dithering effect where some noise pumps up the apparent volume and you "hear" more detail as a result. Longer term listening would probably reveal the illusion. And longer term listening would make me like the Neko more and the other DAC less. It also squares with the idea that comparing DAC-to-turntable and/or live music rather than DAC-to-DAC makes sense. I feel so clever now

Did I miss something? How the hell did they end your insurance with no notice? Can they DO that?

Think I'll be sticking to my Vortex Box. My friend Alan literally built his Vortex box out of junk, by the way. He went to the county electronics recycling site and they were nice enough to give him three junked boxes, out of which he built one perfectly functional Vortex Box. All he had to buy was one bare hard drive. I splurged for an off-lease business desktop for $100, which still isn't bad. All I'll have to do is cryo treat it and I'll be golden.

They tweeted today Sing In My Meadow available for $2.99 is.gd/DKTHwc Here's the long form version of that URL http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies/2011/10/20/sing-in-my-meadow-available-for-2-99/ I grabbed the album from their Clubhouse site, but I haven't listened to it yet.

I just (finally) posted my review of the loaner Neko on Wes' forum. The short version is that it's a rave. A qualified rave, but a rave nevertheless. I found the Neko to be unforced and natural sounding, with absolutely wonderful resolution, top to bottom. It sounded very "real". The qualification is that it's a little rolled-off in the top octave and can be a little dark or a little warm. So it won't be a perfect fit in every system or for every taste. The most interesting bit is that it dawned on me, late in the process, that maybe the most important thing about a DAC is not how it compares to other DACs, but how well it gets along with your own turntable. On that score, the Neko looks like a champ. It became instant buddies with the table in my headphone rig. Thanks for the opportunity, Wes! It was a great experience. (Even if it did make me want to buy the thing). Sorry it took so long to get the review written and posted.

Happy Birthday!!! What excellent taste in birth dates you have

Thanks guys! I had a great time. Reduced a little wood to sawdust, Bonnie and I went to a wonderful dinner at Sukko Thai, which, of course, is next door to Radio Active Records, where she treated me to a dance through the newly-arrived used records bin.

Squeezebox integration seems to have taken semi-forever. It'll be a darn handy gadget when it's finally available. There's a fair bit to annoy in both Spotify and Mog, but when I'm looking for new music, I tend to end up spending more time on MOG. Actually playing music I've already bookmarked (in other words after I'm done being frustrated by both outlets' search engines and poor keywording) it seems to be about 99% MOG.

Happy Birthday!!!!!!

I don't think upsampling the file will accomplish anything. Let the playback software or your DAC do that. What's more, you wouldn't want to do that anyway, for archival reasons. You want the file to be recoverable as an exact copy of the original. (Your very valid future-proof concern)

The Jude TV package on HF is pretty damn cool. It's about three uninterrupted minutes of the awesomeness of Thunderpants. (And pretty well produced, too, actually.)

Chris - Happy Birthday Benjamin! Raffy - I'm sorry. That really sucks. Wayne - Nothing wrong with white hair and beard all year 'round..... Al - It's got to be some kind of wide spread (sub) contractor disease. You'd think they'd see people like Steve racking up all the business they can handle by being straightforward and responsible and that would become the fashion. But nooooo.....The contractor for the power company showed up today to replace in my underground service. I came back from bicycling to find one of the chuckleheads fondling the plants in Bonnie's vegetable garden. Then, it transpires that they've not contacted my neighbor to gain access to he private drive, which they need to do the job, despite both the neighbor and I had made it crystal that a polite and timely request would be required to get the gate opened. Otherwise they could pound sand. They acted like it was some sort of injustice when I told them she wasn't kidding. So my house is still powered by a giant extension cord.

It's on Netflix streaming now. Along with Weeds and Archer. I doubt the episodes reach the current season, but it's still pretty convenient. Quality on Netflix streaming is fine for a TV show. (Disclaimer: I don't actually have TV service, so what I know of the quality of TV comes from the air monitors at the office, which isn't exactly the best environment to experience quality entertainment.)

Three pieces of news: Mog now has a free version, ad supported. According to them, you can send links and anybody can play the song, like you could with Lala. This, if true, is a really good thing. Spotify will no longer support PPC Macs. Case lesson in why I think the client software model was a dumb idea. And a pisser, since my old laptop in the den is.... a PPC Mac. Not that I listen to Spotify much anyway. And - drum roll please- Mog introduces, yes, client software for Intel Macs.

Welcome icculus514.

Happy Birthday!

Glad to hear that both your friend and your system are blessed with resilience. When the karma is going in the right direction people and high end gear can survive some serious adversity and come out OK.

Watched FPL guys attach a temporary power drop to my house. It was kind of interesting. They do all the same stuff we do, only it's really big. Butt splices you crimp with an impact hammer thingie (one guy) or compound crimpers with handles two feet long (the other guy), silicone-filled European barrier strips the size of a loaf of bread, heat shrink you shrink with a big-ass blowtorch. When I asked what size wire he was using, the fellow in the little half size manhole in my front yard said "four". He meant four-ought, not four AWG. We had had power sags. I thought maybe it was some of sort of brownout, 'cause it's been pretty hot. Then I noticed that one half of my house was seeing sagging voltages and the other was seeing spiking voltages. Frankly, when I called FPL, it hadn't yet dawned on me that my neutral line was in the process of parting. When I told them I was seeing 100 volts on one side and 130 on then other it got their attention real quick.

Very cool.