Young HiFi dot com

Just a few minutes ago I found a pretty nice music video and I decided to share it with you guys. It’s the official music video for the song “Golden Cage” by The Whitest Boy Alive. It was made by Mauro Vecchi.

It showcases some of the most famous optical illusions, which in my opinion, is a pretty clever approach and unique way of making a music video. Anyway, see for yourselves… Continue Reading »

Ugh! My website and forum seem to be more dead than alive lately… But, alas, that’s how the wheel turns… Now then…

ATTENTION, ATTENTION, TIME FOR A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!

I’d like to point-out something really important for both you and me. I really appreciate every comment that I get from you people. I’m the kind of guy who likes to get in touch with people who have problems, some doubts or simply are knowledgeable. That’s why often, instead of replying to your inquiries here as a reply-comment, I write an e-mail reply to you. BUT! Most of you seem to be afraid of typing in your real e-mail address. Why? Probably most of you are scared of spam-bots or other such “web monstrosities”…

Well then let me assure you, right from the start of this here blog I made certain that spammers won’t get to your e-mail addresses. How? It’s simple. Nobody (and no “thing”), but me, the site administrator, can see your e-mail addresses which you leave in the comment fields. The addresses are stored in the blog’s comment database and not somewhere directly on the website, so the spam robots aren’t able to find them.

So to sum things up, I’m not forcing anybody to write your real e-mail address, but if you’d like to get some direct feedback from me (especially when you’re in need of help) then please don’t be afraid to use your real address. That’s all. Thanks in advance!

This is just a short rant in which I’d like to say what I think about the pricing policies of guys who sell audio equipment online here in Poland.

Oh and yes, it’s a rather negative rant and it kinda involves national economics, so don’t say that I didn’t warn you… Continue Reading »

Yesterday, I’ve decided to join the last.fm band wagon. I’m still wondering why it took me so long to do this. I mean, it’s been out there for like a year or so (maybe more, I really don’t know) and I’ve always thought of last.fm users as the same bunch from the myspace craze. I guess I was wrong thinking  like that, eh?  I’m glad that I’ve decided  to give  it a try… Continue Reading »

This college term has been a pretty tough one. I seriously didn’t expect this. Tests, projects, revisions and everything and even if there was a rather “free day”, I was so pumped-out after spending 6-8 hours on campus that I could only crash down on my trusty bed. Funny enough though, my term hasn’t ended entirely yet, I still have one exam ahead of me, scheduled on Tuesday. After that, it’s summer holiday time! And no, I’m not planning any long-time vacations, I’ll be spending most of my time at home with my family, which of course doesn’t mean that I won’t have any time to write on the blog. Expect the old “once or twice a week” posting routine to come back. Continue Reading »

Well, it’s been a busy month for me (college stuff of course), but that really isn’t an excuse as to why I haven’t been posting (again…), but (thankfully) I also can’t say that I wasn’t doing anything audio related during that time.

So what the hell was I doing? Well, for starters I finally got a turntable here in Warsaw, so I’m back on the old vinyl collecting band wagon (yay!). One can also say that I did a lot of audio research, for instance I’ve found out a great recipe for an inexpensive, but very effective vinyl record cleaning fluid. Also, the turntable that I bought had an old cartridge on it so I bought a new one and replaced it (for the first time on my own). I’ve also had to re-adjust the table, so now I’m on the fresh with how it should be done (and not just recalling it how I did it several months ago back home). This is just a taste of the material that I’ll be showcasing here on the blog real soon.

So, tomorrow I’ll be leaving Warsaw for Easter and I plan to be back here on Wednesday. The thing is that I’m not going straight home to Lebork, but to Wrzesnia, a little town in central-western Poland (the so called “Greater Poland” region), because I’ll be spending the holiday at my grandparents’ place this year. That’s why don’t expect any input from me till next week.

In other news, it would sure be great to own a digital camera… I’ve skimmed through all the posts that I wrote here and they surely look bleak without photos… (well one of the Vinyl Collecting 101 posts has some, but they didn’t come from me). I don’t want anything fancy, just something with which I could do some snapshots of my HiFi gear, records and anything which I’d deem useful to show you guys. Problem is that I don’t know much about digital cameras, so I’m open for tips and recommendations regarding this matter.

Well, I still have some packing to do, my train leaves at 10 a.m. so I can’t stay up late either. Happy Easter to all of you!

PS: The title for today’s post comes from a Steppenwolf song :)

As promised, it’s finally time that I start writing a new audio guide series. The previous one was about collecting vinyl records, now it’s time for the record players, i.e. turntables.

Every turntable consists of a base, a motor, a platter with a spindle, signal cables, a tonearm and a cartridge with a needle. They can also be full of additional useful mechanisms and control functions. There are also different methods of operating a turntable. The components of a turntable also require maintenance and sometimes even replacement. The goal behind this guide series is to showcase and explain all the different aspects of owning, using and keeping our turntable (and at the same time our vinyl records) in best shape.

In this part I’ll focus on explaining all the different types of turntables and turntable drives…
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20 days since the last update! That’s too much. Thankfully, I’m finally over my first term exams (passed all of them, of course) and now the second term starts, which implies that I’ll have more time for audio stuff again. I can assure you that my next post will start the turntable guide series (finally!). Stay tuned for increased post frequency!

As for recent blog-related stuff, I’ve updated the blog software to the newest version, so it should run a bit more smoother now. I’ve also added the “Guides” page, where you can find direct links to all the guide posts that I wrote. You can also think of it as a “featured posts” page.

The recently established forum is slowly becoming more popular (at the time of writing, it’s 6 members strong out of which 3 members are most active). I wonder when will it hit the 10 member milestone…

Back when I wrote my previous post, I thought that the forum idea would come after the personal log one. After giving it a lot of thought, I decided that the forum is more important…
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Hi gang, Wojtek here (who else?). I’ve been very busy lately (and frankly, I still am) by doing college stuff, so I didn’t have any time to spend on the blog. I’ve managed to pass all the tests, but I still have 3 exams ahead of me.

I promise I’ll get back to some writing right after the examination session.

Furthermore, I’ve decided to slightly divide my blog. As you probably know, I sometimes also post strictly personal posts, sometimes not even related to audio (just like this one here) and I’m not too comfortable with that, because I want this blog to be only about my audio experiences and not all my personal experiences…

That’s why I decided that when I’ll have some more free time on my hands, I’m going to put up a personal blog next to this one. I dunno if I’ll be also using the Wordpress platform for that purpose, but the main idea is to have a place where I can post about stuff completely unrelated to audio, so to not clutter up the content you may find here.

There’s also an idea of starting a “Young HiFi” forum, a discussion board where people who are new to the whole HiFi biz or any other audio hobby have some questions. I’ve noticed that most popular audio forums out there don’t have a “newbie corner” and sometimes the new guy gets ignored or laughed at just because he’s not one of the “elite”…

That’s it for now, tell me what you think about the forum idea, because maybe I’m wrong and such a place isn’t even needed in the big WWW :). I’ll keep you posted when something comes up…