Young HiFi dot com

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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It seems that as of late I can’t write anything at normal hours, either I write a post early in the morning or late at night. It’s kinda crazy. Anyway, things are starting to heat-up at college (got a test on linear algebra on Monday and discrete mathematics on Wednesday), so I’ll be pretty much occupied with hitting the books on the weekend, so I can’t promise anything about my posting frequency in the nearest future. That being said, let’s get down to tonight’s business…
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Last time was a “bedtime” post, so this time it’ll be a “good morning” post! It’s kinda weird actually, it’s still dark outside and I rarely get out of bed at such an hour if I don’t have anything planned for the morning, even more so on a Saturday!

This week I finally got a pair of loudspeakers for my receiver. I’ve also done some cable huntin’ in Warsaw. Thought it would be easy in such a big city. I never thought that I’d start to despise the city street planning afterwards…
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OK, it’s almost 2 am now and I’m finally back in Warsaw, in front of my computer. Actually, I came back as I planned before, meaning that I arrived in Warsaw on Thursday, 28th December. Why haven’t I written anything since then? The answer is that I was too busy and too tired to touch the blog at all. I had to have some good old fashioned relaxation after Christmas (a bit funny, isn’t it?) and after that preparations for New Year’s Eve were afoot and so on. Anyway, it’s easy to justify yourself for lack of time, right? That’s why I’d like apologize to any returning visitors of my blog for being absent for the past one and a half week. Now what happened exactly during that time …
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This is the last part of the “Vinyl records: Collecting 101″ post series. Future vinyl-related topics will most probably be discussed only in singular posts.

The last thing I’d like to talk about is the “hardcore” aspect of vinyl collecting, namely finding vinyl oddities/very rare albums and releases which never made it to the digital-era music market…
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You can’t imagine how many times I’ve tried to start this next part. I don’t know why, but I guess I’ve been suffering from “writer’s block” again. Anyway…

Today we’ll concentrate on taking care of our record collection…
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My friend Robert Benson (he runs the www.collectingvinylrecords.com website), has sent me an interesting link yesterday.

It’s an article from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, titled “Everything Louder Than Everything Else”. Here’s a short review:

It’s author, Joe Gross, makes a very elaborate study on modern record loudness levels and tries to answer the question as to how and why does today’s popular music can be exhausting to us, the listeners.

Joe touches the subject on both sides: from the music enthusiast’s and from the sound engineer’s (a.k.a. “the expert’s”) point of view.

Read on for some interesting excerpts from the mentioned article…
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Now this news is suprising, funny & pretty extraordinary. Apparently, some serious HiFi enthusiasts praise the old 1st generation Sony Playstation gaming console as a high quality CD player !

The people who tried to experiment a little with the console say that the CD transports may not be worth much, but it turns out that Sony put a pretty high-class DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) in the launch-edition (the very first model) of the old Playstation…
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Finally, the media start to notice the most significant problem of portable music media popularity: the omnipresent compromise in sound quality.

What does it mean ? It’s very simple actually. Just think logically: how can a small iPod surpass or even be equal in sound reproduction quality to, let’s say a home theater system ? The stratling thing is, most youngsters think that portable equipment really sounds THE SAME or if not then it can’t be such a big diff…

In my opinion, such a way of thinking about audio doesn’t even need a commentary, so let’s leave it at that (I wouldn’t want to make new enemies ;)).

Anyway, check the scoop out for yourself by reading this news article:
“Thousands of songs in your pocket: An audiophile’s nightmare?”

Also, the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) just recently started a campaign called “The Great Audio Experience“. It’s main goal is to popularize great sounding audio devices and it’s especially dedicated to the younger generation. It even got support from the band 3 Doors Down. You can check it out at the GAE’s official website.