Classical Music Mayhem!!

I've gotta say, that's an impressive setup, Feanor! Looks like you could take out a wall with those things turned up full-blast!

By the way, I like the Terra Cotta Army dwelling on your top shelf.

Thanks, SA. It's not really a "high-end" setup -- no £4000 components here. Still, it offers wonderful resolution and transparency for the money. I really don't listen at very high volumes however; my average listen level, crescendos aside, is under 70 dB.

The Terra Cotta Army figures were a gift from my son from his trip to China.

I'm impressed with all that vinyl on the bottom shelf. I have some recordings that sound better that way.

I'm sure if I had speakers like that, Elliott Carter would start to make sense.

Lots of vinyl has a "warmer" sound to it than digital music. I think a great deal of that has to do with the way music is recorded now. Back then they used less mics and picked up more ambience from the recording studio or hall and it worked better I think.

Yes, I think it has most to do with the recording techniques that have become better attuned to the medium. There have been technical improvements too, however, that pertain to both recording and playback.

The row of LPs I picture is mainly for show. I hardly ever play any of it, nor physically CDs for that matter, since most of my listening is computer playback. However my wife likes the look of the row of vinyl so there it stays!

That makes sense. What I didn't like about LPs was, each time I played one, I was contributing to its eventual demise. Even CDs can get scratched. If I weren't so lazy about such things, I'd upload my most-played CDs onto a hard drive or thumb drive.

What's a "thumb drive"?

A flash drive. Sorry.



I have a thumb drive port in my car CD player, which is a nice feature.

It is strange how they are selling cars these days (at least here with UK TV ads) on the basis of having Ipod/bluetooth facilities. This is preposterous when you think about it, but then Ipod owners deserve no better.

Yeah, Ipod capability doesn't have much to do with the actual performance of a car.

In my case, it's kind of funny; I bought a 1996 Toyota Camry [I refuse to pay $20,000 for a car] but insisted on a CD player, so they threw one in for the deal. So I have a low-tech car, but like they say in Nashville, there ain't nothing wrong with the radio.

Well I generally agree with you about iPod users, but I happen to own one because it's the only large capacity mp3 player on the market.

I have the 120 gb iPod classic and right now it has 107.89 gb worth of music. If the Zune came in a large capacity format I'd snap that up in heartbeat, but alas, it does not.

Well if you had a WMA compatible player you wouldn't need so many gigs! I have a 20 gig Samsung and my whole A-List collection takes up only 12.5 gigs (8,616 tracks) in WMA64 format.