If you're on the Japanese coast or on the nearby mainland coast, head for high ground!   A 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Japan's northeastern Honshu Island Friday. Japan has issued a six-meter tsunami warning and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said a tsunami warning was in...

I got the new Blind Guardian album, At the Edge of Time, on vinyl - a 2LP pic disc set.  It is an excellent album musically, but it has the worst surface noise I've ever heard on any vinyl record.  During the quiet parts it sounds as if a wind is blowing during the performance, and it diminishes...

So, what do you do to reduce/eliminate/mitigate background noise in order to enrich your listening experience? Being from the north, I've lived for the last 13 years in various houses with forced-air heating systems. The fan from the furnace drove me nuts, especially since two years ago when...

We have had a lot of intelligent discussions here about climate change, and while there are certainly differing opinions, people have generally kept it civil and I don't believe any of the threads I participated in were locked due to people getting too, um, excited. However, I noticed that the...

Thanks to DavidhunterNYC and via the head-fi Xmas gift exchange in 2008, I've been listening regularly to Mozart's Requiem at work. I'd like to get more classical music, and while I often buy cheap classical records at thrift stores, my home situation (two young kids) makes it nearly impossible...

Hey all, I'm doing some volunteer work and I've been asked to put together a list of schools and what they do to promote Earth-friendly transportation. For example, my alma mater had a mandatory U-Pass, which was included in our student tuition fees and gave every student unlimited access to...

So, I had a seizure at work (thankfully there and not while driving or holding my baby) two weeks ago, and the subsequent CT scan revealed a nice surprise, just in time for Christmas - a lesion in my right frontal lobe. It's either a cavernous angioma or an arteriovenous malformation, about 1cm...

I live and associate with a lot of high-risk people, so I'm getting it as soon as I can. How about y'all?

Not trying to start another p!$$ing contest about whether climate change is real, anthropogenic, or not, but this is a very well done and downright scary radio documentary about climate change and geopolitics from the CBC Radio show Ideas. I'm streaming it right now. CBC Radio | Ideas |...

Can anyone comment on the sound quality of this album, in either format? I prefer vinyl to CD in general, but some vinyl releases have disappointed me in the past.

James Lovelock was interviewed on The Current on CBC Radio this morning. While I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, I always find his ideas interesting and they make me think about things in a way different from usual. Listen to the interview here (scroll to part 2): CBC Radio |...

I'm ready to snap from it. I've been a 3-hour drive away from home with my wife and son for the last two weeks while we wait for her to go into labour - she's due this Thursday and the baby is sitting breech (head up). A C-section (the standard delivery method for breech babies in rural areas)...

Gizmodo - Why We Need Audiophiles - Audiophiles There, let's all pat ourselves on the back now. Edit: Ooops! Thanks Drag0n. Everyone disregard this thread and join the party in the one linked below.

Sennheiser HD600 headphones w/Toshiba mp3 and amp Wish I could!

I think it is the mark of a good song if it can draw you into a genre that you don't ordinarily enjoy. Here is my most recent: Mary the Inventor, by Ash Koley YouTube - Ash Koley Mary The Inventor I normally listen to metal and bluegrass. Let's hear yours!

Wow, listen to this podcast: Past Podcasts | Podcasts | CBC Radio Q: The Podcast - Billy Bob Thornton UNCUT Billy Bob Thornton and his band, The Boxmasters Right click to Download Q: The Podcast - Billy Bob Thornton UNCUT [mp3 file: runs 18:39] Is he on drugs, or just an...

I've been thoroughly enjoying this music for many months now, and I thought I'd share with y'all. Record of the Week Club Essentially, a producer in Winnipeg by the name of Mike Petkau got a grant to record a song every Wednesday for sixteen weeks over the summer of 2008. Each Wednesday, a...

Action Video Games Improve Vision, New Research Shows The ability to discern slight differences in shades of gray has long been thought to be an attribute of the human visual system that cannot be improved. But Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of...

My son is 16 months old, and he loves being read to. Books with rhymes and animals are popular, and trucks as well of course. He is a big fan of Sandra Boynton and Eric Carle, some Dr. Seuss, and others I can't recall off the top of my head. So what books should we read next? What were your...

I've read numerous comments over time that say there's no point in buying a vinyl record instead of a CD if it was recorded digitally in the studio, because the digital damage has been done, and cannot be undone by fully analogue playback. I admit that I don't know everything about this, but I...

One of the greatest scientists the world has ever known turns 200 today. His work on natural selection remains the most important unifying theory of all the life sciences, 150 years after it was published. Happy birthday, C-Diddy!

I'm the sole bread-winner in my family. My wife takes care of our one year-old, and we have a new baby coming in May. We're not what you would call "poor", but money is always tight, and there are always things to buy that are vastly more important than audio gear. The main problem is that...

I think it started last week but I'm not sure. It's my work computer, and my data is all stored on a network, so no worries there. However, I've got a whole crapload of things to do this week, and if I have to spend 75% of a day reinstalling Windows and all my programs on a new hard drive, it's...

I've been a big fan of folk metal ever since I first listened to Finntroll. My favourite groups are Finntroll, Korpiklaani, Ensiferum, Turisas, and Eluveitie. I also enjoy Manegarm, Equilibrium, and Mago De Oz, among many others. Most of the groups I've heard tend to have harsh death-style...

Some of my favourite memories are of concerts where I did not know much or any of the performers' music going in, and where I pledged to buy their entire catalog on my way out. The most striking example of this would be the Sam Bush Band, whom I first saw in 2002 at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I...