[Ryokan]

Hmm School . Had to dig deep for WOW, as the only one I could think of readily has been taken - Alice Cooper.
Used to listen to Steely Dan a lot when younger, mostly into hard rock and stuff but for some reason I took a shine to them, they wrote interesting lyrics and I always think they sound sinister and very knowledgeable guys.

Any way all I can come up with, bit of a scary one:

 

[GearMe]

WOW

 

[Midgetguy]

I've returned from lurking! But only very briefly

It's to say that I've gotten my Drop THX Pandas! I don't have much sound impression right now aside from a quite narrow soundstage IMO, probably because the earcups have absolutely no depth. But they're pretty comfortable; headband could use a bit more padding though, but it's still not all that uncomfortable. I'm so super happy about the control scheme personally. The control nubbin is great! Anyway, I'll return to the shadows and maybe I'll come back again at some point with actual impressions.

 

[jerick70]

I've returned from lurking! But only very briefly

It's to say that I've gotten my Drop THX Pandas! I don't have much sound impression right now aside from a quite narrow soundstage IMO, probably because the earcups have absolutely no depth. But they're pretty comfortable; headband could use a bit more padding though, but it's still not all that uncomfortable. I'm so super happy about the control scheme personally. The control nubbin is great! Anyway, I'll return to the shadows and maybe I'll come back again at some point with actual impressions.

I look forward to your thoughts on these. I've been watching these on massdrop and have been interested.

 

[Layman1]

Hi Loungers, happy Sunday

Bought some FLAC versions of some Paul Young albums. Just had a fondness for these old 80's songs that I hadn't heard in ages.
The funny thing is that, as I often find, listening to 'familiar' songs in FLAC or even more hi-res audio versions with hi-res audio equipment, I suddenly notice loads of details that I never noticed before.
Even things like instruments, backing vocals and so on. I don't know if my audio equipment was just so bad in the past, or maybe I just wasn't paying attention enough?

Good audio gear tends to make me focus on the music, which is a very good thing in my opinion

Anyway, listening to these two Paul Young tracks, I noticed how good the backing band and their music was. Some very subtle but nice guitar riffing at 41 seconds in, piano and drums all on point etc.
But what really impressed me was the bass playing. There's a tendency to kind of dismiss 80's pop as 'synthesised music', but this kind of 'blue eyed soul' music (Deacon Blue being another good example) can sound terrific and have loads of soul in the instruments and vocals.

When I heard the bass lines on these two songs, I was hugely impressed. Kind of solo-ing all over his own bass rhythm, little licks and flourishes; this is world-class stuff, just hidden away (for me at least) on some 80's pop songs I'd never given a great deal of attention to:

First up, Every Time You Go Away, a kind of extended full album version, mixed to some live video, which is nice as you can see the bassist doing his thing, although unfortunately the live performance part ends before he starts doing a bit more soloing on the extended version.


Next, Wherever I Lay My Hat, HQ 1985 LP version:


A bit of quick searching turned up some more info on the bass player, Pino Palladino:
"Giuseppe Henry "Pino" Palladino (born 17 October 1957) is a Welsh musician, songwriter, and record producer.
A prolific session bassist, he has played bass for acts such as The Who, The John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, Jeff Beck, D'Angelo and The Power Station, plus live tours with Eric Clapton, Simon & Garfunkel and JJ Cale".
Quite an eclectic CV!
He played fretless bass on these Paul Young tracks, which got me (again) to wondering why people choose fretless bass, and how it sounds different from regular bass (I assume that's the answer to my first question lol).
Anyone got any good explanations and/or comparison examples?
Are any of you bass players or otherwise good musicians?

 

[grs8]

@Layman1 https://bassisthq.com/fretless-bass-guitar/
A real good explanation imho.

 

[groucho69]

RIP Toots Hibbert

 

[DBaldock9]

Here's something curious, that's just started happening to my PC -

My Linux PC has a Radeon R9 Fury X video card (still deciding on whether to get a Radeon RX 5700 XT, or wait on the next top-of-the-line Radeon).
I've got 2x Dell 24" monitors, one mounted above the other.
Recently, the top monitor has had video tearing near the top-left corner - but only when the Chrome browser is being displayed.
When other programs are "on top", the video displays just fine.
It almost seems like Chrome is using its own Linux video driver.

 

[Layman1]

@Layman1 https://bassisthq.com/fretless-bass-guitar/
A real good explanation imho.

Answered all my questions, many thanks!

 

[mbwilson111]

WOW:

Those are all selections that Tom might have made. He loved all of those bands.

I have been wanting to do mine for several days now but I keep losing my internet connection... since Thursday. I was without it for several hours at a time each day. Sometimes it would reconnect for a minute... sometimes an hour. When this happens I feel panicky and even more isolated that ever. Tom needs to be here to help me with things like this. I did call the service provider and the guy said it could be 5 to 8 business days. What??? This happened on my birthday in July and that time it was fixed the next day... but it was the bereavement team that I had called because I needed to get the details put into my name as well as reporting the fault. They were so helpful and sympathetic and made it a priority.

Anyway it was out when I went to bed last night but back again this morning. Same thing happened yesterday and at noon it went out for the rest of the day and back again for an hour in the evening. Hope today will be better. I had better hurry and finish this while I can.

My choices for Word of the Week.... WOW are:

Belle and Sebastian - We Rule The School (BBC Sessions version) 1996 Mark Radcliffe session



and... I always have loved Warren Zevon... this one is a real oldie..... 40 years ago!!! It wasn't an oldie then.

Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School

 

[Ryokan]

Warren Zevon

The only Warren Zevon song I know is Werewolves of London, it used to get played on the radio quite a bit.


Just realised if I copy and past some words in a post and hit 'quote' only those actual words appear, kinda cool

 

[Midgetguy]

Here's something curious, that's just started happening to my PC -

My Linux PC has a Radeon R9 Fury X video card (still deciding on whether to get a Radeon RX 5700 XT, or wait on the next top-of-the-line Radeon).
I've got 2x Dell 24" monitors, one mounted above the other.
Recently, the top monitor has had video tearing near the top-left corner - but only when the Chrome browser is being displayed.
When other programs are "on top", the video displays just fine.
It almost seems like Chrome is using its own Linux video driver.

Huh, that's weird behavior. But you've learned something I guess? I would personally wait for the RX6000 series. NVidia's unveiled their next lineup already, I'm expecting AMD to do theirs maybe around January with availability in the summer. But who am I to talk? I get a new GPU every other generation so I moved off my 980Ti almost a year ago to a 2080Ti. And I'm going to sit on that until at least whatever is getting made next year. As tempting as this new high-end 30-series is, the price for the top model is equally high. And I'm kinda hoping that in about a year and a bit, NVidia will be putting out yet another stupidly powerful card that I will buy haha. Meanwhile, you're still on a card from the same gen as my old 980Ti so I wouldn't blame you for buying a new card right now.

 

[seanwee]

Huh, that's weird behavior. But you've learned something I guess? I would personally wait for the RX6000 series. NVidia's unveiled their next lineup already, I'm expecting AMD to do theirs maybe around January with availability in the summer. But who am I to talk? I get a new GPU every other generation so I moved off my 980Ti almost a year ago to a 2080Ti. And I'm going to sit on that until at least whatever is getting made next year. As tempting as this new high-end 30-series is, the price for the top model is equally high. And I'm kinda hoping that in about a year and a bit, NVidia will be putting out yet another stupidly powerful card that I will buy haha. Meanwhile, you're still on a card from the same gen as my old 980Ti so I wouldn't blame you for buying a new card right now.

I have a 2080 myself and I'm waiting for the really big leap in 2022 for a full overhaul. Amd ryzen 5000 on 5nm EUV, Nvidia RTX 4000/RNDA4, ddr5 and PCI-E 5.0

 

[DBaldock9]

Huh, that's weird behavior. But you've learned something I guess? I would personally wait for the RX6000 series. NVidia's unveiled their next lineup already, I'm expecting AMD to do theirs maybe around January with availability in the summer. But who am I to talk? I get a new GPU every other generation so I moved off my 980Ti almost a year ago to a 2080Ti. And I'm going to sit on that until at least whatever is getting made next year. As tempting as this new high-end 30-series is, the price for the top model is equally high. And I'm kinda hoping that in about a year and a bit, NVidia will be putting out yet another stupidly powerful card that I will buy haha. Meanwhile, you're still on a card from the same gen as my old 980Ti so I wouldn't blame you for buying a new card right now.

I have a 2080 myself and I'm waiting for the really big leap in 2022 for a full overhaul. Amd ryzen 5000 on 5nm EUV, Nvidia RTX 4000/RNDA4, ddr5 and PCI-E 5.0

I bought a laptop in the Summer of 2019 - that has a Core i7 6-Core CPU (faster than my i7-3930K home PC), and a RTX 2070, as well as the built-in Intel video.
.
For my home PC(s), I did get a pair of used 1080Ti cards, earlier this year. Planning to use one for Virtual Machines on the PC, and the Radeon is used for the main Linux OS.

 

[seanwee]

I'm planning to get into VR as well. Just waiting for Samsung to announce their new headset.