[bosiemoncrieff]

The restoration of the Staatsoper, apart from the abysmal sightlines, seems to have been stupendous. All of the facilities sparkle, and the Apollosaal was like a brighter, more tasteful east room of the White House. The singing was excellent, though the bel canto bass had little to no acting ability and was quite stiff throughout. The best singer of the bunch, I think, was either the one who sang something from Elsa in Lohengrin or the one who sang a bunch of Dvorak. The acoustics are likewise very good (I was 10 or 15 feet from the singers, third row back, just off center) though more traditional than in the curvilinear grossesaal. I can't believe they charge €3.50 for a tiny bottle of average-tasting mineralwasser. Bi tches!

Die Nase/The Nose was my introduction to the Komische Oper, which apparently is part of Germany's long history of operetta/musical. It's sort of halfway between cabaret and opera. I will state unequivocally that I don't understand Shostakovich's music and that the apparent parody the libretto was executing was lost on me. If it was a reaction to some conservatism of the time, that era has now closed so firmly to an American viewer (if it was ever open) that the piece is simply not relevant to me as parody.

As for the plot itself, it's absurdist. A man loses his nose, apparently because a barber chops it off, and goes around for 3 acts (just shy of 2 hours, performed without intermission) melodramatically distraught about having lost it. There are tap dancing noses, and soldiers and police and angry wives, but the stakes of the lost nose are so very low, and so much else seems always to be happening, that the piece failed to engage. No one seemed much interested in the plot, and the action stood still for most of the opera.

The music—what can I say? Boulez said: "Well, Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It's like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler." I just don't see what he's up to.

What surprised me most is how generous the audience was. There were so many bows at the end! And all I could think of was "can I push past these thirteen people to get to the aisle and leave?"

 

[wink]

A case of cultural Philistism, perhaps........?

 

[Rensek]

+1 to the mimby love.

I use the same unit at home (2 ch) and at my office (hp), I bring the unit home when I'll use it for extended periods. Can't do DIY without music. I ordered my mimby the same day Jason mentioned sending out coasters. I asked for a couple of coasters to be thrown in with my mimby. I felt extra special when I discovered Two wall warts in the package. Until I get my coaster amp built the second wall wart is powering mimby in 2 channel usage, while the other stays at my office. It's fantastic for both uses. Can't sing its (or Schiits) praises high enough. Call me a fanboy, I don't care.

 

[ScubaMan2017]

+1 to the mimby love.

I use the same unit at home (2 ch) and at my office (hp), I bring the unit home when I'll use it for extended periods. Can't do DIY without music. I ordered my mimby the same day Jason mentioned sending out coasters. I asked for a couple of coasters to be thrown in with my mimby. I felt extra special when I discovered Two wall warts in the package. Until I get my coaster amp built the second wall wart is powering mimby in 2 channel usage, while the other stays at my office. It's fantastic for both uses. Can't sing its (or Schiits) praises high enough. Call me a fanboy, I don't care.

...it's sobering to believe this was how service used to be (well before I was born). Brand loyalty... I'm a fanboy too (and praise Schiit on other forums).

 

[the finisher]

+1 to the mimby love.

I use the same unit at home (2 ch) and at my office (hp), I bring the unit home when I'll use it for extended periods. Can't do DIY without music. I ordered my mimby the same day Jason mentioned sending out coasters. I asked for a couple of coasters to be thrown in with my mimby. I felt extra special when I discovered Two wall warts in the package. Until I get my coaster amp built the second wall wart is powering mimby in 2 channel usage, while the other stays at my office. It's fantastic for both uses. Can't sing its (or Schiits) praises high enough. Call me a fanboy, I don't care.

Ya me too, they gave me a free DAC, I ordered my Jot amp only when they switched the 4490 dac to the new board, guess they would not sell the old ones so Happy customer. I actually use it when Yggy's is in my living room for basic PC sound, 2 sets of cables for Yggy.

 

[Derrick Swart]

Here a compliment to Mike Moffat:
See below

 

[Derrick Swart]

True story. My friend uses my gift in his studio-B and he told me that it keeps up with his apogee dac in studio A. Gift was a fulla2, purpose of the tool was that he could do better work at home while creating his thing on his macbook. He does not work like that, he needs the quality difference. So great implementation Mike and i confirm that for playback on my hd 6xx the fulla2 gives lovely sounds

 

[Timster]

The Hario manual grinder is quite good. Not sure whether I'm allowed to post a link, but if you search for Hario manual coffee grinder it will come right up. They seem to have several versions, but we've been happy with the version that is about $40 on Amazon.

I have one of these, and it travels with me, along with an Aeropress and Lavatools thermometer (so I can use water that has cooled sufficiently fro boiling to not burn the coffee)
The grinder is great!

 

[Timster]

As for a press vs dripper, I was considering the Aeropress. The thing that may turn me off about a traditional French Press, is coffee grunds in the coffee. I've read reports that this can be an issue. I don't think it is that way with Aeropress, however.

It's not if you use the paper filters for the Aeropress. However you can buy re-useable stainless filters with differing hole sizes, some of which allow a small amount of grind through to the cup.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Enjoying a nice Sudden Coffee! as I make my oatmeal here in Moabit. Last night's sinfoniekonzert at the Komische Oper was very fun. There was no maestro, so the orchestra began when the konzertmeisterin indicated the downbeat. Daniel Hope was on the violin and something something was on piano. Hope was kind of gross for the Mozart double concerto reconstruction, but the pianist was excellent for that and for PC #23 (you all know the slow movement), and Hope more than redeemed himself in the two twentieth century concerti after the intermission. My own favorite part was the intermezzo by Franz Schreker, an under appreciated composer who fell into disfavor in the late 20s and early 30s as the Nazis rose to power, dying in early 1934 at 56. Once hailed as the future of opera and an equal to Richard Strauss, he is now almost entirely forgotten. His opera Die Gezeichneten was magnificent in Köln last summer. His musical palette is post-Romantic and harmonically innovative and experimental without being atonal or insistently dissonant. I hope the Renaissance he currently enjoys continues; the music is worth it.

Seeing Rossini at the Deutsche Oper tonight. I'm already steeling myself for the bad acoustics.

 

[Baldr]

So this post is about a two subsets of multibit D/A converters. The first would be those (like Schiit) who utilize integrated circuit DAC chips, and the second would be discrete DACs made from discrete resistors, switches, and logic audio data interfaces. All too frequently in audio circles there are polarizing opinions stated (electrostatic headphones suck, solid state amps sound like ass, etc, etc) which represent single viewpoints over complex subjects. The fact is that there is no overreaching engineering argument in favor of either which multibit DAC type one uses. He who implements his preferred solution best wins. Notice I restrict this choice to multibit designs which I prefer for their sound. My position of delta sigma has not changed; they are inexpensive and preferable and competitive for lower cost designs. If one’s goal is to reproduce music in a manner where realism can thrill the listener, well, hey, multibit is the only choice - hands down.

I begin by mentioning that this is not intended to be a grad school discussion of digital signal processing applied math. I seek more to make this essentially accurate to the point that no one will fall asleep. On the topic of math let me get that over with first, so here we go: Digital audio is a series of regular interval (sample rate – like 44.1K samples per second) numerical representation of audio information. A snapsot, if you will. Now acoustical information tends to be positive and negative in nature. Meaning it deviates from a center. This center tends to be important because the music spends much of its time traveling through zero, either from positive to negative, or the other way around. These are referred to as zero crossings. Since music at its lowest level is closest to the zero, a small error here can have an ever larger bad impact on reproduced music as it reduces in volume. That said, there are several ways to format the numbers used in D/A converters. The most popular is two’s compliment which is almost universally used in digital audio. Two’s compliment has a number which represents all the minus and all the plus, and zero. The ubiquity of two’s compliment is because through zero (audio silence) it climbs from -2 to -1 to zero to +1 to +2, with the point being that there is only one value for zero (and vice versa). Now this is as expected that counting naturally should be. The disadvantage of two’s compliment is that the numbers for +1 and -1 are distant numerically, making the DAC chip naturally wanting to glitch as it crosses zero, which it does a lot. That was the biggest design problem (solved) with the Yggy and it was a head-scratcher.

With one’s compliment aka sign magnitude (the audio minority) you take one bit of your 16 or 24 and call it a sign bit setting it one way for plus and the other for minus. This means that if you count as above, you get -2, -1, - zero, + zero, +1, +2. This counter-intuitive; sorta unnatural like trying to cohabit in happy harmony with chickens. The workaround is you have to do math on every sample to add or subtract one to each minus or plus sample. The other problem is that you need a bit to set the plus or minus sign; your 16 bit DAC just became a 15 bit; or your 20 bit a 19 bit. Now those who implement sign magnitude design DACs are generally mathematically sophisticated so they can do the math (which does have quite a bit of overhead). Quite essential, though, to get the chicken schiit out of the house in the happy harmony above. Now, in all fairness, sign-magnitude adherents can laugh at all of us two’s compliment for all of our effort to get rid of zero crossing problems.

Now I shall address the discrete vs. monolithic (integrated circuit) DAC. Why do I use monolithics? Quite simple; it is because I can provide a much higher value scalable multibit solution than I can with discrete DACs. Now DACs have two critical sections – the digital section which routes the proper bits to the proper switches – the switches which switch the appropriate resistor in the network. There is also an electronic section which interfaces the switched resistor to the outside world which has little effect on the accuracy of the DAC if properly designed for the network. The tolerance of the resistor and its value shift with temperature are critical to the parts per million in a 20 bit system. Here are some advantages of monolithic DACs. The ladder/R2R resistors are properly designed/trimmed for their bit width, providing greater accuracy than some random purchase of resistors and switches in discrete DACs. Only in a monolith are all resistors are on the same die so their temperature variations track, resistor to resistor. This all contributes to the value metric favoring monolithic DACs mentioned above.

Does this say it is difficult/impossible to build a proper discrete DAC? No, it is more like making sure all of your 20 bit DACs in production are just that; in Singapore, Alaska in winter, or Key West. There could be nothing worse than making production quantity 20 bit DACs until you realize some are 12,15, or 21. It is more like building a highly tolerance precise, labor intensive, parts matching, temperature controlled DAC which would be difficult to exactly duplicate, sample to sample. Am I ever going to build it? Who knows? I have thought about it since the 1980s. If I were to do so, I would not use either one’s (sign magnitude) or two’s compliment. I would use an old coding designed to be used on polar co-ordinates which I feel would be the absolute best to decode music. I would put it in a temperature controlled oven and agonize over how to solve the switch variation problem. It is a bucket list item for me. I know I could make two the same. But two thousand? Probably not. Maybe I could learn.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

The schiitr would be a great place for prototypes and other incomplete, but interesting, ideas.

 

[wink]

Probably not. Maybe I could learn.

So, get to learning before you get too old to learn new tricks........

 

[ScubaMan2017]

The schiitr would be a great place for prototypes and other incomplete, but interesting, ideas.

It might even reduce the number of prospective users who take their shoe and bang it angrily on the Schiit’s virtual order desk (how DARE you back-order my xyz). No?

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

At the konzerthaus Berlin for Mozart pc23 and pastoral symphony. Then Orfeo ed Euridice in 3 hours