[bosiemoncrieff]

Breaking news: ran into someone from the Wagner Society of Northern California yesterday at the Wagner exhibition at the German Historical Museum, and he had a free ticket to Tristan on Friday in Leipzig. So no Mahagonny. Meistersinger in 4 hours, and Tristan on Friday! (Thank god I can make the 10:15 ICE back to Berlin.) Also got a ticket to the Flying Dutchman at Grange Park with Bryn Terfel next month.

I declined Lohengrin tomorrow because, you know, Meistersinger on Wednesday, Tristan on Friday, we all need some time off. (The Deutsche Historisches Museum has 3 exhibitions right now - Wagner, Marx, and Merkel - which sounds like the title for a hilarious sketch comedy show.)

Last night I was at the Philharmonie, with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Christian Thielemann. (Barenboim was in the audience, CT was filling in for an injured Herbert Blomstedt.) The maestro treated Berlin to the fastest Tristan prelude I’ve ever heard. It was indecent. Nothing had any time to flower or bloom. It was as if he had a game of poker that he was late to. (Artur Bodanzky received that complaint in the 30s for his blazing fast Wagner as well.) The liebestod was slightly better but also gave one the impression of constricted air. It felt like a bad joke to let the oboe solo at the very end hang for two or three times the conventional length. I am all for fast performances of Wagner, but whatever your tempi, you need to make the whole of it gel. The dynamics and so on need to "keep up" with the governing tempo. Here, it felt disheveled, as if it were coming apart at the seams, tripping over itself. The orchestra is superb, but still inferior to the Philharmonic. I heard a squeak or two in the brass.

He is a surprisingly energetic conductor, crouching down for piani, waving his arms for fortissimi, often doing a sort of knees-bent-while-leaning-back move and pumping his arms rhythmically. It was weird. Nevertheless, the Bruckner 7 that followed after intermission was excellent. The speed served that work quite well. I am also less familiar than with the Wagner, so my opinions are less specific and prescriptive.

 

[W3WEB]

Bye bye "Buy Better Gear" as a Schiit feature. An important goal was happiness and unity in the marriage of digital sources (transports, tv and satellite receivers, digital audio audio over USB, etc.) to digital to analog converters. The best way to achieve this is to allow clocks in the D/A converter to be dragged off frequency from design center to match the source clocks. Gungnirs and above in the Schiit line used to have a “Buy Better Gear” correction to advise the user that the source in use was off frequency. In the early days of digital audio, there were two notoriously bad sources. One was laser disc players.

Back in the early 1990s I had a chickenschiit homeowner’s association. They kept giving me writeups for loose bricks and other really hard to find infractions. It was nothing personal – others got them as well. It was just that the homeowner’s association president was a rare true a$$hole. So I went to the trouble of getting a ham license just so I could put up a BUD (Big Ugly Dish) in the front yard. This was one of those 8 foot diameter really ugly satellite dishes. I even painted it beige to match the HOAs color schemes – it was even uglier). (I don’t know if this still works 30 years later nor am I endorsing for a current HOA issue.) The reason I mention it is that it required use of an old analog video/digital audio satellite decoder which was even worse as a drifty, unstable digital audio source than a laser disc player.

Meanwhile, time went by and I realized there is probably no one left using BUDs or laser disc players. The reasons for “Buy Better Gear” have become obsolete. Yay!

BTW, I also removed the BUD as soon as the HOA president was replaced.

Interesting use of a BUD. As a ham operator, I'm currently stuck in a non-hoa property, but too small an area to deploy a proper antenna. Kind of radio silent these days, though do experiment with digital ham radio. It's kind of cheating to consider a very small uhf signal from a radio to a digital hub; which then uses internet to route to the national and international communities. Sigh.

 

[RCBinTN]

I suspect we now know the function performed by the VXCO in Gungnir.

 

[GumbyDammit223]

Interesting use of a BUD. As a ham operator, I'm currently stuck in a non-hoa property, but too small an area to deploy a proper antenna. Kind of radio silent these days, though do experiment with digital ham radio. It's kind of cheating to consider a very small uhf signal from a radio to a digital hub; which then uses internet to route to the national and international communities. Sigh.

The next sunspot cycle has begun and is on the rise, so smaller antennas become more efficient. I live in an apartment and have a fan dipole slung between two trees in front of the place. During the last cycle I was able to hit eastern Europe with ease. I could hear all over, but contacts were limited to the dipole axis. Oh, to have the money to get the property to put up a Yagi on a tower. Unfortunately not in this lifetime.

 

[Scott Kramer]

delete

 

[artur9]

Sounds like the BBG light was really a "replace your laserdisc player" light
Darn! just when I found a box of laserdiscs in storage: Twilight Zone (OG, w/Shatner!), Indiana Jones (again, OG), some others...

 

[JanMc]

Background: during the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-4 I was working at a bicycle assembly plant in Van Nuys, California, USA. We assembled bikes using parts made in Japan. Business was crazy. Even before the embargo baby boomers like me were buying their grown-up adult bicycle. Sadly, most would spend years untouched in a garage after a brief flurry of use. A problem was that bikes sold in America, still true to today, are mostly racing style bikes with swooped down handlebars, lots of gears, geared for speed, etc., and appropriate for exercise and athleticism--think competitive racing-- who want to ride hundreds of miles a month very fast. Another problem is that roads in North American have a lot of miles that are not bike friendly. All other bikes sold North America, children's bike, commuting bikes, are low end bikes, sometimes low quality that breakdown or need adjusting often, and not thought out very well.

tin-ear, did you work for the Lloyds (can't remember the kid's name)? If so, small world since I ran the parts department upstairs. I still have some great parts (full Campagnolo groupo) from that time.

 

[tin-ear]

tin-ear, did you work for the Lloyds (can't remember the kid's name)? If so, small world since I ran the parts department upstairs. I still have some great parts (full Campagnolo groupo) from that time.

OMG! Yes. Just west of the Van Nuys airport. Lloyd Docter was the... owner. Small world.
I did assembly, shipping and receiving--nothing like loading a few hundred bikes on trucks by hand with no lifts or forks to help to build muscles. I still have one of their catalogs around here.
PM sent

 

[JanMc]

OMG! Yes. Just west of the Van Nuys airport. Lloyd Docter was the... owner. Small world.
I did assembly, shipping and receiving--nothing like loading a few hundred bikes on trucks by hand with no lifts or forks to help to build muscles. I still have one of their catalogs around here.
PM sent

Yes, and his father, Doctor Doctor. I was friends with Tom Pierce and Mike Waugh who also worked there. I remember that we used to have shooting practice after hours in the warehouse but Lloyd quit inviting me after I killed his target by pinging it all around the perimeter instead of in the middle after he accused me of missing all my shots. Small world indeed. Haven't thought of the Doctors for a long time.

 

[GearMe]

Yes, and his father, Doctor Doctor. I was friends with Tom Pierce and Mike Waugh who also worked there. I remember that we used to have shooting practice after hours in the warehouse but Lloyd quit inviting me after I killed his target by pinging it all around the perimeter instead of in the middle after he accused me of missing all my shots. Small world indeed. Haven't thought of the Doctors for a long time.

Did his father...give you the news?

 

[tin-ear]

I just found your reply...the name Tom Pierce rings a bell. Spelling: the family name is with an "e": "Docter." For all looking over my shoulder, this was a bicylce assembly/importing factory in Van Nuys that existed circa 1970 to... 197???? I worked there for about 1.5 years when I was 22-23. It was valuable experience; I think having worked in a variety of odd jobs is valuable. Seeing how part of the world works.

 

[433521]

They're selling a heavily used rental bike for $709. OK.

They're fining you $709 for not returning it.

 

[gefski]

I just found your reply...the name Tom Pierce rings a bell. Spelling: the family name is with an "e": "Docter." For all looking over my shoulder, this was a bicylce assembly/importing factory in Van Nuys that existed circa 1970 to... 197???? I worked there for about 1.5 years when I was 22-23. It was valuable experience; I think having worked in a variety of odd jobs is valuable. Seeing how part of the world works.

I like that “Seeing how part of the world works.” Pieces of those experiences stay with us.

 

[433521]

Interesting use of a BUD. As a ham operator, I'm currently stuck in a non-hoa property, but too small an area to deploy a proper antenna. Kind of radio silent these days, though do experiment with digital ham radio. It's kind of cheating to consider a very small uhf signal from a radio to a digital hub; which then uses internet to route to the national and international communities. Sigh.

MARS is doing the opposite. They are, or at least were, training volunteers to transmit digital messages through short wave.

 

[Ableza]

Bifrost 2/64: I like it more than my original shipment Gungnir Multibit in a 2-channel application. Your results may vary.