Punk Radio? .. Yes, Please!

Well, I never like to have idle hands, I always like to be doing something.

As some of you dear readers might know, I run a huge Facebook Music Group .. Songs From Under The Floorboards: The Best Of The Punk, Post-Punk, Alt Era. It's a heavily Magazine (the band) influenced Group, with nearly 3,000 members.

I was thinking about how to move things on and make it even better for our members, when I hit upon the idea of adding an internet radio station under the same banner.

The trial has been so successful, we're going to go ahead with it and keep it as an ongoing thing.

If that type of music floats your boat, instead of today's radio fodder of George Ezra, Ed Sheeran ad nausea .. here's the url for it:

Songs From Under The Floorboards Internet Radio Show

Record Labels: Download Cards! Be Consistant!!

A nice day to be had, swanning around Chester. I picked up the last Kate Bush boxset that I needed and another 2 x Siouxsie and The Banshees Half-Speed Abbey Road Remasters ( .. only 'Kaleidoscope' and 'The Rapture' to find now).

I was really looking forward to getting home and taking out the download cards from the Banshees albums.

All the other Remasters had download cards that enabled WAV 96khz 24bit versions of each album to be downloaded .. (except I always had to convert them to FLAC in order for Sonos to play them, but ... since I discovered Roon ... no more conversion needed).

Carefully, I took off the polythene that encased the album sleeve .. I took out the inner bags .. peeked inside ... No download card ... for either album!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Why oh why can't record companies be consistant?!?!?!

There is a digital hole in my hi res collection! I am beyond grief .. I'm stuck to the old FLAC 16bit CD Rips of 2 of the most important albums in the Banshees catalogue .. 'Peepshow' and 'Hyaena'.

Damn you, Universal!

FIX IT!!

Name that Naim Admin .. Why .. it's Me!

Today's the day I became Admin for the Naim Audio FB Group! 8,000 Members strong!

The fella who owns a NAC102 / NAP140 / Hi Cap .. is feeling very happy with himself.

Very short blog post .. I just had to spill 👍

Room for Roon?

I've recently become a convert to the Roon 'ecosystem'.

If you're not familiar with it, Roon basically gathers together all your audio files from wherever you store them on your network and adds wonderful stuff like cover art, biographies, album reviews .. all the metadata you can shake a fist at (and then some) plus an artist radio feature (gathered from your networked music library) which sympathetically marries similar tracks together.

Did it change my life? Actually, yes it did.

I've been a staunch Sonos user since the first units came out a looong time ago. The whole house has been networked for what seems to have been always .. (over 10 years .. pretty much) .. and the damn thing about Sonos is there's a 66,000 track limit imposed in its architecture. That may be enough for some, but not for me (being a lifelong consumerist of music).

Roon works around Sonos' limit .. you just have to completely ignore the Sonos app (as good as it is).

The other annoying thing about Sonos is it's lossless file limit. The highest resolution that you can normally play is CD quality. Pfft, to that! I want Hi Res .. which is where Roon shines. It'll take anything Hi Res (without changing the file format or 'down res'ing-it) and play it back through the Sonos.

Fantastic! .. and to think I almost discarded the Sonos and was seriously thinking about going with another manufacturer.

Another good thing about Roon, is you don't have to take it to the next step and spend £1500 or £2500 on their Nucleus or Nucleus + range of hardware. The free Win.10 app will do for now.

Is Roon free though (even though the app is)?

Well .. no. There's a choice of buying either a 1 year or lifetime license. There's a 2 week trial period and then (if you're suitably impressed) it's time to make your mind-up.

At this stage, I'm going for the 1 year option, but I'm fairly certain that when I discover everything that Roon offers, I'll be upgrading to the lifetime option.

It's that good!

If you're interested, have a good look through their website.

https://roonlabs.com/

Ribbed Amplifiers and Paintbrushes ..

Having loved music and hi fi (equal measures / go hand-in-hand), it was particularly fortuitous that I found myself working in a store that had a museum of hi fi .. er .. I mean a hi fi shop.

Seriously. I was like a kid in a candy store.

Now I could actually listen to all the great bits of hi fi that I'd previously only been able to read about in the hi fi press. That's a little fib, actually .. as I'd bought various amps and cd players 'on the journey'.

At least I could have an 8 hour demo now 😏

I'm a devil for misremembering model numbers .. so if I'm talking about giving the giant-killing Pioneer Axxx amp from the '90's a pass, (because although the sound wasn't bad at all; the build quality left a lot to be desired) .. it's only because I can't remember the darn numbers.

EDIT: A900!!!

Same as the NAD 32xxPE .. damn fine integrated amp, but .. erm .. looked a bit nouveau bauhaus (I actually bought that one though, because .. just because).

EDIT: 3220PE!!! *The alzheimer's hasn't quite kicked-in yet*

The first integrated amp that really caught my eye was Musical Fidelity's B200. An all-black, ribbed-topped beauty of a beast. It didn't run hot like the Class 'A' amps, (like the name suggests .. it was Class 'B') it weighed a ton .. and the sound .. ahhhh! .. the sound! .. rock-solid, great mid-range .. but .. but .. BUT .. those bleedin' ribs on the top .. collected dust like a Dyson. I used a paintbrush to 'flick-off' the dust. The things you do, eh?

Anyhow, like I said when I started this blog. A collection of missives. Recollections of fun times. A jumble of professional mischief (sometimes).

Just a note though, the blog .. alas .. won't be all about my workings in that illustrious musical centre of Salop .. sometimes it'll just be 'boring' stuff about what bit of hi fi hardware I've bought, or what bit of vinyl I've spent out on etc ..

Prepare to be amazed! .. or bored-rigid 😮

Who goes there?!?! .. Elephants on the Roof! .. or something else? ..

The time came when the electricity supply main-box that provided the building became so unreliable, it had to be replaced.

Knowing that the job was going to have to be done when there were no customers about and there were going to be electricians left to their own devices amidst millions of pounds-worth of musical instruments, hi-fi, televisions etc .. it was decided that three lucky bods .. er .. members of staff .. should 'keep guard' and make sure there were no 'security issues'.

With duvets bedded down on the hi fi floor, armed with copious amounts of canned-beer and pizza (plus one of those new-fangled dvd players for film-watching), we were all set-up.

In the interests of protecting identities, there was (lets call him) Haymar and .. er .. Ardean and myself. Shropshire folk will get the joke behind Ardean's name :)

None of us could sleep that night, between the coming and goings of the electricians and the excitement of being left to our own devices with beer, pizza and Robocop (the film and not another assumed identity).

Eventually the electricians finished their work and left the premises. A deathly quiet descended over the building, except for strange creaks and taps every now and again.

As an aside, we had a professional ghost-team come in a few years later to do a full-on paranormal investigation, but that's another story for another day, suffice to say that that was a hell of a night too.

Salop Music Centre ran parallel to railway tracks coming in to Shrewsbury and a train crash happened in the early 1900's (several post office workers lost their lives in the crash).

Morbidly, part of the back-side of SMC was used as a morgue in the 1940's (oddly enough, manned by Peter Owen's dad). It always remained forever cold, no-one liked going in there (oddly enough, it was Ron Bowen's (assumed identity) workshop for many years. Go figure) .. so .. the building definitely had history.

Anyway, about 4am, we all heard what sounded like a herd of elephants running across the roof .. huge noise .. plenty of footfall.

All three of us split-up and ran outside to different points to try and catch the would-be breakers in, who had obviously got onto the roof from the railway lines, despite having to negotiate a steep-drop, a sharp, pointed metal fence that ran along the embankment, plenty of thistles etc and a 20' hike up to the roof.

We saw nothing .. not a soul. .. and we were out there pretty damn fast, we should have seen at least somebody .. but there was no-one.

Still no explanation to this day. One day I'll cover the paranormal investigation :)

Welcome!

Hi! This is my sneaky attempt to create a blog detailing my adventures in Hi-Fi and is not meant to be chronological at all. It should read as abstract missives. Enjoy!

After I bought my first Music Centre (well, in truth; my mum did. The paper round didn't stretch that far), music was forever embedded in me. This eventually led me to working in an A/V + Hi Fi store for 11 wonderful, weird and funny years. The Hi Fi shop in question was Shropshire Hi-Fi (within the Salop Music Centre store of Independant shops. SMC Sound and Vision also being one of them). Shropshire Hi Fi is still an active concern today, working under Peter Owen. There is no-one on the planet like Pete. Pete is a Legend.

After Shropshire Hi-Fi, I carried on working within the store at SMC Sound and Vision, working with High End Audio and Television products under the equal legend that is Bernard Littler (Retired).

Sadly, SMC Sound and Vision are no-more; but the business was absorbed by SMC Custom Installations (another separate 'SMC' division, at the time).

Happy days indeed. I would be telling an untruth if I said I didn't miss working there.

Between Shropshire Hi Fi, SMC Sound and Vision and SMC Custom Installations .. I had the time of my life.