Recent content by DevillEars

Season's greetings to one and all on this pleasantly cool/wet Gauteng day (something of a relief after a couple of weeks of mid-30 degree days). For those that celebrate Christmas (or any equivalent), have a great day with family and friends and take care not to over-indulge... :) For all...

After experiencing similar problems a while back, I did some research into the probable cause(s) for constraints when trying to create USB drives that were compatible with - in my case - a Denon DM-40 CD Receiver. The first aspect to establish is what file systems are supported by your AVR...

Although not into HTPC as a dedicated system, I use Micro$oft Wireless Desktop 3000 keyboard/mouse combinations and find them particularly pleasant to use. The keyboard has a great "touch" to its key depression and the mouse suffers from no lag at all and handles fine movement increments very...

Back in the late 1960s, I was a Kef person and had two pairs: one, a pair their Cadenzas; two, a pair of their Cantors. These remained in use for 20 years from 1969 through to 1989. In 1989, I got the Tannoy bug: one, a pair of 613s (nice DC floorstanders); two, a pair of D700s (better...

The only "feature" I use is "Program" as there are a number of CDs where not all the tracks are that great, so programming to ignore these is useful. In the early days, when a cassette player was used to compile collections for the car, this was extremely useful, but since switching from...

This approach was suggested earlier but is dependent on your laptop having an HDMI 1.3 or later display port. If it does, then you need to do the following: a) Download and install a media player application like VLC (freeware and also supports all audio and video formats) b) Plug your...

Two somewhat different tracks from two rather different albums featuring two different drummers come to mind: Both tracks feature drum solos at about 2/3 through: a) Joe Morello on "Take Five" from the album "Time Out" by The Dave Brubeck Quartet (a favourite since 1963 - the whole album is...

The number of album titles available by source as a medium selection criterion is NOT ABOUT HOW MANY ALBUMS ONE NEEDS TO OWN! Each of us have a different set of "preferred genres/artists/composers/etc" (call them "tastes") and these may well differ from the "tastes" of the person/people...

With vinyl, the major plus aspect if being able to plug gaps in your collection of older music - you may just be able to find it on CD but forget SACD. Even digital downloads (with only 25,000 albums to choose from versus 2,000,000+ albums on vinyl/CD) are likely to present a problem when...

NB: The 25,000 titles refers to album titles and not song titles (all numbers in that post refer to album counts)

If the list of required components is scary from either a cost or space required perspective, there are fairly decent compact solutions. One would be PS Audio's "Sprout" (a compact 30wpc integrated with both in-built DAC and phono stage for MM only): I heard one of these at HFX being fed a...

The question here is not so much about "convincing anyone to get a turntable" but more about the music available and on what format. If the person concerned owns no LPs and has no intention of building up a collection of LPs from scratch, then there's no need for any further discussion. If...

Based on recent performance ONLY, I would agree with statement regarding the current Aussie cricket team, but - on paper - the individuals that comprise that team are NOT weak - just lacking confidence, motivation and real leadership. Reading some of the articles on how Smith has reacted, how...

To call the Hobart test result "just a good win" is to ignore the Perth test and the five ODI matches prior to that. Hobart started out with a good toss win followed by an excellent choice (to field). The cumulative impact of the previous 6 games had to have been a mental challenge to Steve...

Another tremendous performance by the Proteas (as a team, nogal - and, to my mind, that has been the key difference to these series vs Aus - ODIs & Tests). The team has developed into a functioning multi-element unit and, while this shouldn't be used as an excuse to overlook individual...