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HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

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Howard
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358703

Postby Howard » November 21st, 2020, 12:18 pm

If you are a real Hi Fi buff and appreciate Beethoven, Spotify isn't good enough.

You should be able to look at the grooves on an LP and identify the symphony without bothering with the label. And if you are very good, you can have a stab at the conductor. To the cognoscenti the grooves on a Karajan have a completely different appearance to a Rattle.

Arthur Lintgen is a leading proponent of this art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lintgen

Difficult to do while driving, I admit. :)

regards

Howard

tikunetih
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358711

Postby tikunetih » November 21st, 2020, 12:38 pm

stevensfo wrote:Nope, I'm using the app on my phone. Now the shuffle icon has disappeared.


The Spotify UI design is a bit 5h!t because of lack of consistency...

Depending on "some criteria" (type of Playlist etc), the track playing screen may have the Like button/icon displayed either to the right of the track name or to the left of the Skip Backwards button.

In the latter case, then the Like button/icon displaces the Shuffle button which would otherwise have appeared in this position, such that it's not displayed as in Itsallaguess's sreenshot but instead gets moved to the "overflow" menu, accessed via the 3-Dot button in the top right of the screen.

Completely mental!

So take a look there, Steve.

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358771

Postby stevensfo » November 21st, 2020, 2:45 pm

Howard wrote:If you are a real Hi Fi buff and appreciate Beethoven, Spotify isn't good enough.

You should be able to look at the grooves on an LP and identify the symphony without bothering with the label. And if you are very good, you can have a stab at the conductor. To the cognoscenti the grooves on a Karajan have a completely different appearance to a Rattle.

Arthur Lintgen is a leading proponent of this art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lintgen

Difficult to do while driving, I admit. :)

regards

Howard


Well, I certainly agree about recognising some music from the pattern on the record. The loud bits are quite easy, so I guess you can soon learn to recognise the symphony.

Sometime in the 70s, I still remember putting a sewing needle through a piece of cardboard and resting it on the record while turning it to show my parents that you could still listen to it without any electricity. With some corrugated cardboard, it actually sounded quite good.

Of course, as all true HiFi buffs know, the type of needle and type and dimensions of cardboard are vital. ;)

Steve

PS Always ask permission before attempting this demonstration with someone's record! 8-)

Longtermyieldman
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358897

Postby Longtermyieldman » November 21st, 2020, 8:05 pm

Two thoughts for getting excellent sound quality from streaming services:

1. Spotify Premium (set to very high quality (320k), any phone supporting LDAC Bluetooth codec, Sony WH-1000xm4 headphones, DSEE Extreme upscaling enabled

2. Amazon Music HD, either high-end wired headphones or Amazon Echo Studio HD

I've owned high end HiFi in the past but find these solutions more convenient and at least their equal for audio quality.

dspp
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358920

Postby dspp » November 21st, 2020, 10:33 pm

As a result of this thread I am considering buying my GF a Brennan B2 for Christmas. Ill probably her a couple of bookcase speakers as well as an interim solution because that will provide a pathway independent of her 15-yr old TV that she currently listens to music through. The TV itself will likely be consigned to the dustbin in a few years time, certainly it is never used as a TV. Internet out here is iffy and not great.

To put things in perspective, she has a couple of grand pianos in her pile which she plays quite well as well as various other instruments, so she is quite musical. We host a lot of concerts and have built up a collection of CDs from the various musicians over the years. I on my side have a mixture of old kit (Tannoy/Dennon/Marantz/Nakamichi). Quite relevant is that I have an old yacht and the solution must be capable of going off-grid/off-net which kills the streaming services even if I were that way inclined (which I am not).

So .... we are thinking of using the Brennan to rip our mingled collection to FLAC based at my GF's. Maybe we will one day end up with three Brennan or equivalents spread around my little house, her big pile, or my old decrepit yacht.

>>>> So .... question/advice welcome from any Brennan owners. In particular:

1) Any advice on managing multiple Brennans;
2) I wish I'd known that .....
3) Using Brennans in old piles with a rabbit warren of rooms and etc ...

Regards, dspp

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358924

Postby fisher » November 21st, 2020, 10:51 pm

With the caveat that my father's Brennan is probably 20 years old, I do know that on that model you can back up its entire contents to a Usb hard drive. I presume you can also restore this onto a 2nd machine. Keeping 2 or more in sync with ongoing updates may be more tricky.

I would contact them and ask questions. I have done this in the past and got speedy responses from Martin Brennan himself. Again, this was over a decade ago. They will have some good suggestions for your circumstances though I'm sure.

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#358928

Postby servodude » November 21st, 2020, 11:28 pm

dspp wrote:Quite relevant is that I have an old yacht and the solution must be capable of going off-grid/off-net which kills the streaming services even if I were that way inclined (which I am not).


I know you're not inclined... but with Spotify you can download and store music locally in your library for just these circumstances
- it's got us through some very long car trips outside of data coverage

-sd

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#359038

Postby Grumpsimus » November 22nd, 2020, 4:39 pm

[quote="dspp"]As a result of this thread I am considering buying my GF a Brennan B2 for Christmas. Ill probably her a couple of bookcase speakers as well as an interim solution because that will provide a pathway independent of her 15-yr old TV that she currently listens to music through. The TV itself will likely be consigned to the dustbin in a few years time, certainly it is never used as a TV. Internet out here is iffy and not great.

To put things in perspective, she has a couple of grand pianos in her pile which she plays quite well as well as various other instruments, so she is quite musical. We host a lot of concerts and have built up a collection of CDs from the various musicians over the years. I on my side have a mixture of old kit (Tannoy/Dennon/Marantz/Nakamichi). Quite relevant is that I have an old yacht and the solution must be capable of going off-grid/off-net which kills the streaming services even if I were that way inclined (which I am not).

So .... we are thinking of using the Brennan to rip our mingled collection to FLAC based at my GF's. Maybe we will one day end up with three Brennan or equivalents spread around my little house, her big pile, or my old decrepit yacht.

>>>> So .... question/advice welcome from any Brennan owners. In particular:

1) Any advice on managing multiple Brennans;
2) I wish I'd known that .....
3) Using Brennans in old piles with a rabbit warren of rooms and etc ...

Regards, dspp[/quote

The Brennan B2 will work on 12V DC power supply, if you have this on your yacht. The display will be dimmer and the power output lower, but I doubt this is important unless it is a very large yacht.

The B2 is good for ripping CDs to Flac. However, the built-in drive is slow and if you are going to rip of a lot of CDs it is worth getting a faster external drive. I certainly found worthwhile and have now ripped hundreds of CDs.

I would suggest powered speakers with B2 for the best sound and value for money.

It has already been suggested that a USB drive can be used to move file between B2s. This works but can be a bit tedious if you keep having to do it. It can also be used as a backup.

The B2 is not really intended to be a multi-room system, however it does integrate well with Sonos which was designed for this purpose.

I like the B2 very much and find it works well. The worst thing about it is the indexing system it uses to store music, the well known Artist/Album/Track model. This is fine for popular music, but not so good for classical. Ther kludges to try to work round this, but it is not ideal. I take from the description above that your tastes are more towards classical than the top ten. So I thought you ought to be aware of it. Unfortunately, I do not know of any ready built systems that cater properly for classical music.

dspp
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#359050

Postby dspp » November 22nd, 2020, 5:42 pm

Grumpsimus wrote:
dspp wrote:As a result of this thread I am considering buying my GF a Brennan B2 for Christmas. Ill probably her a couple of bookcase speakers as well as an interim solution because that will provide a pathway independent of her 15-yr old TV that she currently listens to music through. The TV itself will likely be consigned to the dustbin in a few years time, certainly it is never used as a TV. Internet out here is iffy and not great.

To put things in perspective, she has a couple of grand pianos in her pile which she plays quite well as well as various other instruments, so she is quite musical. We host a lot of concerts and have built up a collection of CDs from the various musicians over the years. I on my side have a mixture of old kit (Tannoy/Dennon/Marantz/Nakamichi). Quite relevant is that I have an old yacht and the solution must be capable of going off-grid/off-net which kills the streaming services even if I were that way inclined (which I am not).

So .... we are thinking of using the Brennan to rip our mingled collection to FLAC based at my GF's. Maybe we will one day end up with three Brennan or equivalents spread around my little house, her big pile, or my old decrepit yacht.

>>>> So .... question/advice welcome from any Brennan owners. In particular:

1) Any advice on managing multiple Brennans;
2) I wish I'd known that .....
3) Using Brennans in old piles with a rabbit warren of rooms and etc ...

Regards, dspp


The Brennan B2 will work on 12V DC power supply, if you have this on your yacht. The display will be dimmer and the power output lower, but I doubt this is important unless it is a very large yacht.

The B2 is good for ripping CDs to Flac. However, the built-in drive is slow and if you are going to rip of a lot of CDs it is worth getting a faster external drive. I certainly found worthwhile and have now ripped hundreds of CDs.

I would suggest powered speakers with B2 for the best sound and value for money.

It has already been suggested that a USB drive can be used to move file between B2s. This works but can be a bit tedious if you keep having to do it. It can also be used as a backup.

The B2 is not really intended to be a multi-room system, however it does integrate well with Sonos which was designed for this purpose.

I like the B2 very much and find it works well. The worst thing about it is the indexing system it uses to store music, the well known Artist/Album/Track model. This is fine for popular music, but not so good for classical. Ther kludges to try to work round this, but it is not ideal. I take from the description above that your tastes are more towards classical than the top ten. So I thought you ought to be aware of it. Unfortunately, I do not know of any ready built systems that cater properly for classical music.


Grumpisimus, Servodude, fisher,

Thank you all for those pieces of info.

Rest assured my yacht is small, old, and pleading for TLC (which I am giving her), but 12V is possible. Putting music into her is in the future, but I am trying to think ahead. For the size of our combined collection USB drives will probably be OK.

Regarding multiroom, again I'll leave that for the future, but the hints are nice to know to think about in advance.

Regarding speakers, again good to know. I think we'll take one step at a time.

Regarding contacting Brennan, thanks, we may do that in due course.

Regarding Spotify, thank you, but we really are trying to avoid subscription stuff.

Our tastes vary from modern pop through jazz to classical. I must admit I'd never really given any thought to the importance of the indexing system (Artist/Album/Track ) when it comes to handling classical but now you mention it I can see the problem. What are the pros and cons of the different kludges and is there an article about this issue I can read somewhere.

Once again thank you all.

regards, dspp

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#359356

Postby Grumpsimus » November 23rd, 2020, 4:58 pm

dspp

The kludges for the B2 are discussed on the Brennan website. I would put them all into the category of trying to make the best of a bad job, rather than pros and cons. There is also a brennan forum where this has been discussed, but it is difficult to find information on this quickly.

This a very widespread problem which is not just confined to Classical music, but also causes problems with other genres i.e. Jazz and Hip Hop where it is common for different artists to appear on different tracks. It all goes back to the inadequate metadata tags that came in with the first MP3s.

You might like to have a look at the website for MinimSever which is one of the few products designed with Classical Music in mind. On the features page it discusses problems with tagging and in particular Classical music.

dspp
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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#359391

Postby dspp » November 23rd, 2020, 6:34 pm

Grumpsimus wrote:dspp

The kludges for the B2 are discussed on the Brennan website. I would put them all into the category of trying to make the best of a bad job, rather than pros and cons. There is also a brennan forum where this has been discussed, but it is difficult to find information on this quickly.

This a very widespread problem which is not just confined to Classical music, but also causes problems with other genres i.e. Jazz and Hip Hop where it is common for different artists to appear on different tracks. It all goes back to the inadequate metadata tags that came in with the first MP3s.

You might like to have a look at the website for MinimSever which is one of the few products designed with Classical Music in mind. On the features page it discusses problems with tagging and in particular Classical music.


Thank you, for others' benefit:

https://minimserver.com/features.html
https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-m ... -out-upnp/
https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.p ... gYourMusic

regards, dspp

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#359421

Postby Mike4 » November 23rd, 2020, 8:40 pm

dspp wrote:Rest assured my yacht is small, old, and pleading for TLC (which I am giving her)


Point of Order M'Lud....

You never own a boat (especially not a yacht). the boat owns you....

And another boating cliché - the two happiest days of your boating life are the day you buy her, and the day you sell her.

:)

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#361928

Postby jaizan » December 1st, 2020, 9:17 pm

Gerry557 wrote:Have a look at something like the £250 Denon dm 41. A mini hi fi and well regarded in your what hi fi magazine. You can just buy the box and choose you own speakers.

I have the earlier version of this. The DAB failed when it was just out of warranty. Denon just referred me to some third party repairers, who wanted £40 just to look at it & refused to tell me what a repair would cost. Despite some internet searches showing this a known issue on this model, so they must have a very good idea. Also affects earlier models and the later model. Clearly Denon do not fix known issues.
I shall try to never buy another Denon or Marantz product.

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#362101

Postby MaraMan » December 2nd, 2020, 11:46 am

Just a word for those who have or are interested in Spotify Premium. If you have children, as I do, they may well pay for Spotify Premium Family for their own use, but this also allows six different sign in's. This is what I do with my son's account, which he would have anyway for him and his girlfriend.

MM

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#362128

Postby genou » December 2nd, 2020, 12:22 pm

MaraMan wrote:Just a word for those who have or are interested in Spotify Premium. If you have children, as I do, they may well pay for Spotify Premium Family for their own use, but this also allows six different sign in's. This is what I do with my son's account, which he would have anyway for him and his girlfriend.

MM


Just as long as you all live in the same house.....

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#362388

Postby servodude » December 2nd, 2020, 9:23 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
genou wrote:
MaraMan wrote:Just a word for those who have or are interested in Spotify Premium. If you have children, as I do, they may well pay for Spotify Premium Family for their own use, but this also allows six different sign in's. This is what I do with my son's account, which he would have anyway for him and his girlfriend.

MM


Just as long as you all live in the same house.....

I cannot speak for Spotify but see my post above. Those services are shared in the family across four addresses.

RVF


Spotify T&Cs do require that you live at the same address

https://www.spotify.com/uk/legal/premium-family-terms/ wrote:2. Eligibility and Verification

A. In order to be eligible for the Premium Family Subscription, the primary account holder and the subsidiary account holders must be family members residing at the same address.

B. Upon activation of a subsidiary Premium Family account (excluding Spotify Kids account(s)), you will be asked to verify your home address.

C. We may from time to time ask for re-verification of your home address in order to confirm that you are still meeting the eligibility criteria.

We use Google Maps address search to help you find and set your address. The address you enter upon activation or re-verification will be subject to the Google Maps Additional Terms of Service and Google Privacy Policy.

Spotify reserves the right to terminate or suspend access to the Spotify Premium Family service and the Spotify Premium Family account(s) immediately and at any time if you fail to meet the eligibility criteria and as otherwise set out in the Spotify Terms and Conditions of Use.


- they do occasionally check - but it's as trivial click though "nothing to see here"

- just as they occasionally inform you of unexpected/unusual access

-sd

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#362500

Postby stevensfo » December 3rd, 2020, 9:38 am

I can't thank the people enough who first introduced me to Spotify and Idagio. I haven't started Spotify premium yet but I'm amazed at what they have. Not just music. Last night I was laughing my head off - and annoying my wife - at tracks from Monty Python I haven't heard for decades. There are Radio comedy shows and even language lessons to explore. I'm also very proud that I can now say in fluent swahili, "Excuse me, do you speak English? I understand only a little Swahili." Should be really useful next time in Luton airport! ;)

Steve

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#374313

Postby dspp » January 7th, 2021, 1:13 pm

dspp wrote:
Grumpsimus wrote:dspp

The kludges for the B2 are discussed on the Brennan website. I would put them all into the category of trying to make the best of a bad job, rather than pros and cons. There is also a brennan forum where this has been discussed, but it is difficult to find information on this quickly.

This a very widespread problem which is not just confined to Classical music, but also causes problems with other genres i.e. Jazz and Hip Hop where it is common for different artists to appear on different tracks. It all goes back to the inadequate metadata tags that came in with the first MP3s.

You might like to have a look at the website for MinimSever which is one of the few products designed with Classical Music in mind. On the features page it discusses problems with tagging and in particular Classical music.


Thank you, for others' benefit:

https://minimserver.com/features.html
https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-m ... -out-upnp/
https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.p ... gYourMusic

regards, dspp


OK, many thanks for the suggestions which led me to the Brennan B2 which I gave my GF for Christmas. I then ripped over 350 albums to FLAC in the last few weeks for the pair of us, and I found that about three quarters had the track etc data in the system (good), and that about a quarter did not (so I punched it in). For just a fraction I could not find the cover art. So a promising start.

The indicated drawbacks for the metadata were as discussed. So (e.g) our artist is sometimes ascribed to the composer and sometimes to the musician. Anyway that is how it is.

I am now trying to use the near-infinite number of playlists as a way of kludging the metadata for genre. That in turn is leading to my GF and I considering genre taxonomies. Since we have (crudely) a quarter jazz, a quarter classical, a quarter pop, and a quarter other stuff this is quite an interesting matter, prompting me to ask how others have done it, and any advice they would give us.

Searching around for genre taxonomies I have come up with this thoughtful paper from a pair of Sony France authors (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/2856 ... nload=true) and I can see an interesting style list on Wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_styles . Can anybody point me to any others I ought to read and consider seriously ?

(does anyone know if Brennan have any plans in this area, it seems a somewhat obvious software extension for them)

regards, dspp

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#379684

Postby Grumpsimus » January 22nd, 2021, 3:43 pm

dspp

I am glad you like the Brennan B2. However, as expected you are finding the limitations of the indexing system, which is really only suitable for most basic genres of music. Leading you to the work rounds for what appears to be a large part of your CD collection.

You ask if Brennan have any plans in this area. The only way to find out is to ask them directly.

However, I suspect not as it would really require a completely new version of the software. Brennan are a very small company and I will probably not wish to support two software versions. In anycase a new indexing system, suitable for complicated genres, would not match existing data sources and would require users to enter most of the information manually.

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Re: HiFi buffs? A small but good HiFi system?

#381885

Postby Itsallaguess » January 29th, 2021, 12:45 pm

Just a quick heads-up for anyone that might have been considering the Tidal music service - there's a 6-month free code available at the moment, so just entering 'LIDLMUSIC' on the following Tidal page will get you into the summer for free -

https://offer.tidal.com/voucher

Like most free periods for services like these, it'll need a payment method registering, and then active cancellation of the service nearer to the 6-month period end.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


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