My favorite Christmas song ever

  This is without a doubt my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time.

 Progressive rock (read Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, etc.) was my biggest thing during my early audiophile days. I think I was probably 12 or 14 when it all started, FM had just become available (I'm dating myself, I know).

WCMF was one of Rochester's first FM stations, and when you looked at the FM program listings in the newspaper they listed WCMF as "progressive rock". This was always humorous to me, as progressive simply meant one song played after another, one song progressed into another. But at the time, this was the music they were playing, so it became labeled as progressive rock.

 I had subwoofers back when no one knew what they were, and the Moogs and pedal notes were so deep it just rocked the room. I have almost every ELP album still, I think Lucky Man actually took out one of the subs! Genesis- The  Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and of course Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd music has survived much more so than ELP or Yes, but I still love to pop on these lps, dim the lights and go back in time to my junior high years.

 I visited WCMF back in the day, and saw two guys sitting on a carpeted floor in an unfinished room with two turntables (probably Technics)  and a microphone (long before Beck) and thought it rather anti climactic. They supplemented their station by doing equipment repairs, and I think I was there to pick something up.

 Nonetheless, these songs were an average of 20 minutes long (a typical album side), and were sometimes referred to as concept rock, or art rock. Try to interest the 20 somethings of today in something that long and profound! There were no drum machines, samplers or digital edits, strictly talent and a lot of creativity. The sound quality and production values were first rate. I would put them up against a lot of the stuff being recorded today.

 And it was all analog! Glorious analog!

Just lit my Christmas lights.......

 Just lit my Christmas lights, thinkin' I need a few other colors besides orange. Purple? Not good. Emissions leak. Green? Not good either,also a leak and ready to explode. Red? way too late. Call the fire department.Also remember these have between 300-500 or more volts running through them. If Santa urinates on them he will go up like a Tiki torch! Nice for keeping the house warm on this 20 degree night, though.Put a baking rack above a triode amp and the cookies came out perfect. Rumor has it that Rudolph's red nose came from attempting to sniff one of these.........  

Happy Thanksgiving!

 With headphones enjoying a resurgence in the industry, Dr. Dre, House of  Marley and others now have a new competitor, Mr. Bean.
 His first model is the Cranberry One, and your head becomes an integral part of the system (patent pending). This takes the "over the ear" category one step further. I might have tried this today, but not on any other holiday. Reasonably priced at 70 cents a pound. Twenty cents more if you want them to butter the balls, an optional tweak that makes it easier to take on and off. .
These are best used raw, as deep frying it will change the resonant frequency and Squash the highs.
Manufacturing these is a Gravy job, according to Bean. His green Bean casserole has pretty much reached its peak, and he was looking for a new venture, another piece of the Pie.Another Leg up on the rest of the world,he didn't want to just "Wing it".  A simple matter of Stuffing these in their packages. I won't Mince words, this is unique!  I will stay aBreast of his progress. Thank you in advance for laughing at at least some of this. Can't believe how popular headphones got again after all these years! This one may or may not be as popular.

  Seriously, hoping you all had a great day, I know I did. Got together with all the ladies in my life, Mother, Sister, Girlfriend. A year ago today I couldn't swallow, just diagnosed. Decent progress, and a lot to be thankful for this year, thank you for your interest and your visits, questions, emails,and contributions!  A lot of great people have come out of the woodwork for this blog, and it is making it all worthwhile!


                                                         Don

Tony Taddeo

It dawned on me that I made a significant omission in my April 2012 post on local area manufacturers.

   I was reading this month's issue of Stereophile, the industry update section, when the words "Digital Antidote" jumped out at me on page 16. "Wow", I thought. That was Tony Taddeo's biggest claim to fame years ago, and someone is reusing the moniker! Reading a little deeper, a company in England- iFi - is actually using his technology! Their Digital Antidote Plus  is based on his work and credits him accordingly.  

Tony started the Taddeo Loudspeaker Company, with an office on Elmwood Ave. in Brighton. The early antidotes he assembled himself. I would see Tony often in the shops around town, and if you have been following this blog you know that I don't have a great affinity for things digital. He always tried to get me to try one of these. I told him I had no use for CDs.

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Basically a buffer stage that goes in between the line levels of your cd player and the preamp input, this was a filter that made digital sound presentable, kind of like unhooking your tweeters. As I shunned the equalizer/dynamic range expander/processor band aids years ago (I haven't even had bass and treble controls on my equipment in 40 years!), I wasn't quick to want to jump on this one. To this day I have not tried one, but there have been numerous people over the years that swear by these! Good to see that his technology is live and kicking- sadly many years after Tony's passing.

Tony was kind of special to me. As coincidence would have it, he was a counselor at camp Pathfinder in Algonquin park, Ontario Canada years ago. For one of the  seasons I was one of his campers. This goes back probably 45+ years. I remember laying in bed one night with him telling us a story, Dracula, aka the Bram Stoker version. In great detail, as I later read the book and he didn't leave much out. He definitely made life there a lot more bearable, I was a young kid who really didn't want to be there. 

My first re-acquaintance with him was at JB Sound, where his first attempt at an audio product was a pair of speakers. He wanted to bring them in and play them for us. "Sure", I said, really great to see him again after 

all those years. 

We put them on the shelf,probably next to a pair of Advents,one of our best sellers in the mid priced segment. Set up the comparator to flip back and forth, and his speakers sounded AWFUL. Mind you not a completely finished product by any stretch, more of a working prototype. He had been hyping these to me for months before he brought them in, a technology so "revolutionary" that he couldn't tell me any more about them. I remember them being extremely efficient, the top part of the cabinet being somewhat horn loaded.You could see the look in his face as we switched back and forth. He tried to keep a poker face but couldn't. A few years later, I remember seeing a pair of these as empty cabinets for sale at The Speaker Place parts store in Henrietta.  

 In all fairness, there have been some great speakers over the years that sounded lousy when you A/B'd them. The DCM Time Window is one that comes to mind. Yamaha NS 10Ms.  Energy, with their first model 22's demanded a separate room as part of their franchise agreement. A/B'ing  was not the way to accurately evaluate a speaker, but it is what sold them. People would pick the most impressive sound, later to realize listening fatigue after an hour or so. 

As time went by, he came up with more refined speaker designs, I saw a few at Soundworks, but never heard them. A few products came along that impressed him, I remember him spending an hour with a tape measure with a pair of Von Schweikert VR-4s. 

I remember him telling me that blue leds are more expensive than red ones.

His claim to fame will always be the Digital Antidote, and to have had some enduring success with an audio product in this industry is impressive. . 

Every male audiophile's dream.........

To have a spouse/girlfriend/significant other that is interested in hifi as well.

The acronym WAF (wife acceptance factor) was coined a few years back, particularly when referring to speakers and huge power amps. Tubes could go either way, being too funky or having an interesting ambiance..... Most girls are also cold, so the additional heat certainly doesn't hurt. I would much rather look at a tube amp than an Amish fireplace.....

 I sat in the Sound Concept with the guys on many a Wednesday when couples would come in, look at quality, attractive and fairly compact shelf speakers only to have the wife turn up her nose at them. "You've got to be kidding!" I said after they left.  Anything bigger than a tennis ball wouldn't work. Speakers should be hidden, heard and not seen. This is when the Bose mini cubes, the many imitators of such, and paintable in wall speakers really started to take off.

   Myself, I miss my six foot tall Samsonite luggage finished Apogee Duetta Signatures.

Anyway, one of the fellow bloggers in my links at the bottom "Retro Vintage Modern  Hi Fi"  has a cool feature called "retro hifi girl Friday". I am posting several of the (cleaner) pictures here, after all, I am trying to keep this "G" rated (and also not offend any of my female readers, as if I haven't already). Many thanks in advance to him for the unauthorized reposting of these pictures.        


                                                                   Enjoy!