The classics restored

Another bitter sub zero winters day so why not get this post written so I can chill a bit later on as after that rotten migraine I need the rest.

Anyway as several of you know I have had a long liking for what is termed Classical music  stemming from actual childhood having had my own meagre record collection from around the age of 8 of my favourite pieces.

Over the years I've added recordings to them, changed formats  as the years have seen the availability of and advent of recordings new media has changed and I've written a bit in the past on the blog about them.

The start point for a good many of the restored Classical recordings on sd card was a series I bought in early 2015 and here are some comments on them.

The music of Ravel was one of the first composers I encountered and recently this recording by the distinguished American conductor  Leonard Slatkin, whose career I've followed over the years. The playing by the French orchestra is superb and I can see this and  it's second volume that I also purchased gaining a few awards at the years end.

Bela Bartok's Concerto is a fine example of twentieth century classical music, indeed many have said it has some of the boldness associated with American composers that period so it's fitting this is performed by an an American orchestra and a remarkable female American conductor Marin Alsop who has conducted in many countries including the 2013 Last Night of the Proms in England.

How many of us just loved watching Disney's Fantasia and can remember that series with Mickey Mouse getting in trouble as the Sorcerer's Apprentice?

Well that was written by by France's Dukas and is featured in this excellent modern recording that has plenty of character.

 Finally and fittingly back to violin music and a violinist I first encountered way way back in 1992 in a program of French Sonatas for violin and piano.

I completed before some issues with a computer put things on hiatus a new series including the four symphonies recorded by Sir Edward Gardner and the Bergen Symphony Orchestra by Brahms.

One thing technically all these recordings I purchased have in common is that although they are available on regular cd, I bought these as better than cd quality 'High Definition'  24 bit downloads which can be played on a computer.

I play them using my Fiio x3 digital audio players line output through my hifi system as well as on headphones where the smoothness and lack of the low level artifacts that even the best cds have is noticeable.

Billy Joel's Greatest Hits

The last time in the evergreen "teenbeat" series of posts I looked at the hugely respected singer-songwriter Billy Joel was in August Second, Twenty-fifteen with the specialist re-issue of his Streetlight Serenade album in part five of a series of posts around his music.

In September second Nineteen eighty-five, the first compilation of his many hits was issued on record, tape plus slightly later as it was CBS/Columbia on compact disc as they were late getting into cd and it was well conceived.

First off this it was planned as double lp and double play tape because it would of been hard to have fitted every single hit into a single album even though on the first issue they used mainly singles edits which was changed with the Nineteen ninety-eight remaster to album versions.

By this point the album was only available on tape possibly MiniDisc and cd and with these formats disc or tape side lengths are less of an issue than lp record sides.

They also had the sense to program it chronologically, so you saw how he developed  from Cold Spring Harbour to An Innocent Man lyrically and stylistically rounded it off with a series of special recordings just for the album.

 Over the last few years the specialist cd and record company Mobile Fidelity Sound Laboratory of Illinois, U.S.A., have been re-issuing his recordings from the original master tapes rather than copies using high quality equipment to get the very best sound of his best loved albums on record and also on Super Audio CD and after quite a delay from advertising their intentions to tackle this compilation finally it emerged late July Twenty-seventeen. 

Inside the slipcase the disc itself is sandwiched in a Mini lp gatefold sleeve that my plushies are reading!

Also in the slipcase comes a song book with all the words to featured songs in order of appearance on high quality paper which is a lovely touch and one that was unexpected by many of us who buy these discs.

The disc features the singles mix of Tell Her About It, You're Only Human (Second Wind),The Night Is Still Young issued as singles in nineteen eighty-five and a version with re-recorded sax of New York State Of Mind.

The remastering which is unique was done by Shawn R Britton and is exceptional for the depth and atmosphere he's managed to get from those recordings  making this version of the classic double album most worthwhile.

 
Technically this is a hybrid Super Audio cd (sacd) with a thin top layer for playing in super audio cd players like my new one for improved fidelity and a second layer for regular cd reproduction or copying to a portable music player and so is 99.9% compatible with all players.

Portable music redux

Not everything lasts forever and unfortunately my clip on portable music player died last week after a few years of life.

This Sandisk Clip Zip  music player developed a couple of faults one being being unable to recharge the internal battery from a charger and the second being over 70% of the time it would not be recognized by my Windows Laptop so I could neither charge it from that nor add music to it. 😒

Bit of a problem, what?

I was looking at possible replacements as that manufacture has in many ways lost real interest in new players plus as no longer use exclusively Windows computers (Up with Linux!) something that doesn't reply on a Windows or Apple program to use it.

Recently the Chinese company Fiio discontinued its 2014 X1 player for the X1 Mark ii with blue tooth and a different round scrolling wheel which meant there were  number of the older players on the market both new and some used  and I was able to find one used in excellent condition  for little more than what I paid for the Clip Zip in late December 2012 which is quite a step up from that model.

Removed from its rubberized protective jacket, you can see a bigish 2.4 inch screen showing the menus you navigate using a scrolling wheel, an okay/confirm button in the centre and a back key on the top right. It may be a little old-fashioned in an age of touch screens but hey! it works and is easy to understand.

The bigger screen helps with album art often included in commercial downloads or those you might have added on anything you've copied from cd yourself without the size and format restrictions that were trying on the Clip Zip.

Talking of formats without getting super technical, it'll play Mp3's from the likes of Amazon, AAC files as loved by iTunes and also used by 7digital and lossless "full cd quality" ones in Flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and Alac (the same thing but by Apple) other stores supply.

It also includes the ability to play 24 bit so-called High Resolution audio files some stores and artists offer should you have any which as it happens I do as they can sound better than regular cds even.

The headphone output is noticeably better, able to go louder easily when the music requires it without sounding strained and will drive most headphones very well as is.

The real beauty of this is by selecting it on the menu, it can output a very high quality 'line level output' to connect to a stereo system as if it was a audio component so you could use this like cd player except for playing your music files you might of bought from iTunes from instead without having your computer on.

On the right side of the case is a Micro SD card slot because this play has no internal memory but uses these popular and ever cheaper memory cards which means you can make a series of cards up by music types for example and just swap them over.

In Fiio's players you insert the card writing side toward the back of the player rather than the front. Presently it can take upto 128gb cards although cards over 32gb need to be 'formatted' using the formatting tool in the player before first using them to put your music on by just dragging and dropping the folders to the card which I was doing this weekend.

Although it lacks a FM radio, something I do like for listening to shows like BBC Radio 4's "The World at One", this is a really good replacement for that no longer working Sandisk player.

The Return of Tape

There's no  need recheck your calendars as this is not an entry from 1996 actually but this very year that I wasn't really expecting to make not least as I think I wrote some bits around that period as I'd moved over to a portable digital enclosed disc system called MiniDisc because of my inability during the 90's to use reel based recorders and physical trimming and joining of program on tape and finding cassette wasn't quite doing what I wanted for a one format for all recording needs.

That system came to the end of its road with the discontinuing of both home recorders first,followed by portables together with its re-recordable discs and so for just carrying portable music around, I copy it to Micro sd card and put in a portable audio player which is currently my Fiio X3.

 Sometimes you do need a quick means of recording something and I do have a number of pre-recorded cassettes bought during the Nineteen eighties that have things that aren't easily found on cd or other digital forms never mind tapes of various chart shows with voices of DJ's some now dead like Tommy Vance of the BBC I like to listen to.

That's why given the issues around the reliability of my last home MiniDisc deck like it died a few weeks ago (!) it was a Yamaha KX-393 cassette deck  I've gotten that had it not been for falling in love with a Sony MiniDisc unit in February of 1997 I'd of considered buying new!

It's a simple model in some ways, in that it only has one head to record and playback with outside of another for wiping any previous recordings and only records and plays in one direction so you turn the two sided tape over by hand.

On the other hand it has a thing called Play Trim that helps tapes recorded on other machines keep their sparkle by making the high notes clearer when playing back and the ability to match individual blank tapes to the recorder for the best possible sound.

Like most home decks it has switchable Dolby B type noise reduction for reducing the noise on tapes played back and then  featured C type that is more effective at reducing hiss but sounds really bad on machines without it which some of my legacy tapes were made with unfortunately between 1985 and about 1990.

Feminine schoolgurl technology

Every modern young person I ever met had some interest in music  whither or not it was just about the look and fashion of the artists, just singing the songs and usually some way of playing our favourite music.

Obviously with changing times, what it is we have changes as some products come to the end of their lives and others replace them and so while I was infatuated at one time with reels of tape, also I was an early adopter of the Japanese craze of the MiniDisc although that technology has come to something of a dead end with the discontinuing of recorders.

I have had personal digital audio players using either downloaded albums or home made copies, not least the Sandisk Clip Zip of which there is a feature on this blog but they didn't quite match the best of my portable MiniDisc machines as modern players are designed more about maximizing running time between charges rather than fitting the best possible  sounding electronics and that still left the question of playing music on them through a regular stereo a bit messy.

Like why would you want to fire up a computer to just play something?

I had considered a number of ways around this over the last year and very recently I obtained what is proving to be the answer.

Enter the Fiio X3

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It's a digital audio player for sure but it is designed from the ground up to sound really good starting with using the same chip to convert the zeroes and ones of digital to analogue sound  as a £400 separate cd player and a very high quality headphone stage that cures at the outset the problem of not enough of and the failure to reproduce fully, the sound even from iTunes or better quality Mp3 albums.

Then there is the fact it also plays not only regular 16 bit lossless (Flac) downloads and home copied files equalling the full quality of a cd, it plays 24 bit better than cd ones too (192/24 being its limit) and it sounds on headphones better than many separates.

In the UK you can by cd and better than cd  quality downloads from Presto who do Classical music and 7Digital as well as the French Qobuz company for much else like Rock.

Compared with the ClipZip, the display has much better resolution, nearer a cellphones and isn't as restricted to the maximum number of pixels as that player is when it comes to artwork.

It has 8GB of internal memory but you can use upto 128GB micro sdhc cards too that might be pre-assembled by genre just like I did for the Clip Zip and its cards worked straight off the bat on it.

The kicker though is it for once has a proper line level output just like a cd player rather than relying on a crummy headphone stage with it's built in restrictions, so armed with lossless files it sounds equal to or actually better than a dedicated cd player.

Throw in the ability to play from a charger while charging and you too can be listening in really high quality to all those files while being portable enough to carry around with you.

Finally I have that not just can equal but now surpasses my MiniDiscs!

Interests of "The Child"

This week I'm talking about interests and where they led me.

Sports were a big thing in school to the point they were social connectors so any child who wanted to get on like me needed to get engaged with them.

Hand to eye co-ordination was never me strong thing cutting across to varying extents my abilities in playing school sports but the thing was it never stopped me trying or just playing as a purely social thing.

That meant I was prepared to pick up a tennis racket and ball to play with another child if they felt like a game even though I'm not good at it rather than getting into funk or screaming to anyone who would listen. 

Another interest of mine was music, specifically recorded music.

When I was younger how you listened, the cultivation of a time to listen intently to it, appreciating took hold not that I didn't have music on as a 'background' but I'd find time to do just that and maybe a quiet room to sit in too.

Also I was interested in how that sound was reproduced caring that although I may of been ten years old, I was getting the best I could get from my recordings be they tapes or as was common then stereo  records. 

I was fortunate Dad knew a fair bit about electronics and especially audio engineering so even with our modest income I had at that age my very own stereo record player with a built in radio cos he built it for me from modules and made a case from wood. That was better sounding compared to what my friends had.

As I got more into my teens money permitting I bought magazines about what they called "High Fidelity" which when remove a lot of technical terms and snobbery from it is really more about getting the best sound and they had articles about improving what you heard as well as reviews of equipment.

I was reading them cover to cover from the age of eight!

Around the same time I got from grown up friends handed down equipment that while good wasn't as good as what they could now afford was better than what I had so at one point I had a tubed Rogers Cadet II amplifier with it's control unit, a Panasonic stereo cassette deck for recording and playing cassette tapes on , a Goldring turntable and cartridge and a pair of hand made speakers using units originally fitted to Rolls Royce upmarket cars!

Today I own an all Rotel stereo separate system and a Sony MiniDisc recorder with a portable player for listening while away or on the move.