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Multi-award-winning Naim HDX gets SLC SSD

May 6th, 2010
by Steve.
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May 6 2010 High-End Show, MOC, Munich. Naim confirms, in an aggregate of abbreviations, that the multi-award-winning Naim HDX is to be offered with a 16GB Enterprise grade, Single Level Cell (SLC), Solid State Drive (SSD). This totally silent drive will contain the operating system and includes space for future upgrades. This and the performance upgrades are an upgrade option for existing HDX owners.

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Don’t you just love iTunes not

May 13th, 2009
by Steve.
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For reasons mainly to do with a second interest after music/hi-fi, I’m often swapping computers and playing about. Nearly every application on this planet is easier to reinstall, without losing stuff, than iTunes.

I’ve just moved to the beta of Windows 7 because even in beta it’s more stable that Vista. To give it a fair chance I thought I should start with a clean install. Sorted everything out but bloody iTunes. Haven’t lost the apps for the iPhone but have lost all the music on the hard drive. Not the one I installed Win 7 on – I’m not that stupid yet, but a second drive used for miscellaneous data and iTunes.

Luckily the music is still on my iPhone but getting it back to my HD seems to be very difficult. I’ve done it before but that was when it seemed to be possible to tell the iPod it was a HD. Doesn’t seem possible with the iPhone.

I’m sure someone out there will tell me it’s easy. Hopefully.

Budget Turntable Table not Lacking much

Mar 26th, 2009
by Steve.
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For reasons that will be more obvious at the Munich High End Show in May, I have been listening to rather a lot of vinyl recently.  It’s good to get back into the critical listening to turntables, arms and cartridges again after many years of really only listening to records for pleasure.

It’s also good to find that every change is audible just like CD or HD replay.

One of the listening tests was to try out the differing performance of the TT in design, on different supports, to get an idea of the variations in performance customers may get at home.

I had previously good results at home using an Ikea Lack table and so we risked the weather to visit the local Ikea.  The Lack tables were hugely expensive at 9.90 Euro so we bought two.

The point of the blog of course is the performance.  While I would never argue that the Lack delivered 100% of the dynamics of the specialist rack we were using, it wasn’t too shabby at all.  The good part is that, what it didn’t do well – mainly dynamic contrasts – it didn’t fail badly and horribly.

Overall the performance was reduced but in a very even handed way.

So I reckon the conclusion is that; if you are looking for something suitable for your turntable and you are just getting back into vinyl maybe after a few  years absence, you can do far worse than an Ikea Lack at £7.82 currently in the UK.  At that price it has got to be worth a punt.

The New Year and Computers

Jan 4th, 2009
by Steve.
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What is it about the new year and computers? The two weeks over the Christmas holidays is the time when I tend to try to stay away from computers as much as possible.

Somehow, however, they seem to feel that they are being unloved and one always fails over during this time.

This year it was a hard drive initially causing constant rebooting and then pulling down the power supply enough to kill it.
Even a new PS was stopped dead by the offending drive. At least the new PS survived the ordeal.

This was then followed by a Vista machine refusing to update itself. A problem I’ve yet to fix.

There are times I absolutely hate computers.