Emotiva UMC-1 vs. Onkyo TX-SR707

This one will be quick. I used the Onkyo TX-SR707 as a processor. Feeding an external Innersound ESL amplifier for the fronts, Focal Profile 908s or something like that. To upgrade and make some dough, I sold the ESL, and the Onkyo, replacing it with an Emotiva UMC-1 and a pair of Yamaha P2xxx series amplifiers from the late 80s.

I had almost no reliability issues with the Onkyo. It functioned like a champ, and the universal remote that came with it was incredibly full functioned, though lacked meaningful backlighting. However, there is absolutely no comparison in the quality of sound between it and the Emotiva UMC-1 that just replaced it.

This isn't subtle only an audiophile would hear it either. It was a night and day difference in imaging and mid-treble to treble response. It makes me wonder if the Audyssey EQ in the Onkyo was totally off, or if whether there was just a generally depressed treble in the Onkyo. The Emotiva not only brought treble and sibilance alive, but filled in the images between my speakers. Honestly, I wish I had the patience and test tools because the difference is so great I can't believe these two units reproduce sounds above 4K with the same response curves. It's just a completely different world. I regret it took me as long as it did to upgrade.

MediaMonkey and JRiver's Media Center

September 30, 2011

I've been staring at a collection of about 50 mostly unlistened to CD's for the past year. Mind you, I totally like the music, but I've been promising myself that soon I was going to rip them via a lossless codec to my Network Attached Storage (NAS). After that, I would put them away someplace safe. I would have started on this earlier, except that I also promised that as part of that project I would go over the other 300 or so CD's on the CD rack and re-rip them as well. About half of them or more are already on the NAS, but in MP3, WMA or WAV (yes, I know, I know, I'm not really sure how I ended up with WAV files).

I have been taking a whole new look at my stereo, and in the process I looked at HDTrack's recommended PC software. They list only two, both of which I am currently using. MediaMonkey and JRriver's Media Center.

Here Are My Impressions:
Overall I think I am going to have to keep them both for different reasons.

JRiver's Media Center is easily the winner when it comes to ripping CDs. Once you have configured your default codec (FLAC, etc.) network paths, and track naming conventions, the entire process is almost completely automated. I can put my laptop next to my PC and rip two disks at once, with rarely any manual intervention. I turn on something on Hulu, and before the show is over I have ripped 10 to 20 CD's and barely interrupted my strangly un-masculine obsession with watching Gilmore Girls reruns. I justify it by claiming Heather Graham is a babe. She is, but that part is not the only reason. Back to the software. MediaMonkey, on the other hand, sucks for ripping large CD libraries. It feels really like regressing into the stone age. Media MediaMonkey needs intervention both before and after the ripping has been done. Before it rips you have to select the right meta data, which oddly brings over the album art. If you want album art you are forced to go get the tags again in order to get the album art, despite the fact that MediaMonkey had the artwork before you began. This is a process which JRiver completely automates. All I do with Media Center is put a CD in. Wait for it to eject. Done. This isn't every time, but about 90% of the time. Every so often I have to manually intevene by helping it pick a song list.

It is painfully obvious to me that the MediaMonkey developers are all network music guys and haven't seen a physical CD in years or they would have fixed this ages ago.

Also JRiver has a very very nice user interface which is never out of synch with what the program is doing. Not true with MediaMonkey. It's kind of ugly, and the windows are often out of synch with what the tool is actually doing. This makes it wickedly confusing to understand what steps to take next. Is it really going to save Tori Amos as if she were Deep Blue Something?

Why Keep the Monkey?
MediaMonkey does have some seriously nice features. It is ridiculously fast compared to JRiver at importing my 9,000+ song library. Also, music playback on MediaMonkey never ever stutters when clicking around the menu tree which JRiver often does, interrupting an otherwise pristine musical experience, and others have commented on just how good MediaMonkey is at re-organizing files and metadata. MediaMonkey can do on-the-fly conversion to my old Creative Zen player, and of course, I paid for it already so I better get some use out of it.

For the next few months I'm definitely not going to use MedidaMonkey for a while. After that, I'll look at it again, and post any new impressions.

Update December 5, 2011
Another reason to hate the monkey is it's inability to perform bit-perfect playback without plugins which are poorly documented. I have one word which sums up MediaMonkey: TOY! If you are serious about music, and audio and you get your music from sources other than MP3 downloads, look elsewhere.

Theta Digital HDMI Upgrade is for Real?

According to recent posts at Ultra High End, Theta Digital has actually started to deliver Casablanca III HD upgrades which include HDMI as well as upgraded DAC's. Good for them!

Does Meridian Even Have Competition Anymore?

I'm speaking specifically of vendors who are in the domain that is high-end digital audio and home theater. Seriously? Is there anyone left besides Meridian who has a comprehensive lineup, and who is committed to pushing digital audio as far as it will go?

As far as I know Meridian is the only company that is in the high-end Home Theater market place who isn't pandering exclusively to the custom installation market. Everyone else has gone *POOF!* or has become available exclusively to the home audio installers.

Even the Onkyo Integra line has disappeared from consumer audio stores and seems to be available only through installers, and I shudder to think of what getting their time to sell me a surround processor would be like. "Are you buying a new home or adding to a new one?" "Excuse me?" "How many rooms do you want touch sensitive remotes in?" "Huh?" "What home automation do you currently have?" "You mean like a garage door opener?" No, no thank you. I'd rather buy used just to save myself the experience.

OK, there ARE others selling home theater gear in the crossover domain, but they have limited products in this domain or they haven't released anything in years. So many wannabe's have come and gone. Halcro, Fostex, Sunfire, Carver. Where are they now? Lexicon is still around, but besides an Oppo based BluRay player have they released anything else? Do they even have an HDMI processor?

Like it or not it seems that most of the R&D money in high-end digital home theater has been sucked out of the market. What we need now is an open-source solution. We need innovation from enthusiasts who aren't willing to settle for what gets packaged up and sold to contractors and the masses as the best we can do. People who aren't threatened by patents or technology and who know that it's worth building something incredible together.

Before I go, there does seem to be one other company who has a shot, Cary Audio, but they aren't quite in the same place as Meridian. They are broader based, selling tubes and analog gear as well as A/V processors at a price range that is closer to what most non-bankers can afford. I will have to think about this. Maybe this is all perception in my head, but now that I get to the bottom of my own blog I'm not sure I agree with my thesis anymore. Suggestions?

Brands I miss and Brands I am Grateful For

Brands I miss:

* SUMO
* Tandberg - Not only a great FM Tuner, but amplifiers that really could control any speaker better than anything. And let's not forget their luscious reel to reel and cassette players.
* Nakamichi
* Threshold
* Kyocera as an audio brand.
* Snell while Peter Snell was alive.

Brands I am grateful are still with us:
* Conrad Johnson
* Audio Research
* JBL (love / hate relationship. How do you design an $11,000 speaker with $1000 worth of parts and still have to make it in Mexico to turn a profit? On the other hand, they sound soooo good....)
* Focal - Best performing, widest range of top value speakers in the business and terribly under appreciated in the US.
* Monitor Audio, though I liked them better as an undervalued bargain brand than as a high end manufacturer they are trying to become with the new Platinum line.
* dCS - Can't afford any of them, but I still wonder if anyone has bested their Ring DAC for sheer ingenuity of DAC technology.
* Meridian - For pushing the Digital envelope, sounding great and being such a bargain on Audiogon
* Analysis Plus
* Kimber Cable
* Cardas

The Audio Undead

I remember a long time ago on TV, perhaps the Twilight Zone, there was an episode where in a country home Grandpa had died but he was too stubborn to accept it so he kept showing up for meals, each time looking more and more disgusting. Only after he is surprised with a bag of black pepper and he sneezes his nose off does he finally accept the truth and die.

I've been thinking a lot about the fact that many of us have cherished brands from our past who passed away without any sort of ceremony or sometimes even notice. These days it seems that instead of the brand actually laying down and dying gracefully the web allows them go hang on long after they should have been acknowledged to be beyond hope. Which brings me to a few brands I've been looking at lately whom I wonder if they aren't doing just that.

As you may know, I am a huge fan of Theta Digital, though I believe that they have passed beyond this world and into the world of the past. Because of that I've been doing some online snooping of them. One thing I found that is new to me is that Morris Kessler, the person at the head of Amplifier Technologies, Inc. (ATI not to be confused with the graphics card manufacturer) also had started SAE a long time ago and that has ties to a company which we know know is dead but I really liked, Sumo.

Anyway, onto the undead. I took a look at the web presence of ATI and Theta Digital whom ATI acquired in November, 2007. If I look only at the web side of things it looks like ATI is done for. No new products in years, and all Theta has to show recently is a modified Oppo player becoming the flagship disk player. In the past I have rung the death bell for Theta Alone but now I must wonder if we should have been ringing it for ATI as well. Time will tell.

Along the same themes of death and resurrection is Miller and Kreisel, or MK Sound. As many may remember, they went belly up quite suddenly a while ago, but the original web address www.mksound.com now takes you to Ken Kreisel Professional Sound. Ken may have the web address, but not the brand, as MK Sound is now apparently under the management of the Dolphin group, with both Ken and Dolphin trying to claim the legacy of the professional movie monitoring business MK Sound had established. Good luck to both of them.

Also receiving honorable mention for not quite giving up is the reborn Threshold brand. I really had high hopes for them.

I shouldn't be so melancholy I suppose, it's just that I save my money for years and when I finally can afford what I want, they go under.

Gaim / Pidgin Sucks

Pidgin is a free multi-chat client. It used to be called GAIM. It is similar in intent to Trillian.

So, the quick review. My main reason for investigating it was that Trillian does not offer encrypted messaging outside of AOL, and that messaging is subject to relatively simple attacks.

So, on to Pidgin. After 30 minutes of screwing around with it, neither AOL nor Yahoo were connecting. Only MSN worked.

I'm very very happy to get rid of it.

Lexicon vs. Oppo Blu Ray Player

Stereophile ran a fairly decent article on the Oppo player and it's reincarnation under the Lexicon brand name. I nearly chocked. Not because the article was descent, they do that now and then, but because I had no idea Lexicon still existed! Hah!