I didn't even notice the auto-edit. I just thought you were really happy about the gift! Woo woo woo!
Speaking of vinyl... http://www.irwinsjournal.com/ijonline/ijrail.htm I for one am so glad that I kept all of my old records including through my divorce. I can live without having the "180 gram vinyl" edition of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. My 138 gram version (yes, I weighed it) is just fine! Oh, as for trains, the "Happy Birthday" Z Scale car for my wife's birthday just showed up today even though it was shipped on the 15th! Uh, Happy Fourth Day of Christmas, dear...
I sold my entire record collection (going back to the early 60's) about 15 years ago. 1) It helped pay my sons tuiton to 2 years of trade school. 2) Records where passé about 2005 anyway. THE Wife still chews my a$$ for doing that. As with most things these day...the younger generation cant come up with anything 'original' so we get a ton of things making a 'comeback' in every aspect of our lives! c'est la vie
George- The actual Twelve Days of Christmas are December 25th through January 5th. So that present fits in nicely...
A vinyl lover for 5 decades, I still have 90% of my collection including dozens of 200 gram master recordings. I am also addicted to HD Digital Audio as well so it is a best of both worlds. My audio addiction still comes second to my N scale train addiction!
I have always loved music... Cant play it worth a damn myself but I have always enjoyed listening to it. My parents had a turntable ever since I can remember and during the holidays mom would play a selection of X-mas records. It was auto feeding so it took a while before the stack needed to be reset. I got my first cassette player around 7 or so years old and my first "boombox" at about 10. I would prefer to listen to music over TV for most anything. Being a child of the 70's, growing up in the 80's I had all the goodies like the Walkman, and the portable CD player. It wasn't until the early 90s that my dad finally bought a component stereo. He claimed it a gift to mom because her record player wasn't doing so well 30 years on. Well he actually is the one that wanted it, I was the one who mainly used it, and when they got divorced it pissed dad off that mom took it. She did so out of spite as she knew he bought it for himself, but claimed it as hers to prevent her from getting mad. When I finally made enough money for one of my own I looked at many brands but found Kenwood was not the cheapest, nor the most expensive but seemed to have the best value for the money. That ended up with my ex when we split. So fast forward a few years and component systems are not a thing any more. . I still wanted the sound I had growing up from Mom's stereo and the one I had with my ex. I found some people think these old component units are made of unobtainium and are worth more than royalty has to spend. So I started looking at broken units. Knowing that they are usually just needing the capacitors replaced and maybe a driver chip here or there, I have the skills to fix that. So in comes an amp, a controller, a tuner, an equalizer, and a CD changer. The only one of these units that didn't need any repair was the CD changer. Well it needed stuck CDs removed but that was it. The Amp got a new power cord (woo woo woo is it with people cutting off the power cords?) and 4 of the large caps had leaked. I replaced all the larger caps but left the small ones, and all is well. I am getting a bit of minor distortion now, so those are going to be replaced here soon. The tuner needed knobs, and one of the boards needed some reflow work. The EQ again had a cut cord but was otherwise fine. and the controller had a bad power supply. I bought a trashed controller that had a good power supply and I was in business. I have some good in their day, but worn out tower speakers doing the job of giving me all the music I want. I have my Audio Technica turntable attached to this setup, also using the TV inputs I have a Kindle to supply my iHeartRadio and other streaming services, and in the AUX I have a bluetooth interface that lets me connect my iPod for all my other digital needs. Who says that old component units cant handle modern music? Mine does just fine. Though I do someday want to own a Kenwood 9600. Maybe soon I will have the $$$ for one.
The 'youngins' will make them another comeback item by the end of 2021... I love my component system. I even have a seperate tuner...equalizer and dare I say...a VCR...lol
The VCR is long gone... after seeing the quality difference in DVDs and since I never really recorded anything, it just wasn’t a thing for me to keep. To me though, I don’t see much of a difference at all with blue Ray over dvd, even on my 4K tv, I just get whatever version of a movie I can.
The VCR was being used as a modulator for the cable coming from the dish receiver in the livingroom...around the house to my bedroom...so I could run component cables from it to my Stereo and then to my monitor for TV. I'm with you on the quality of Blu-Ray over regular DVD's. I cant tell the difference at all...lol
I try to keep all formats, even have an 8-track that still works !!! Some stuff never made it to CD (The Hounds), and some songs have different versions on different formats. Rolling Stones' "Miss You" on 8-track is different from cassette, cassette is different from LP, 10" EP is different from all. "Someone in my neighborhood" has ALOT of studio and live bootlegs, so gotta' keep everything working !!!
4K vs. 1080P (Blu-ray) vs. 480P (DVD) is all about the ratio of viewing distance to screen size. The human eye can only discern up to a certain resolution, and at certain points it simply can't tell the difference between them. In those cases, it's more about source quality than media resolution. I have two full 4K setups (display, player and soundbar), but honestly think that 4K is mostly a gimic. Ironically, the thing I notice most about 1080 vs. 480 is the quality of text in the subtitles.
4K is a bit of a gimmick when the human eye is only capable of seeing about 2K resolution any way. What I find is more important is color quality and separation, as well as refresh rates. If something moving on the screen leaves behind artifacts that ruins the image for me. Also colors that are too saturated or too vivid its a no go here too. I know watching a Tim Burton movie could go either way with the colors but that's his style. I don't need to see "IceMan" on my screen with hair so blonde that it seems to glow. Yes I seen a TV playing Top Gun at a store and that's exactly what it looked like when Maverick and him were facing off in the locker room.
I checked my LP collection on eBay a year ago and found I didn't have much of anything. I think the most valuable one I had was a mono edition of Magical Mystery Tour and it was worth only $25. (Remember when you couldn't play stereo records on mono record players? Something about the mono needle profile doing damage to stereo grooves.) I still have them all, but rarely listen to them.
Santa brought me a lump of coal. I'm very excited. But it's going to take so long to finish my live steam project, I hope I remember where I put it.
I got a lump of coal one year, and displayed it in my train room ever since. I also gave a friend at work a lump. He was a fellow model railroader and the guys at work couldn't understand why someone would get excited over a piece of coal. Where we lived you only needed to walk along the main line and you could pick up coal by the bucket load from what fell off the cars.
I've already mentioned the awesome train things I got for Christmas. What I didn't mention was the best present of all. My daughter, who lives out of state, spent three wonderful weeks with us this Christmas. She left to go back home today... Miss her already.
