Hey Mani - I will be impressed if Satti is impressed!!!!

Let me know how that goes!!!

Paul

Hey Mani,

You forgot one variant :

4. Orelo MkII (but with 4x 15" bass drivers) with 1 x 15" mounted above the horn. And wow would that be BIG

Ha ha

Paul

Hi Peter,


I understand what you are saying and because of that I was expecting to hear something different in the bass than I am used to but I would be interested in hearing Nick's opinion because his view was that when he listened to the Mk II's at your place there was much more weight to the sound.

Cheers

Paul

Thanks to Satti & Mani for their excellent hospitality on a fine day yesterday Nick and I had a great (and illuminating) day.

First of all immediate impressions - OH BOY the Orello Mk II's are BIG the pictures that Mani posted (and indeed those that Nick took yesterday) are very misleading looking much smaller than in real life.

First NOS1a - this is a BIG improvement on NOS1. I took Mani's other NOS1 (with Dexa) back and so we were able to compare NOS1 with NOS1a. I won't say any more about the 1a because others have covered it elsewhere but NOS1a is special - very special.

And now on to Orello MkII. This was the first time that I have heard a horn (Orphean) that sounds right to my ears. But that is with NOS1a - going back to NOS1 it was not so good and many of the "problems" I always had with horns again became apparent. It is clear that this horn implementation is special and starts to fulfill what I always hoped a horn could do also maybe a horn to some extent is incredibly revealing of the input. BUT there are a couple of downsides first is that they did not quite sound as "sweet" and smooth as I would like. Singing voices sounded fantastic but ultimately not quite smooth enough. HOWEVER that is almost certainly because they need more running in and I think that they will settle down over the coming weeks. Before I move on though we were sitting quite close to the horns (8' ish) and I would prefer to be further away to reduce that "in your face" impression of the horns and to get a more real life perspective. But maybe that is just a personal thing.

Now on to the bass. First the bad news immediately it was clear that just now Mani's set up is bass light - very bass light. We played tracks with bass lines that I know very well and they were almost completely missing. It sounded as though nothing was happening in the 35 - 100Hz region. I stood behind and in front of the Orello's and there seemed to be very little difference in bass - and I know that is not right. It has to be that much more running in is needed because there is a long way to go to get bass that properly underpins the music.

But now the good news - we played a track well known to both Nick & I with much percussion and electronic sounds. Apart from missing bass lines I have never heard a speaker come close to the Orello for speed accuracy and punch - a big step towards how it should sound live and very impressive.

There is one thing I would have to "play with" in Mani's set up. He uses a very long balanced i/c (14 meters was it Mani?). My system is extremely sensitive to i/c's and if it were me I would have to start off with a short i/c of known construction (to me) just to find out if was impacting the sound. I don't know if that i/c is impacting performance but for me I would have to find out.

So overall very interesting both Nick and I were agreed that we had a glimpse of a sound quality that potentially could be a big step towards live sound. But I suspect that Mani's system is at the start of the 'running curve' and there is a long way to go.

Cheers

Paul

Where I am working just now I drew Australia in the sweepstake. If they could have just got through to the finals I would have won £2. Ah well!!!!

I am really shocked and upset. As Mani said we met Eric when Mani and I went over to Peter's for the weekend. Eric picked me up at Schiphol (a complete stranger at that time) and took me back to his place where we met Michaela. Eric and Michaela were fantastic hosts and looked after me until we went back to pick up Mani and then off down to Peter's. We had a great weekend.

Eric was a lovely, lovely guy and very special. I am greatly saddened to hear that is no longer with us.

Michaela you have my deepest sympathy and condolences.

Paul

I remember Radio Atlanta but not for long as it joined forces with Radio Caroline thereby giving Radio Caroline 2 ships that could cover most of the UK. Not sure about Holland though. Also I remember Radio Caroline broke its moorings one night and ran aground in Frinton. No one hurt but it was repaired in Holland.

"On 2 July 1964, Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline's companies, Project Atlanta and Planet Productions., announced the stations were to merge, with Crawford and O'Rahilly as joint managing directors. Radio Atlanta closed at 8pm that day. It was renamed Radio Caroline South and MV Mi Amigo remained off Frinton-on-Sea while MV Caroline broadcast as Radio Caroline North."

Nowadays Radio Caroline "transmits" on the internet - but that's no fun!!!!

I remember Radio North Sea International but not Veronica - weren't these some years later though?.

I used to listen to Radio Caroline on a Crystal Radio connected to the radiator in my bedroom. That was probably my first electronic project when I was around 10 years old.

Those were the days!!!

Cheers

Paul

Who remembers the Blockheads? originally the Loving Awareness Band in the days of Radio Caroline and then the backing band for Ian Dury. Top quality musicians back in the day.

I did not realise that they are still touring but they are!! I managed to get hold of some tickets and 3 (yer the same 3 that went to see Nigel K) of us went to see them on Friday. Unfortunately we arrived at 8pm and found that the Blockheads were not on until 10p.m. Even more unfortunately the two support bands were dreadful - truly awful. Anyway we stuck it out and it was well worth the wait. The original line up were there including Chaz Jankel (keyboard/guitar), Norman Watt-Roy (bass guitar), Mick Gallagher (keyboard/piano), John Turnbull (vocals/guitar).

The only problem for me was the singer - he was mates with Ian Dury but I do not see any other reason for him being in the line up. OK he could do the original Dury songs OK but the new songs well not so good. But anyway when the blockheads get going they are superb. This has to be another recommended set - they are on regularly around the south east and tickets are cheap. If you get a chance go!!

Last weekend 3 of us saw Nigel Kennedy at the Round House in London. Billed as "Bach to the Future" it was supposed to be that the first half of the programme would be Bach and the second half various music by Nigel's Polish group and guests (including two from the Jazz Warriors). The set kicked off with Nigel playing a couple of Bach Sonata/Partita's sitting in the audience with a couple of lucky girls. Then another piece back on the stage. Then Nigel stepped forward and said "Bach created the harmonic structure of music and so I am going to explore a few more modern pieces in other words I feel justified in playing what the f*** I want" good old Nige!!!!

Anyway the rest of the evening was playing all sorts of stuff including classical jazz, gypsy, Klezmer and much more.

Towards the end of the evening Nige and the band played a Hendrix number. Wow was it good!! brilliant and complex with Nige playing his electric violin.

Back in 1997 I bought "Kafka" which is pretty much when NK started exploring music outside of classical. I did not rate it that high because Nige really could not throw off the classical shackles. In fact no classical musician I have heard to date has managed that. That was then - now Nigel has managed it now and in some style. To hear a virtuoso performer play Hendrix and for it to sound like proper rock but at the same time sublimely good quality playing was a real treat. NK has achieved something no other virtuoso classical musician has achieved (that I know of anyway). What a stonking good set!!!.

If you get a chance you have to see him!!!

Hey Peter,

I have to say (to echo Nick) all the work you have done on this is super impressive. From an engineering perspective it is almost unheard of these days to experience this level of clarity, vision and execution.

Everything is digital nowadays and there is little proper engineering done - just bolt a few IC's together without any proper understanding of what is going on tends to be the normal approach. The old days of proper engineering (i.e. in the days of analogue) are largely a thing of the past. Except here of course!!!

Cheers

Paul

This is probably a stupid question but hey what the heck I will ask anyway. So the input is "noisy" and by that I read "jitter" and on the output clean ie virtually no jitter because it is regenerated. BUT the "regenerator" has to take its trigger points (i.e. the points at which it triggers up & down signals on the clean output) from the jittery input. Doesn't that mean that in the output signal the positive and negative going "edges" are mostly in the wrong place? So although there is little measured jitter it is actually embedded in the output.

Cheers

Paul

These look like all the problems I had with my ASRock PC which is why I ended up in UEFI. But before I sorted out UEFI at one point I did boot up and randomly was able to see 4T - however on next reboot I lost it and was only able to see one partition with 2.2T and could do nothing with the unallocated remaining space which was when I gave up and booted to UEFI.

So yes your experience looks entirely consistent with mine!! either the disc sucks or Microsoft sucks!!

Hi Peter - Booting into UEFI cannot work with Windows 7 and so the only way to be able to "see" a 4T disc is using the tools that are provided on the Seagate disc by the manufacturer. I guess these are the tools that "trick" the OS into seeing more than 2.2T. I had this working on another computer and it seemed OK but I did not check it very extensively and I did not attempt to install OS onto it (it was MBR).

Booting into UEFI only works from W8+ which is all I use now with XX so no I cannot really comment on the other options you list except that I gave up trying to get the 4T disc working with MBR and normal BIOS.

Cheers

Paul

I have 29Gb in the OS partition and 2.25T of music in the other partition. As it happens I rebooted earlier (for different reasons) without problems.

If I had seen your post before I rebooted maybe I would not have!!!!

So Peter are you booted into EFI? I thought 2.2T was only relevant in MBR and in MBR the 2.2T limit is overcome by special software "tricks".

Paul

Hi Alain,


Same disc for me and it was MBR. It needs to be GPT - but see above I had to let W8 (booted in EFI) format the disc to get it working.

Obviously I had to do a complete W8 install to get everything working but it was worth it because now no problems with the 4T disc. But also the network start stop with XX is completely seamless (i.e. not visible).

Cheers

Paul