Listening times

[Neil McCauley]

Max is definitely a truly remarkable man with a solidly reliable opinion on a great many aspects of hi-fi, he rarely says anything that he hasn't thought long and hard about - the tenacity of a terrier. Met him a couple of years back, lovely chap - lives just down the road from me - and an exceptional ability to bring the best out of any component by simply engineering and re-engineering the solution to a problem.

A bit of topic drift here, and I hope you’ll forgive me.

Max Townshend as a North Sea oil rig hard-hat.

Max spent a while, he told me, working as a consultant for the Norwegian oil industry trying to solve a problem regarding the disposal of the toxic drilling ‘mud’ which is part of the drilling process. According to Max, this mud is so toxic that on the sea bed around a drilling rig, that nothing or virtually nothing lives there for a radius around 12 Km. Clearly a major problem. He attempted a number of solutions that if I recall correctly would recover the ‘mud’ and incinerate it in some way so that it could be disposed of harmlessly. Had he succeeded, which to his frustration he didn’t, he truly would have made a significant and positive difference to sea bed ecology around the World.

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[Mike Reed]

What an interesting and well-written post by HOWARD, though he leaves more questions than answers (but all will be revealed, he says!).

IAIN thinks it's mood rather than mains.

I've grappled with this phenomenon for nigh on thirty years, though this on-colour, off-colour situation hasn't happened to me for some years.

I believe it is mainly the quality, and especially the QUANTITY of mains in periods when more is being drawn. I.E. when people are at home, or there's a larger than normal demand.

I also agree with Iain, that personal mood can have an effect, even when one is not aware.

I also feel that the sound/presentation, though technically faultless, can fail to move the soul because of the relative humidity, or even temperature, of the room. My LP12 often sounded lifeless in the early eighties until I put small troughs of water nearby. This was obviously when the air was dry.

One also gets used to a specific presentation until, eventually, it lacks that 'Je ne sais quoi'; this could well be a human failing or the equipment becoming' sad' and needing a bit of titillation.

However, I do believe, through experience, that the first, and possibly the worst, bete noir can be simply eradicated by having a totally separate mains supply. The fact that it equates to some serious upgrades is just a bonus. Not possible for all, of course, but I really don't think that any amount of expensive filtering or conditioning of household ring mains can hold a candle.

[tfarney]

If by "changes" you mean that sometimes in the evening, the guitar solos in Kid Charlemagne sound less that freaking brilliant, you're just tired. If you're talking about changes in the fidelity of your system, look around you...no, over here...see? Walk toward the light.

Tim