New Tech For Toes & Space Mtn Jaunt In Lieu Of Blodgett 29Apr20.

1st, I've given back my 1# 10z Arcteryx Aerios FL mid hiking boots... they were unbelievably light, stoke green color, and reasonably stiff underfoot. However, after a couple of rough ones in the Gore, the man-made uppers were showing significant cuts through. That is - they were too light.

REI accepted and recently I acquired a couple of heavier, but with leather uppers, day hiking mid boots. Enter Scarpa and La Sportiva - two alternative reliable mountaineering brands. I settled on the Scarpa Mojito Gortex mid weighing in at 2# 4z, so 30% heavier, but hopefully much more industrial in strength. After multiple sping outings I conclude the footbed is stiffer and more rock repellent, the Vibram sole and lugs are stickier, and the upper is nearly indestructible. I know, I returned Arcteryx, but yea. The supplied insole wasn't perfect so I swapped in some old Superfeet, but they'd seen better days too I guess as they allowed my forefoot soreness. I highly recommend the final Superfeet Trail insoles which now adorn the Mojitos. I can barely feel these things as I float along trails now. The top-stiching isn't sweet lime so I have to don brookie colors to match, but else this system rocks.

Scant subscription to today's Blodgett ascent prompted me to call an audible and hike the 5+ miles up Spruce Mtn, with Kala - something which she's never enjoyed as I'm typically riding it. Awesome outing in the affirmed boots and hiking again with m'lady.  Yea, that's Pike's Pk and Long's Pk in the BGs. More wildflowers too - fab weather and friend.

Mob Scene On South Platte, Party Of Felons, Tr 713 Checkup, CoWW VHH 26Apr20-28Apr20

Wow the weather has turned very nice - except for allergies impacts... hope y'all are gettin' out. I'll start this entry with a felonious act in which we partook. Brantleys threw a get-together on their lower patio days preceding the "Safer @ Home" release. Good to party, Scooter served serious Napa cabs and we offered a 2012 Law Segacious GSM - very nice. Dave is in the background next to me - he was a restaurateur and pretty happy he's not right now. Kala is with me at the party of felons but she's also behind the lens.

The CoWW VHHs continue and are pretty fun. Here there's no Steve Brown as his phone died. While billionaires and scientists are solving Covid 19, we discuss fishing flies and  tasty cocktail choices - gotta have priorities.

Kala & I checked out Tr 713 behind the AFA on Sun 4/26 and it spurred me to source a Blodgett Pk ascent via that trail. It was a nice day and a great hike with m'lady. I saw my first wild flowers on the outing.

Finally, I did get out toward Cheeseman Canyon but so did everyone else. I could not even find illegal parking hear the Gill TH at 9:30am so I blew it off and went back down to Deckers. It was no better and I found another mob-scene on the river there after hiking in from a lesser used pullout. Terrible. Flows were up to ~250cfs which should be good but I only managed one smallish brown between the combat fisher-persons and the dead deer drinking Coors. I gotta remind myself that SR 285 mainlines near this area from Denver whereas 11 Mile is more a COS-centric playground. I left at noon. Sheesh.

Top "Live" Rock Harmonies 24Apr20

UPDATE - I deleted the entire prior post on a nearby subject as it had been hacked somehow and all the images and links were deleted from the blog. NP really, I revisited the subject and decided I was too deferential to some classics in my prior post. Below are a list of 10 songs via live videos that I like - are they "best," maybe; are harmonies, sometimes; are they good, yes. Here I am more indifferent as to date and some of my current favorite bands factor more heavily... as do the quality of the recordings... except I still must bow to The Beatles, CSN and The Beach Boys. Who am I to judge? In no particular order...

Lake Street Dive - Mistakes @ Bose Studio

boyrgenius - Cowboy Take Me Away @ KEXP

The Wild Reeds - Young & Impressionable @ WGBH

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Suite Judy Blue Eyes

Brandi Carlile & The Henseroth Twins - The Eye @ Boston Calling

boygenius - Me and My Dog @ Colo Public Radio

The Wild Reeds - Everything Looks Better In Hindsight @ NPR Tiny Desk

The Beatles - This Boy @ Ed Sullivan Theater

Grouplove - Deleter @ YouTube Space

Of Monsters & Men - Little Talks @ Icelandic Airwaves

The Beach Boys - Sloop John B @ Knebworth Park

Fishing The Blue & Ark And Living Abundantly 23Apr20-24Apr20

After 11 Mile on Wed, I headed to the Nest to do some work and grab some new brews from ORB, my favorite Colorado brewery. They were both yummy and I enjoyed them while listening on the new Nest Theater and using JRiver's lyrics display, which is awesome. Here's the dive on sad country with Cowboy Junkies on the table at the time.

Then I dropped into the Green Mtn Canyon section of the Blue River, affectionately Jurassic Park. It was cold but flows were back down to ~250cfs so I was hopeful. I hooked one but did not land it. Spawn sign still evident here - but there was precious little bug sign - I think we are days to weeks off before the Blue heats up here. Maybe as the mayflies start hatching; I've just never done very well here on midges alone, but man it's gorgeous.

I headed back to COS and set out for the PT on Fri with the weather favorable and flows a perfect ~425cfs for this stretch in spring. Midge sign as I hit the river at 10:30am or so. There were a couple of guys but not bad. The redds were mostly empty now so we are fishing for everyone. BWOs started coming off ~11am and kept it up till 12:30pm. It's still a light hatch but it was a sunny day. I had a good day catching a number of 17"-19" cutbows like these on mayflies and midges. Several also got off my line, like the wiley 20"er shown escaping my net as he'd wrapped on a branch in the water and we were both caught on it - till he wasn't and I still was.

Living abundantly not only means 4 packs from Summit Club at ORB but today I stopped at Cerberus (the best brewery in COS) to support them and scored a buy 3 - get 1 along with my lamb sliders.

'Bows On The Run 22Apr20

I fished 11Mile in good and poor weather ~ ahh springtime. I caught a number of fish on Top Secret midge, Money midge and an egg. All were smallish ~16"-17" or so like these shown. Always fun out there but it is very crowded now so my catches were not from prime spots. I was just on a run up to Summit Co again and went the back way. It snowed on me in 11 Mile Canyon and again on Hoosier Pass.

Nest Theater Part Eight - Audio Integration & Measurement 18Apr20

With the AMP compete and tested and the DAC verified I headed to Silverthorne to install all the gear in it's rightful spot, integrate it, test it and most importantly, listen. The entire 2.1 audio system is now ready and frankly one of the best digital source hifi systems I've ever heard. JRiver MC / Roku Ultra > DENAFRIPS DAC > AudioNote Kit 1 300B SET AMP > DRC BLHs with Veriwave SRT7 Ribbon supertweeter & HSU ULS 15 Mk II subwoofer. Integration was not totally simple as the DAC tended to over-deliver the low end to the sub and so careful adjusting was required. The TV delivers PCM over optical back to the DAC when Roku is streaming and JRiver on the PC uses USB to connect to the DAC. From there it's just using the DAC outputs to get to the tube amp and to the sub's amp. I am amazed at the quiet yet mind-blowing loudness I can get from this 8 watt system - super efficient. Plus, thankfully, all the gear choices yielded a very smooth, liquid and organic sound with a huge yet well-defined soundstage... and no fatigue while listening - I've now spent many hours. In fact, driven by this gear, the horns are sufficient and the super-tweeters and subwoofer are just icing. If at the Nest, do ask to listen. Now there's just the staining and finishing, and a new TV; Ill probably clean up that inter-wiring too.

I installed REW on the XPS laptop so measuring would be ever-ready and simpler than toting my Mac all over. The system on its own was awesome as you can see from the 1st SPL graph but I knew I could to even better with a little EQ - I got a very close match to my desired house curve with a dozen or so filters added to JRiver - see the 2nd SPL graph after correction. I sense I got the variability from ~5-10 dB from house to ~2-3 dB from house and importantly got rid of the shout at 1K-2.5KHz - I still have some bass dropoffs and may need to continue to work the SUB-BLH integration some.

I also compared the full system's frequency response with one captured previously when the speakers were driven by the digital NAD amp/dac and noticed that while similar, the new amp/dac delivers a smoother raw response over the spectrum but rolls off sharply @ 17KHz compared to the NAD-driven high end.

Update - I did a range of measuring & testing with two different subwoofers, each in multiple locations, and have dialed in the low end a little better. Below I compare No Sub (red) with the best settings & location for the Hsu Sub (green) with the best settings & location for an 18" Velodyne Sub (purple). While I moved the subs around, I still found no better acceptable spot than the front wall near the right BLH... I'm sure it suffers a bit from not being directly in the corner but I need the BLH there for separation and it's bass contribution. I'm not even using a crossover so the Hsu can help out all the way to ~200Hz.

 

Update #2 - I've continued to work the audio paths, especially for bass management, as the install was so delicate and finicky to control. My latest scheme measured more controlled than all prior and sounds even better as to balance with the BLHs. Shown below is the house curve with the old and new schemes - full sweeps, then the DSP corrected response. Low end distortion previously possible has been mostly eliminated (or below the noise floor) and overall volume is controlled via the single 300B SET amp's potentiometer. Amazing.

Listened to Fiona Apple's latest album - as usual, quirky good stuff including very idiosyncratic percussion throughout. My favorite track was the title cut. I caught The Strokes new drop, The New Abnormal... it's also good and more accessible to me. The New Abnormal is quite possibly the best Strokes album since Is This It. I also dove again on sad country and Cowboy Junkies are awesome... especially those first couple of albums.