The Crags On Our 40th 31May20

Kala and I hiked up to the Crags on a gorgeous Front Range day. It's our 40th anniversary and we are mostly "out there" so it was appropriate and fun. We saw where Matt had carved his name in an aspen along the way in 2007! We also met a nice family from PA, now located in Woodland Pk, with a pro mtn biker and a geriatric nurse, just in case we need her.

Music From Sequestration 30May20

Yeah, SpaceX. Who knows what tomorrow is? Here's a couple of things "my" artists have done from sequestered spots, some of which are worthy; some are edits of prior footage dropped during our times... from desert punk from the Peacemakers, to keen singing ladies, to NoFX's ska punk @ Red Rocks backed by an orchestra, all are fun.

Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers - City Girls

Haim Sequestered @ For BBC 1 - The Steps

Alex Lahey & The Kitchen - Hits

NoFX w/ Bas Orchestra @ Red Rocks - The Decline

11 Mile Canyon Fishing With Yoho 29May20

Jim & I got out to 11 Mile today. It was a gorgeous morning and fishing was decent with worms and midges though we did not see a lot of bug-sign. The flows are way too low at ~65cfs and the river is choked with vegetation. Jim caught a really nice rainbow and some others and I got a number of 16"-17"ers on midges. We stopped for lunch ~1pm and waited out a 20 minute storm - but the river never really "came back." Oddly the storm had dislodged tons of river scum and every other cast was a cleaning task - and the fish went hiding too. Opposite fun factor vs the morning session.

Just One On The Blue 27May20

On a 65° overcast day I was hoping for lots of mayflies... there were some on & off on the Green Mtn Canyon section of the Blue River today, but not epic. And, the fishing was pretty slow with the flows bumped to 360cfs four days ago. Nonetheless I caught a strong and colorful 17" cutbow today... oddly this is the first 'bow I caught here this year. It was kindof crowded - I was the 6th car to arrive and I passed 10 guys and two rafts as I hiked downstream. Cute new goose family. The water was reasonably clear until some weather rolled in and while I was just hit with light drizzle the water turned milky green - some stronger remote storm must've unleashed via a feeder stream.

Williams Fork - Where Have All The Rainbows Gone? 26May20

With the weather passed and the Williams Fk flows holding @ ~200cfs, I headed to Grand Co after the long weekend. My last two outings here have been weaker and more crowded than I ever recall. Today I was just the 3rd car, so that's better. It was a decent mid-50s day and no mosquitoes yet - but also not much other bug-sign except an occasional BWO or midge. Again I caught a couple of ~17" browns, one on Don Juan 2Tone Squiggly worm and one on #22 olive KF Flasher midge. But in spring on this tailwater I have often in the past caught a number of strong rainbows and cutbows up from the Colorado spawning, or holding over in the Bill's Fork. All season thus far I've seen none of these larger fish - something has change but I do not know what. The bottom does seem yuckier this year, and I've observed no redds here, but who knows? I finally did catch an 18" rainbow lady today but she was thin and likely not a participant in any spawn - kind of and ugly lass. Hmmm. I caught her in a decent hole (on the worm) I usually deem my turn-around point but today I headed further upstream... it is more rugged and didn't yield anything new except for this good view downstream from above as I finally did turn-around and take the high road.

I found yet another nice ghost net while fishing in Colorado - this is my 3rd. My good friends Steve and Rob have been beneficiaries of the last two, but who now? I tucked it in my guide belt loop behind my real net but when dispatching, it came along out and buggered up the first landing attempt on the 'bow. Sheesh... I did land the bow with it ultimately and I did get it back to the car. The wildflowers are starting in earnest in Grand Co and the WFk valley is attracting moose!

Nest Theater Part Ten - Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' 24May20

I rolled tubes in the pre-amp section of the 300B SET Kit 1 today. My amp came with a modern Electro Harmonix 6SN7, which was excellent, but I replaced it with a NOS 1951 RCA 6SN7GT Grey Glass Short. I'd have preferred late 40's but those were 2X the price. That swap delivered a wider sound stage but not much measurable difference (see graph); I kept going on the pre-amp and replaced the stock GE 5687 tubes, also excellent, with desirable matched NOS 1958 Tung-Sol 5687s. The new pre-amp sounds better to me, and measures slightly flatter and extended but as measured it is very correlated to the prior tube set. I conclude that the pre-amp has less impact on sound in my system than do other things - well, WTF, what are those other things... search on.

Original Pre-Amp

New Pre-Amp

Comparing SPL Sweeps of OG & New Pre-Amp

My DRC-BLHs (D37) were built to allow "rolling" of the full range 6.5" drivers. I did that today for the first time by replacing the keen original Fostex 168E𝜮s with some somewhat less efficient 6.5" Tang Band W6-2144 full range drivers. In firing up the new drivers I had plenty of power (which was a concern replacing 94dB sensitive drivers with 89dB ones - NP). After balancing the system for the new drivers I was very pleased and impressed. Drivers make a difference but not as large a one as I'd expected. The TB does seem to shout less and have a smoother high end behavior (I imagine it is the center plug). I can see that the enclosure of a full range driver is the most major factor in what sound is delivered to my ear (other than source material quality); this makes sense but was not what I fully understood till today. Handmade enclosures take a lot longer to swap - I'm staying with the DRC-BLHs for now. I don't know if further driver swaps or new rectifier or power tubes will change my already astounding sound for the better. I need to cogitate but both of these drivers are excellent - especially when tamed with some EQ.

Original Fostex 168E𝜮

New (and Cheaper) Tang Band 2144

Driver Comparison Sweeps - Purple Is Tang Band

Tang Band NestT Driven By New Pre-Amp

New NestT Equalized Response Cure

Low Distortion Too

The good news is that we can enjoy tunes on the Nest Theater with the aid of ORB brews.

Mastering Abuse Sucks Dynamics From Digital Material 20May20

Referenced in some email threads is my dive into why I prefer "the sound" of some albums over others, when all other things should be generally equal. My research led to understanding the "Loudness War" that's been raging largely since the CD was introduced. The Wikipedia article linked is very good. Basically though, during mastering, a recording engineer can compress and equalize tracks with digital signal processing - making louder parts quieter and quieter parts louder, and deliver more instances of peak amplitude (of which a CD is only allowed "a few"), making a track "louder" overall. The effect often for me however is that dynamics and timbre have been mastered/compressed out of songs in the studio and I get a deader overall feel. This effect is measurable (more later) and a clear illustration is ZZ Tops' recording of Sharp Dressed Man which was released 3 times using the original, with some remastering done for each release.

Hmmm... nothing can be done about this unless an artist or producer or engineer chooses NOT to make these tradeoffs, and some do choose that path. Dire Straits stuff under Knopfler often had great dynamic range. Brother's In Arms was released when loudness manipulation was well underway and it is awesome, as almost all his releases are.

Unfortunately in many cases louder is the "average" listener's preference and bands are motivated to sound loud on the radio, since they are in comparisons. This might also be at the core of vinyl's resurgence; some say records sound better to them - and it very well might be better because an engineer has many fewer chances to equalize master material in a more purely analog domain. There is a keen database of albums and tracks I found that was produced using standardized measurements of audio dynamic range... it's cleverly called Dynamic Range Database and you can search for artists or albums and folks have uploaded their measurement of material. Supporting the vinyl DR notion I looked up Vampire Weekend and show measurement of their different albums and release media below. Red is low DR, yellow is mid DR and green is good DR in this database - it's been dumbed down for easier and quicker interpretation. It's great.

The database was largely compiled from measurements done using MAAT's software. I used their DROffline Mk II to measure some tracks and albums myself and it's fast and simple.

There were not standards on how to measure a track's or an album's dynamic range for many years, but now there are and MAAT's pro audio software measures to those standards as well as does an interpretation of goodness on a 0 to 14+ scale (as shown in the DR database). I used another app from Sweden's LTS called MasVis which also analyzes tracks regarding dynamic range and delivers output which is analytic and comparative - it's only available for Windows however.

Now I just need to figure out how I am going to behave, listen, buy and alter my own equalization practices. Bit depth & sample rate are insufficient to determine the "quality" of a digital source recording, we need the dynamic range published too - at least you can look up what others have measured about the material you intend to buy. This all ignores streaming which is much lower quality on published & unpublished metrics... my system @ the Nest renders stock YouTube videos decently - but could do much more if the source material was better.

Big Fish Day On The PT 18May20

Nice day. I hit the PT arriving ~9:30am with only several cars in the Nature Center area. It was an overcast but rapidly clearly and rapidly warming day in Pueblo. Flows were back down to a sweet gin clear 400cfs to boot. While things were favorable and I caught a number of fish, it was not frenetic and I felt like I was earning the ones I did hook. I saw only sporadic BWO and midge hatch activity and I did not see many fish easily (but did see some and the main catch of the day was one such fish which fell for my plan). I caught a very fat 22" cutbow near the carp hole out of nature center, on the #22 green vinyl KF Flasher midge. The rest of the fish today were ~17". I contemplated the question: "would I rather catch one 22" fish, or six 18" fish or  a dozen 15" fish?" - and I came out on the pig side of that Q. That was kind of like today. The #20 RS2 and the new #18 Purple May Reign also nabbed fish today. The one pic of a cutbow near the net was taken right before he bolted again, through my legs, catching the flys on my pants and busting off - nice move for him. Also, caught a cute new/big goose family.