Ear Pain

It has not been for want of trying, but the pickings have not been good at all. Very small success today with a little selection.

Upgrade-itice strikes yet again, beckoning me once more to her warm embrace. Never really happy with the Wharfedale SW150 subwoofer. It made low level noise, but was never really controlled and got a bit too boomy. With music I found it unusable. The low level drone just cancelled out the listen pleasure for vinyl and CD. The lower compression of streaming suffered even more. SW150 was boxed up and sold on a forum I frequent. After living sub--less for a couple of weeks I gave in and purchased this beauty: A BK Gemini II in light oak. I mean, look at it, it is lovely just to look at. Still breaking it in, but the low level experience is in another league. So much tighter, and musical. When listening to music it is a world of difference, and with films, the gut punch is more than enough. I only have a small listening room, and the reason I went for this entry level sub is I just don't need anymore at present.

New arrival from Amazon. Actually purchased a new release. I love the fact Amazon gives you the MP3 when you buy from them most of the time. Have already been listening to this on Spotify, and Then Amazon, since it came out a couple of weeks ago. Was hooked since his first Album, Endtroducing, which I have on original CD in gatefold packaging...so cool

Shopping trip with the wife allowed me a chance to pop into a local charity shop that I have had some success with before. Not a bad haul today. 49p an album.

Been a while without any success. Decided to wander into my local charity shop after a long absence. Quite a successful visit. Not bad for £2 all in. All ready ripped to FLAC, re-cased damaged boxes and sorted on shelf. And now for an evening of some classic REM.

Another day, another Amazon special arrives. Probably one of Massive Attacks greatest (and their first) After listening to this a couple of times I have pulled out the CD of 'Collected', their greatest hits. This then let to a spinning of 'Dummy by 'Portishead'... it just goes on and on....

Deviation from usual content...well kind of. I keep all my FLAC files on a NAS. One of these: https://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/storage/readynas/RN524X.aspx It a great machine, more than powerful enough for what I use it for (including Plex Server, file Server, Apple Time Machine backup, etc...). But the noise it makes and the temps it registers have been bothering me for a while. CPU was idling in the high 70s (celsius) and the fan noise was not pleasant in the room it sits - which is also my office! Job 1: New thermal Paste Dismantled the the whole thing, which was not easy because I could not find any schematics online. Eventually got the system board out, carefully removed the heatsink off the CPU and cleaned up the touching surfaces - much scraping of crusty old paste. Applied some fresh Arctic Silver thermal paste and put everything back together. Temps dropped to high 60s. Not bad, but the fan noise was still annoying. Job 2: New Case fan ...