Author: admin

Posted on

A tough year…

Wow, it’s been over a year since my last post, and it has not been because of not wanting to. 2024 has been a rough year for my family with several significant events, mostly related to health but I don’t want to get into much detail. The last event I for sure want to mention it here since it basically changed what I thought about life since I was basically born again that morning.

October 1, 2024, 8:43AM AST, I had just finished a conference call with a peer in India when I noticed a red flash to my right. Thinking it was a lightning I shrugged my shoulders, stood up, and a few milliseconds later a destructive expansion wave came crashing thru the window to my right and the one behind me, including flying debris. At that moment I though so many things, that a lightning had struck my house and my generator propane tank had exploded, or even that a plane had crashed on top of us. I was thrown over a few feet away and ended up standing in my home office door looking at my master bedroom towards my bed. My wife, who at that moment was laying in the bed checking her emails was screaming asking what had happened, and at that same time my eldest son came to the room asking the same and screaming. The floors were all covered in shattered glass and debris and we all were bare feet. Carefully I moved around and found my tennis shoes and looked out thru one of the blown away windows. My back door neighbor’s house had exploded and the structure had collapsed.

The picture above was taken from my home roof the day after the explosion. Regrettably my neighbor passed away due to the injuries incurred when the roof fell in top of her. 22 homes suffered some kind of damage including mine, which lost almost all its windows and external doors. Thankfully we were not severely injured but we had to undergo physical therapy due to the impact of the expansion wave. In the end a gas leak was the root cause of the explosion. She was an odor candle lover and seems she did not notice the bad smell of rotten eggs while lightning up one candle.

This Thanksgiving Day I want to gives thanks that my family and me are still alive. Material things can be recovered, but life once lost is gone.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

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Network Cables

Hi!

Long time since my last post. Been working long weeks for several months in a cloud migration project but just found some time to post about an interesting topic which I’m familiar with, network cables. For those who don’t know me, I have over 35 years of experience in IT infrastructure design and support (besides other specialties) in the financial, private, and public sector industries.

Also known as patch cords, network cables allow you to connect networked devices to a switch or patch panel, allowing network traffic to flow to/from between networked devices. Today, almost everyone has at least one patch cord in their house/business which allows you to connect more than one networked device (PC, printer, server, streamer, tv, etc.) to the internet.

One question I frequently get from friends and customers is if they should spend their hard earned cash in expensive patch cords / network cables for their streamers (Wi-fi only devices do not apply here), and my recommendation has always been to get a well built and certified cable, but do not spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in them. In my humble opinion it is a waste of money.

For example, banks have huge amounts of network devices and must ensure that networked data traffic is not affected by data packet losses which will affect networking performance which could cost them millions of dollars, but will not spend thousands, or even million of dollars in fancy network cables since they will ensure each network cable is certified by the installer. Large network installations usually get a fixed price per certified patch cord no matter its length (usually from $100 to $150 each). Network cable certification ensures that it performs to an certain standard specification (Cat5e, Cat6, Cat7, Catx) which has been more than proven in the industry. Speeds over 1Gbps (gigabits per second) can be achieved by most of these standards but are not required to stream music at all. In fact, 100Mbps is more than enough to stream a High Definition music file from a local source or from the internet.

On standards, the Ethernet port in which the patch cord connect is is galvanically isolated (as per the 802.3 standard) which ensures no interference or noise is propagated, and the TCPIP protocol has robust error correction algorithms which have been in place since its inception more than 40 years ago, and will ensure any corrupted data packet gets retransmitted and reassembled in the correct order.

This URL links to a document from Linn Products, manufacturer of one of the most acclaimed cost no object digital streamers, and their recommendation on network cables.

https://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Network_cable_definition

As they say in the above document,

‘Using higher spec cables will make no difference in the sound quality, but may be useful if the local network cable installation is going to be used with high bandwidth video streaming devices.‘

In summary, get a good certified network cable, but don’t spend ridiculous amounts of money on it.

Enjoy!

Vic

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What, an Audio Show?

Well it’s been a long time since my last post!!! As you may know my main source of income is as a Mainframe Solutions Architect for a U.S. corporation, and I’ve been working in several projects which have taken much of my time, but I’m back!

What have I been doing in the audio world? Well, turntable setups are still strong, some audio gear repair attempts (some successful, others not), and one interesting development was that I went to my first Audio Show ever, the Capital Audio Fest in Washington D.C., the weekend of November 11, 2022. My friend José Ramirez, aka Dr. Vinyl, asked me if I could help him managing one of his four demo rooms and I gladly obliged! José and me have been friends since he was my customer back in the mid-late 80s while I worked in precision Audio, so we go a long way back.

The room we set up had the following gear:

Reed Muse 3c turntable
True-Glider tonearm
DS Audio DS-3W optical phono cartridge with equalizer
Backert Labs Rhythm preamplifier
McGary Audio SA-1E amplifier
Usher Labs ML-801 speakers

Here is a picture of the setup in the demo room.

Dr. Vinyl demo room @ Capital Audio Fest 2022

Those of you who know me, I’m not a tube gear guy, and I was really impressed by this system!!! Price? Over $75,000 USD, expensive for some of us but not for some big rollers that visited the room and were ready to open their checkbooks to purchase it.

My personal highlight of this setup was the Reed turntable, True-Glider tonearm, and DS Audio optical cartridge. This combination is one of the most musical, tuneful, and dynamic I’ve ever listened to, and it goes against all I have learned in my over 40 years as a vinyl lover. Contrary to gimbaled or uni-pivot tonearms this one just hangs from a string, there is no bias/antiskating to set and it wobbles!!! The friction levels are so low that the force created by the friction between the stylus and the record is enough to force the tonearm to basically align itself to the record allowing it to track it in a way similar to a tangential arm. Seriously it goes against everything I’ve learned but I was really impressed by it.

On the phono cartridge, the DS Audio DS-3W, instead of using coils or magnets as generators, it use light variations to determine the signal levels to be sent to the equalizer/phono stage. There is a pair of light emitters and light sensors, and between them there is a shading plate that is attached to the boron cantilever. This shading plate is a lot lighter than both coils or magnets, it is made of beryllium, and allows the stylus/cantilever assembly to react more quickly to groove variations.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to met several well know audio personalities but the one I enjoyed the most was Carl Marchisotto, the famous speaker designer for Dalquist, and now designer and owner of NOLA speakers. Really enjoyed the time I spent talking to him, his wife, and daughter, specially the few hours we spent at José Ramirez house and demo room. Carl is a pleasure to talk with and an avid music lover.

I’m looking forward to this year’s Capital Audio Fest show!!!

Enjoy!

Vic

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Lazyness…

Hi there!

Well it’s been a while and it has been my fault. Been really busy in my main job as a Mainframe Consultant and pretty lazy posting updates to this site, but there has been activity setting up turntables and fixing repairing some vintage gear I got my hands on!!!

Marantz 2238B receiver

About two months ago I got my hands on a cosmetically good to nice condition Marantz 2238B receiver built back in 1979. This receiver was one in my hifi gear ‘Must Have’ list back then since I was at my senior year when it was released to market! Brings back so many fond memories of my high school Senior year when a bunch of friends just jumped into a car on Fridays and store-hopped every audio sales store in the metropolitan area within a two-hour break we had at lunch time (Senior year perks!).

Here is a picture of the Marantz 2238B received once I went over it checking it and replaced all bulbs with LEDs:

Marantz 2238B receiver

A thing of beauty!!!

JBL 4311Bs

About two weeks after I saw an advertisement for a pair of JBL 4311B speakers (JBL L100s daddy!!!) These were also in my ‘Must Have’ hifi gear list back in my Senior year and luckily got my hands on them! They are in relatively good cosmetic condition but one of the tweeters is sounding pretty low, so I may end up replacing both tweeters. They sound pretty good even with the tweeter issue!!!

JBL 4311B speaker.

Some touch ups here and there and they will be a thing of beauty!!!

BSR EQ-3000 Equalizer and DBX 2BX Processor

As part of the JBL package I also got my hands on a BSR EQ-300 equalizer and DBX 2BX processor. Both seem to be working but I’m still in the process of testing and cleanup so this is still on my to do list!

BSR EQ-3000 equalizer and DBX 2BX processor

And last but not least, got my hands on some Perreaux of New Zealand early 80s gear!!! It has some cosmetic flaws here and there but it is working FLAWLESSLY as expected from such vintage Perreaux gear. 200 watts per channel PMF2150B amplifier, SA-2 Class A preamplifier with moving coil and moving magnet phono sections, and a TU2 FM-only stereo tuner. This one sits in my shop and weights a ton!!!

Perreaux of New Zealand.

In other matters I’ve been recommended by a local dealer to install and set up one of the most impressive turntables in the world, a TechDAS Air Force One Premium with the world famous Graham Engineering Phantom 2.2 tonearm!

TechDAS Air Force One Premium.
Graham Engineering Pahntom 2.2 Tonearm.

Really looking forward to set up this combination and for sure I will report back with pictures and comments pretty soon!

Enjoy!

Vic

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Record cleaning!

Hi!

Many people have asked either personally or electronically what record cleaning fluid and machine I use to clean my LP collection since they sound pretty good even on not-so well cared used copies I’ve collected 2nd hand.

For more than 25 years my record cleaning machine or RCM has been VPI’s 16.5. Currently I’m on my second one since the first one I bought used (from a good old friend who passed away several months ago) gave up the ghost about 15 years ago.

For record cleaning fluid I use my own concoction of distilled water, 91% Isopropyl Alcohol, and a small squirt of Kodak’s Photo-Flo 200 fluid to ensure that the water film gets penetrates well into the LP grooves.

My formula for my record cleaning concoction is as follows:

FluidVolume
Distilled water183.4 ml
91% Isopropyl Alcohol51.6 ml
Kodak Photo-Flo 2001.2 ml
Record cleaning fluid ratios for a 235ml plastic bottle

It is perfectly fine to deviate from the above based upon the type of Isopropyl Alcohol available. The higher the Isopropyl Alcohol percentage, the less amount you need to use. It’s just a matter of remembering your High-School Chemistry class and do some math to adjust the volumes based on the capacity of your plastic bottle and Isopropyl Alcohol concentration.

If you need any help on the above don’t hesitate to contact me.

Enjoy!

Vic

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It’s been a while!

For sure it’s been a while! Between the Pandemic lock down and new job responsibilities I have not made up enough time to post something but after so many months I finally allotted some to say hello.

The Pandemic has brought new energy to the vinyl enthusiasts! People are spending so much time locked down at their homes (thanks God restrictions are now being slowly lifted) that they are looking for ways to make this time more enjoyable, and there is nothing more enjoyable than sitting down to listen to music from your favorite LPs with you favorite beverage in one hand and in good company!!! It is incredible the number of new turntable enthusiasts that have contacted me to set up their new turntables or existing enthusiasts spending some money to maintain / upgrade their turntables and keep them in tip-top shape.

About two weeks ago I received a call from a new customer, a referral from one of my associates, asking me if I could set up his new $12,000+ turntable system (Dr. Feickert Woodpecker, Kuzma 4-Point tonearm, Hana ML phono cartridge, and Gold Note PH-10 phono stage with PSU-10 power supply). I gladly said yes even though I’ve never had set up one of these, but a little bit of research gave me the tools and insight to do it, and I love challenges!

The Dr. Feickert Woodpecker is a belt driven turntable made in Germany which uses an inverted magnetic oil-bathed bearing. It’s simplicity is astounding, but hidden within is all the electronics required to ensure that the main platter rotates at 33, 45, and 78 revolutions per minute (RPM). Yes, 78 RPM! It’s been years since I’ve seen a turntable supporting that rotational speed.

The Kuzma 4-Point tonearm is made in Hungary. Kuzma started business back in 1982 establishing its reputation in the market with the Kuzma Stabi turntable. The Kuzma 4-point tonearm is an exercise in precision engineering, finish is excellent, and it is more than comparable with more expensive tonearms from other brands. Craftsmanship is excellent and setting it up is relatively simple.

The Hana ML moving coil cartridge is one of the offerings by Excel Sound Corporation in Japan. Hana has made its name in just a few years but its background and DNA goes back more than 50 years, being Excel the OEM phono cartridge designer and manufacturer for a significant number of companies, some of which names may not be even known in the western hemisphere.

The Gold Note PH-10 is a phono stage made in Italy. It has established its reputation as a audiophile level phono stage at a relatively low price when compared with other phono stages in the market. What caught my attention is that all settings are done via a color screen and a single knob. Push the knob for 3 seconds and the unit powers on, rotate it either way to move the screen icon to highlight an specific option, push the knob to select the option, rotate the knob to change the option, push it again to set it and save it. Its that simple. One interesting setting is the equalization curve. As you may know all of today’s LPs and most ones since 1954 have been mastered using what is known as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Equalization Curve. The purpose of this equalization curve is to permit greater recording times (by decreasing the mean width of each groove), to improve sound quality, and to reduce the groove damage that would otherwise arise during playback. Before RIAA was adopted there were two other equalization curve schemes used by mastering studios, the Decca-London and the American-CBS-Columbia equalization curves. Having these options in the PH-10 allow LP pre-1954 LP collectors to apply the corresponding equalization curve with the touch of a button, a nice feature, but I don’t think many people will use it, just my humble opinion. There are two phono inputs so you can connect two turntables to the PH-10, and each input can be individually set for moving coil or moving magnet phono cartridges, and their respective impedance and capacitance options. Included with the PH-10 was the PSU-10, an optional external 24-volt power supply to enhance the PH-10 performance.

Once everything was set up we spent about an hour listening to a few records. His system is tube-based and as many may know, I’m not a tube system fan. Incredibly, the music was very involving and dynamic, something I’ve never experienced while listening music though a tube system. Hmmm, has something changed throughout the years that I don’t know?

Food for thought…

Enjoy!

Vic

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In Remembrance…

Hi! Not music related but just wanted to post something in remembrance of the over 4,600 people that died days/weeks/months after the impact of Hurricane Maria on September 20, 2017, and recap my experience after.

Many theories have been raised about why so many people died, and the government (both State and Federal) lack of preparedness and inability to address the disaster in a more expedited manner. In the end, no one was ready for a hurricane of such magnitude and lessons learned from past major hurricanes impacting the mainland (Andrew and Katrina for example) have been totally forgotten.

One thing for sure, unless you have experienced a Category 4, almost Category 5 hurricane, you don’t have an idea or say in what proper preparations procedures are. In my previous job I was in charge of the Business Continuity planning for both Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands locations for a Canadian bank I used to work for. Never in my life I would’ve imagined what I would be responsible for such a huge endeavor in a major disaster affecting both territories within a span of two weeks (Hurricane Irma impacted U.S. Virgin Islands exactly two weeks before Hurricane Maria impacted Puerto Rico). The amount of logistical work to get emergency supplies to our peers in U.S.V.I. was enormous, requiring external partners to coordinate U.S. Coast Guard approvals just to land a boat in Charlotte Amalie, U.S.V.I. Thankfully all went according to plan and emergency supplies finally made it to out main branch.

Now, September 21, 2017. Our Business Continuity Plan established that specific key staff would try to make it into the main offices one day after the disaster. A trip that usually took 20-45 minutes took me almost three hours but I finally made it to the Main Office building. I was one of the first ones to arrive, and we made it to the building lobby. The building had power (huge diesel generator), no A/C, no elevator service (had to walk up and down 11 floors several times every day until they were fixed), and lo and behold we had communications to the mainland. We were able to contact our main offices and provide them with an initial status report. The island’s entire power grid was down and communications was very difficult. Recovery plans went immediately into execution and the first branch was open for service on Saturday. Just remembering the number of people in queue to withdraw cash from the ATMs gives me the chills. In the end we were able to recover and reopen all of our branches by late October.

The rest of the island, specifically the areas that were directly impacted by the eye of Maria, reminded me of battle zones. Roofs torn apart, no trees, utility poles torn or bent, power lines all over the place, people wandering in shock and disbelief, huge queues in gas stations to get gasoline for small power generators, it was chaos. In the end I spent almost two and a half months without power, and I was one of the fortunate to have it restored in such a short time, due to the many political scandals related to the contractual agreements between the government and several private companies in charge of restoring the power grid.

As mentioned previously, the government’s, both State and Federal, inability to prepare for and address the disaster is still inexplicable. It’s been three years and still some areas in the island look like just the day after the hurricane. Just a few days ago approval to release 13 Billion USD in funds to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and reboot the Department of Education was given by the Congress, and yes, 3 years after the disaster, and less than 45 days before a Presidential election. Seems that the more than 1 million Puerto Ricans that migrated to the United States, specifically the state of Florida, after the disaster now matter to the Federal government.

Hope my rant does not bother you but I had to.

Victor

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Pandemic and other stuff

Wow, it’s been 4 months since I’ve posted something! My fault, sorry about that but February was a very hectic month for me since I was resigning to a 12 year stint on what was left of an international bank after it was acquired by a local financial institution.

Go back to late summer 2019, I received a message from an ex-peer from way back when I worked for a U.S. technology company between the late 80’s and early 2000’s, asking me if I wanted to return to the company since they were looking for IT professionals with my expertise (old school Mainframe administrators with programming, networking, data management, and Information Security backgrounds). I told him I was interested and in February 2020 I received the offer and proceeded to resign to my position as Information Security Officer and Business Continuity Coordinator. Started working in March and its been three amazing months doing what professionally I like the most.

This pandemic has created a lot of uncertainty and havoc all over the world resulting in strict recommendations to stay home unless absolutely necessary. Many corporations and people have finally realized that working from home is a real option (more than 20 years for them to figure this out but Micro-Managers are an incredibly resilient pest which need to have total control and up-to-the-minute oversight of what their direct reports are doing, and that is the worst environment to work at. Believe me, I did for the last 4 years. Thankfully my new job requires me to work from home so I don’t someone looking over my shoulder every 10 minutes or some other ‘peer’ watching over from my back and telling my boss.

Now returning to turntables, people have realized that now they have more spare time since, working from home lets them more efficiently manage their daily schedule, and has allowed them to clean their houses more thoroughly, and find stuff that has been stored in their garages or closets for many years, many of these being turntables!!! ‘Wow, a turntable!!!! I forgot I had this one in storage!!!’, only to connect it and find out it does not work. That’s when I come in.

Since March I’ve received more than 20 turntables to check over and repair, most of them Technics vintage models, Project, Music Hall, AR, Clearaudio, Chinese SL1200 MkII clones (BID?), Linn, Sanyo, you name the brand. I was able to repair all but one of them (the Sanyo’s power supply motherboard was burned beyond repair). Also, many customers have decided to upgrade their turntables (new cartridge, new bearings, etc.) since they spend more time listening to their cherished vinyl LP collection.

Keep on listening to your vinyl LP collection, for sure it has taken you many years to get it where it is, and for sure there are still some treasures still to find and enjoy.

Happy listening!

Vic

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Let’s do this!!!

Well it’s been a while since I’ve last posted anything, lots of work at my job as Information Security Officer in a bank, almost no spare time due to changes at work, but as I say ‘Planets are aligning’ and a new job opportunity just crossed my way and took it!!!

Anyway let’s get back onto turntables. A few months ago I got a call from Mike Nunez from Audio Degenerate regarding a customer’s turntable, a Marantz TT-15, which tonearm somehow got smacked by who knows what and the cartridge suffered serious damage as you can see in the picture:

The cartridge metal body somehow got separated from the upper plastic body and the stylus was totally wrecked. The cartridge is a Clearaudio Concept moving magnet so I proceeded to remove it from the tonearm and re-glue the metal engine to the upper body. Regarding the stylus, Clearaudio’s position is that it cannot be repaired/replaced, but on the contrary, it can be replaced with careful hands and a little surgery using an Audio Technica AT95 family replacement stylus.

Here’s the completed job:

Tested it, adjusted tonearm height and cueing device and it was back up and running as before the incident.

Enjoy!

Vic

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Surprise!

Hi!

Sorry I’ve been disconnected but between work and a three week vacation haven’t had much time to post.

Last week I picked up a Linn LP12 for service. The customer was complaining that since new it could not keep proper speed, did not seem musically engaging, sounded awful, and was barely used. I suspected that there was something wrong with the power supply but lo and behold, as soon as I opened the bottom of the LP12 I found out what was wrong. Can you see it?

The bottom base board (in this case a Trampolin base board) ground cable was attached to the sub-chassis instead of the front chassis bolt (barely visible in the picture), TOTALLY messing up the suspension. There were other ‘rookie’ mistakes in the setup process of this turntable (improperly dressed tonearm cable, improperly dressed power cord, messed up suspension, etc.), but all of these I took care of doing them properly, and the turntable now performs flawlessly.

When you buy a product like the Linn LP12 it must be setup by a properly trained specialist, if not, it won’t perform at its best, and the customer will end up disappointed and frustrated. In this case the customer is very happy and enjoying his 2012 purchase like never before.

Happy listening!

Vic