It became quite amusing at the Wigmore Hall, a famous venue with precarious finances. Most performers, with a few exceptions, come on, play and leave. In July 2020 when they started up again with an audience, all the performers were so excited they were doing almost more talking than playing and they were all saying the same thing.
We have an annual fundraiser for the Wigmore Hall at our local golf club. One guy promotes it and the music is arranged by a well-known violinist, the son of a member. Itās been going about 20 years. I think about 250-300 people attend, ticket + donation, thatās all we can pack in. When itās all added up, the promoter chap doubles the money from his pocket. Talk about generosity.
I think we all support our local music scheme because we want it to survive, not necessarily as an act of charity to individual musicians, many of whom wonāt make a living from music, even if they are very good.
Iāve not heard of Roscoe Mitchell, but see he was a founder of AACM. I took my son and a couple of friends to see Kahil ElāZabar last time he was in London. One of the most amazing evenings of music. Pre-Covid, a small venue, 300 standing.
We would all want to see artists earn more or have greater opportunity to āmake a livingā. Thatās what Octave Records is meant to be all about. I questioned Paul, more than once, how that was compatible with limited edition and expensive HD-only digital releases when so few people listen to HD or will ever pay $30. He mentioned recently that he is rethinking this. Studios near me operate 24/7 and people can get stuff out of Bandcamp relatively cheaply. If the Octave studio could do that, it would be a fine thing, whether or not in DSD.
My issue with Octave is that there are many other artists that I am interested in. If Paul & crew can attract some of them I might be interested in Octave .
All I meant to say was that I follow many artists that will probably not record or release on Octave records. For example, the ECM label has several artists that I follow .
Actually, dcs dropped the ball pretty hard with this one. They would not be able to make usb out to properly work. This was an advertised feature, and they had to compensate customers.
I have had one. The sound was ok. Lumin U1 mini with linear power supply sounded better. Vivaldi upsampler sounded way much better than both. It will not be too difficult to beat dcs on the network bridge. It will be very, very difficult to beat the Vivaldi upsampler.
All of this taking into consideration all of dcs inherent complexity, clocks, cables etc. they have to make it simpler if they want to be competitive in the long run (and my guess is that they are trying to).
The dCS Bridge was a very cheap (for dCS) and popular unit. The choice is now the Bartok or Rossini players. They invented most of this audio signal processing, it seems more a matter ow they package it. The Vivaldi is way better than anything else Iāve heard since I first heard it in 2013.
Yep. Very fine and beautiful piece of gear. But I am convinced me that dCS is kind of lost now.
As they try to keep the Vivaldi as their top of the line, they are missing opportunities to release new and more affordable gear, with performance on par of Vivaldi. Network bridge is a fine example. Why not use the same input board of the Vivaldi upsampler? Why not make the Vivaldi One more affordable, since it is using 10 years old tech (at least for dCS).
OTOH, they keep insisting on dual AES connection, which limits them to 2x DSD, when by todayās processing power, they could easily go to 4x DSD, with the correponding benefits in modulators and filters. Also, they do not take advantage of the latest optical connections available, losing on the isolation benefits.
Lastly, I am close to 3 more people that had full Vivaldi. The 4 of us traded the Vivaldi for other solutions. 3 (including myself) went with nagra hdx. The fourth traded for a msb select.
They seem to me as a company trapped by their past success. Quite the opposite of PSAudio, that is always stirring up the pot, trying to cover new ground.
On the AirLens thread, 7th March was when PSA dropped the sad news. Should stil be a great endpoint for PSA DACs though. Just you need your own serverā¦
Who me?! My anniversary on PS Audio forum maybe?? It was my brotherās birthday yesterday though. Thanks for the kind wish of course! Think I will go get some ice cream now!
