Forget the old saw about the heroic diligence of mailmen trudging through crummy weather. The new
champion is HAL. You should know that I had Rich upgrade the processing works in my dspMusik active
digital crossover from Rev C to Rev D, which entailed a switchout of my metal case. More about that in a
minute. He was slated to come over yesterday to do the case switch, but we were in the onset of Snowma-
geddon here in Maryland and, between the snow, the roaring winds and the 'teen-y' temperature, the road
and institutional closings, I didn't even bother checking with him to see when we could re-schedule. To my
jaw-dropping astonishment, as I was looking at the scary conditions on the weather channel, who do I hear
knocking on my door? Rich Hollis! He began talking right away, but I was so stunned I couldn't gather my
thoughts for a moment - but he had the goods, did the switch and we checked it all for soundness with the
Beethoven Violin Concerto. Very sound, indeed. And that, ladies and gentlemen is what you call customer
service the way it should be, and never is. Darn. Now that I write this I suspect I hallucinated the whole
thing. If Rich is tuned into channel AC, verify this crazy story for me.
In the previous note Rich asked me to talk about the Rev C to Rev D change. I had heard the talk about
all the theoretical advances in it - Rich is non pareil at that kind of thing - but I was a bit iffy, especially since
I'm now nothing but a poor old retired guy. But I went ahead with it. Here were my reactions.
I didn't play approved audiophile selections. I went straight to, perhaps the first 'song' I ever liked - Elvis'
Don't Be Cruel. I was, of course, quite young back in 1956, but, as my older brother can verify, I, went nuts
over that and many other Elvis songs. I would estimate I've heard it a few thousand times since then, on radio
originally, on records, on poorboy systems, on variably better systems and on the recently dspMusik-boosted
system. I know what to expect. Except that I didn't. This time, with the newest such-and-such, I had a spooky
'Elvis is alive experience' and is singing in my room that was so real I had to pause listening to get my bearings.
Laugh if you will, but I was there. Not a refined recording by modern standards, but wow, if it can do that, imagine
what else it can do!
In short, it refined sound to a stunning degree. Not only that, but there was what sounded like an anomaly
in the older setup at really high levels that had me thinking my left ear was going - sort of a faint, high-level
stuttering in the output. That effect is now gone at the highest level I can stand. Rich explained that it had to do
with lowering the voltage level on the blah-blah so as not to overload the you-know-what. Forgive me - I'm not
good at technical stuff, but I know what I like and this is the Outer Limit of what I ever expected to hear. Anyone
who's around here is welcome to a listen.
Hah - here is incidental proof that the delivery by HAL really happened - a picture of the dspMusik box in the
middle, with the rectangular blue light. The ligthing is funny because of the bright snow, but I like it. For you animal
activists: the cat Yinko is on the inside, not out in the blizzard.
