11. I always prefer quality over convenience, almost without exception. I’d rather have some massive speakers taking up half the room, vinly LPs, a big camera…

12. Following on from the last point, I truly believe simple is best when it comes to quality. Any technology which rests heavily on its features is bound to be a load of rubbish! I’d rather have something with one feature which is done really well.

13. This also explains why I so love old technology, because so much old technology is simpler and, as a result seems to work better or sound better. Valves, big transformers and vinyl are the best examples of this – they’re so much better than CDs, digital downloaded audio, modern tiny transistor amps with horrible switching power supplies which focus entirely on convenience and being as small as possible.

14. I currently work on a farm. I never thought I’d say that!

15. I like 0.9mm propelling pencils, the fatter the lead the better. I always have two books with me, a notebook and a sketchbook.

16. Speaking of writing, I love using a fountain pen. Can’t stand biros. Horrible things. I believe in writing by hand as much as possible and not using the computer.

17. When it comes to creative things, such as music, film, art, I prefer flawed things to things which are perceived as “perfect”.

18. I love the films of people like Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Krystof Kieslowski and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

19. My musical tastes are quite diverse but some of the artists I love are Amon Tobin, Built to Spill, David Byrne, Soul Coughing, Four Tet, Alias, Why?, Jaga Jassist, Squarepusher, Calexico, They Might Be Giants, David Bowie, Robyn Hitchcock, Sage Francis, Spoon, Deerhoof, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Seb Rochford, Menomena.

20. There are lots of things I used to do. I’m sure that’s the same with most people. But there aren’t many things I want to do.

Hello everyone. I’ve been slow to write anything new this year and it was suggested to me that I should write a bunch of random facts to shed some light on Smoking Drum without giving too much away! This is mainly about music and film…

1. Smoking Drum is a musical reference – it describes a particular style of drum beat which is smoking or sizzling. It has nothing to do with smoking tobacco! Sorry to disappoint any readers but I have never smoked tobacco.

2. I studied Film at West Surrey College of Art & Design, worked in the film industry for three years and almost followed a career of cinematography. I had the opportunity to become a camera assistant for a documentary film maker but it would have meant traveling the world six months of the year—something I didn’t want to do as I’d just got married.

3. I learned violin and piano as a child, and later guitar. I haven’t played for a few years but I’m really hoping to do so again, very soon.

4. Music is in my blood. I don’t know why, but it is. I’ve written this before but music gets me through all times, good and bad. I must have a deep connection with it! This is why I know that one day I will play again. Maybe I’ll be 70 by then!

5. I built my first electric guitar in secondary school in Modular Technology. It was a “flying V” type guitar made from mahogany. I have no idea why I chose that style!

6. I played in various bad bands and had a horrible Marshall transistor guitar amp (eugh). One of the bands was called Pernicious Anaemia!

7. I used to work as a Telecine operator where you transfer film to video tape. I worked mainly on rushes, where the film crew would send in the raw unprocessed film, it would be developed and then I’d whack it on the Telecine machine and “grade” it on the fly onto video tape – basically colour correcting in real time. The tapes would then have sound put on them and sent back the next day to the director ready for viewing.

8. We tried to create a little film company in the early 90’s, we shot a few shorts (on 16mm) and it was immense fun. Some of the actors even went on to bigger performances in The Bill and Casualty!

9. I have met a few well known faces I suppose…my favourite was John Peel who I met a few times as he used to come into the sound studio to record voice over for programmes like “Classic Trucks”. I made him cups of coffee!

10. I haven’t been to nearly enough gigs as I’d have liked but I have been to a few memorable ones, like Motorhead in Reading in the 80’s where there was literally a riot as the gig was closed down (police and dogs running after metalheads) and the last gig of Alice Donut. Recently I’m pleased to say I’ve been able to enjoy the ATP festivals and have seen some truly excellent bands like Built to Spill, Sonic Youth, Battles.

Just a quick post to update anyone who is interested (which I seriously doubt) about the progress of the Decware HDT writeup and any new stuff.

What happened was the new HDT speakers sound absolutely stunning, without wanting to give too much away, but there’s been an ongoing problem with thinness of sound which I’ve had ever since my Parker Audio speakers.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to rectify the problem whilst also improving the system as a whole—in fact building the Decware HDTs was supposed to alleviate the problem, with their single driver which should have produced a lovely smooth midband. I also purchased a new phono stage which was supposed to address the problem, too, but it did not.

Becoming suspicious of where the problem now actually lay I decided to measure the frequency sweep output from the phono stage, the amp and the speakers. On doing this I discovered a potential problem with the amplifier which really surprised me—I had assumed it was giving a flat response, as you would. Instead it seems to give a big increase above 2KHz forming a “hill” all the way up to 15-20 KHz.

So the HDT speaker writeup is on hold until I get the amp problem sorted. Obviously I don’t want to continue writing any reviews with a potentially flawed component at the heart of the sound.

By the way, the phono stage I bought is the Lehmann Black Cube, a really well reviewed phono amplifier with some useful loadings you can set with DIP switches on the bottom, plus an upgrade path with a new power supply. I’ll do a write up of this, of course, once the amp is sorted.

On another note, I’ve swapped my freedom for financial security and it is really depressing. No longer can I decide how to use my time, we can’t go out for any spur-of-the-moment trips to places. I have to be in my office each day working with the same brand. I’ve sunk to a new low but, hey, at least we can pay the mortgage.

Today I had to pay £52 for the privilege of finding out that my old G5 2GHz Dual Processor Mac is dead. But I felt the need to write about it because of the injustice of it all.

It’s taken a painful and long journey which I will attempt to wrap up in just a few paragraphs.

We bought the Mac from Jigsaw in Nottingham. The G5 Dual Processor had eleven fans (!) so it made quite a racket. Mine, even more so, because one of the fans decided to squeak which was incredibly annoying and detrimental to my work.

So it went back to Jigsaw who had it a few days, said they thought they’d fixed the problem and returned it. The squeaking was a lot better but not completely gone.

Instead, something much worse started happening. Now, on regular occasions the Mac wouldn’t start up. It also would crash if the energy saver came on, resulting in ALL eleven fans going at full blast. The first notice I would get would often be when I was informed that there was a “jet engine” taking off in the loft.

The Mac couldn’t go back instantly because I was so busy, but the startup failure was getting worse and worse so go back to Jigsaw it did. They diagnosed a logic board failure, replaced it and sent the Mac back along with a HUGE scratch to one side of the computer which Jigsaw then strenuously denied. Thanks!

A year later, or so, I couldn’t sleep, got up one night and tried to turn the computer on but it refused to start up. The Mac was now out of warranty and Apple Care and I needed a computer urgently, so we purchased a new Intel Mac Pro. The old G5 languished in the loft.

Until today, when we took it to an Apple repair place, with the intention of getting it fixed to use in the office we’re about to move into on Monday. By the time we got home there was a message on the phone saying that it was a logic board failure. And no Apple Care. That’s a £650 repair bill on a computer which is worth £800 in good working order.

The problems with the startup and energy saver only occurred after Jigsaw had it the first time to fix the squeaky fan, so I blame them for effectively killing this computer.

It seems so unfair that a logic board for a Mac can cost £500, that a really fast and useful dual processor G5 can go from being my working computer to useless and literally worthless with one press of the power button.

I’ve suffered from tinnitus now for about seven years.

I’m also a big, big music lover. I am actively seeking out new music and bands all the time. Not only do I have an insatiable desire for music but I have got hooked on reproducing music, to try and get it sounding as realistic as possible.

Hence my audio electronics, my building of kits and speakers, my search for the audio truth (within a certain budget of course).

So, you might wonder how tinnitus and music get on with one another. It’s not an easy combination for me.

My ears ring constantly, the left more so than the right. I should point out that while it is there all the time, it’s not so intrusive that I cannot work and live normally, most of the time I actually forget about it, because with normal background noise and attention on other things it does get pushed into the background.

The worst time is when I’m tired, the ringing can become really unbearable because it’s so intrusive. Also I really miss absolute silence. And, silence is really what you need when trying to listen to music.

The other thing is that the tinnitus makes the sound distort; high frequencies are especially bad. It often means I need to wear an ear plug in my left ear. When I go to see gigs I sometimes use both ear plugs, sometimes just the left one, depending on the volume. Same for the cinema.

However there is some salvation in the form of alcohol. Drinking a bottle of beer really helps the ringing enormously—drinking two bottles is even better! The alcohol really dulls the ringing, taking the nasty high frequency edge right off it and leaving me to listen to the music in (relative) peace.

The result is a bottle or two of beer makes for a much better listening session. Red wine doesn’t seem to have the same effect, you might be interested to know. And more than two bottles of beer doesn’t remove any more of the effects of the tinnitus, it just makes it harder to put the needle on the record!