Rick Schmidt

Telluride Film Festival 2014

Rick Schmidt

This was my 13th straight year at the Telluride Film Festival and I was more excited than ever. The story leading up to the festival was the "land grab" by the Toronto Film Festival. The Toronto fest immediately follows Telluride each year. And while Telluride can best be thought of as the Labor Day barbeque for Hollywood and film lovers...

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Moving Magnet vs Moving Coil

Rick Schmidt

I bought a new turntable but am still trying to decide on the cartridge. Should I get a moving magnet (MM) or moving coil (MC) cartridge? What price range should I consider assuming I have mid-priced components in my audio system?

- Tony M
Phoenix, AR

SECRETS Home Theater Q&A

Sundance Film Festival 2014

Rick Schmidt

As in previous years it became just a little more difficult to get tickets.  But, I am less and less concerned about this since it forces us into more offbeat movies. I enjoyed all the movies we saw this year but in many cases that is simply because it was a film at Sundance. Some of them were surprisingly bad. I'll try to point those out in my reviews.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Benchmark DAC2 HGC Review

Rick Schmidt

I think it's fair to refer to the Benchmark DAC2 HGC as a DAC since that is its official title, or a headphone amplifier but the owner's manual refers to it as a 'Reference Stereo Preamplifier'. Whatever you call it, this little box does a lot. I reviewed it mostly as a DAC but tried out the preamp and headphone functions as well.

DACs

Telluride Film Festival 2013

Rick Schmidt

This year marked the 40th year of the Telluride Film Festival and so an additional day was added to the schedule in celebration. In each of the last three years the winner of the Oscar for best picture had its debut at Telluride: "Argo", "The Artist", "The King's Speech". This year there are two likely contenders...

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Parasound Halo CD 1 Player

Rick Schmidt

The Halo CD 1 is a flagship CD Player from the well regarded, San Francisco based, Parasound. CD Player? Surely I mean 'DAC with Transport'. Nope. CD player, put your CD in, music comes out. No, you mean it's part of a server system, the data is stored for later retrieval by a computer system. Well, only if you count the internal buffering and Intel ITX computer running Linux inside the CD 1. In implementation then the CD 1 is quite modern, it's a computer, dedicated to CD playback only. In practice, it's an old fashioned (and in this case, that's good) CD player.

CD Players

Sundance Film Festival 2013

Rick Schmidt

After not seeing any of my favorite indie directors lined up with films at this year's Sundance and after having to settle for our second and third choice tickets I was pleasantly surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed almost every film we saw this year. I always tell people to go off the beaten track at festivals...

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Audio Desk System Automated Vinyl (LP) Cleaner

Rick Schmidt

For all of these years that I've been extolling the virtues of analog (LP a.k.a., vinyl) playback I've known that it just isn't really practical for most people. Even less practical, is the necessity to clean your LPs once in a while to keep those pops and ticks out of the music. Several companies make devices that clean your LPs. The Audio Desk System Automated Vinyl Cleaner is one of them, and we review it here.

Audio Accessories Misc

Telluride Film Festival 2012

Rick Schmidt

As usual the passes for  the Telluride Film Festival 2012 were sold out a short time before the festival started. There did not seem to be any major upsets with large numbers of people getting shut out of a particular movie. Perhaps this was because George Clooney was not at the festival. Bill Murray was however, in support of his new film with Laura Linney, Hyde Park on Hudson.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Emotiva ERC-2 CD Player

Rick Schmidt

Emotiva continues to occupy an interesting space in the audiophile realm. It is now possible to get an entire two channel or five channel system consisting almost entirely of Emotiva products, CD player or DAC, a preamp, a variety of amplifiers from one to five channels, a pre-pro on the way and interconnects. The Emotiva ERC-2 is a two-channel CD player with balanced outputs for low noise transfer between the CD player and your preamplifier. At $449, this is a player to reckon with.

CD Players

Sundance Film Festival 2012

Rick Schmidt

Sundance 2012 was as busy as ever including the all important film deals. There may have been a slight let-up in the downtown party scene, but I may not have been the best judge of that as I opted to stay in on Friday and Saturday night of the opening weekend. That was due in part to the relentless Saturday snow which became slush on the ground. I wore my favorite shoes, they are not waterproof. That Saturday snow also led to an enormous traffic jam. At about 6 pm on that day it seemed like there was one theater bus, with about 500 people on it and it was not going anywhere.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

CEntrance DACMini USB DAC

Rick Schmidt

CEntrance is a Chicago based company with engineering in the US and Moscow, Russia, design in Holland, and manufacturing facilities in Asia but final assembly in the US . Let's just say 'multi-national'. They got their start in pro audio making microphone/guitar pre-amps with analog to digital converters, the MicPort Pro and AxePort Pro in amazingly small packages. Designed to plug inline on the microphone or guitar cord with a USB output (the units are powered by the USB connection) they provide the smallest possible recording studio, enabling musicians to plug a microphone or guitar 'directly' into a computer as if they were plugging into tape deck. Here, we review the CEntrance DACMini.

DACs