We are having the meeting at Gavin Fish’s house this weekend on Saturday, May 19 at 1 pm.  The address is 7315 Redwing Ct., Orangevale, CA 95662.  Directions are as follows: from the shop: Take Douglas Blvd. exit, go East for 2.6 mi, turn Right onto Sierra College Blvd., go 3.1 mi (turns into Hazel Ave.), turn Right onto Oak Ave., go 0.4 mi, turn left on Redwing Ct., house is the first the on right at top of hill.  Phone number for contact is Dave Marihart at 530-320-1576.
Gavin has quite a system, featured will be the Light Harmonic da Vinci DAC, Pass Labs pre and amps, Clearaudio table, MIT Oracle wire, and the new Wilson Sasha speakers.  So bring your LP’s, CD’s, and USB sticks.
See you there.

Due to the quantity and quality lately of used and consignment gear I will be changing the posting process.  The hold up has been taking pictures of the gear, as this takes at least 15 min a piece to do it right.  So from now on I will list the piece but add the pictures later as so to get it on the web faster.  This should enable me to get it on 2 days after reciept of the piece rather than the week to two weeks it has been taking me.  I will also be using a rating system like the one used by Audiogon to aid the buyer in their selection.  I am very conservative with Audiogon’s system, most rate the same piece 1-2 points higher than I do.  1 will be the lowest, 10 the highest (absolutely perfect condition).  Refer to Audiogon for the complete descriptions of the individual numbers.  Thank you for bearing with me on this.

Our next meeting will be at Thomas Turner’s home on April 14, 2012 in Carmichael, CA.  For directions you can call Thomas at 916 604 2232.  Or you can call Dave Marihart at 530 320 1576 as an alternate.  We are going to be having a brain storm session on future meeting topics so bring your thinking hat and those topics that really excite you.  The meeting will start a 1 pm and go until 3 PM, after that will be a listening session.  See you there.

We are having our Grand Opening Celebration this Saturday on March 24 from 11 AM to 5 PM.  We will be serving light refreshments and will have representatives from Linn Sondek, Novidor Firestone/ Revel, MIT and more present.  Also Jon and Dave will be there to demo the various systems set up in the 3 listening rooms.  Come and get your questions answered and enjoy great music.  Our address is 1120 Douglas Blvd., Suite B, Roseville, CA 95678.

We will be having our meeting on March 10, 2012, at Audio Experience at 1 PM.  We have open topics-anyone who wants to talk can on any topic pertaining to audio.  Also we have a lot of new toys at the shop-namely the Feickert Blackbird turntable with the Triplanar tonearm and Transfiguration Phoenix cartridge.  Also we may see the Light harmonic  da Vinci DAC.  Hope to see you there.  Address is 1120 Douglas Blvd., Suite B, Roseville, CA.

Our meeting this month will be at Dave Sykes house in Foresthill. It will start at 1:00 PM and go to roughly 230 PM.  The Review Committee will have a meeting right after the main meeting, and there will be demo of the First Watt SIT2 amp in Dave’s system.
Directions: I-80 to Foresthill Exit,  take the road to get on Foresthill Rd., follow Foresthill Rd. 15 miles, turn Right on Todd Valley Rd., go 1 mile, turn Right on Green Ridge Rd., go about 1 mile, turn Right on Birchwood Dr., go 1 mile, and Dave’s is the second to last house at the end on the right (20617 Birchwood).  Walk past the main house to the little house in the back.
Hope to see you there.

Steve Lester of Linn, Tannoy, and Peachtree was here and gave a very informative overview of computer audio as it is now.  We also listened to the Linn Majik in a small networked system he set up using a NAS drive, an Ipad for a controller, and the Linn Majik connected to our main system.  The sound was quite analog, sweet, warm, large soundstage with none of the digital artifacts one normally hears with computer music.

Steve covered a lot of ground during his 1 hour talk.  I will just cover the highlights here.  One of the most important in using computer as a source is to rip the cd/download, etc. properly.  Most of the normal techniques introduce errors and jitter.  He recommended going to Chris Connaker’s website Computer Audiophile: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Computer-Audiophile-Symposium-Performance-Playback for an in depth set of tips to ripping and storing music files properly.  He also covered UPNP players in some detail (Universal Plug and Play) and talked about Apple products such as Airport Express and Apple TV.  He talked about using USB (bad) vs. ethernet (good) for transfer of data.  USB has a bad way of introducing jitter into the signal, whereas ethernet there is very little or no jitter.  Network set up using ethernet is preferable.  Peachtree DAC’s and integrateds are one of the few units designed from the gate to deal with very high amounts of jitter in the signal (10,000 times that of other DAC’s).  He mentioned that Amora software as mentioned by Chris Connaker does a very good job of cleaning up Itunes and other signals.  if you need to contact Steve you can through his website at: http://www.stevenlester.net/

There will be a meeting of the Sierra Nevada Audiophile Society this weekend, Dec. 10, at 1:00 PM.  It will be held at Audio Experience, 1120 B Douglas Blvd., Roseville, CA.  Steve Lester, the Linn, Tannoy, and more representative will be giving an in depth talk on computer audio.  This talk will cover some of the basics but mostly be aimed at integration and use of servers and hard drives for music storage, with wireless/ wired networks and distribution systems.  Linn Majik and other systems will be demonstrated.  The main system will be the Cary 98P Preamp, the First Watt M2 or Soaring Audio A 600, Exemplar Audio 93, Bryston BDA 1, and Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers.
If you need any help please call me at 530-320-1576 or 916-742-5322.  See you there!

The Sierra Nevada Audiophile Society (SNAS) will have its monthly meeting at Audio Experience, the new store, on November 12 at 1 PM.  The address is 1120 Douglas Blvd., Suite B, Roseville, CA 95678-just look for the Audio Experience sign on the left at the intersection of Douglas and Harding.  Directions are: take the Douglas exit off I-80 and head N toward Harding Ave.  At Harding Ave. make a left onto Harding which will wind back toward the freeway.  Take the first right into the parking lot by Burger King and park near Audio Experience or in the lot near the Roseville Gourmet restaurant.  We are to the right of the restaurant near the State Farm office.  Hope to see you there!

We had 10 regular members and 4 new people at the Marihart Audio shop and home in Colfax, CA.  The society also gained 2 new members at this meeting.
The topic of Discussion was how we hear music.  We held a question and answer session and discussion on the fundamentals of how each of us hear music and what is important to each one of us.  Turn ons were as follows:  Presence, Overall Balance, Timbre, Lack of Fatigue, Resolution, The Amount of Emotional Involvement, and Dynamics.  Turn offs were:  Distortion, Upper Midrange Glare, Muddy Bass, Poor Value for the Money, Poor Stability, Lack of Durability and Dependability, and Absence of any Major Qualities.  The overall plan is to open this to more discussion in November meeting with the goal of a rating system so members can set up a review committee.  We will start by reviewing some of our own gear that is little known in different systems, and publish on this website and others including Audio Evo and maybe Dagogo.  We feel that by using a group review and a standard rating system it will help the reader come to a better understanding of how it will work in his/her system.
The next meeting is in Sparks Nv. at Jerry Cohn’s house at 12PM on Oct 8, 2011.  Directions are:
Address: 1046 Greenwing Drive, Spanish Springs, NV. 89441.   Take I 80 East to Pyramid Way, Exit and go North on Pyramid (about 10 miles) to Eagle Canyon Dr.  Left at Eagle Canyon, go about 1 mile to Golden Eye Parkway (next street after white church steeple), Right on Golden Eye Pkwy to Greenwing Dr., make Left onto Greenwing, and Right on 1st Cul De Sac.  1046 is last house on Cul De Sac with 2 large Christmas Trees in front.
Call Dave Marihart (530-320-1576) if you need a ride or have questions.