BUT.

Moments ago I was cycling home through the residential streets of Camden..

It’s dark, but both of my lights are working. I’m heading north-east-ish on Hungerford Road at around 15-18mph. Up ahead there’s a junction on the left, and a car approaches it. I see the driver look left, and continue to look left, but not right, as he turns onto the road. Onto the wrong side of the road. FFS. He’s driving towards me still looking the wrong way. I shout f@!k pretty loudly, which to be honest is about all I can manage as I fling my bike sideways in one of those wobbly ’shit-that-tarmac-looks-hard’ manoeuvres, managing to avoid his bonnet.

Now to be honest, this kind of thing happens fairly often – perhaps not generally as close as this – but still it’s pretty common in my experience, and I’m sure other city cyclists can tell similar stories.

Today however, was an entirely different experience.

As you’d expect, the car screeches to a halt as he sees me pass the bonnet. Yet immediately a passenger (large male) jumps out of the car shouting “oi you [various expletives]” and proceeds to chase me on foot! Next, the driver wheel-spins whilst turning the car around and joins the chase.. leaving his mate behind and tearing down Hungerford Road after me!

Luckily, I’m downhill otherwise he’d have caught me in no time.. I’m flat out as I hit Hilmarton Road knowing he can’t cross the central reservation onto Penn Road without doing serious damage to his car. I dissappear at almost 30mph into Holloway.

My legs were still shaking when I got home.. so clearly this unnerved me slightly! But besides being scared (I admit, I was terrified), I’m pissed off that their reaction can only really be explained by a pre-conceived hatred of cyclists.. They blamed me almost instinctively before they had a chance to realise they were in the wrong. Fucking apes.

I don’t have a conclusion for this. Just thought I’d share my rage whilst the adrenalin is still pumping.

Hmph.

Why? What? For the curious yet uninitiated, a compressor is an essential piece of studio gear. It allows one to control dynamics of a signal using certain parameters, which is really important for reasons documented elsewhere on the interwebs. The 1176 is a very popular form of FET compressor, which can work magic on all kinds of material, particularly vocals in my opinion. It’s big, warm, open, and can really help you bring out the room with the right attack/release settings.

I’ve already hit some hurdles with this project. Firstly, I don’t really know what I’m doing. Secondly, I don’t really know much about the 1176. It’s one of those great legendary pieces of kit that has a rich history, many many different versions, and the usual amount of ‘opinion’ floating around regarding which revision was the best, and for what (generally unscientific) reason. I’ve never had the privilege of using one myself, and even the modern commercial clones of the original are way out of my price range. I’m going to try and build one for around £200.

So, since I’m way out of my depth as per usual, the plan is to keep it simple. And thanks to the many others that have attempted this before me, help is abundant, albeit badly organised.

The current state of play is:

• There’s an awesome clone design from Jakob Erland, which many people have had success building.
• Mnats revised Jakob’s PCB design, to make them more flexible essentially, and has done great work since on building clones of the various 1176 revisions.
• I’ve ordered a set of Revision J boards from Mnats, which should be here next week.
• I intend on ordering most of the basic components from Mouser.
• I have a choice when it comes to transformers; do I opt for both input and output transformers? If so, do I order Lundahl transformers as suggested? Alternatively, Hairball Audio have stock of recreated B11148 output transformers, and I could stick with the op-amp based input.
• I’ll get a standard 2U rack case from somewhere..
• And have front panel custom made by Schaeffer.

So already I have choices which are confusing me, and I may encounter problems sourcing certain components.. we’ll see. Beyond this, there’s putting the thing together, and testing everything correctly along the way. I have the basic tools; soldering equipment, digital multi-meter, but probably need to buy a second hand scope.

I reckon I’m only scratching the surface to be honest.. this whole thing feels suspiciously like a can of worms!

It’s an early 80’s Geoffrey Butler, made in Italy by a person called Olag, so I’m told! It’s from Sargent & Co., who are a small company near Clissold Park, London who show old bikes some love. They’ve been great actually, really helped me out with it.

Ok, it might not be the most flash bike you’ve ever seen, but it certainly has character. The green saddle is not exactly original though, as you might have guessed.

It took me about a day to build each pre-amp, and generally it went without a hitch, which is definitely testament to the quality of instructions and help on the SCA Forums. It’s best to practice your soldering technique on something less expensive first, if you’re not used to soldering with precision. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Once you’re confident, start by stuffing the PCB with the lowest profile components first (resistors), and build up from there. You’ll generally find it easier to work with the board like this, since when you flip it over the parts are held in by the work surface, allowing you to mount most things flush for a more solid and professional looking board.

The only really tricky bit is wiring the input transformer, which involves soldering some resistor lead across certain pins as jumpers. Gravity is not your friend. Take your time, and all will be well.

How do they sound? Incredible. High quality pre-amps are essential to getting the most out of your microphones, but despite knowing this, I was still blown away by the results! They’ve got that warm bottom end that you’d expect from Neve gear, which isn’t to everyone’s taste, but they’re also really open in the top end, not dark at all.

I’ll definitely be building some of the other modules, probably a pair of each flavour once I can afford it.

I’m seriously considering the London to Berlin ride next year..

Here’s a video shot during the ride.. notably absent are the hills (he was obviously busy trying to cycle up them).

Charlie

It was really quite useful, and informative.. I didn’t realise the scope of the foundation’s work was so wide, stretching beyond the magazine scheme. They also pointed out some of the core ethics of the charity, repeating “street trade not street aid”, and “a helping hand up, not a hand out”. Apparently many people aren’t aware of how the Big Issue works, and some are often sceptical about the magazine system, claiming that it encourages begging.

I was completely unaware of this until yesterday, so I thought I’d mention it to be really clear about why I think the Big Issue is important…

Apparently, many people don’t realise that the vendors pay for the magazines they sell. It varies regionally, between 70 and 75p per copy, which they then sell for £1.50. Vendors buy their magazines on a non-returnable basis, which means if they don’t sell them then they lose out.

This may seem a little harsh, but the point is to give people an opportunity to become self employed, budget and account for themselves, and take pride in their work – and for some it means an opportunity to develop personal and social skills which they might be lacking.

Beyond this, the Foundation which is funded by donations primarily (the London to Paris ride being the biggest yearly earner), provides a host of services to help people find safe housing, and provide educational paths and opportunities which might normally be difficult without a permanent address. These are really important things clearly, and to learn that our bike ride is the charity’s biggest earner has spurred me on further to try and raise even more money.

We also met the people who will be guiding us on our three day trip, who really seem to know their stuff.. plenty of bike training advice was given, including recommending against doing it on heavy old mountain bikes. Ahem, oh well.

In other news, I’ve done some serious maintenance to the bike.. photos to come.

This summer I’ll be cycling from London to Paris to raise money for the Big Issue Foundation. Trouble is, I don’t think I’ve been fully paying attention to how scary this might be!

It’s not the 250 miles in 3 days that’s worrying me – that’s just 3 days of my life after all. It’s more the huge amount of effort it’s going to take to train (which I haven’t started yet) and crucially raising enough money!

In the spirit of trying to get on with this, I’ve just taken my bike to be upgraded. It’s a 1991 Marin mountain bike, about which many people have said “there’s no way you’re going to Paris on that old thing”. Which has made me even more stubborn about it.

I’m not completely mental though – it’s getting new wheels, tires, chainset, gear shifters, brake levers, and I’m putting the original flat handlebars back on for a more aggressive position – which is not as nice for London traffic but much better for long journeys.

Soon enough training will have to begin, so I’ll post routes and progress up here for anyone interested. In the mean time, your support in the form of hard cash is much appreciated! Well, not just appreciated but critical to me actually being able to do this thing…

So, please please give whatever you can..

http://www.justgiving.com/riverratrecords

I’ll be doing assorted fundraising events, such as busking and anything else I can think of in the coming months.. details will also be posted here. I’d even dye my hair a funny colour if I thought people would donate for it.

Part of me knows this is silly – vinyl is cumbersome, fragile, and most of the records you can see in the picture don’t exactly sound good. I think they spent too long around me and my brothers judging by the finger marks, scratches, and occasional strange substances to be found.

But, I’m sold on the idea, and am sticking to my convictions, for several reasons…

Vinyl makes you care about what you’re listening to more than any medium. I’m listening to London Calling as I type, which has four sides. This interactivity, annoying to some, encourages me to sit and listen – to properly pay attention.

It looks fantastic in our living room! It’s now the centre piece, encouraging us to sit around and listen/talk about great records.

The CD is dead, long live Vinyl! Ok, bold statement, but hear me out.. CDs made a lot of sense at the time, but digital music has just evolved so well that the only reason you’d want to buy a CD is to own the artefact – which is clearly something lots of us still like to do. But in a world where we’re listening to music almost entirely on computers and iPods, to buy purely for the artefact’s sake is just so much more rewarding on 12″. 

The decline of physical CD sales has been on the cards for ages. Now it’s happening, people seem to be moaning about it. Personally, if CDs decline I don’t mind too much, provided I can get high quality digital files, and provided I can still buy vinyl for my collection.

If vinyl can survive 20 years of CD dominance, and still be the first thing you see when you walk into Rough Trade East, for instance, then I think it’ll be around for a while yet. 

Here’s to wishful thinking anyway.

So far I’ve managed to date them to 1930s, but no more specific than that. Any help appreciated!

Sadly the box is in quite poor condition.. I took the records out and put them in separate sleeves 10 years ago, but the box had already suffered quite a bit. The records themselves though are in really good condition.

The story goes that my Great Grandmother probably bought them second hand. That’s our best guess anyway. We’re not one of those families with display cabinets full of interesting heritage.. in fact, I barely know my grandparent’s history, forget the generation above. So this I find really interesting!

UPDATE: Thanks to Norman Field these have now been dated to no later than 1929! At least, Parlophone advertised them in the November 1929 issue of Gramaphone magazine.

Mastering is the process that recordings go through after leaving the mixing engineer and before arriving at the replication plant. A record might contain a whole bunch of mixes from different sources, at different levels, with different amounts of energy. It’s the mastering engineer’s job to make these mixes coherent.

There are many parts to this job, including; equalisation, microdynamics, macrodynamics, arrangement/spacing of tracks, and noise reduction/removal.

I’d like to talk about dynamics, and specifically, the loudness race.

Since the mid-nineties, CD mastering has become so aggressive that we’ve effectively backed ourselves into a corner. With each new hit wanting to push the loudness barrier a bit further, we’ve run out of headroom, with the majority of releases being first heavily compressed, and then brick wall limited, resulting in severe clipping. Which incidentally is a Bad Thing. 

Loud masters are fatiguing on the ears (which I think contributes to our impatience with music these days), and lack a major feature that I really look for in music – dynamics.

I can understand the reasons for the loudness race. Record companies want their track to sound fresher and bigger than the competition. But the trouble with all of this, is that perceived loudness is really just relative. Humans are pretty bad at judging absolute levels of sound pressure – or rather we’re pretty good at adjusting to what we’re hearing, zoning out noise, and focussing on what we want to hear.

So before I rattle on about this (more posts to come), I’d like to ask of anyone who might be reading…

1. Does the perceived average loudness of a recording make an impression on you about the quality of the recording?
    
2. Do you mind adjusting the level of your stereo/iPod from record to record?

I’m just curious really, to hear other opinions on the subject of loudness. Have a lovely xmas!