One of my fondest memories from my youth, was riding in my parents old three door Range Rover (and later on a Land Rover Defender 90), across the Shropshire and Welsh rural landscape. In the car, we only had one tape that worked. That tape was Paul Simon’s Graceland
, a seminal piece of work, that without a doubt moulded my musical tastes at an early age. When a piece of music has such a strong emotional attachment, it can be difficult to be objective and rate it compared to other works. At the same time, everything Paul Simon has done since Graceland, has been compared to it, with little deemed as good.
So with hearing Paul Simon’s latest work: So Beautiful or So What, its inevitable I’ll compare it to Graceland. Now I personally don’t think it comes close, but whether that’s because it doesn’t evoke the same fond memories or because it simply isn’t as good, is a tough call to decide. That said, this is still a great record and will be loved by any fan of Paul Simon.
You may also be interested to know this album is available in hi-res 24bit 96kHz flac format from HDtracks, which sounds top notch and a distinctive step up from Spotify Premium.
Over the last few years I’ve been using a Rega Apollo as my main CD player and a very good CD player it is too. Quite unique in design with a highly distinctive top loading mechanism, rather than a usual run of the mill tray. The Rega Apollo is special in that on loading a new disc, it will scan the discs entirety as part of an ‘initialisation’ process and set it self up as best to read it. It also has a generous 24MB memory for use as a read ahead buffer.
However times have changed, I now find myself streaming my music for playback, either stuff I’ve ripped into iTunes or over the net from Spotify and internet radio stations. Streaming bring many convenience benefits when it comes to music playback; ease of finding tracks, random shuffling across your whole collection, playlists and checking out new unheard bands. As such, I’ve bitten the bullet and sold my Rega Apollo. I will miss it, it had a unique sound quality that my Mac Mini and M-Audio Audiophile USB soundcard simply can’t match.
Hunt down ‘rega apollo’ with Hi-Fi Hunter
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With the recent revival of the Tron story in Disney’s Tron Legacy
, I’ve recently been enjoying its soundtrack
by the French dance duo Daft Punk. Recently the score has been remixed with a more dance slant, as Tron Legacy: Reconfigured
. It retains the same classic harmonies throughout, that tie the album together, however this work is destined for the dance floor. There’s some great groups behind the remixes, like Photek, Crystal Method, Moby, Paul Oakenfold. If you enjoyed the original soundtrack, but longed for something harder to get your juices going, this is it.
I’d like to bring to your attention a friend of mine, who has quite an interesting blog on computer games, from a female goth’s perspective. 
Sally’s blog is still quite new, but is showing lots of potential. She doesn’t write out the very latest headlines or games that have just been released, rather she writes about what games she thinks are cool and enjoys playing right now. A step away from the mass of other gaming sites out there, but infinitely more personal and honest. Check out this post here on the best video game robots:
Queen of Geek – [THINGS I LOVE] Top Five: Video Game Robots
I would just like to apologise for the lack of updates lately. This has partly been due to time away on holiday and partly due to time spent updating my other websites; www.RoydAudio.com and an exciting new yet to be launched site. RoydAudio.com has come a long way other the last few months, with many updates, including many reviews of Royd loudspeakers and a new ‘Buy Royds’ section, which uses the power of the eBay Partner Network and its API to present all the Royd speakers currently on eBay. This last feature is a great tool for visitors to find Royd speakers to buy (a very popular request) and also doubles up as a good way to monetise the site, covering my hostings fees and costs of source material.
My new web project is also Hi-FI related and is still heavily in development, but taking shape well. It leverage’s a lot of funky tech from across the web and I hope it will be a very useful resource and also a nice little money earner for me. 
Watch this space!
With E3 currently under way in the US, the latest game project I’ve been working on has finally been announced publically! Yes its has two names, Everybody Dance in the US; DanceStar Party in PAL territories. Below are a bunch of links to various press releases and new coverage of the game.
DanceStar Party – E3 2011 trailer
E3 2011: Everybody Dance is Surprising, Delightful, Embarrassing
DanceStar Party Gets E3 2011 Moving
Just returned from a little holiday down in Weymouth. Bad news is, my bike was stolen on the night of 29th May. Little thieving twats, used bolt cutters on my Thule bike carrier and legged it with my Specialized Hard Rock A1 Comp bike. Its a few years old, no suspension, pretty distinctive being the A1 Comp version and with blue DMR Pedals
. It also had red plastic fittings near the rear wheel and behind seat for attaching a Hamax Plus rack and kids seat. If you see anything in the Dorset area matching this description, do please get in touch.
