Week Five, No time to Skive

I’m getting on ever so well with my new smartphone and it has already been of some real use. My artist chum Julian Sewell is a night owl and he mailed me late one evening about the next Son of BoomZilla Strip “Son Of Boomzilla And The Blown Meters” and I of course was able to answer him right away. So, I can pretend I’ve always had one now.
On the reviews front the new test enclosures are finally under way for the big old slice of coaxes I want to look at, as well as their ability to go baffle-free and act as single ten inch woofer boxes. These are to replace an old pair of boxes that I was kindly given some time back. Right now the old ones still have the Pioneer ten inch Accelerate three ways in there as Girish from Pioneer (not the single most ruddy KEEN and thrusting young executive in all UK Ice – but bloody close) wants me to try them with a small amplifier as well. I fear they may be a little stifled as they are designed for boxless use, or what is wrongly termed as free-air, when they mean infinite baffle!
Sorry, went into audio Swahili briefly. On a more normal note, I crapped out slightly last week and still owe you a new video. The only excuse was going to see an old mate and losing the lumpy bit in the middle of the day to lunch while talking about the possibility of my doing some stuff for his title. Suffocatingly exciting but would never stop me from doing this, rather raising the old media profile somewhat. (Oh cripes, it’d be so cool…)
And blithering about cool, I will be setting up that most utterly masturbatory of all things, the self-branded F-List celebrity website and I’ve seen the template. I have yet to do a damn keystroke about the content, which will start with the CV that no-one’s seen in my fifteen years as a journalist and hopefully have the old show reel video I made from episodes of Pulling Power with a professional editor. Just piffling on about it here is the self-created stick to bully myself into doing it.
But best of all, I have done a Good Thing. I have invited forum user pc99 to come help test the Pioneer DEH-P8100BT I have here on the test rig. Said rig uses a Daiwa 12V power supply and I was gratified to see the same PSU on the bench at Connects2’s R&D department recently! There’s also a Genesis SM100 amplifier and a pair of Bowers and Wilkins Leisure Monitors – LM1s, in my system. This makes for scary-rigorous audio testing but pc99 has some horribly cogent questions about his great big huge library and the fatness and cunning of the electrickery and chippery behind the USB hole in the deck. He’s bringing a mighty weapon, an iomega 320MB USB-powered HDD. (Oh and his brain, too, which is used by a university department to develop software, which to be fair I had no idea about ’till two minutes ago.) It’s due to be done this Friday so won’t be published ’till the following week in fact but could herald the start of a new flavour of review, where we get a few warm bodies down and do the old speaker-panel stuff. I can offer better than the garden though, as Kenwood have their now little-used audio test room and Mike Edwards said I can use it. If you are able to take time in the week sometimes and live close enough to be feasible to visit Watford, you could be a panel member.
I’ll go get on then….
Adam Rayner – Online Editor