Special AVS Deal From AIX Records - Page 5

Dr. Aix, please keep us updated on the progress with Colin Hay, his solo acoustic version of overkill is stellar. I can only imagine what you guys could produce together in this format.

It arrived here Tuesday, I was quite impressed that it got here that quickly. I've listened to the Bad Haggis disc somewhat all the way through - starting it at around midnight wasn't a good idea, I was already tired. Sound quality was exceptional! The music itself was pretty good, although I found it a little repetitive.

Gave the demo disc a quick listen too, and found at least a handful more that I want to investigate further. Gee thanks... just what i need, MORE to buy. =P

Haven't listened to the Guitar Noir disc yet, just haven't had the time to give it the attention it deserves.

9.1? *sobs*

Although, i am eagerly awaiting HR audio discs on one (or both) of these new HD formats.

One nice thing about HD DVD is you can author a disc in HD to standard dvd which will play on HD DVD players. The main thing which would hold you back is the amount of HD video you could fit on a standard dvd with lossless audio. I think more people would have to adopt the new HD formats to make it worth it for a small label to release on either one. I do have some nice HD concerts with Dolby TrueHD, I have the Heart and Nine Inch Nails discs.

Opiate: give the Guitar Noir a listen when you have a chance, it's still my favorite.

I just finished listening to this exceptional recording. I was very impressed with John Gorkas depth and deep emotion he demonstrates in his writing--very nice!! AIX has done a very good job recording and mixing this material as they have with all the DVDs, I have from them. I especially enjoyed the DVD Video side with insight to the artist. I loved the DVD-A side as well WOW!! I am looking forward to the new AIX material including Dave Mason.

Now that my MC statement closing date has clicked over, I'll order up at Aix. You have one by Jonathan McEuen too which I shall order. He is so good on "The Brand New Opry" that I have to have it. Two more will put me over $100 so I'll get free shipping. AND I'm still listening in stereo. I have the B and W 9NT speakers still in their boxes for the rears. I think I'll buy the Sherwood Newcastle R-972 receiver when it comes out in March. Onkyo is having some issues with black and white levels with their implementation of the Reon chip. The S-N will have the same chip but may sidestep the issues.
BTW everybody, try Smart Mouth mouthwash, just out!! It really works!! Zinc chloride formula neutralizes the volitile sulfur compounds in the mouth, as did Lavoris Formula Z in 1984!! Somebody immediately bought Lavoris Co. then and killed the product. Who do you think was behind that? Now a second zinc ion mouthwash is here. I bought it at Walmart for $10.77 I think a week ago. It worked, so I immediately bought 5 more packages of it and called the co. in St. Louis and raved! Called store mgr at Walmart and raved. Called my dentist and raved. Now raving here. It really, really works. I find if just use once a day in AM it works pretty well for 24 hrs. It says to use 2x per day.Try it and tell everybody. They are a small co and cant afford big advertising, so it will fail if we dont spread the word. www.beasmartmouth.net I am sure our Aix disks will sound much better if we have nice, fresh breath, so there is the connection. You know me, Mark, when it comes to spreading the word.

Cool, will check it out

I played John Gorka Gypsy Life yesterday. Wow. Very, very good. I strongly recommend it. Buy it for the holidays. It is upbeat and both the audio and video are stunning. It includes three songs shot "outside the studio"- one in a big room in a house(?) and two out in the country. Hard to verbalize beyond that. All three are among the greatest tracks I own. This is an innovation for Aix, and a most welcome one. My Tandberg receiver and my mighty Allison One speakers (MSRP $5,350 per pair, I paid $720 per pair in 1976) seem made for the guitar. Clang, clang go the tweeters and midranges as the guitar is played. Geez it is lifelike! The bass guitar, played wonderfully here, is new to Aix here, I believe. I recall that sound from "Rumors", not an injudicious model from which to learn. I'm watching on my mighty 21" Sony, so it seems strange to hear that huge room-full of sounds and see small hands on a small screen across a 16' wide room plucking the strings producing them. I'll cure that with, say, a Samsung LNT 5271F flat panel up the road.
I can honestly say that Aix disks are wringing the final 30% or 35% out of my Tandberg and Allisons. Neither manufacturer ever knew what the full potentials of their products were when they built them. I hope Roy Allison gets to hear Allison Ones playing some Aix disks. He'll hear the full measure of what he created. AND, I'm listening in stereo, using two analog cables from my Panny S-97 player up to a tape input on the Tandberg. Before long I'll unpack the B&W 904NT's for the rear channels and buy, say, that S-N 972 receiver. Substitute the Panny's HDMI cable and throw in the Sammy flat panel, and I'll be able to charge admission. Women between the ages of 18 and 23 will be admitted free of charge, of course.
John Gorka and those who accompany him here are very talented, as are Mark and Mona Waldrep and their entire team. The female voices (and faces) accompanying Mr. Gorka add much to this disk too. The Allisons just light up with a mandolin. Gypsy Life should be mailed to Joan Baez in an effort to get her to do a disk with Aix. It's that good.

Dr. Aix,
I just came across this tonight and would like to know if the free sampler offer is still running.

Steve

Dr. Waldrep- I really mean everything I say about Aix and about "The Gypsy Life" disk. It shows an increased polish and a noticable advance in overall production values. Those three tracks "outside the studio" really are a nice addition. Please don't let up with that in future productions. Is that you in the white cap in some of the extra video material?
I think I suggested the following when you first mentioned iTrax: Could you please just mention the minimum computer features we need to download from iTrax. I am a good Aix customer, but rather hopeless when it comes to the details of computers. We need high-speed internet, apparently, or do we? Can we just add a burner to our computer, and, if so, what burner? What sort of recordable disks should we buy? Please furnish us with information re the basic hardware we need to use iTrax. My Gateway Performance 550 was purchased in early 2000. It gets me by just fine, but it is reaching obsolescence I guess. At eight years it is probably fully depreciated. What should I buy to replace it? An HP media computer? I checked a year or so ago and they seemed to have great ones for ~$2700. I know you believe in the future of the home media server, but I think it will be another PC for me this time around. If you only sell downloads to people with those, I think your sales volume will be a small percentage of what it could be.

When I ordered "A Gypsy Life" a few weeks ago, I also bought Hanna-McEuen "Tried and True", Jonathan McEuen "One Step Ahead", and Beethoven "Symphony No. 6 in F Major". ~$50 for the first, and ~$25 for each of the other three. Since that's over $100, I got free shipping, at least in the U.S. Those four make a very nice package. All are just a total joy.
Aix is the very highest fidelity recorded audio ever offered to consumers. I still can't get over it.
BTW, Dr. Waldrep- I see Dell and other computers that say they allow you to burn CDs and DVDs. If a computer can burn a DVD, does that mean it can burn a DVD-A, and, if so, what blank disk will work to burn a DVD-A? The same blank you use to burn a DVD? Those seem dumb questions to most, perhaps, but I don't know the anwers. Answers please, Professor.

[quote=fresno1232001;12320027]Dr. Waldrep- I really mean everything I say about Aix and about "The Gypsy Life" disk. It shows an increased polish and a noticable advance in overall production values. Those three tracks "outside the studio" really are a nice addition. Please don't let up with that in future productions. Is that you in the white cap in some of the extra video material?

fresno,

any dvd blank will work as a dvd-a you just need the proper authoring software

http://www.tape.com/resource/dvd_audio.html

Thanks for that information, Siriously. I wonder if the Itrax site provides the authoring software for us to download? I just looked at your www.tape.com site and it admits that the process of authoring a DVD-A with video "is complex". Do you simplify that complexity for us on your Itrax site, Dr. Waldrep?
At least I now know that any computer that can burn DVDs can burn DVD-As and any DVD blank will work if I have the proper authoring software. Does the Itrax site allow us to download the authoring software?

OK, I just now got slightly less lazy and read at length on the Itrax site. There is surely a lot more there than there was a couple of months ago. It says to download the "Itrax Download Manager". But then it has a blurb about download managers and there seem to be lots of them. Does Itrax have its own and does it include the authoring software we will need to do downloads? I.e., once we download "the" Itrax Download Manager, we are then ready to start downloading tracks?
The Itrax site lists operating systems that will work and Windows 98 is listed. You might want to add Windows 98SE, Dr. Waldrep. (Although of course if the first works, so will the second). (and of course the number of people with either one is getting small).
It looks like a new computer with, say, 500 gigs of hard-drive space is in my future. I see media computers from HP for ~$1500. A neighbor has ATT DSL for $19 a month, so I'll get that.
(Editing here: I just looked at the HP site and "built" a media computer with nearly everything- 1 TB of hard-drive, 4 gig top-flight Intel processor, a blue-ray burner, 5.1 speakers, atsc and ntsc tv tuners, the best DVD burner software, no monitor, 3 yr warranty, and it comes to $3,610. I paid $650 for my Gateway 20" CRT monitor, and until it burns out....Such a thing should enable one to download optimally from Itrax, I would think).
The Itrax site is loaded with information, but, Dr. Waldrep, again, can we download a download manager from the Itrax site and is that all we have to download before we can start downloading tracks? Also, if we have DSL, how long will it take to download a track in the highest audio quality with video? 10 minutes or 3 hours? Just roughly.

fresno

I would just burn it into the DVD-V area - any DVD authoring software can make a slideshow with a backing track, in this case your backing track is hirez and you can put a blank picture

I suppose this turns out like Classic Records' DAD format

(actually when I did this I made one image for each track highlighting the song name)

From the Itrax site: "How do I download tracks?" Answer: "First, be sure you have the Itrax Download Manager installed on your computer or media server". That statement implies to me that there is an Itrax Download Manager, since that is what it says. Since there is not, you may want to go into your Itrax site and tweak this statement, Dr. Waldrep.
[quote=Dr. AIX;12468145]THere are lots of download managers available online and we list a number of them on the pages of the web site. Because of the large number that have already been developed, I didn't feel it was necessary to build out own. FInd on that works, test it with the test files and you're good to go.


You say "As for burning discs of the files that you download, that's another matter. The Minnetonka company makes authoring software for DVD-Audio (in both a basic and premium form) or there are other solutions available if HD stereo is your thing. THe reference to the so-called "DAD" format is appropriate. There is no such thing as a DAD format! THe discs are actually DVD-Video format with no video. All DVD-Video titles can accommodate 96 kHz/24-bit PCM audio. However, the inexpensive machines truncate the data to 48 kHz."
OK, once we download tracks using SOME download manager which we have installed on our computer, the next step is to burn them to a disk. I would want to download and burn only the highest resolution 5.1 audio and any video associated with the Itrax tracks I buy. Are you recommending the Minnetonka authoring software? Can we buy and download it on-line or do we go buy it at CompUSA ? (before our local store closes- they just got bought out). Once we get it from somewhere and install it- and I take it you recommend the premium form of it, then we are set to burn disks? I do not, do not, know what you are saying when you say "All DVD-Video TITLES can accomodate 96 khz/24-bit PCM audio". Do you mean to say that all DVD-Video DISKS?- the blank disks- can accomodate 96/24? And what do you mean by "The inexpensive MACHINES truncate the data to 48 kHz". What machines? I swear I have utterly no idea what you mean by that. This is frustrating. I am asking how to buy your product.
You are a genius with recorded audio, Dr. Waldrep, and I keep buying your disks, and will continue to do so if you keep selling them, but please realize that there are people with a deep love of hi-rez audio- and your great video material, who are not "in the industry" and even a few, like me, with sub-normal IQs who hide it well with hard work.

What I have gleaned so far is that we first download SOME "download manager" to our computer, and Itrax does not have its own despite what I quote from your Itrax site above. We are then equiped to download tracks from Itrax.
We then, to burn our downloads to a disk, need "DVD authoring software", and you like Minnetonka brand, and perhaps the premium version of their product. If that is right, would you please just tell me what blank disk to buy! What brand, or what should it say on it so it can accomodate 96/24 with your vidio?
You are a brilliant man, Dr. Waldrep, one can tell that very quickly in talking to you, and great minds think alike, but not all of us have one. So please try to accomodate us too.
Editing here: I just looked at the Minnetonka site. It looks to me as if they sell professional authoring software to recording studios! Maybe I'm wrong. When you say "as for burning disks of the files that you download, that's another matter" and then tell us about the Minnetonka product, to me it almost sounds as though you would prefer we DON'T burn them to a disk. I can hardly believe what I am reading. I thought the idea of Itrax was that we would download tracks and burn them to disks. For those with enormous hard drives in media servers, I guess there is no reason to do so, but for the rest of us, I thought that was the idea. I can surely see that you might worry that someone would burn your tracks to disks, pay you $2 per track to download them, and then sell the disks on street corners paying you no royalty. If the Minnetonka software IS intended for recording studios, it is probably expensive. Their site looks like it is aimed at professionals in that I have utterly no idea what their different products do. I might as well be looking at a producer of electron microscopes. Is there an affordable authoring software we can buy to burn your tracks to disks, or are you indeed discouraging us from doing that?

Dr. Waldrep- Thank you for these comments as they do shed some light. Pardon me for getting a little cantankerous. For now, I shall for sure just keep buying the disks from you. Somewhere up above I mention an HP media computer I looked up that costs ~$3410. I would not try to burn downloads from Itax until I own such a computer and that will be at least a year from now. I am concerned that you will be putting new content on Itrax which you will not put on disks, and I don't want to miss out on it. Over the next couple of years, what percent of new content on Itrax will also appear on physical disks sold by you, would you estimate?
When I read on the Onkyo TX-NR905 thread and the Sherwood-Newcastle AVR-972 receiver thread I see discussions about these allowing one to stream audio and video from one's computer into the receiver. Perhaps that is a way around our trying to burn Itrax tracks to disks. One would need a big hard-drive to go that route. The HP computer I discussed above has a one terabite hard-drive, but I suspect even it would reach its limit with not-that-many Itrax tracks. How do we tell?
(Editing- I just looked at media servers at www.niveusmedia.com. Their 2008 models are out. One has a 1 Tb hard drive and it says that can hold "100 hours of HDTV, 3,000 hours of digital music at lossless compression, and 670,000 hi res photos". So 1 Tb of space is substantial. The HP computer for ~$3610 I discussed above has a 1 Tb hard drive. Perhaps if I installed that next to my AV set up, I'd be set to download from Itrax. The threads for receivers- S-N AVR 972, e.g., say one can connect them to a computer and stream content directly into the receiver. If one can "stream" it in off the net, I take it one can download content, store on the hard drive, and then feed it from computer into receiver. Would that work, Dr. Waldrep?
You say above that more manufacturers are discussing media servers. I searched yesterday for media servers and it seems that some at least are professional servers intended for companies like Itrax- i.e., the professional media providers, not for the consumers at the receiving end. Perhaps over the next year or so there will appear a new, affordable family of media servers for consumers. It has been a chicken-or-egg problem heretofore, you imply in a post above. The manufacturers have been waiting for a hi-res source of downloads, and your Itrax site is it. You told me the names of two companies about a year ago (one was Niveus) and it seemed the cheapest server was ~$3,000, (still is) which is out of my range. I realize that after 7 years of Bush, there are thousands of 50,000 sq. ft. homes in American with huge media servers, and those folks may be your main Itrax customers for now. The first act of the new Democratic President will be to re-impose the 93% marginal federal income tax rate, and so that may cut into those folks' incomes. We are going to recover the $3 trillion looted by these people. I would be just as happy, and perhaps more happy, to just download into a server rather than burn disks. I don't intend to sell your tracks on bootlegged disks on street corners. If for no other reason, I watch a lot of movies, and I see that blurb about copyright violation carrying severe civil and criminal penalties.
At some point I shall explore Minnetonka DVD-A authoring software more closely. Do you have any idea how much their software costs which would allow us to burn your tracks to DVD-A at full 96/24 with video? Is it even a consumer product? If not, does anyone else reading this know of affordable DVD-A authoring software? Perhaps an HP media computer comes loaded with such software or can be bought with it.
Apparently the source (Itrax) is a little bit ahead of the receiver (affordable media servers for consumers) technology right now, and that is fine. The Bushies can download Itrax content into their massive servers now and we low-lifes can do it in a couple of years. I'm fine with that.
Again, I am surprised at the complexity of burning hi-rez content to a DVD disk. Looking back, you have never talked much about doing that in connection with Itrax, but have always emphasized the down-loading. I just did not notice that distinction. If fact, I have always thought of downloading and burning as being one process! I thought I would burn and then carry the disk into my greatroom and play it in my Panny S-97 DVD-A player.
I sounds like your offering of physical disks will continue for now but taper off as more consumers get media servers, provided of course that you can make money from physical disks. That trend will pervade the record and movie business. The day of the physical disk, at least as the marketed carrier of content, is clearly waning.
They said 10 years ago that the computer and the TV would merge. They are edging closer, at least. More accurately now, the computer and the A/V system are converging.
Editing here: As I see it, at this point, we can download and listen to tracks from Itrax by doing one of the following:
1. Just store them on our computer's hard-drive and listen to them on cheap little computer speakers. God what a waste that would be.
2. We MAYBE can run a cable from our computer out to our great room and feed the Itrax tracks stored on our computer hard drive to our A/V receiver and listen to them that way. I don't like that idea, running cables on the floor in my little palace.
3. MAYBE we can use wireless routers to transmit the tracks stored on our computer out to our great room and feed them into our receiver somehow. Today Bestbuy shows in the paper a Netgear RangeMax NEXT Wireless N Router than can "simultaneously stream HD video, download MP3s and more at blazing speeds". $99.99. With "4-Port Gigabit Switch" it is $129.99. Would that work? If it is fast enough to stream HD video, can it stream or transmit DVD-A content with video? It seems to me there is a crying need for a new consumer electronic device: A wireless router that can transmit DVD-A and HD video material from one's computer to one's A/V room, and a receiving device there that plugs into one's A/V receiver. If I have to, I'll start talking to people in Silicon Valley about that. Maybe that already is possible with therse wireless routers. I get the impression they are intended to allow more than one computer in a home to use a hi-speed internet line, not transmit things like Itrax tracks from a computer to a A/V receiver. SURELY that little change would be child's play for the folks in S.V.
4. Buy a $3,600 HP media computer with a 1 Tb hard drive and install it in our great room next to our A/V set up and feed the Itrax tracks from the computer's hard drive directly into our receiver. I don't like that since computer fans are noisy. No way would I put my current Gateway computer in my great room.
5. Spend ~$3,200 for a Niveus media server and put that in our greatroom, hooked up to a high speed internet connection. These are essentially silent, Niveus says on its site. They don't have fans but rely on huge heat sinks (fins) on the sides of the unit to get the heat out. They do have spin motors for their huge hard drives, but then our DVD players have those and they are quiet. I just don't have $3,200 for one.
6. The solution I will most likely go to: Put my mind to it and buy the Minnetonka DVD-A authoring software, install it on a new $3,600 HP media computer, learn how to make it work and burn the Itrax tracks I download to a disk. Carry these out to my great room and play them on my Panny S-97 player. I am about to suffer an increase in income, so I shall be able to do all this.
I would most heartely thank anyone reading this if they told us how they are listening to Itrax tracks now. How are you getting them into your AV receivers?
Congratulations, Dr. Waldrep, on having Itrax up and running and in getting a good response to it. I am sure it will be a very big success. You are the master of hi-res audio. Once in a while your tracks cross the line to where the performance really seems to be live in my greatroom! And I'm still listening in stereo.

Just bought the Moonlight Acoustica disc only to realize I don't have a player to play it on . Can anyone recommend a reasonable player to invest in for DVD-A? I have the Emotiva MMC-1 so no problems there. I'm looking for best bang for the buck. Nor was I aware of the free sampler disc, bummer. All comments welcome, thanks.

Wow, gets great reviews. Thanks, I think it will suit just fine .

the sampler disc is a must as it really gives you a great taste of everything they have to offer. They cram so much on all their samplers. Give them a call and see if they can add it still.

I've been talking to a real techno freak. He thinks that a Linkus WRT 45 using the G or N channel would work for transmitting the audio from an Itrax download on my computer out to a receiving unit in my greatroom. That would not be sufficient for the video, and a Slingbox Pro might be needed for that. Those were ideas off the top of his head and now he is researching it more for me. He did say if you use these you are sitting next to a radio transmitter when at your computer, but then when you are out in the greatroom listening to the transmitted tracks, you would not be sitting next to the transmitter. The signals WOULD be passing through me on their way to the receiving station in my AVS system, however.
Mark- Are the Niveus media servers complete computers? I see they come with a wireless keyboard and a mouse. If so, I suppose one could buy one instead of a new computer.
Editing here: I have asked all this on the Sherwood-Newcastle AVR 972 receiver thread. Someone just posted in response that the conventional way to get dense files such as Itrax tracks from a computer to a receiver is with a cable. OH. OK. Just wondered. So forget wireless. You use a cable. I have just asked him what cable and have asked Jeff, the S-N guy who responds on that thread, if the 972 will have a place for such a cable to plug into or will one be installed on it before it ships in March, 2008.
But my question to Itrax customers, and to Mark Waldrep, still stands: How are Itrax customers getting the downloaded tracks into their avr receivers? If they are downloading them into Niveus Media Servers and then feeding them from those into their receivers, I can understand that. But if they are downloading them into their computers, then what?

[quote=fresno1232001;12491369]
3. MAYBE we can use wireless routers to transmit the tracks stored on our computer out to our great room and feed them into our receiver somehow. Today Bestbuy shows in the paper a Netgear RangeMax NEXT Wireless N Router than can "simultaneously stream HD video, download MP3s and more at blazing speeds". $99.99. With "4-Port Gigabit Switch" it is $129.99. Would that work?

Just recently purchased a Lowen and Navarro album and an Ernest Ranglin album from ITRAX. Using DVD Solo software and my computer's DVD burner I easily made 96/24 2.0 DVD-A's. It was very simple and the software will only cost you about $40 to download. My computer is about 5 years old. An investment of only $40 was needed to play these discs. The Minnetoka Bronze software will cost you about $100.

These are read by my universal players as DVD-A not DVD-V.

Both of these DVD-A's sound great. They took several hours to download, but I can download them as frequently as I like. I do have trouble sometimes with 96/24 files on my home network due to the data size. Maybe a Slingbox would work better for the purpose of a home server?

Many thanks, Aggieheels. Yes, I noticed in reading in depth on the Minnetonka site that their DVD-A authoring software can handle 2 channels in 96/24 resolution, but not 5.1 channels. I guess half the fun of the Itrax-Aix tracks are the 5.1 surround channels. If you go to 5.1 channels with Minnetonka, you are cut off at 44.1 kHz resolution. Nice, huh? Yikes! I am grateful for your information, but the question still stands: Is anyone downloading Itrax tracks and then listening to them in their media room through their AVR receiver in 5.1 and 96/24. As I see it, the only way anyone is is by using a Niveus Media or similar server in their greatroom.
I have emailed Niveus and asked them if their server(s) are a complete computer- i.e., can I surf the web using the wireless keyboard and wireless mouse that come with the servers. The Niveus servers come loaded with Vista Ultimate, I believe, unless it is a special media software. If I can surf the web with a Niveus server AND download and play through my receiver Itrax and other music tracks I would consider buying one instead of a new HP Media computer at $3610. I will say that reading what you get with the basic model of a Niveus server with a 500 Gig hard drive v. what you get with a $3610 HP Media computer with a 1 Tb hard drive and Blue Ray burner, it looks at first blush, at least, that you are getting a lot more with the HP computer.