Lady Elanore

The latest pics are George smothered in lurpack, dancing with bats In fact you can just see it at the very end of the bat video

not that you can see anyway

It's got used to me I think I've passed it many times. It sees an awful lot of people these days as lockdown has sent them towards its natural habitat :(

Yes my flickr account is public. I've taken a lot of photos of friends on jetskis and so publish them all as they like to see themselves You don't see all the photos though as some are hidden from you

I looked that up on Wiki and it's the way a heron shows its admiration for another being (I might put it on flickr, probably easier and I wouldn't have had to compress it so much-which in turn has probably converted it into a format that most peoples' browser don't support ) https://www.flickr.com/gp/66765220@N07/8TtW7F

Must be my browser settings. Thanks

Can you guys see that above? I just see a timeline and hear audio, unless I download it. I thought the upload would show on the site

I got a short video of a Heron recently. I don't think it approved... Heron Vid.mp4

I think of them as big 'bean tin' shaped fuses, in the same way I think of silicon chips as little spider shaped fuses.

Big round heavy things and big cylinders that go bang when shorted out make the best amplifiers

I think I have said before on this site, I like to buy my hifi by weight Lighter is very rarely better The beauty of these older amps and a lot of British current amps, is they have big toroidal transformers in them and can produce big current when it's demanded. This means they can drive difficult loads (many modern speakers have impedance that can dip down to 2ohms) with a good amount of shove. A clever high-powered Japanese amp/receiver may have greater headline figures, but ultimately can't deliver that same as the toroidal powered amp. A bit like 2 cars with similar headline power figures, eg the old M140 and the AMG A45. From a rolling side by side position, the ageing M140 with it's older school big engine could usually pull away from the A45 with it's smaller high tech engine. It's one of the reasons British amps are still amongst the best in the world (they make V8 amps )

The 'fold down mix' is something that happens before the sound gets to the consumer. It's done at the broadcast end and it's a ratio of 'L+R:C:Surround' that the sound mixer sets up. It's how regular stereo telly gets it stereo sound when the original program was made in 5.1 or similar. Too much surround or even L+R can mean the ratio against the speech channel in the centre will make it tough to hear dialogue over fx and music. Although there is a certain amount of what would normally be the centre channels speech fed into the L+R in a 5.1 mix which mitigates this (you can feed speech only into the centre channel or equally into the L+R channels and achieve the same mono result of speech in a surround system). Another off-piste thing is some sound mixers use the '.1' channel to add bass and low frequency into, instead of it being an fx channel. Most movies rarely put much above 120hz into the subwoofer channel. It's really just the problem of do you do the mix for 5.1 or stereo/mono? In telly it's rare to do both properly, as time and money aren't available, so if a show is made in 5.1, a predetermined ratio of how the 5.1 channels are put together so that the stereo listener and the mono listener get a decent experience. Naturally it doesn't always work. There have been a few dramas over the last several years that have been disasters with muffled and hidden speech. One possible reason is the dubbing mixer listened in surround with a nice clear centre channel for dialogue, but when auto downmixed to stereo or mono, things became rather muddy. Your receiver is doing something similar if needed, eg if you only had 2 speakers but were listening to a show that was in 5.1. Funnily enough, some receivers produce poor audio results doing this, not because they get the ratios wrong (which can happen) but because they are driving internal power amps into none terminated outputs (ie the surrounds and sub channels if you only had say two speakers). Hope that makes sense

The 8300A has direct access to the power amp, which is why it's on my radar The Fold Down ratio I was referring to, is the stereo sound you hear on telly when the original sound was in something like 5.1. So for the Olympics or Wimbledon, which may well be originated in 5.1, the ratio is preset by the broadcaster, although the person mixing it hopefully will keep an ear across the stereo mix and tweak if necessary -it doesn't always happen successfully of course. Movies for tv may be encoded in surround sound but is auto mixed for stereo :( There is a bias towards the front sound of course as that's where the dialogue and most of the general fx and music is.

Funnily enough I am looking out for a new amp to double up for 'home theatre bypass' and the Audiolab 8300a is on my short list

The 'fold-down' ratio of tv sound has been a bugbear for at least a decade or so. These are pre-defined ratios of how 5.1 is auto mixed down to stereo, often failing. It seems there is no universal ratio either. When the Olympics came to London, the broadcaster were set to apply their usual ratio for mix down, but the Olympics had their own and overriding idea. Many audio mixers (the human version, not the electronic version with faders) were not happy and were forced to comply-not always with complete success. You get to hear some of the weirdness of the fold down ratio when you have had to turn your telly up to listen to a program on an HD channel then get the shock of your life when the adverts come on and blow you into next week. This happens less as tvs and soundbars with 5.1 decoding become more commonplace.

I'm still sticking with the "I quite like it" camp, well at least the front of it. It's the rear quarters look very lumpy to me.

This is interesting. Old M4 versus new M4. As I've said before, I'm interested to see how the extra 60-70bhp and a similar torque increase (lb/ft) would fare against the extra weight of the new car. On paper the new car would 'smash it' according to the test results and recent solo reviews. If anyone still cares here is a non-scientific test. No spoilers

I think that warrants an "Ooooooh shiny"

I just can't get excited about the arrival of this new C63. As a car enthusiast I love the ever growing power of the 4 main protagonists, but I'm not a fan of the shrinking engines. A 6 cylinder is great, but a 4! And then there is the downsizing of capacity and even more hateful, the adding of weight. The C63 gains over 100bhp to top 600bhp, which is great. It loses the V8 and gains a 2.0 litre which is 60 kg lighter - also sort of great, but, it is a 4 cylinder, which is not. Then to add insult to injury the car will be close to 2 tonnes due to the addition of an electric motor and those ruddy heavy batteries, which is appalling. BMW held out on it's straight 6, 3.0 and more power, but somehow along the way it added 150-200kg, possibly more when the new 4x4 version appears and this begs the question of what will it weigh when it goes hybrid? Jaguar have been building tubby cars for ages (the beautiful F type has needed a diet from day one) The Audi RS is already a heavy lump, but presumably the next version will weigh substantially more and be tipping the scales around 2 tonnes, leaving only the Alfa to fly the flag of moderate weight (at least in the modern world's definition of moderate weight). It makes me so sad that we are losing the multi cylinder engines, but it really annoys me with the increasing girth and weight of all our cars. Perhaps some brave designers will cotton on to the fact that overweight does not improve handling, no matter how much grip the car can develop. Here's Cars spec of the new C63 https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/spy-shots/mercedes-benz/amg-c63/

Is it just me, or is Mr Smith looking quite buff these days?

I guess that's why they pay Hamilton the mega bucks

SPOILER ALERT DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO WON TODAY RACE What a race! Well hopefully it might slow down the haters who keep saying Hamilton only winds because he has the fastest team. If we get a few more races like this between the main protagonists, then it will be a season to remember. Anyone who hasn't seen it and still wants to watch the highlights knowing who won, should do so. Thrilling end to race, at least watching live

You can't beat a nice grit bin Nice photo (not meant sarcastically-just in case you thought I might have been )

This was an interesting article on Autocar. They were obviously bored and had a few cars lying about so did a brief test. Turns out the new M3 is wider 'mirror to mirror' than the Mercedes E63S!!! What the heck! I'm almost pleased I can't afford one now, although I wouldn't say no to one I wonder how big the next C63 will be. Apparently even though they have dumped the V8 (the misguided idiots) and have chucked the 2.0 in to it, the whole shebang will weigh considerable more than the outgoing 4.0 V8 car. The world has gone mad (I blame the ruddy battery thing) https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/super-saloon-shootout-bmw-m3-vs-amg-e63-and-alfa-giulia-qv

What a fantastic night. Great sunset and pie. Winner winner chicken mince-pie dinner