- now sold -

Well here we go, revealing just how obsessive I am about things. This here is a balanced power unit, it removes the noise from the incoming mains power to your hifi and gives out pure AC (wikipedia). To say this improves the quality of music reproduction would be an understatement, but as I'm trying my best to avoid all the usual hifi sales cliche's (transparent and expressive, like a veil has been lifted from your speakers, etc.), I'm not going to go on about it.

These are £3,500+. There are only a few in the UK and this is proper UK spec direct from Equitech (i.e. UK mains sockets). This is definite, hardcore, scary audiophile territory. My asking price is £1,800.

It has one IEC input and five standard UK mains socket outputs, split across two separate circuits with their own breakers and isolated from each other, so you can power amps and components, or analogue and digital equipment separately.

The information from Equitech is here, it is model 3Q: http://www.equitech.com/products/rack/modelqav.html

If you are interested email robert@weareboy.co.uk

- now sold -

The time has come when I have to part with something I thought I could never live without, but real life has firmly set in for me and I'm having to break up this system to be replaced with something child-friendly (i.e. poor at playing back music, and worthless).

These speakers retail at £8,495. The information from Dali is here: http://dali-speakers.com/display_content.php/UK/speakers.html/213/1364

I have owned them from new (approx 3 years), they are in extremely good condition, I can find 1 very light scratch on one of them which is so faint I can't photograph it. As the cabinets are made from real wood veneer, this could be easily attended to using french polishing techniques (as per the Yellow Pages advert from the 1980's).

I do not have the original packaging, as a small family of hobos is living out of a condo built with the boxes... but I do have the manuals.

The price is £4,000. A deposit on a house, a small car, or a really nice holiday to some people.... or a piece of high resolution audio reproduction to others... Which will unlikely depreciate. You decide what you need more - food, or music.

If interested please get in touch: robert@weareboy.co.uk

I'll be detailing the rest of the system for sale as I get time.

EDIT:

On a 'blatantly-related' note, I've been working on this rough list on how to identify if you are a timewaster. If you are a timewaster, then it's your responsibility to keep the destructive and wasteful nature away from people who would otherwise be doing good things. You are holding the world back with your favorite, selfish, moronic past time. Please only waste the time of the evil people, and pensioners.

1. Extreme concern with how things look rather than the quality of them.
2. You have no idea what it is you are looking at, and expect to have to do absolutely no research about it to find out if you even want it.
3. Compulsive need to own original packaging and thinking it affects the value of the item - are you going to use the item, or just store it in the loft? Go to Staples, buy yourself some cardboard and chill out!
4. Repeated asking of questions which are clearly explained by existing photos - e.g. 'what colour is it?'
5. Demands to know reasons for sale - intrusive behaviour. Maybe I'll grill you about your reasons for buying, as I'm sure they're highly suspicious. (You probably have control issues from your childhood or a previous relationship)
6. Making offers below even 50% of the sale price and being offended when they aren't accepted. (Spoilt child syndrome)
7. You want to speak on the phone about all the different bits of hifi you have ever owned for about an hour as though I know all of them, or care. (Lonely child syndrome)
8. You 'don't quite have the funds' yet... But can you pay in installments, or part exchange some unrelated real piece of crap like a dehumidifier?
9. Your wife makes all the decisions anyway.

I like to think digital has few boundaries... Except for when the client's daughter shot all the footage themselves because 'it's just filming something innit'.

I forgot to include the other repeated client request to 'remove all the background audio and just leave the voice' when they've been using an omni-directional on board microphone the size of a frozen pea with auto gain control on a £300 consumer direct-to-DVD camcorder which has a signal to noise ratio of about 1:50 from a range of 150 metres with a motorway and major airport flight-path crossing the shot. And no matter what it says on the box.... your camera is not HD.

There is no good/free sound effect anywhere in the world of quickly taking the needle off a record and scraping it across the record when doing so... I know because I checked the internet for about 45 seconds for it earlier. However, this slapstick sound effect can enhance every single project, and should be considered a core part of every production studio's toolbox.

I had to go ahead and make this thing myself... and seeing as I like to give back, here is a high quality WAV file containing a few variants of this classic sound, completely free to use for absolutely any useage. Hope to see it overused and exploited as far as possible. Click on download to steal the file.