the sun of the musical fun

I love to share my insights with all that love good music and nice reproduction. Just today i burned some of my favorite acoustical Indian spiritual music on CD. It is great how the message remain deeply carved when recording technique is simple and direct. When there is no technical overflow with capturing sound, sometimes results are quite amazing. The should of the performance and the music itself is very fresh and feels like breathing. Sometimes you have to go trough many of the recordings but it is worth it. Simple can be so much more than complicated procedure many times. And when you find some of the acoustic jewels grab your phones and turn on Cute Beyond and explore the horizon in the wholesome meaning.

Time to listen

It's hard to follow up with all the new music that is coming up. Our computers offer us vast storage medium that can hold thousands of music files. But how often do we listen to all of them. Are we simply flickering like with most of the things in our daily life. Music should be something profound and personal to the real lover. I recently purchased the CD player and I'm burning myself cd's again and search for the one that are hidden under the shelves or in the boxes. Bob Ohlsson said that singles might be killing the music businesses and specially the artist. There is quite some material to think about. What i do is start listening to CD's or LP's as whole album. Or even burn cd with favorite tracks and enjoy the whole CD. Attention is back and music is back. Buy medium priced CD or DVD player hook it up to the Spitfire DAC and go swim into the music

All phones leads to heaven

Do you found yourself troublesome by all the choice today. If you want to buy a headphone amp like Firestone cute beyond and pair it with the new set of headphones you might fall into a contemplating wonder what to get. There is vast offerings from all over the world and from all "big" names. Headphone listening lost the nice market label long time ago. You need to take a close look and dig the net for reviews and fair tests. If you willing to put a dollar more into headphones you would hardly go wrong with some legendary names like AKG, SENNHEISER, GRADO etc. I'll cover few of the in upcoming blog posts and make the choice easier for all of you.

Phones to entertain us

Phones are getting more and more capable machines. They are actually a sophisticated computers or dare i to say, multimedia and communication monsters. If we take a look decade and half back in time and see what progression technology has made. Well it's all miniaturized today. What would take a whole car space back then you can carry in your shirt pocket today. I often find myself in situation where i just want to listen to music quickly and without too much hassle. And my Blackberry curve offers nice mini jack audio output. Few click and your favorite track, podcast or audio book is at you ears disposal. If you suffer from low gain just use some headamp like Firestone audio Cute Beyond and you're good to go.

Firestone. Audio Korora

Some of my favorite and vinyl only releases were collection lots of dust. Its great to revive some of the personal history with spinning of the some almost forgotten albums. Taking the black plastics of the huge paper sleeve is still quite some ritual. I got a feeling of nostalgia and re connection with the music at the same time. Hmmm, yeah a great combo :).

Smart little analog box

Korora finally arrived at my listening space. It's a smartish little analog preamp box. For the given price range it offers quite some tweaking and adjusting. First impressions are very positive and welcoming. It is good to be round these days with so much quality little products with the fair price offering. There are few excuses to revieve analog passion at present. What is yours?

good reviews always help

Here are two nice comments from Fubar III and Cutte Beyond reviews:

Excellent review Larry. Very informative and insightful. I had always been curious of both of these units, and this review was more than helpful.

Nice review. The Cute seems like a bargain for only $187 exchangeable op-amps and high/low gain switch.

good reviews always help

Here are two nice comments from Fubar III and Cutte Beyond reviews:

Excellent review Larry. Very informative and insightful. I had always been curious of both of these units, and this review was more than helpful.

Nice review. The Cute seems like a bargain for only $187 exchangeable op-amps and high/low gain switch.

Spitfire DAC review

Here is another nice review from true lover of headphones (Head-fi). Ian already owned Firestone Fubar II. Spitfire DAC is a nice upgrade and specially with the Power Supplier. Take few minutes and read nice headphone thoughts: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f7/firestone-audio-spitfire-dac-impressions-154095/

Computer audiophile review

Very nice review from Computer Audiophile. Chris writes about Firestone Fubar II and gives fair positive comments about it. Like i mentioned many times. This is probably as simple as it gets you enjoy your vast computer music library. Here's the link: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/498

Hedmp's for us

Another round up of affordable and good sounding headphone preamps. Ed Kobesky put quite few contenders under the loop. There is also a place for Firestone Cute Headphone amp. Here's the link: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue21/headamps.htm

Fubar III

If you want quick and no brainier headphone listening experieance consider Firestone audio Fubar III usb-headphone amp combination. It's as easy as it gets. Just plug it to your laptop or PC and put on the headphones. Voila! You are at you personal musical garden. Here is one of my review:

http://www.onheadphones.com/product-reviews/fubar-iii-usb-dac-and-headphone-amplifier.html

Cute Beyond review

Here is another review about Firestone Audio Cute Beyond headphone amp. This one is from me :). I liked the little gizmo. Paired with HD-650 it plays very nicely. I recommend you tried it out yourself.

http://www.onheadphones.com/product-reviews/amplifiers/firestone-audio-cute-beyond.html

Firestone Audio 6moons Cute review

Lot of our reader want to read as much as they can about Firestone products and reviews of them. Here is another glowing review from David Abramson from 6moons. He liked Cute quite much back then. And he compares it with two other headphone campers. Happy reading.

Positive feedback review

If you missed Positive Feedback online review here is the link: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/firestoneaudio.htm

Ed Kobesky took a look at Firestone audio Tube Head, Big Joe Power amp and Korora phono preamplifier. This little system allows quite some tweaking and would give you instant pleasure. Take few minutes and check how Ed felt about Firestone trio.

RIAA report

 Vinyl LP sales increased in year 2007 for 36.6 percent. In 2006 0.9 million LP's was sold to 1.3 million in 2007. This is very interesting. Like i mentioned before people are rediscovering the secrets of vinyl. More and more bands are releasing their album on vinyl. Will it stay? Who knows? In mean time grab Firestone Korora and enjoy it. You can always add higher performance if ever needed.

Positive Feedback

If you haven't seen already here is nice review of Firestone audio Korora Phono preamp: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue23/firestone_korora.htm

Roger Gordon give nice insight about quality of this little gizmo. It is not the absolute high end, but for the given price is more than quality and instant analog satisfaction. For better performance you really have to go deeper in your pocket and carefully choose what you going to pick up. Happy vinyl digestion :)

Both sides

I'm not advocating either analog or digital format. It seems we have to learn to live with both of them. Some of the music we'll never get on either CD's or vinyl. So for audiophile in love with music it is clear path. A system that replay both. Like i wrote in my previous post you don't have to go broke. Get for a start good CD player or even DVD player connect it to the Firestone audio Sfitfire DAC and dive into digital domain. Get Korora phono preamp and you'll dig the vinyl heritage with ease. No compromises needed. It never were so affordabe....

Love for vinyl and quality

It is interesting how vinyl is not actually not just coming back but staying. Latest edition of Stereophile is very vinyl oriented. Even readers are writing about it. Some young audiophiles are giving feedback on the real situation. Our youngsters care about good sound. Often they are not educated enough about possibilities of great audio reproduction or they never heard quality playback system. But there are quite few young audiophiles who are raising the high spirits. And a lot of them are going into vinyl. It's physical, it's something unique and you wont lost it when your Ipod or harddisk broke down. You have to interact. And this give special pleasure and experiance. You don't have to go broke. Take nice turntable affordabel Firestone audio Korora phono preamplifier and start your own revolution.

Matej Isak

Binaural listening

Binaural listening requires a headphones. This is a special recording technique that record stereo source material from two microphones. Microphones are placed on the dummy head that provide stereo signal which try to reproduce the feeling of live surroundings. This is a special way of perceiving the music and sound landscape around us.

Some of the binaural recordings are quite amazing. I would suggest a good pair of in ear monitors and a head amp (something like Cute Beyond, Fubar III).

It' never too late to try new things out. You too, yes :)!

The healing part

Potency of music in our relaxing. It's open secret that music have a healing effect to the body and mind. For complete audio isolation you would need noise and sound proof room. It's unlikely that most of us have such optimal conditions. But! With a good pair of headphones and headphone amp (like Firestone audio Cute Beyond) you can have your personal musical healing universe. Be careful with selection of music...

Matej Isak

Warmth to the digital

Ever found your digital audio to sterile? Your mp3's too cold. Many music lover are reintroducing the tubes (valves) back into the audio chain. Why tubes? Tube electronics can add a bit of warmth and help us perceive audio a bit. Firestone Audio Tube head preamplifier is a more than nice addition to your digital playback system. You simply insert it between the source of audio playback and your amp and voila! Get some sunshine in your digital audio life :).

Review

Larry (Headphone Addict) from Head-fi on of those audiophiles and headphone enthusiasts, that most of Head-fier's rescpet a lot. He took quite some time and test Firestone Audio Cutye Beyond and Fubar III. Here is the short exerpt from the review:

"Feeding the Cute Beyond from my Headroom Micro DAC with lossless files through the optical input, I was pleasantly surprised the first time I jacked in my Edition 9 and hit the play button. What I heard was dynamic and clean, quick and responsive, and detailed with ambience and musicality. Timbre seems rich and accurate, and portrayed instruments the way I expected them. The upper treble and deep bass seemed to be present and accounted for as well."

Affordable listening system

More and more music lover are heading for headphone listening. Why would you ask. Our life tempo is getting tight each years and our living spaces are getting smaller. And to build a great speaker system you'll have to work hard to achieve synergy. These can be pretty long and expensive quest.

Headphone listening can offer much easier and cheaper, but also quality reproduction system. You don't have to worry about room acoustics, blooomy bass, positioning of the speakers etc. You just need a good source, amplifier and great "cans". Investing few in hundred $ will give you a great headphone rig. Take Firestone Audio Cute Beyond for example. It's affordable high quality headphone amplifier. Try it yourself, you'll hear the difference. It's worth it!

Additional power supplier

Lot of time we heard that we Audiophiles love to complicate things and give to much attention to the things that are not important. Let us take for example the power suppliers. You'll quickly find out that all major high end audio manufacturers offer most of the time additional power supply units. If not so they have build in high quality power supply. Most audio designer will give almost top most importance to the quality power supply. It is like building the new house. You'll invest your founds and knowledge to quality ground.

With Firestone audio products is easy to experiment cos Power supplier supply unit is only hundred bucks! It won't rip off your wallet and you'll appreciate the difference.

Matej Isak
mi@sgn.net

Rasa, Every thing you see is Me

Ebay and Google seem to be such a great please to rediscover history and past. I was looking for few great devotional LP's and net is "the place"! It amazing that you can still find sealed original vinyl albums from 60's and 70's. Album "Everything you see is Me" is one kind of history written. It totally devotional album but with vibe that will swept most of today producers. If you want to see where Jamiroquai got his inspiration, look no further. Some of the songs are gone make go... What? Is this copy of Jamiroquai's mood? Nope this is 1978 recording. I have to say that listening to this is one hack of the journey into higher spheres of consciousness. If you want to know more there and dig into it.... Do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy while they are still available. There is no digital media releases except of few mp3 downloads. So this one falls into category of those great albums that consists only on analogue format. Warm up your Firestone audio Korora turntable gizmo and spin it till it wears up. Yes it's that good!

Matej Isak

mi@sgn.net

Greatness of internet and digital-analogue reproduction

It's almost funny that in this digital era we still deal with turntables and vinyl. You might laugh at vinyl as much as you want but smile at this: "ION Audio has shipped its one millionth USB turntable." Yes you see it right. This is no  April Fool joke on your behalf. And while CD sales numbers are going down and Itunes store selling is rising... What this means for vinyl? Vinyl is only physical playback media that sales numbers are increasing. This is a good thing. Maybe biggies from music industry will finally understand what's to be done. I at least i hope so. It's time to make change and adapt. Ether way you're heading Miniature audio is covering your back :). Digital side with Fireston Fubar III and Spitfire DAC. The analogue campers will be more than happy with little big boy Korora. Be here right here right now. Be with music!

Matej Isak

mi@sgn.net

Joy of vinyl

My new CD 051 from Burmester is soon to be here and I'm looking forward for it like anything. I'm trying to get back to listening music in this crazy scheduled world. Darn, if we cannot find time to spend quality time with music, then what kind of audiophiles and music lovers we are. The whole album concept listening brought me back to vinyl. I dig out my old Project and Firestone audio Korora phono preamplifier is on the way. Doesn't really matter what kind of media we are spinning our favorite music. Let it be rounded and let us find time for something we call love for music.

Matej Isak

Review of Firestone audio Fubar III and Icute headphone amp

Head-Fi is one hell of a big place. And not just ordinary place. You simply won't find larger group of audiophile enthusiasts on the net. What started as a small community of headphone lovers, grove into largest audio fan site. There are tons of reviews of all gear, but head-fi is mostly known for headphone and headphone amplifier reviews.

There is few older Head-fier's that this large community trust. One of them is Skylab (Rob). Here is his review of Firestone Fubar III and Firestone ICute headphone amp: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f5/review-firestone-audio-icute-headphone-amplifier-fubar-iii-usb-dac-headphone-amplifier-319381/#post4120583

Happy reading

Matej Isak