5/21/03 WED:
---Another rat-race wild-goose chase. All for a little buzz developing in my CD player, plus the need to take a runoff of more copies of the Sheehan bibliography up to my printer in Ames, who I wanted to check in with anyway to explain my unaccounted absence these many weeks onto months. He had hoped I would stick with it at least another ten years to keep him in business that length of time he hoped to continue before retiring. I indicated I would try to have another catalog ready by the middle of June. He leaves for his vacation Jun 27, so I could bring him my layouts as late as Jun 23 and he would have some extra recreational cash.

---Then 60-cycle buzz offered up by CD player made me have to take it to the repair place recommended by Audio-Video Logic (where I bought it). Will have to get by with old Sony ES 5-disc changer (which actually sounds much better than the old player was starting to sound). Later: I am noticing a hardness or edginess in the sound that maybe would not be so relentless if I didn’t have half-inch thick Hyperlitz speaker cables that do nothing to filter or color the sound. So far, it has not been displeasing but I am not sure I will want to crank up the volume, even in deskchair sweetspot, as I could do before with my CAL Icon II without feeling any unpleasant onslaught seemingly no matter how far I turned the dial (the 4 ohm PS Stratus Mini speakers power hungriness might have played a role). Now I might just have to keep it down for my own sake, and not just that of others upstairs.
---Note that I remember the names of the equipment with some effort and perhaps imperfectly, having bought the system a few years ago and resolving then to stand pat with it, and not be continually wanting something better. They were all pretty much recommended components in Stereophile magazine. “C” pricerange with “$$$”, meaning (as I took it) that they performed as well as components in a higher pricerange. The CD player, however, was B-listed (‘A’ being the most and prohibitively expensive). I got it as “B stock” too, with cosmetic defects. It served long and well. I hope the repair needed won’t be excessive. These days CD-playback technology might have outstripped what this several-year-old player can deliver, so that even a cheapo unit might have capabilites that hadn’t even been invented then. But the build-quality, I think, is still there. Indeed, A-V Logic had just sold a used Cal Icon the day before, brought in by someone trading up. I maybe should have inquired what the up-trade was for, but I don’t need to be contemplating any costly moves myself. I think the buyer of the trade-in was maybe smarter than the trader-inner, despite my unit having taken a southerly turn.
---Anyway, that is some of what I did all day.