KEF LS50 and the Lyric Ti60

My 20 year old Sony stereo has seen better days:  From the original set of CD, Tape, Radio, Amp, and Speakers only Amp, Radio, and Speakers still worked.  Somehow.  Female singers, however, started to strangely crack at high tones, and the potentiometer became rough and cracky, and there was just no stereo feeling any more.  Instead of repairing I decided for replacement.

I was looking for something which would last another 20 years or so and I wanted a tube amp.  I like simple things.  Reading some reviews I decided on the Lyric Ti60 which is an AB-type tube amp with EL34 power tubes.  The speakers were the question.  According to Hifi forums tube amps need very carefully selected speakers.  A German newspaper recommended standing speakers by Heco for it.  The Hecos were very sensitive and so the small Lyric Ti60 (with about 40W output) would be able to drive them.

On the other hand the internets and the audio press was very fond of the new KEF LS50 speakers which would fit nicely into my bookshelf and in my budget.  Internets also claimed these speakers need big amps, +90W, to be driven properly.  I was unsure if amp and speakers would play together.

I'm not a Hifi forum person, just someone with normal ears and a 20 year old half-broken Sony system for direct comparison.  Still, the combination between KEF LS50 and Lyric Ti60 works very well for me.  In my small (12m^2) listening room I only need about 30% of the max volume.  The amp seems plenty strong enough.  The bass I have to dampen (the speakers come foam to make the bass a little weaker when they are placed close to a wall), otherwise it's too pronounced.  The sound is clear and stereophonic, a good recording sounds like the music stands in the middle of the room.  Beautiful.

The only special thing I had to do was to adjust the bias of the Lyric tubes after arrival.  This is easily don't without opening the amp.  If you are contemplating a similar setup, don't be afraid.

Sustainability

BP is the oil company operating the oil platform Deep Water Horizon which exploded on April 20th, 2010, killed eleven workers, and sank two days later, causing the largest oil spill in human history. Investigations for cause and responsibility of the oil spill are ongoing and when finished results will probably be messy and intransparent, given the massive lobbying efforts and the close political connections of BP to decision makers and investigators in Washington (THE INFLUENCE GAME: Can BP's connections help?, AP, May 10, 2010, sourcewatch.org). Transocean is the company building Deep Water Horizon.

I found it interesting that BP is part of the following sustainable ("socially and environmentally responsible") investment indices: DJSI STOXX, DJSI World, DJSI World 80, DJSI World ex US, DJSI World ex US 80, FTSE4GOOD Europe Index, FTSE4GOOD Global Index, FTSE4GOOD UK Index.

The following sustainable investment funds hold significant amounts of BP shares: SAM Sustainable Europe Active Fund, SGAM Fund Equities Global Environment Opportunities A, SGAM Fund Equities Europe Environment A, Parvest Europe Sustainable Development, UBS (Lux) Islamic Fund - Global Equities , SAM Sustainable Europe Fund, Pictet Funds (LUX) European Sustainable Equities - P, Dexia Sustainable Europe, Fortis L Fund Equity SRI Europe, GLG Environment Fund, MEAG Nachhaltigkeit, JPMF Global Socially Responsible Fund, LIGA-Pax-Cattolico-Union, Dexia Sustainable European Balanced High, Fortis L Fund Strategy Growth SRI Europe, Fortis L Fund Strategy Balanced SRI Europe C.

And Transocean is held by the following sustainable investment funds: terrAssisi Renten, Credit Suisse Fund (Lux) Global Responsible Equities, SUNARES - Sustainable Natural Resources. (All sources: nachhaltiges-investment.org)

These sustainable investment funds charge significant fees for making sure that only "the leading companies in terms of sustainability around the world" (Dow Jones Sustainability World Index) are invested in. I wonder if they are worth their money.

Christmas!

In the tram. That little Santa in the back is actually a skater guy, Swiss style. There was no white beard.

Merry Christmas!

M.

OLMA

Ostschweizer Landwirtschafts- und Maschinenausstellung.

Alpes

Hiking in CH.

Night

Long night of the museums in Zurich.

Shame

Today is a sad day to be a German. The parliament passed the "Child Porn Access Complication Law" [German, PDF]. The federal police will develop a secret list of websites with child porn. It will force national access providers to DNS-resolve the porn site names to an IP of one of their servers. People will see a STOPP! sign, and that's the end of it.

This is sad for a number of reasons:

1. There is no judge involved, and the police operates in secrecy. Talk about division of power and accountability of police action. That politicians in Germany can pass such a law is beyond belief.
   
2. There was a huge petition of 130.000 people warning about the re-dawn of censorship in Germany. The politicians just ignored it. (For comparison: The next-largest petition to the national parliament has about 5000 supporters.)
   
3. The law doesn't actually bother to persecute the pornographers. That would be way too expensive. Also, the access attempts are logged and reported anonymized to the police. A German compromise.
   
4. The law does not actually prevent access to the sites. It only requires a change in domain name resolution (i.e., the translation of www.bka.de to 62.156.153.38). Someone really looking for child porn can just use the number directly.
   An international DNS provider such as OpenDNS will provide it. On Linux doing
   sudo echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222" > /etc/resolve.conf
   will prevent from ever being redirected to a police STOPP! sign. The politicians actually knew that and that's why they called it "access complication law" (meaning: it's complicated to them). It remains to be seen when and how these huge gaping loopholes will be closed.
   
5. The most interesting question of course is if the law will remain about child porn only, or also about violence, terrorism, politically dangerous opinions, etc.
   
6. The ineffectiveness of the effort and the grave violation of democratic principles makes this an enormously stupid law.
   

The last hope is the Supreme Court where the law will go next. These are actually smart people, and because they don't need to be re-elected they can act smart, too.

UPDATE. Bruce Schneier on why Technology Shouldn't Give Big Brother a Head Start