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

Sechselaeuten

Today was Sechselaeuten. A half holiday. Zurich was in traditional middle-age dress on the streets. A snow man (the Boegg) was burned. It exploded after 9min. This means we'll have a nice summer!

Swiss

The other day there was a discussion on what can be called "typically Swiss". The mountains, the cows, the chocolate, etc. There was no real agreement reached but shortly afterwards I found this note in the local tabloid 20minuten.

Awards for Taxpayers Among punctual tax payers the town Gansingen (Argau) raffles attractive prices. "The main price is a week in a hotel in Berner Oberland -- for the whole family.", so the spokesman of the town Martin Steinacher. The people of Gansingen shall so be motivated to pay their taxes earlier than usual. The small town has 680 taxpayers.

Economy

Spring Break

Back from vacation. One week. Cheap flight. Sun. Beaches. Friends.

UBS

UBS is Switzerland's biggest bank. It lost heavily in the subprime crisis and its aftershocks, needed government assistance, and now had to pay $780 million to the U.S. government because UBS systematically helped U.S. clients to commit tax fraud. According to U.S. officials about 20.000 clients withdrew approximately $20 billion from taxation.

For the first time ever information about 300 clients was transferred from Switzerland to the IRS. This means the Swiss bank secret is no more. There is a huge outcry in the press, naming the data transfer (not the money transfer) "illegal", calling for a new (i.e., legal) strategy for Swiss banking. It's all very interesting.

The worst taste showed a local yellow press paper with a picture of Obama: "Yes, I can half the U.S. deficit by 2012 - thanks to the many billions that we'll get out of the Swiss banks."

New Years

After Christmas I've visited Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Upsalla. Watched fireworks with friends.

Bambi

Yesterday I was at the Zurich train station. They have a huge Christmas tree in an indoor Christmas market. In the shop next to the tree I found compelling evidence that having money is orthogonal to having good taste.

Vacation

Yesterday I returned from a week-long vacation. I was first for the weekend visiting friends in Bonn, Germany and then for another week in Mariawald, Heimbach, Germany. I was staying in a 600 year old monastery occupied by Trappist monks and three novices.


The monastery is pretty remote. Actually for the last couple of kilometers I had to walk a rather steep and slightly muddy path trough the woods uphill because there was no bus and a taxi would have taken 1.5h to arrive. I still arrived a little late and very sweaty.


The place itself was very beautiful. The landscape, the rooms, everything was tidy and clean and in order. Food was simple but fresh and well prepared. There was no radio, no TV, no internet, no distractions.

Most impressive were the monks. They live a really strict and ascetic life. They get up at 4am to go to the cold church and pray for 1 hour (1.5 hours on Sundays). They chant Gregorian songs, they speak Psalms and traditional prayers in German and in Latin. Throughout the day they meet 7 times in the church for the hourly prayers. They eat no meat, sleep on straw, live in a very moderately heated place, have no possessions, never leave the monastery, spend most of the day in silence. Many of them are also rather old. The impressive thing is though that these monks are genuinely happy. They are cheerful, have warm and strong voices, they see a purpose in their efforts, know exactly what they are doing. Amazing.

Geld 2

"Banker streichen trotz Krise über 70 Milliarden ein
Zahlungen an der Wall-Street in keinem Verhältnis zum Wertverlust

[...] Die Papiere der Citigroup und von Goldman Sachs fielen um über 45 Prozent. Die Titel von Merrill Lynch und Morgan Stanley gingen sogar um über 60% in den Keller. Die bisherigen Gesamtbezüge der Morgan-Stanley-Mitarbeiter von fast 10,7 Mrd. Dollar seien zwischenzeitlich sogar höher als der Börsenwert des Unternehmens gewesen." [NZZ Online, 18. Oktober 2008]

Opera

Yesterday the Swiss television recorded the opera La Traviata in the Zurich train station. Singers sang on trains, in little train station bistros, in the large hall in the center. A major logistic effort. I saw at least three conductors at some point. Cameras everywhere. Nice crowd of spectators, some dressed like opera, stood patiently during the whole thing.

As an opera experience it was actually a failure: Most of the time you could hear either the singers or the orchestra. Also, the acoustics was really bad and unless you stood within a meter from the singer you couldn't actually hear very much. Except for the soprano whose voice worked well in the huge open space.




Still, at the end it became very clear to me why people invented opera houses.

Geld

"Die Realwirtschaft ist in Geiselhaft der Finanzwirtschaft und ihrer Habgier geraten und hat diese Gaunerei auszubaden." [Edgar Oehler, Chef des Thurgauer Bauausrüsters Arbonia Forster (AFG), NZZ, 29.09.08]

"Egoismus und Geldgier führen in die Katastrophe. Jetzt sind wir da." [Johann Schneider-Ammann, Präsident des Industrieverbands Swissmem, Chef der Langenthaler Maschinenbauerin Ammann Group, NZZ, ebd.]

"Gebt mir die Kontrolle über das Geld einer Nation und es kümmert mich nicht länger, wer dessen Gesetze macht." [Mayer Amselm Rothschild, 18th century]

Back

I'm back from a three week stay in California. It was work-related, so no pretty pictures from gorgeous vacation sites and beaches. I still had fun, work-wise and on the weekends.

During my stay I survived two Hurricanes on the other side of the country (on all channels: reporters outside, in the rain, fighting the storm, shouting in their microphones), a 4.0 earthquake in Oakland, and the American election coverage on the news. It was the time when McCain for the first time was leading the polls in front of Obama (check the Iowa election market for the most up-to-date, historically most accurate predictions). McCain picked a former beauty-queen as running mate and surprisingly gained popularity among young white males. Obama made a comment regarding putting lipstick on a pig and now the question whether he was sexist was top news for three days. I wonder how the Americans can stand their abysmally bad political news coverage until the election is over.

Regarding political activism: The LGBT group at my company invited a panel of gay/lesbian activists who were fighting Proposition 8. The proposition is about constitutionally banning gay and lesbian marriage in the state of California and there will be a vote on it in November. It turned out to be actually a fund raising event: The three panelists were highly professional campaigners and they argued entirely in terms of money: This is how much money the other side collected so far, this is how much we expect them to collect, this is how much we have, and here are the current polls. We need to be first with TV spots and the other side will have a prayer event with 40k participants which we need to counter. All about money. All about polls. No arguments.

Me eating a burger.	American eating a burger.

When driving in the States I always listen to talk radio on AM. Last year it was a right wing station that made fun or Hillary Clinton all day long. This year it happened to be immaculate heart radio, a catholic talk radio where you can mainly hear sermons against abortion and where you can call in with a question about catholic doctrine and get told the truth right away. Example: A female caller from Iowa was puzzled about the piece of scripture where Christ said on good Friday to the other guy on the cross they would be together in paradise by tomorrow. But on Saturday Christ was not yet risen? And would the other guy not have to go through purgatory? The host had the answer immediately (hint: the meaning of "paradise" changed over time) and the woman was happy again. Faith restored.

The impression you get from immaculate heart radio about catholicism in America is a bit similar to Germany in the 50s: In attack mode, with a very clear doctrine, quite political, anti-abortion, and anti-contraception, arguing a lot with scripture (probably protestant influence here), complete faith in the pope. I'm not sure how connected this world is with reality: I've been to a number of bookstores and scanned the philosophy/religion/psychology corners as well. The impression you get there is that, besides some degree of confusion (in one case I found Nitzsche in the "self-help and healing" section), actually the Asian religions and especially Buddhism are on the rise and occupy much space on the bookshelf.

Return to Switzerland was uneventful. (Probably a good thing on a plane.) I was greeted by cold 7deg Celsius and cloudy sky.

Moderat

"Die SVP spricht sich klar für ein moderates Rauchverbot aus" (NZZ, Aug/19th/2008).