User Details - Geohominid

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Name:
  John Miller
Details:
  Retired geologist (BSc, PhD) and former Senior Lecturer and Director of Open Studies, Edinburgh University. Published a number of geological research papers, but Classical music has been a life-long love. I played piano and church organ as a youth, bought my first "hifi" at the age of 15 and have been upgrading ever since. I taught music courses in the Edinburgh Adult Education programme for many years, especially social history of music, illustrated studies of composers including Bach, Beethoven, Elgar, Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Mahler. Several courses attempted to introduce people to post-Impressionism musical developments, and I also ran courses on Scottish classical music history. I was particularly interested in the period instrument movement and did extensive research on this. Gave pre-concert talks for the then Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh and Festival Lectures on featured composers at the Edinburgh Festival for over 10 years. Despite the classical bias, I have wide tastes in music. Also, I enjoy painting in watercolour, pastel, acrylic and oils.
Location:
  Edinburgh, Scotland
HiFi:
  Having had to take early retirement, I sold my 2800+ CD teaching collection in 2005 to take up high-definition multichannel and begin an SACD and DVD-A collection (much smaller!). Have upgraded several components since then, and present system is approaching personal nirvana... or so I think at the moment.

Oppo BDP 103 with DSD over HDMI (suprisingly superior in SACD to a former Denon DBP-4010 UD Universal Player), Denon AVR-X4000 multichannel receiver.
Magnaplanar MG 1.7 front speakers, Magnaplanar CC3 centre, Magnaplanar wall-mounted LM1 surround speakers, Quad Lite subwoofer. I consistently use the Ultima Signature Mat when playing discs, it helps the transport recover more information and makes an astonishing improvement in definition, ambient information, instrument location and sheer musicality. Power cables - Russ Andrews PowerMax Plus, Interconnects - Chord Active Silver HDMI cables, QED optical cable. Power Conditioning - Monster power block and Russ Andrews 'The Silencer'. QED speaker cables.
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Posts:
  181

 
 
Reviews
Found: 689 show all

  July 21, 2015

The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here: http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=10778#reviews
  July 12, 2015

The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here: http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=10695#reviews
  July 8, 2015

The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here: http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=10768#reviews
  July 2, 2015

The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here: http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=10773#reviews
  June 24, 2015

The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here: http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=10770#reviews

 
 
Latest Posts

Dvorak's 5th Finally on SACD!
September 15, 2015
I'm as happy as you are after a long wait! My review will appear on the new site in a few days. Geohominid ... more
Discussion: Merikanto: Serenade for Cello & Strings etc. - Ylönen, Kangas
August 7, 2015
I'm in the process of reviewing it at the moment. A very interesting disc. Geohominid ... more
Neilsen's new Maskarade
July 14, 2015
Hi Chris, Glad you are enjoying the pot of golden Nielsen scores in the Royal Library. Another major source of free scores is IMSLP.org, if you haven't found it already. It has thousands of scanned classical scores of all kinds - solo, chamber, orchestral etc, which are in PDF files. I find it very convenient to download them straight onto my iPad, ... more
Neilsen's new Maskarade
July 13, 2015
Krisjan, I thought long and hard about this. Granted that two purchased sets had a disc two which failed to load on my two Oppo players MIGHT indicate a mass error in pressing, I emailed to DaCapo but so far have had no reply. I just don't have enough evidence to declare this was a serious problem in the review, as it could stop people in the ... more
Neilsen's new Maskarade
July 8, 2015
Thanks, Chris. I had the same idea and just downloaded a hi-res master from DaCapo in order to carry on with the review. John ... more