I think cable directionality does matter. The way the metal is extruded determines the way the structure is formed and therefore must have an effect on performance. I must say I haven't performed a listening test, but if you know which way a cable was made, it kinda makes sense to keep things consistent. Why bother going against the grain if the manufacturer has made directionality an identifiable mark on a cable? I guess i'm being somewhat supersticious rather than scientific about this, but it seems like a non-issue to me. It's the type of cable which really matters.

As I have stated in previous threads on this topic, I once thought that claims that different cables would significantly vary the sound quality of a system was all a load of mumbo jumbo hot air, but when I tried a few out I realised I was totally wrong in my assumption.

Technically, it's all about reactance IMHO (capacitance and inductance varies according to the signal frequency and complexity), but nobody seems to be able to come up with any way of measuring cables other than subjective review articles. Understandable given how difficult cable characteristics are to measure. They form part of a circuit which other components have an influence. So the task of measurement becomes pretty impossible.

You get techy types telling us that certain amplifiers will handle tricky loads, whereas others fall flat. I'm sure a particular amplifier's ability in this respect makes a difference to the performance of a cable, as does a speaker design. So in one system, a super fancy cable won't do a great deal whereas in an other it is like chalk and cheese in terms of performance.

Price is no measure, but you try getting cables on loan to try out in your system (you absolutely have to try the cables out in your system at home). It's all about trial and error. I found it very difficult indeed to get a set of different manufacturer's cables on loan.

Interconnects count too and need matching. This all takes time and usually money!

I will not recommend any particular product because what is right for one setup is totally wrong for another, but I assure you that this aspect of sytem building should not be overlooked.

Rule number one: have a completely open mind!
Rule number two: listen for a period time, not back to backing.
Rule number three: Try out as many cables as you can (even if they are ones you cannot afford).
Rule number four: don't forget that hifi is about the pleasure listening to music, not equipment evaluation and interminable upgrading – make a choice and move on to enjoying your music collection!

I bought a Saracen Blizzard back in 1988, my first MTB. The steel frame was lovely and springy unlike the stiff oversized alloy frames which are prevalent now.

Saracen was a quality brand then and my bike was specced out with Shimano Exage – a middling quality groupset and with that weird Biopace chainset. I quite liked the Biopace, but there was plenty of bits on it that you would scoff at these days. Technology has moved on a great deal since those early days!

I had my Saracen for 15 years and rebuilt it at 13 yrs, converting to a hybrid with road tyres on skinnier Mavic rims (I bent one of the original wheels). I fitted a double road chainset (highly polished Campag), rear mech, new sidepull brakes, a sandblast and powdercoat of the frame, plus a host of cheap, but good functional lightweight polishes alloy bits. I had new brake bosses welded on the rear stays enabling me to bin the weird and heavy brake that was bolted to the bottom bracket.

The reason I sold this bike was because I had also bought a road bike and so the Saracen began attracting dust. A mate now owns this rare bit if semi-retro hardware and he loves it. Of course, hybrids are all the rage now whereas this was unusual at the time i put it together.

Shame "Numpty Hut" got hold of the brand. There is nothing worse than a national chain engaged in selling bikes. I don't think they realise how utterly inept their business model is when catering for enthusiasts. As for the Saracen brand now, well it's synonymous with cheap children's bikes. At least they are better than the £69.99 supermarket specials!

And yes I do have a problem with people earning millions of pounds! Damn these greedy people who push up prices! Nobody needs this much income – period!!

State pension provision is lavish in comparison to the private sector! If you step out of your state sector NHS job and into the private sector, you will want to buy a money purchase pension to provide the same income value as the NHS one you will be getting. You'll need at least 30% pay rise though! This is assuming you have 20 years until you retire to build up your fund and that there aren't any horrific corrections in the money markets close to when you retire. Also, after you have retired, your pension can go down with market performance. State sector pensions are gold plated – index linked and cannot be reduced. The provider is not going to go bust either. Wake up!!

Well who can seriously make a choice when it comes to choosing Labour or Conservative? Neither party have done anything to stem the social injustice that has been growing for the past 30 odd years. The rich have got considerably richer whilst the majority have seen their wages driven down in real terms. The minimum wage is a completely inadequate income, but a national average of £24908 hardly goes that far either. Meanwhile others earn up to millions of pounds. The situation is offensive!

Pensions; my number one concern at the last election, but now I have given up on them. The state sector get lavish pensions whilst the private sector get conned by private money purchase firms.

I have lost out with Equitable Life on one of my tiny private pensions and am also waiting for the two endowments I have paid into for almost 25 years to mature. Thses will be at well below the value that the puffed up shirts were bandying about when I reluctantly took them out. Do not trust any money men!!

Who says you don't need money to be happy? This thread proves that anyone with such a view is incredibly naive!

Fairness disappeared a long long time ago.

Politicians who mislead us into thinking we would become financially better off, financially secure, have proved themselves to be no better than the bankers. Lock a few of them up!

I was into it big time, but got fed up with travelling for miles, only to find the weather was wrong, or just as you rigged up a 6.5m you'd need a 5m, then as soon as the 5m was ready the wind dropped again.

I then bought a Saracen Blizzard (a half decent bike in those days). I out it in the car as well as taking my board and set off for Camber sands. As expected, the winds were light, so I go my bike out. My mates all thought I was nuts taking a pushbike sailing, but then they had a very boring day.
Mmost of my friends thought it was ridiculous to buy a pushbike at the ripe old age of 23. I old them that we'd all have one someday and that MTB's would catvch on in a big way. I think I was right seeing as the said critic ended up with a series of push bikes (starting with MTBs) and now does century road rides every weekend! Well it's relatively flat where he lives – Tokyo.

My poor windsurfer has been suspended from my garage ceiling for the past 17 years in the hope that i may one day use it again Seems unlikely as i'm now crewing on a yacht from time to time.

oldgrump08 – Member

Sellers and eBay getting greedy.

eBay – yes
Sellers – not really

Well definitely not if you are a private seller!

Using eBay and Paypal to sell an item, you pay a whopping 14%. Also, you may never get paid after being forced to send goods before you have received payment. If the buyer chooses, they can slate your ratings, but you can't leave any negative feedback (even if they have badly let you down etc).

Now you try complaining about anything whatsoever. What a complete waste of time that is! They are a bunch of faceless greedy slopey shouldered crooks! For what they charge in fees, the OFT should insist that they have call centres for customer service and deliver some sort of reasonable standards of consumer protection.

In effect, eBay rendered my account closed!

As I have said before, eBay/Paypal no longer want the people who made their business – private sellers.

Most sales are by commercial sellers who most often charge more than elsewhere on the internet. Why? Because of eBay/Paypal fees.

In my opinion eBay is going to loose market share after taking such an arrogant stance!

People like eBid have a one off joining lifetime fee of £50 then you can sell as much as you like. Now, if they were smart, they would allow sellers to pay fes under their normal tariffs until they hit this £50 threshold and from there on there would be no further charges. This would give them a chance at building up a substantial audience. I will not be holding my breath on this seeing as eBay has such dominance.

Down with eBay! Vote with your feet!

Logitech Harmony remotes are OK. However useless programming software lets them down as Logitech assume all users are too stupid to set up a learning remote themselves. The end result is that a stupid person at Logitech gets confused e.g. they think your stereo amp is an av amp so you get 22 pages of useless commands and no control of your amplifier! The device configuration is either wrong and/or too cluttered.

Things switch on in the wrong order when executing macros and/or the remote settles on the wrong device after the macro has completed.

Trying to get Logitech to sort it out is a waste of time.

Aside from this big let down, the remote does actually perform basic tasks.

If you want perfect remote control, buy a one box system!

Yeah Paypal the "****" witheld a payment to me until i recieved positive feedback after selling a £55 item. So I had to send off valuable goods at my expense in good faith and then pay a percentage of %4 for the entire transaction, but before i got any money! Thankfully the buyer was happy and I got paid

Paypal are taking an easy route for themselves. Their customers feelings don't even feature. I asked them why they withheld a payment on a seller who had an unblemished 4 yr record and they responded saying that this would inspire confidence in buyers, be a benefit to me!? wtf! Well the buyer had no idea the payment had been withheld. I told Ebay and Paypal that their policy had, in effect, closed my sellers account. They offered no relevant or useful comments/advice (as per usual).

Conversely, I bought an item that never arrived. Six weeks later and I still have no refund! The seller has not responded to any communication and aparently I have to wait 20 days for my refund. The purchase was 3rd September!

Ebay and Paypal are a proper bunch of shysters! They should be closed down!

With a proper geodesic tent, sure!

The thing that may be letting my Squeezebox down is the interconnect. The cd player and amplifier interconnects are Nordost "Blue Heaven", the SB has a £20 interconnect of no known quality. The difference in sound quality between streamed lossless MP3 and the CD player is easily noticeable. Must try experimenting by swapping leads around, but at £125 a pair, I won't be upgrading anytime soon!

BTW, the sonic improvement in my system justified the spend (I used to be a big cable sceptic, if not THE biggest, until I had a few demonstrations).

I also see there are some "silly expensive" upgrades for the SB3. Maybe I should look at an alternative streaming device.

With hifi you have to faff about trying different bits until the whole thing sounds as good as it can. This quest can be a little frustrating at times (and damned expensive). There's no easy option, you have to take your time and let your ears do the deciding. If you can't be bothered, buy a £300 all in one system and forget about stunning audio reproduction.

Cum, County Mayo, Ireland

Ugley in Herts.

Cross in somerset

Beer in Devon

Upper Dicker in Surrey.

Great Snoring in Norfolk

MFCat – where are these roads?

**** me! That's way more than I get paid. I only did three years postgraduate training to
qualify though.

I'm in the wrong industry methinks!

But the guy charging £25 per hour doesn't always work 8 hours a day. He generates his all of his own income, doesn't get sick pay, paid holiday, subsidised pension, a company vehicle, funded training. He does have to pay an accountant, insurances, fuel, do his own books in the evenings/weekends, canvas/advertise, spend time doing free estimates that never turn into work etc etc.

It would take 2 years at college to get certified as ana electrician or 3 years if you do block release. This costs a fortune too.

Plasma gives a better picture with standard feeview broadcasts.

LCD tvs are evolving and have greatly improved.

HD signals give impressive results on either format.

Plasma TV's picture actually improves over time and talk of screen burn and them wearing out is utter nonsense.

Most current LCDs use a cfl tube for baclighting. These can and do fail.

I'm sure that super slim LED backlit LCD TVs are the future due to their low power consumption and space saving dimensions.

As soon as they get LCD digital processing to the stage where day to day TV picture quality is as good as (if not better than) Plasma picture perfomance, then plasma is dead.

A lot of managers don't seem to know how to manage people. You are obviously sensitive to this. It would be easy to say you should communicate more, but then I have tried this in the past with my bosses and they usually say they are too busy, or just ridicule what are just intelligent suggestions etc. It's all too easy for people who are senior to you to pull rank and frankly, if things aren't causing THEM a problem, they don't give a sxxt!

My advice would be, if you are a person who cares about things, is to stand your ground and calmly argue your case. Your bosses, if they are worth working for, will listen and in the end they will respect you for giving a damn. However most people don't care and don't make a case. They simply put up and shut up during work hours and allow themselves to be bullied. Some managers like this because it gives them a sense of importance and power. They come to expect total compliance, but this is to their detriment because they are shutting staff out from giving valuable input. They are also stifling creativity and relieving their staff of any feeling of responsibility. They will always have a struggle on thier hands and will miss many opportunities.

My advice on stress relief is to ride your bike and then rant on here. It works for me! 😆

swallow tattoo – what do they symbolise?

That you're a cock? 😉

Sorry, tattoos might be cool at the moment while you are young and trendy, but when they are faded and you are old, you will regret it.

I have a Squeezebox 3 and a Netgear ReadyNas Duo (0.5Tb), Audiolab 8000s, 8000p (both British built), TEac VRDS-7 CD player and Castle Howard S2's. A good £4k's worth of kit in it's day.

The Squeeze box was a bit of an experiment, but I have found that 320kbps MP3 (lossless – allegedly) doesn't hold a candle to my Teac VRDS-7.

However, a mate has the same speakers as me, but uses a Creative Xfi audio card in his HTPC, running into his Roksan Caspian amplifier. Comparing this to his £1000 Caspian CD player there is no dicernable difference.

I conclude that the SB3 is not hifi, MP3 lossless is near as damn it – lossless and that I need an HTPC.

Sounds like she wants a baby to me.

Man, I read this thread when it was a day old and haven't been on here much lately. Can someone kindly fill me in with a brief summary on what has happened as I dont have time to read over 400 entries?

Good luck petesgaff!!

If I lived anywhere Dundee i'd come and cheer you up. I know how you feel.

My advice is to arrange a trip with your mates somewhere (pre-christmas skiing? Val Thorens is completely rammed with uni students – I can't stand it! ;-), but i'm sure it would be good for you).

Don't dwell on that negative stuff, just think of all the good times ahead. At your age there will be tons of good times!

IFA's doing will?? Use a solicitor! (they know what they are doing!)

It cost me £220 (a year ago) and that was a joint will.

Solicitors have been hit hard by the recession so i'm sure you will get a good deal.

DIY wills are flaky and potentially not worth the paper they are written on.

I had a RAZR for a year and a bit. The thing developed funny habits like freezing out the display, or the clock would just disappear and sometimes the display showed "busy" when I wasn't actually using the thing. The UI is also rubbish compared to my Nokias.

The local newsagent started selling cards last week – their excuse? "You might want to send one to friends/relatives abroad! – what, via Mark Beaumont?

Or a friend in London. With the London strike, it might just make it there by Christmas (if you are lucky).

I saw the first signs of Christmas stuff three weeks ago. Ridiculous!

Right click on the desktop and look at properties. Set your resolution to the highest your monitor supports.

Just have a play with the settings. Go "start" then "control panel" then scan through thelist to see which one looks like it might be relevant to the problem.

Don't be scared to nose around! That's how I learned.

So i'm the only one who went to this show?

You need to move out of London!!

Try Epping Forest next time. SHould be there in less than half that time if you leave outside rush hour.

My main advice is let the wife choose a tent! If she likes it, then you will be in with a chance of her enthusing about camping. My wife hates camping after two unseasonally very cold nights this summer. They were 8 weeks apart. The next night was very warm,but she had gone home by then. Sods law!

Consider what it might be like having a dog in a tent. You will need a bit of space.

Go to Go Outdoors and see the display tents.

I am expecting a big end of season sale of tents in the next few weeks.

1.9Tdi 130bhp powered VW Passat, or Audi A6. Both now cheap as chips, both capable of 65mpg on a run (or more).

We lost the ability, or the enthusiasm to be efficient with domestic food management decades ago. Shortly after the last war, nothing was wasted.

Food has become much cheaper relatively speaking. As convenience food and prepackaging proliferated, it got difficult buying exactly what you need. Mums ended up having to work as well as the husbands due to the women's lib lot demanding equal rights and then the big supermarkets that had appeared found their customers doing the weekly shop.

It has become a complicated task managing the weekly houshold food supply. We now forget what we bought, or bought the 2 for one's etc. We also demand variety and choice and this fussiness has a lot to do with the amount of food tha gets binned, but who wants the same thing day after day? The other thing is the car has enabled people to spread themselves far and wide away from shops.

A war, or extreme economic hardship would fix the problem. 😈

If you have time and are in walking distance from the shops, buy your food on a day to day basis. Buy what you need for the day, not what you might fancy in 4 days. You will be in with a much greater chance of wasting less, eating less and spending less. You will also have a handle on what you eat.

There are plumbing tools for gaining access to awkward nuts. I have several. Crowsfoot spanner etc.

A new ball valve assembly should be around £7 and will fill quietly

If you get the washers for the old one, a cut condom and an elastic band to hold it on to the filler can cut the filling noise down a little.

Thank goodness for that! I can think of nothing worse than a bunch of smelly trout! 😆

Not sensible giving out your sister's mobile number Idle!

F1 had become far too commercial IMHO.

At 17 I wouldn't do DAS, just do the restricted A licence as soon as you can.

But then you'd have to do a further test to be able to ride bikes over 33bhp.

If you need cheap gear, try the BMF Tail End show in Peterborough coming up in the next couple of weeks.

You will get super cheap but good quality end of season stuff there.

Entry is £14 on the gate £12 up front.

As long as you turn up you will pass.

…and you aren't a numpty! There was someone who failed on my course. She was so bad that, in my view, she should never be allowed on two wheels for her own safety.

i have riden a moped around my house

Wow! Big house!

CBT is simple and fun. Almost all pass it. You must listen and not assume anything.

After this, when you have your bike legally on the road, be VERY mindful of the potential dangers of using a public highway in your early years of motoring. Feeling invisible is probably the biggest risk for a rider of your age. I apologise if i am being presumptuous, i don't know you or your temperament, but I from my opinion from statistics and personal experience. There is much to learn, even for older experienced road users. Bear this in mind, always!

The risk for two wheeled vehicles is vastly higher than for those with four wheels. Making mistakes and having an accident on a bike always ends in at least a minor injury if you haven't got a full set of bike clothes – get decent gear!

Some people I knew didn't get a second chance! So my advice is be afraid of what might happen, very afraid! That will give you the best chance of becoming a good rider by gaining the experience you can only get by being out there. (I don't mean scared and hesitant, these people are at increased risk too. You will learn about this on your course).

Get some books on biking. Your instructor will recommend some. In my early years, this reference saved me from a few nasty accidents.

Consider doing a DAS course as soon as you become elligible. YOur instructor will advise you on what age you need to be and what level you can go to.

Good luck and most of all BE SAFE!

I need a doggy! They are awesome, but only the medium sized models (lil ones are to quick and would get unde my wheels)

Petite Polish woman eh? 3 books you say? Sounds like an interesting lady. 😛