Last night at practice Karel was talking about a certain kind of old-timey sound that features rough vocals. Greg and I started telling him about the Delta blues and so forth, and mentioning artists I have on vinyl. I jumped up to play some records – and then I realized that my stereo amp has been DOA for nearly six months.

But no more! This weekend is the weekend we pick up a new one. I mentioned I needed to make a list of what I want to Viv, so, this blog entry serves that purpose. I’m looking to get the cheapest one on sale that matches my feature needs.

The amplifier will be used for movies and TV as well as CDs and records (and video and audio tapes). Therefore some surround-sound would be nice, but I’m not buying a bunch of new speakers or anything so it needs to be able to support what I believe is known as 4.1 in addition to whatever absurd high speaker count surround sound befuddlers they use to jack the price up.

An onboard AM / FM radio.

I’m not an audiophile or hardware snob; I just want something reliable.

• Three or four A/V input-output pairs:
  • one for the VCR (s-video not required, coax)
  • one for the dish box (s-video optional, coax)
  • one for the DVD player (s-video, coax)
  • one for a camera (s-video, coax not req)
• Three or four stereo RCA input-output pairs:
  • one for the turntable (only input required, I hear this is rare)
  • one for ad hoc devices (I plug an RCA pair into these and run them to the front of the stack)
  • one for a future tape deck
  • one for digital audio input

The primary video output needs to support both coax out and s-video because depending on where the video is being routed I might need either or both. I have an inline rgb-to-digital firewire bridge obtained long ago to digitize old VHS stuff, so it’s quite conceivable to imagine running two TVs off the stack when I finish frankensteining it all together for capturing stuff.

I do not anticipate attempting to jury rig a home-made DVR into this batch of gear.

The busted amp came with a remote, which I mocked without mercy and then began to use instead of all the other remotes. I imagine that this is basically a standard feature these days.

I currently maintain a series of hand drawn maps of the wiring of the current stack. I began to use OmniGraffle to map the connections as though they were a LAN, but the default clip art unaccountably lacked audio and video components.

I made vague gestures toward googling an online tool for developing and maintaining these diagrams, but my google-fu proved sorely lacking and I fell back against the pillowy cushions of the daybed in a swoon.

Murray! Murray! Bring me my bacon!