Music Non Stop

If you are a regular listener to "Retro Nouveau" on Cloudmix, it will be no surprise to yourself, that I listen to a lot of music, new and old. It's strange, sometimes, like waiting for a Bus, nothing shows. Then out of know where, a pile up!
Where to start..... Phew, a ZZ Top 10 Album Box Set that selling at a silly price £23.00p approx, A complete John Denver Box Set that has 25 Albums, another superb Box Set from Jean Luc Ponty "Electric Fusion", a five disc set by Otis Redding.
New albums by Inner Road, Lindsey Stirling, Laura Marling and yet another fantastic metal album by Jorn.
As you can imagine, this will take time to digest, but rest assured you will get to hear them and more on forth coming editions of "Retro Nouveau".

If you don't succeed, try, try again. I finally manage to get my new Blake FM8 antenna up and running on the weekend. It's funny, my new QTH is only a quarter a mile for my last home, so you wouldn't really expect that much in regards to a change in reception. A few finding so far, as I haven't had chance to do a full band scan. I used to receive "City Talk" 105.9Mhz from Liverpool, that's now gone, due to yet another Sunshine Radio Relay in Wooferton Doh!!
On the positive side, it's seems I can now get LBC 97.3Mhz and BBC Radio London 94.9Mhz most of the time, which isn't to shabby, being that I am in the West Midlands. I will of course, when completed, post a full band scan.

As you may have noticed, I am really enjoying these old movies, that are now being released on Blu Ray. My all time favourite comedy, The Jerk staring Steve Martin is due out in August. If you have never seen it, it really is Steve Martin at his best, but be warned, it really is silly humour.
Fathers Day was really kind to me, I received a Spike Milligan DVD, and a Frank Carson Live DVD...."It's a cracker!"
On the TV front, we have been enjoying the new series of "Mad Dogs" on Sky 1 which is now in it's 3rd Series, and the fantastic "Playhouse Presents" on Sky Arts 1, Playhouse is superb, really I don't know whats going to happen next, week after week, it covers so many topics and themes. I can recommend this Series for a purchase on DVD.

Well, I guess I should sign off now, until the next update, and take a look back soon for the next release of Retro Nouveau.

73's
Damien

WiNRADiO WR-G35DDCi SDR as good as it gets?

Over the last week Win Radio released details of their new SDR reciever. The WiNRADiO WR-G35DDCi has really seemed caused a bit of a debate on discussion forums ,due to yet another advancement in technology.

Little did I know when I joked in my BDXC review of the G33DCC , that I would be eating my words so soon. So whats the amazing advancement, Win Radio's new unit will captured a staggering 32Mhz of bandwidth, yes...you have read correctly. Although this is the DXer's dream, it does come at big price, I believe it is going to be over $5000 US dollars, no UK price has been mentioned yet.

So the dream will be shortly the reality, but I have to admit, the G35DCCi is clearly aimed for commercial uses, GCHQ etc, rather than the average DXer. Being a user of the G33DCC I struggle to use it's full 4Mhz of bandwidth, so the jump to 32Mhz seems crazy. Valid points have been mentioned about the unit, when would one get the time to listen to such a vast amount of bandwidth, apparently a 4TB hard drive covering 32Mhz will last 7 hours. Thankfully you don't have use the maximum bandwidth, although I would imagine we could see follow DXers swapping Hard Drives.

Of course all this power comes at a cost, you will realistically have to use a fast PC to get your monies worth, probably a Intel i7 with at least 8Gb of Ram, forget going portable with a laptop, as unlike the G31DCC or G33DCC, the G35DCCi runs as a PCI-e card that sits straight on your motherboard. The G35DCCi  specs are pretty similar to the G33DCC, I do wonder about the unit having only one pre-selector, this may be a major problem if you suffer with overload from various different ends of the frequency spectrum and you want to record 32Mhz in one hit.

I have to admit, I can't wait to read the first review, and being that no one has had a play with unit yet, there may be some more surprises install. Personally, I wish someone would release some dedicated  software for playing Win Radio DCC recordings back, if the price was reasonable, it would make a good amount of cash for Win Radio, and in reality most users are after a clearer, and not so crammed screen, for the playback of files.

My next post should be soon, where you will see a return of my usual gossip of music,films and life in general!

73's

Damien