'The Humped Chub' (mullet taxonomy)
Posted by: Donkeyhaute on 27 October 2015
'The Humped Chub'.
I'm not selling lurid DVDs, and this isn't a general exhortation for people to rush about humping chubs. Neither am I a lonely chub.
It's essentially a meaningless quickie that might, briefly, lift the veils of sorrow - like what your Mum does.
It's also the new name I'd like to propose to describe my brother's gloriously unfinished* hifi.
It stands as an abandoned folly: a hymn to absent mindedness and ambition. Whenever I see it, I wince.
Like an excitable chap spelling 'banana', he knew how to start, but not necessarily how to finish.
The first thing he did was drop a few thousand pounds on a Roksan Pre/Power combination. One of those ones named after early Persian emperors, or princesses that Alexander the Great had ransacked. I was, as you'd expect, manfully crying 'Naim! Naim!' from the sidelines but he's much bigger than I am.
To these pretty admirable amplifiers, he connected his very old, budget MA Bronze Something-or Others. They once won an award in a hifi magazine for being the best bookshelf speakers, available on discount, with bronze-coloured woofers, for about £250 to students or larcenous builders. Let's say they got this award about a decade ago. It doesn't really matter because both of them are blown. I haven't the heart to point this out to him. I'd gone croaky from shouting 'Naim'.
Current state of play is x£K of amp (I genuinely can't hear if they are any good but suspect so), connected to very blown £250 speakers. To front this, I think he normally uses a Dac built in the East of England in a town known for its dubious, web-footed scholarship. This, too, won an award from a renowned hifi magazine. For Best-Use-of-a-Sine-Wave-on-metal-casing. Three years on the trot, I believe.
It was at this point that I felt compelled, as the elder brother, to sit him down and explain painful things to him about system balance, basic human reproduction and the quickest way out of Stoke Penge.
Consequently, and almost immediately, he spent £300 on interconnects from a company that normally limits its commercial efforts to the building of reasonably-priced domestic toasters. They had gold things on each end and the cable was semi-translucent. When I tut-tutted a bit he improved things hugely by dropping another £100 on a power lead into the DAC. It had blue bits on it. At this point I rather felt that he stopped listening to me, so I slunk out. He also uses Spotify Premium a lot.
So there we stand. 320kbps through a retired work laptop, into a goodish but aged and budget dac, through many pounds of amp, into flatulent budget speakers.
What do we call such a thing?
* I asked him why he'd abandoned the rest of his plans after the amp bit, and he cited childish things like getting onto the property market, getting married, honeymoons,etc etc. After some of these things were achieved, he started moaning about the cost of water-proofing flat roofs when dealing with truculent and delinquent Irish builders. So, frankly, weak, weak excuses. I'm pushing him towards a 272 front and and whatever speakers he likes the lies of.
George,
Don't worry about it. I have a degree in engineering and nearly put finger to iPad so insensed was I that someone might suggest that 3/8ths is just over half!
Luckily I read the post a second time. Maybe I was Norwegian in a previous life.
Disclaimer: The above is in no way intended to be offensive towards Norwegians.
Geez, you have to be so careful what you write these days! 
George,
Don't worry about it. I have a degree in engineering and nearly put finger to iPad so insensed was I that someone might suggest that 3/8ths is just over half!
Luckily I read the post a second time. Maybe I was Norwegian in a previous life.
Disclaimer: The above is in no way intended to be offensive towards Norwegians.
Geez, you have to be so careful what you write these days!
