Rumer : Into Colour

Taken from Rumer's newsletter

Into Colour is finally complete. Hi! I am delighted to announce that “Into Colour” is finally complete! The release date in Japan will be November 5th. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support and encouragement and for being on this journey with me. Here is a link to a video teaser for the album.

If you pre order the CD from Amazon.co.uk, you will receive a complimentary digital download upon release.. If you purchase the album through iTunes, you will receive one digital track straight away and two more over the next few weeks.

1. Intro (Return Of Blackbird) 2. Dangerous 3. Reach Out 4. You Just Don't Know People 5. Baby Come Back To Bed 6. Play Your Guitar 7. Sam 8. Better Place 9. Pizza And Pinball 10. Butterfly 11. I Am Blessed

The Making of Into Colour

After Boys Don’t Cry, around January 2013, I moved to California and rented a hippy cottage in Laurel Canyon for inspiration. I wrote songs with Stephen Bishop, my songwriting idol, sang a duet with Jimmy Webb at McCarthur Park , sat under a tree and listened to P.F Sloan tell stories, and made many pilgramages to listen to Terry Reid play blues long into many a Palm Desert night. When we were choosing the songs for Boys, at the time, I never for a moment thought I would ever get to meet any of those songwriters. In L.A I was lucky enough to hook up with Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick’s long time music director Rob Shirakbari, a composer producer and arranger extraordinaire, who went on to produce and co-write this album with me.

I have been honoured to work with some of the best musicians in the world on this record - including; Paul Pesco, Shawn Pelton, Zev Katz, Porter Carroll and Everett Bradley. These great musicians have featured regularly on the fantastic ‘Live From Daryl’s House’ show. I am so grateful to that show for the opportunity, the friends I made, and for being the first time many of you heard my music.

Audirvana Plus 2.0

I've been using Audirvana for years now (since 2009 when it was a free application) and recently upgraded to Audirvana Plus 2.0 paying upgrade fee for USD 39.00.
You can check it at  http://audirvana.com/ for full details.
I think it's worth to do that since this version is equipped with full visual interface to control and maintain all music files (include iTunes music if you want), especially for flac files.

Following is the screen shots of Preference and some setting arguments are extended with this upgrade.

You can choose converter as Apple core audio as well.

Interesting point is that disable functions are added to prevent stable playback if desired, NICE!

You can add folders to and delete to sync music file  with visual interface, SO NICE!

You can choose the order appearance as well.

This maybe the most convenient upgrade feature to maintain metadata visually!

iTunes Integrated Mode is still valid and you can see the old interface when you take it.

iFI Audio micro iDSD

I purchased this with reservation and got it when it was released.

Specification of this headphone amp is so powerful and I have no way to utilize full functionally active at this moment.

I use this one simply as a DAC for iPhone and macbook pro with micro iUSB and iTUBE.

I also use AirPlay with Airport via toslink cable since it's too easy for streaming music data with iPhone and macbook pro.

It comes with lots of cables and attachments.

and manual is so simple and this isn't enough for advanced users, so I refer the following page (in Japanese).

This is the decent review of this meaty monster, but written in Japanese, so you can use google translate to the language you'd like to read.

The Beatles US Albums

Enjoy!

Purchased ifi-audio nano iDSD & iPurifier

I purchased ifi-audio nano iDSD to work with iPhone 5s and I found it's a perfect pair for listening Hi-res files (include DSD and DXD files) in mobile environment since it's a super versatile equipment.

This is the package I received. Looks like very resemble that of iPhone's (but bigger anyway). RCA cable, 2 rubber bands, USB cable (50cm), rubber shield, pouch is included in a box.

Other things you need to purchase is the followings;

1. Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, this is mandatory to enable USB connection with iPhone 5s.

2. ONKYO HF Player to extract and send music data to iDSD digitally. 

3. USB cable or USB A male to B male adaptor.

I purchased very short length USB cables which are as a sampler of Japanese audio magazine (HIVI), but they're still too long for mobile environment, so I recommend adaptor.

SUPRA USB 2.0

Zonotone 6N-USB

Setting with iPhone 5s is like the following;

Looks not so smart, but I believe this is the best setting currently available.

I use Etymotic research hf3 and it's quite good (although I used ER-4S before it's broken, hf3 got more bass and better for popular music and it's better for me anyway).

iDSD is equipped with lithium-polymer battery (1400mAh) and said it works more than 10 hours.

Note: Use in battery power mode, you need to power iDSD on first and if power it on later after USB connection, it worked in USB power mode.
According to ifi-audio it takes around 3 hours to charge full of the battery, but blue LED is still on after that and it maybe a issue. 

One thing I have to complain is that USB female port is so loose and I have to stabilize with damping stickers when to use with iPurifier.

In my audio set, I still use Apogee Mini-DAC  and I tried to compare the sound of 2 DACs and found the sound of nano iDSD is reflecting very current favour of the sound, which means rather thin but edgy, speedy and higher resolution compare to Mini-DAC (thick and very studio monitor like sound, used to be the standard of the recording studio i the world) . As I've been accustomed with the sound of Mini-DAC for 3 more years, it might get sometime to get used to it, but I think I will and iDSD can be worked as DDC!

Anyway, the sound via iPhone with nano iDSD is superb (without nano iDSD,  I feel something missing..), especially Hi-res files, but also much better with 16/44.1 files of mp3 (320kbps) or AAC (256kbps) files to playback.

Below is the preference of Audirvana Plus of MacBook Pro for your reference.

I purchased iPurifier as well for indoor listening and not quite sure it works fine since the difference of the sound is so subtle (in case the source is iPhone), but seems something effective in case the source is Mac (or PC) via USB port to reduce the noise floor but I'm not for sure it's cost effective anyway.

Note: I encountered iDSD can't work with iPurifier with my iPad (3rd gen) since when to playback a high resolution file which is higher than 24/88.2, frequent pop noise is on. So I forced to reinstall Onkyo HF Player (Flac Player as well) to resolve this issue. iOS apps are sometimes behaved like this and the only solution to address this kind of issue is to reinstall, it's totally a waist of time since reinstall apps means all uploaded hi-res files are needed to be upload again:(

So at this moment, I don't recommend to use iPurifier with iPad 3.

male B to mini male B exchange adaptor is included! 

green light is on

    

This is the very brief of the current setting and impressions so far and I'll continue to report some later.