Getting an ODriod VU-5A Display Working with the ODroid N2

I love the tiny little single-board computers from ODroid, but their VU-5A display comes with no instructions at all, and the wiki is not a lot more helpful. It wasn't even clear what connections to make when I got the display!

Here, anyway, is what I had to do to connect the VU-5A to my N2.

Teaching on Zoom

A message I sent to my colleagues, after my first day teaching remotely....

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I hope those of you who taught today found that your classes went all right. I was very happy with mine, though I am lucky that we had a good vibe in class before now, and it is small enough (16 plus two TAs and a visitor) that it is not too hard to manage on Zoom.

ODroid Music Streamer (and FREE Roon Replacement)

I've been playing for a while now with an ODroid N2 and trying to build a music streamer from it. In some ways, that is not particularly difficult, but I'm trying to do it my own way, of course, which makes it more so. This page records the steps I've taken to get it working.¹

Birthday Music

1. 
   David Torn, Cloud About Mercury (ECM, 1986)
   If you're at all into progressive rock, and you don't know this album, you need to listen to it very soon. The rest of the band is Bill Bruford, Tony Levin---i.e., the rhythm section from the great King Crimson incaranation of the early 1980s---and Mark Isham on trumpet. Torn is a guitarist, and a very creative one.
   This is one of those genre-busting albums. It's somewhere between progressive rock and fusion, I guess.
   
2. 
   Jan Garbarek Group, It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice (ECM, 1985)
   A stunningly beautiful album, with David Torn on guitar, Eberhard Weber on bass, and Michael DiPasqua on drums and percussion. The interplay between Torn and Garbarek, in particular, is worth the price of admission. And Weber plays bass like no one else.
   From here on out, it turned out to be mostly a night of Garbarek.
   
3. Ralph Towner, Solstice (ECM, 1975)
   Another of my favorite albums, and one of the great ECM records. Garbarek and Weber are here again, along with Jon Christensen on drums. Somewhat unusually for jazz, Towner plays classical and 12-string guitars, and occasionally piano. This is more straight ahead jazz than one gets with Oregon, and there are just lovely textures between the acoustic guitars, Garbarek's sax, and Weber's electric upright bass.
   The recording is extraordinary. It's hard to over-state what a wonderful audio engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug was, and how much influence he must have had on the 'ECM sound'. Here, he gives us a wonderful sense for the softness of Towner's classical guitar and, at the same time, the power of Garbarek's sax.
   
4. 
   Keith Jarrett, My Song (ECM, 1978)
   The second record from Jarrett's so-called 'European Quartet', with Garbarek, Christensen, and Palle Danielsson on bass. The only other studio album they made was Belonging, from 1975.
   This one is more lyrical than that one and less 'free' than Nude Ants (1979), which was recorded live at the Village Vanguard. A wonderful album.
5. 
   Keith Jarrett, Personal Mountains (ECM, 1989)
   Also from the European Quartet, recorded live in Tokyo in 1979. I would guess that this record maybe gives one more of a sense for what their concerts were really like. There's a lot of out-there improvisation, as on Nude Ants, but also more lyrical performances.

More Music

1. 
   Ralph Towner, Batik (ECM, 1978)
   The first song, "Waterwheel", is a classic. The rest is merely good.
   The copy I have is a Warner Brothers re-issue, and these generally are a lot better than the US originals, which were pressed and distributed by Polydor. But I thought this one was a bit dark, and it left me wondering what a German original might be like. That said, I'm not sure I love this album enough to pay what it would take to find out.
2. 
   Daniel Lanois, For the Beauty of Wynona (Warner, 1993)
   As diverse as what he produces, and beautiful. One of my very favorite albums. The highlight here for me is "Unbreakable Chain", though there are a lot of competitors for that title.
   It's a nice recording, too. Though, as you might expect, it is a bit inconsistent in that respect, given how it would have been recorded.
   Unsurprisingly, the original US release, on CD, included a censored version of the cover.
3. 
   Daniel Lanois, Acadie
   His first solo album. I remember hearing it the first time and wondering how on earth this guy could make this album. It's basically folk, with a slightly Cajun edge. But it is wonderful, too, maybe even better than Wynona, because it is more coherent as an album.
   Unfortunately, the recording is just all right. There's quite a lot of sybillance on the vocals (which always reminds me of cheap, crappy speakers).
4. 
   kd lang, Ingénue
   I hadn't listened to this for a while. A great album, and her voice sounds amazing, even through the digital recording. There could be a lot more depth to the recording, but for the most part the instruments sound very natural.
5. 
   Steve Tibbetts, Safe Journey
   I've mentioned him in other recent posts. Many of his albums are meditative and quiet, and this one has such moments. Lovely, and a nice recording, as one expects from ECM.

Tonight's Selections

1. Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette, Standards vol. 1 (1983)
   

Music Music Music Music Music

(With apologies to Mingus...)

I used to listen to music all the time. I'm not sure why that stopped. I remember years ago when my then-wife's sister visited us and she asked me one morning, "Do you listen to music every morning?" My answer, "Yes", was honest, but failed to engage with what she was really trying to say. It didn't occur to me that other people didn't put on an album the minute they got out of bed.

New Other Stereo Stuff: Pass XP-20 and Schiit Yggdrasil

This post is really just a continuation of the last one. In that one, I raved about our new speakers, the Dynaudio Contour 60s and explained that it had been quite a while since I really made many changes to our stereo system.

New Speakers: Dynaudio Contour 60s

As anyone who knows me knows, I'm very into music. And, since most of the time I listen to music at home (not at a concert), I'm also very into stereo equipment. That actually goes back to when I was about fifteen and used my babysitting money to buy what then seemed, to me, like audio nirvana: A Technics receiver, and then later a Technics turntable and a pair of Altec Lansing Model 10 speakers.

Pornography and Accommodation: Published

Online anyway, here.

If you can't access that, then you can find the pre-publication version here.