Great thread.

I’m a retired physician. Practiced in Illinois for many years. Moved to Northern Maine 12 yrs ago, worked a while and then retired. Now, in retirement I’m as busy as can be with new business. I’m a FFL (Federal Firearms Licensee), specializing in Title II firearms (machineguns, silencers, short barrel rifles & shotguns etc). I don’t have a storefront and don’t want one. I’ve sold/transferred to/from many states for non-prohibited persons, mostly collectors and investors.

My music/audio passion trumps this, however. Some background is appropriate. In my sig you will note “4-channel”. Having a passion for capturing live music (of the kind I like) since teen years I was fortunate to become friends with some extremely knowledgeable people in the Chicago area in the mid 1970s. We (sometimes me included-sometimes I couldn’t go) recorded many many many big bands and name acts over the years and have prized recordings. I should add that we never pirated them. We simply came away with studio-quality live material recorded at the performance venue. So we listened to our recordings as recorded, rather than gated, limited, or modified. We used Crown CX844 machines (analog 4-channel tape recorders), AKG or sometimes Neumann mics. Ourlistening rooms had 4 preamp channels, 4 amp channels and 4 sets of speakers, back into the 1970s. I still have my Crown ES 224 (electrostats) in my office, which I shall never sell. Two recordings I made in 1983 were sent by me to the artists. One was issued commercially and I think sold to another company which issued it on some other label. I have seen them occasionally on ebay. I recently found the other tape and sent a CD to the other artist. He is working on releases so he can sell the CDs. Both are famous jazz musicians. When asked what I wanted for the material I told them to put my name on them as recording engineer.

Beause tape deteriorates we embarked on a project to preserve this precious material. We would have liked to use 4 of the 6 Dolby Tracks on a 5.1 disc. And eventually I found a dts conversion program. One of us independent of myself also was able to transfer the material from analog tape to dts CDs. We initially played them back on a DVD player which had dts decoding capabilities. Some of us have an outboard dts decoder. This allows us to play the dts CDs on a regular CD player, sending its digital bitstream to the decoder and then to the 990. Very convenient. My Sony 455s (one classical, one jazz), my stand-alone Tascam CD 01U player, and my Alesis Masterlink ML9600 all feed a MSB Digital Director, which feeds the decoder. So my dts discs play thru the fronts and surrounds (because that’s the assignment I give). But because my living room is hybrid I send the analog outs of the decoder to the 7.1 of 990. Using the SBR and SBL of the 7700 I feed two more up front speakers, replicating the 4 channel array of “yesteryear”. Also I archived the 4-ch material to Alesis HD24XR, using 4 of the multi channels. This also feeds the 7.1 analogs of the 990. A patchbay is normalled for the decoder output and I patch the Alesis outputs. This way I can make extremely long (exceeding the 80-minute limit) programs.

Only within the past few years have I gotten into 5.1/HT. The Outlaw 990 is a key feature in this and gives me great flexibility. I posted pics in a thread, but can’t find it now.

So what now? Clear the snow. Put another log on the fire. Listen to some good music. Eagerly anticipate the next Outlaw pre/pro. Not much to record in far Northern Maine. I came close to getting to record THE AIRMEN OF NOTE last year. My associates recorded them in 1968. No problem. Some idiot got in the way here, but the bandleader said would not have been a problem. I’ve not been able to identify anyone up here who is really into good music and good sound. So.....let’s put pn another CD and relax...............
BTW: If I’m wrong and someone on this thread is in Maine, or wants to discuss this send me a PM. I hope I haven't bored anyone with this post