Well… not all of it new. At lunchtime today I took a bus ride to the new Virgin Megastore, which has taken over the old Tower Records shop at Piccadilly Circus. The idea was to pick up a DVD-Audio disc to see if it makes a difference, so something new would not do the trick. Really I wanted something I was familiar with so I could tell the difference. I decided to try Tubular Bells 2003 it is basically a remix of the original for DVD-A with Dolby Digital and DTS mixes at a high sampling rate which are supposed to be awesome.

Unfortunately they did not have it. In fact it was hard to find DVD-A at all because it was in with the normal DVDs. I ended up getting Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I am fairly familiar with it, and have a decent copy on vinyl to compare the sound to.

While I was there I decided to get La Semilla Escondida by Sergent Garcia as it is unlikely the local shops in Crawley are going to ever get it in. I also thought about getting the latest Bembeya Jazz CD, the new album from Khaled or Rachid Taha’s Made in Medina, but Virgin had none of them! I was a bit disappointed. I bet Tower would have had them…

As I was in the mood for treating myself, I also picked up the new Beenie Man CD. I can’t say I agree with his attitudes, which are getting a lot of press at the moment, but I do like a bit of Dancehall. I have copied the new CDs straight to the iRiver jukebox to play on the train tomorrow.

Only one little problem with all that – I had not really read the manual for the new Pioneer too closely. Apparently, to get the full DVD-A sound quality you need to use the analogue ouputs and not the digital one. At the moment I have one thick coaxial digital cable going across the floor from where the TV is to where the hi-fi is, and I don’t think Jayne will be too happy with three pairs of audio leads there instead. But if I do it I can then get the Dark Side of the Moon SACD to try that out… (I did know that SACD won’t output on the digital circuit.) I’m going to need one hell of a chunky bit of trunking to hide the power extension cable, TV-to-amp audio leads, digital cable and 6 audio leads for the DVD!