You know how life just goes along and you think nothing is ever going to change, and then something totally unanticipated happens that resets everything?

Well, this Saturday evening I had one of those precedence setting events that caught me completely by surprise, and rewrote the book about what I thought I knew about ...

Wait a second, I'm getting ahead of myself - back to the beginning: This evening was a typical weekend where I was unwinding from a work-week of science (I live in the scientific city of the Pacific Northwest that the Syfy channel TV show Eureka is loosely based on, where we study everything from the effects of black holes on the space-time continuum to proteomics, to ... well almost anything you can imagine ... not too many people know about it, but we did the original research that developed digital music playback that ultimately became what you-know-who sold to the public as perfect sound forever). Anyways ...

I was relaxing listening to a superb vinyl test pressing from Acoustic Sounds of You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce, when I thought I'd walk out to the mailbox and see what the US Postal Service had delivered. My timing couldn't have been better, for when I walked out the front door the lovely USPS lady in the levitating mail delivery vehicle (humor) drove up in front of my house and parked, saying she had a special delivery for me. I wasn't expecting anything, so I was quite curious what it might be. It turns out that brother Yoshi (the Leben & Acoustic Revive exporter in Japan) - a man of exquisite taste in all things - had sent me some digital discs to check out as a surprise.

I went into the room where I have my original Leben system: the musical CS-600 integrated amplifier (with a new Gran Corona power cable from Sablon Audio's Mark Coles stuck in its bum); Harbeth Super HL5 loudspeakers & Skylan stands (by Noel Nolan); Acoustic Revive solid core cables, the RIO-5II Negative Ion Generator, the RD-3 Disc Demagnetizer, and the RWL-3 Acoustic Conditioner panels; an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player; and a Philips flat-panel screen added for movie-viewing fun. This is a wonderful no-nonsense system that delivers musical and video joy with deep satisfaction.

Now here's where it starts to get interesting: the discs that Yoshi sent me were Master CDR-II music discs from the T-Toc Records folks. I unpacked R-men's I thought about you and popped it into my Oppo and hit play ... as the music  emerged from my Harbeths I almost jumped out of my skin on the opening number Blue 'n' Boogie. I've never heard digital sound this good, this natural, this musical - it blew my mind - thus this post.

In looking at T-Toc Records web site I haven't found the discs Yoshi sent me, so I'm guessing they're new, but wow, it appears these guys actually use an Ongaku and Acoustic Revive products in their mastering chain of master tape to digital stream, which goes directly to hard disc, then directly to CDR-II disc. I mean, this is a breakthrough in the digital reproduction of music, through my bone-stock Oppo Blu-ray player it is stupefyingly good ... I'm amazed. I notice they also do vinyl, and all I can say is OMG!

So this is just a preliminary heads up about T-Toc Records and the R-men's I thought about you Master CDR-II disc that is devastatingly good music, and the sound is unbelievably good too - wow - I'm amazed! I'm just saying, if you get a chance to check T-Toc and R-men out, be sure you do - you won't be sorry. I'll have more to say as I work my way through the rest of these discs Yoshi sent me.

Thanks for stopping by!