From the bus

I got the bus over to St Luke's this morning because my appointment time was earlier (10:35) and I didn't want to risk getting stuck in traffic on the way over if I took the car. Mind you, traffic is so light these post-recession days that it probably wouldn't make much difference.) Once again it was all super efficient and I was finished before 11:00.

Its fascinating how much more you see from the bus than when driving the car. This circular window caught my eye, and then the characterful brickwork urged me even more to blip the scene. Just an iPhone shot through the bus window.

My mate Derek had been in touch to check treatment time and we arranged that I'd text him when I left Luke's and he'd be at the house forty-five minutes after that. Sure enough, he was waiting outside when I got home, so we had the usual chat and coffee and biscuits. Conversation touched on my Denon music system and my dissatisfaction with it. Derek had planned to bring along a spare compact system he has for me to try, but the CD player was playing up when he tried it out and he came empty handed. I'd sent off a long and very detailed email of complaint to the Denon agent I'd got mine through, asking him to take it back and give me a full refund of the purchase price. He phoned just as I got to St Luke's and said he'd email contact details for guys in Denon UK (who happen to be based in Belfast).

When Derek left I had something a bit more substantial to eat and then lifted the phone to Belfast. I was told that they first need to narrow things down (trouble-shooting style) to help determine if the unit is actually faulty. First question was if the unit firmware was up to date (it is) and then I was advised to do a factory reset (which the guy said they 'recommend' after every firmware upgrade). We agreed that I would do this and report back tomorrow. You need to be a bit of a contortionist to do the factory reset, what with holding down two buttons while unplugging the unit , plugging it back in and turning it on. I did that. Networking problems cropped up immediately (factory reset means the full first-setup procedure has to be gone through all over again, and the unit refused to find my network when it did a search. After half an hour trying various menu options I solved things by entering the network name manually (Ah, there's the network I was looking for', said the machine).

Most importantly, the sound problems (upper-frequency distortion and 'edginess') were resolved by doing the reset, so at least I can listen in comfort again. I'm still far from happy with the messiness of connecting to my local network, though. Still, in order to test things out for tomorrow's report to Denon, I treated myself to an extended listening session. It's good not to cringe when violins get excited or one of those fat ladies bellows it out. All quite pleasant and enjoyable, in fact.