A Phono Stage Can Take The Sound Of Your Vinyl To The Next Level

As a die-hard Record lover, I can safely say that finding the right phono stage is absolutely key to getting the best from your collection. A good phono preamp will take the sound to the next stage, and leave you feeling like you’re hearing your records for the first time. I know this because my life-long love affair with Vinyl underwent a turning point, if you’ll pardon the expression, when I first bought a truly good phono amp.

I first got into records because my Dad had a small collection of old Juke Boxes with classic Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘45s. Looking at Staring at those beautiful machines as they responded to the press of a clunky button – the arm jumping into action and lowering the needle perfectly onto the record – was one of my favourite things in the world. I loved it almost as much as I loved the sound. Not the sound of the music itself (though of course I loved that too, and I became a huge fan of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis, and the whole genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll, before I also got into blues and soul), but that noise the needle makes when it first rests on the vinyl, and up until the point when the music starts. To me it was, and still is, the sound of blissful anticipation.

Of course, the phono amp and also the whole music world has changed since then, first with tape cassettes: they were considered attractive, compact and neat, at the time, and they had brilliant recording possibilities, but on the downside they were also easily breakable and often frustrating when it came to fast forwarding or re-winding; then CDs, which were technologically impressive but, again, broke easily. Now there are MP3s, which, suffice it to say, I’m not a fan of. For the sake of a digital format that is compatible with computers and laptops, a lot of quality has been compromised.

Nothing, not least a load of formless data in a hard drive, will ever substitute my beloved vinyl collection, which has always accompanied me as I grew up. When I earned a promotion a few years back, I decided to treat myself to a new sound system, and I chose a beautiful Mono Channel Reference phono stage that looked great in my lounge, and I rediscovered my vinyl. Listening through the phono preamp was an incredible experience, and I never looked back.

Please visit https://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further info.

Luxury coach hire: an alternative to the train

When you’re organising a long journey for a large number of people, there are a few limited options open to you. You can arrange for everyone to make their own way there – something that results in varying travel times and some people inevitably getting lost. You can arrange to meet centrally and take public transport, which is costly and impersonal. You could try signing people up to car-share, but this is likely to be an administrative headache – and is also costly, since you are still taking a number of cars. Another alternative is to opt for luxury coach hire (or, if your group is only 16-19 people, minibus hire). Coach hire London is a great way to make your journey, since you can choose a firm that provides all the conveniences you need for comfortable travel.

Modern luxury coaches come with a broad range of facilities to make your trip as smooth and enjoyable as possible: air-conditioning, drinks machines, wash rooms, DVD and CD players, and tables. In fact, these state-of-the-art coaches are a world away from the dusty cattle trucks known to most people from unwelcome school trips, in which every mile was a trial and travel sickness was thrown in at no extra cost.

There are other benefits to luxury coach travel, beyond comfort. Economies of scale come into operation in a way that simply doesn’t apply if you are taking several cars – even if you are lift sharing. If you are travelling with a group of 50, it is much cheaper per-person – even if you are paying for a driver. This also has benefits to the environment. Furthermore, on particularly long journeys there is the advantage of not arriving at your destination exhausted – important if you are going on holiday or to a sports fixture.

Coach hire London is a great way to avoid all of these problems, and luxury coach hire is a far more comfortable and relaxing way to travel than the alternatives. Coaches come in various sizes; minibus hire tends to be the best option for smaller groups (up to 19 people), and there are mid-sized coaches that accommodate up to 33 people. For the largest groups of 40 or 50 people, there are still coaches available. If your group is bigger than this, you can still organise two or more coaches from the same company, enabling you to arrive at the same time.

Please visit http://www.goldenboy.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Shops For Sale in North London: Gathering Momentum

At long last, it seems that the green shoots are here. The last GDP figures showed a slow but reasonable 0.3% for the quarter. More importantly, confidence is finally accelerating, with a major study finding it is at its highest level since 2010. Of course, the capital has always played by slightly different rules and has always led both the wider recovery and the upswing in the property market; commercial property London was hit badly in the Credit Crunch but picked up strongly, too. This was true across all sectors, including housing and retail. But now, with business confidence on the up as well, it might be time to take advantage of the number of shops for sale in north London, since there’s a good chance that lending will also soon increase and the underlying economy will support your business venture. Alternatively, a shop for sale in London might be a wise purchase at the moment. Which you look for will depend on a number of factors, including the nature of your firm and what you can afford at the time.

Landlords, too, might capitalise on this improving confidence. Shops to let in north London are in good supply at present, since so many businesses have gone under, leaving empty places like missing teeth along the streets. Location makes all the difference, of course; some areas of the city will always be popular. But the limited space means that there is only so much supply to deal with growing demand – one of the reasons that commercial property London has generally been a lucrative business. If companies simply can’t find the space they require, landlords can – and have – demand enormous prices. That’s why shops for sale in north London can be a goldmine for the right investor, who has funds to spare and can afford to snap up a bargain and wait as long as they need to for the rental market to follow. Needless to say, though, whether you’re buying, selling, letting or renting, it pays to do your research. Talk to a commercial property agency for more information about acquiring a set of premises, or a business expert to put together a proposition for your venture. They will be able to help you make your decision based on ruthless planning and rigorous evidence, thereby ensuring that it gets off to the best possible start.

Please visit https://www.claridges-commercial.co.uk

School clothes need not be difficult to get hold of

Kitting out your children in all the many types of school uniforms and sports kit can be a overwhelming task. Help is at hand in the form of a reliable London schoolwear supplier. Making sure your children are wearing well-fitting, correct school clothes is a thing for you – and for them – to be proud of.

Finding a schoolwear supplier that is well-stocked and usefully located takes a good deal of difficulty out of the annual (or more frequent) trips to buy new ties, blazers, P.E kits and jumpers in the appropriate colours and with the appropriate logos. An excellent supplier will not only have a wide range of uniforms in a wide range of sizes, but will also stock paraphernalia such as stationary, coats, bags and shoes. A supplier that does all this is a real blessing, and will save you time and most probably money.

Staff at a dependable supplier will know how important it is to get the finer points of uniform right, and avoid unnecessary letters from school or even detentions. Ask them for advice when it comes to fittings, the precise components of a uniform for a definite school, and for suitable accessories. With a plethora of experience, they can take a load off your shoulders.

Even if your children are of different ages and at different schools, it is uncalled for to go to two different retailers. Other extra-curricular activities are also often covered by a reputable supplier, including Brownies, Cubs and ballet lessons. This kind of very specialised clothing is often hard to come by, but when you can find it all in one place, think how many trips to the shops you will save. School delivery is often an option at schoolwear retailers, saving yet another journey.

Another important quality of schoolwear is safety. This is especially germane when it comes to sportswear. Gum shields, shin guards, high-quality t-shirts and shorts and football boots should help keep your child safe and warm out on the playing field. Good suppliers will stock leading brands such as Nike and Adidas to ensure you can feel reassured that the products are reliable.

When it comes to buying school uniforms, go to that excellent London schoolwear supplier near you and have all the hassle of choosing school clothes taken out of your hands.

Please visit http://www.uniform4kids.com/ for more.

Accounts Payable Audit – facilitating an overview of complete financial histories

Accounts payable audit systems are almost essential to the running of any business these days. This year we have heard story upon story about tax evasion, misspending, underhand expense claims, overpayment and underpayment. All of these stories have painted a sorry picture, and when big businesses have been revealed to be in the wrong great damage has been done to their reputation. At other times businesses who have mismanaged their finances have had to be bailed out by others or pay out large sums of money owed in compensation to those who have been taken advantage of. All in all, it’s a tricky time to be in business: the utmost transparency is required and best practice systems must be set firmly in place. Duplicate payments are one issue that should be totally avoided: if your business has paid for a service twice it will often be difficult to prove your point and succeed in getting reimbursed. Sometimes these scenarios are unavoidable, however, at which point it is a great idea to have recovery audit software in place: if errors are made you will be able to look through a comprehensive list of transactions and find out exactly what has gone wrong. You will also be able to present the information such recovery systems find as evidence of honest mistakes and misjudgements.

Experienced accountants will testify to the benefits of using computerised fiscal technologies. In some small businesses the use of computer based accountancy will mean that savings can be made on employing a full time accountant to the firm. Generally speaking though, accounts audit systems will assist professional accountants in keeping tabs on the goings on in larger companies. They will help staff do their job more quickly and provide them with an option of checking the accuracy of their work at any given stage in the proceedings – before it’s too late. It’s hard to make a profit these days but it is easier to break even and employ the ultimate level of professionalism with regards to incoming and outgoing payments.

Altogether, accountancy has become a better profession since the launch of recovery audit software. Moreover, running independent and freelance businesses has become much more manageable since the dawn of the accounts payable audit. It would be embarrassing as an independent freelancer to ask for a sum of money that had already been thrown your way. Duplicate payments are a source of great awkwardness best avoided.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltec.com/uk

Minibus Hire is more simple than you think

In a nation where amenities such as airports and ferry terminals, and recreation venues like racecourses or top-class hotels, are spread out over several miles, luxury coach hire is fast becoming the preferred choice for people who want to travel without the restraint of driving themselves or the stress of traditional car or minibus hire. Nowadays, you can find fantastic coach hire London to Manchester, Liverpool to Dover or Inverness to Edinburgh.
Often, minibus hire is seen by trip organisers as a barrier to a smooth and enjoyable trip. Without conveniences such as highly trained drivers, on board drinks machines and DVD players, and, of course, usable and sparkling clean toilets (!), long trips can be reminiscent of school outings which felt more like endurance challenges!

Thankfully, these kind of facilities are no longer out of reach of the average trip organiser. Wi-Fi, high quality WCs and comfortable seats are now expected by most people looking for a minibus hire, and other facilities can make the trip truly part of the adventure. When a group of friends opts to travel to Goodwood or Wimbledon, or to take a trip further afield through the Channel Tunnel to exciting locations like Paris, Deauville or Calais, the coach trip can be part of the fun. After a few hours spent having a chat and drinks and snacks from the fully stocked stores, listening to their favourite tunes on the in-coach entertainment system, or even enjoying a new DVD from their reclining chairs, the party arrives at their destination well rested and excited. And on the return journey, black out curtains and plenty of room to stow luggage make for a restful ride.

In fact, luxury coach hire has reached such high standards that individuals are using them for smaller and more personal events. Using a small minibus gives people more space for less cash than limo hire and other car hire offerings, and increasingly people are using minibuses for transfers at weddings, engagement parties or anniversary dos. And the coach hire London offers lets large families get to the city’s remote airports€“ Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted and Luton – with far less hassle and in more comfort than driving, and parking, oneself.

When looking for excellent luxury coach hire, customers should expect facilities such as air conditioning, some kind of entertainment system and plentiful storage. However, there are many more options out there for those who want a truly fantastic service. Taking a trip on a coach or minibus should be more like a miniature party than a simple dull necessity.

Please visit http://www.goldenboy.co.uk/ for further information.

Brise soleil for more pleasant working conditions

There are a number of ways in which you might secure the energy usage of your work building, and business as a whole. Alongside the standard advice of low-energy bulbs, paperless offices and good insulation, there are factors to bear in mind that will have a more significant impact on your long-term energy usage. As energy prices rise in the future due to peak oil and, quite possibly, energy insecurity and issues of supply, these will become more valuable. The brise soleil and glass louvres – which can be part of the initial building design or retro-fitted at a later date – will become more common sights as businesses try to reduce their energy consumption. In particular, external louvres can make the most of the sunlight that reaches your windows, whilst at the same time ensuring that it does not overheat the room. This would make for both an uncomfortable office environment and increased costs, as it entails the use of air conditioning.

The way each of these architectural features work is generally the same. In each case, they are structures – either fixed or movable – that regulate the sunlight levels reaching your windows. Especially in modern developments, the windows tend to be large and can cover most of the building’s exterior, so this is no trivial matter. The genius of the brise soleil and external louvres is that they do two things – making the most of existing sunlight but not allowing it to overheat the premises. They do this by the angling of the slats or other structures, which allows low-angle winter sun (or sun at the beginning and end of the day) through, but stops the high-angle summer and midday sun. Energy use and heat absorption may be further modified by having moving slats to customise the louvres to the climate conditions, and also by integrating PV (photovoltaic) cells into them to allow them to generate electricity whilst simultaneously lowering your power consumption.

The brise soleil and glass louvres are therefore important developments for both energy efficiency and security, and a good working environment. External louvres are one of a number of measures that can be adopted to lower the amount of energy you use, thereby decreasing both your energy budget and your environmental footprint. This makes for more sustainable businesses and greater corporate responsibility, as well as any intrinsic good.

Please visit https://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

A Presentation Design Agency – That Won’t Send Your Audience To Sleep…

Corporate sales presentations appear in many forms, but it’s fair to say that a large proportion of them are uninteresting – if not downright tedious. Powerpoint design is easy thanks to the intuitive nature of the software, but Powerpoint presentations rarely live up to their potential. Because anyone can use the programme, the job can often be left to someone with the necessary technical ability but no real insight into how it should be used. There’s an appreciation for the capabilities of the software (perhaps manifested in showy effects) but not for the best way to use it to engage and win over your listeners.

If you’ve ever sat through a mediocre sales presentation you’ll have a reasonable idea of what to avoid. Repeating the spoken content on the screen (often word for word) is a classic mistake. Don’t think that this doubles someone’s chances of taking in your message: quite the opposite. Having the material in two different formats distracts your audience from engaging with the one they like better. Just imagine if you were listening to your favourite song but the lyrics were being shown on a screen in front of you.

What’s harder to know is how to get it right, which is why it’s maybe a good idea to enlist the help of a professional. This might either be to write a specific presentation, or to deliver some training so that in future you will be able to make effective sales presentations yourself, in-house. Someone who knows what they are doing and who has a good grasp of your product or service will be able to put together a top quality presentation. You may not know why it works, but it will. It will probably have a simple, clear narrative, with each point leading naturally to the next. The slides will be sparse, not overwhelmingly frequent, and each one will add something unique and useful to what you are saying. They will likely make good use of graphics, or key quotes, though words will not be over-used. They will be uncluttered and quickly comprehensible.

The impact on your sales presentations should be obvious. Powerpoint design can be extremely effective when done well, to complement rather than repeat your spoken presentation. Powerpoint presentations should make best use of the medium, displaying on the screen pieces of information that you want to highlight, or perhaps that cannot properly be communicated in words. Get it right and your audience will take away your message without any difficulty on their part: it will just happen. And that leads to more sales. The return-on-investment of a good trainer or Powerpoint expert should speak for itself.

Please visit https://www.eyefulpresentations.com/

    Luxury Coach Hire – For those special journeys away

    As soon as a chilly snap hits in the UK, travel becomes a nightmare. The trains seem to stop when the slightest dusting of snow falls on the rails and our small, vulnerable cars tend to be ill-equipped to deal with the risks of sliding. Travelling by coach appears as an ideal alternative therefore. If you need to get to London it is not just your arrival in the capital that needs to be thought through but also your mode of transport to the exact location you are expected in once have arrived. Coach hire London provides excellent service where the underground and standard London buses can’t. The drivers of luxury coach hire vehicles keep permanently in touch with travel and weather news services so that they can keep up their high standards in punctuality and reliability. For smaller parties, and when the weather is a little finer, minibus hire can be another excellent alternative to public transport.

    Obviously, public transport can serve us brilliantly when it works as it should but just lately, when weather conditions have been bad and renovations have been underway in time for the Olympics, it has often felt like this service is failing us. On weekends in particular we have grown used to several lines at a time being entirely or part closed for planned engineering works. And this makes our travel frustrating, lengthy and complex. Sometimes it puts us off going to the destination we’d had in mind altogether! As though to add insult to injury, the reduced standards of public transport have been costing us dearly. Bus fares, for example, have gone up by fifty per cent since Boris Johnson became mayor in 2008. And for those who prefer to go underground, a weekly zone 1-2 travelcard costs £260 a year more in 2012 than it did in 2008.

    It must be clear by now that we need to start thinking of something else. Where practical – when travelling as a group, touring several locations over a determined period of time or going to a sports event where parking will be difficult, for instance – coach hire London can constitute that something else. Coaches are comfortable, spacious and these days air-conditioned or heated according to the outdoor climate. In 2012 they are really a far cry from the coaches you may have travelled in some years back on school trips, especially if you upgrade your travel option to a luxury coach hire service. And if you only require something small and simple minibus hire is there for you too.

    Please visit http://www.goldenboy.co.uk/

    Presentation Design – for the age of accelerated visual culture

    Powerpoint design has something of a bad reputation: ‘Death by Powerpoint’ is by now a well-known phrase among office workers who have had to withstand countless meetings and presentations in which someone more senior than them takes it upon him or herself to deliver a stream of information that does little more than raise a yawn. Indeed, when that phrase was coined by Angela R. Garber it communicated with a wide audience who had simply had enough of being treated in this disempowering way. In Switzerland last year, the Anti PowerPoint Party formed, promising to decrease the use of Powerpoint amid claims that it decreased the quality of presentations in 95% of cases. This party advocated the revival of the flipchart as a way of getting us more engaged with information again. This would perhaps signal a reactionary move too far the other way, however; the Swiss party might instead look at teaching people how to use powerpoint presentations more effectively. After all, sales presentations delivered on a flip chart would most probably be deemed deficient in images in this day and age.

    In 2012 it has been suggested that some of us look at between 5-7000 images per day, most of them on computer screens. A figure like this suggests that it would simply be anachronistic to return to drawing diagrams and messages with pen and paper. What’s more, you cannot make smooth transitions to audiovisual clips when you’re using a flip chart, while you absolutely can, seamlessly, With Powerpoint. It is time to focus on how we use Powerpoint, then, not whether we use it or not. Perhaps the most important thing to recall is that this piece of corporate software is simply a tool, not a thing with a fixed usage. Granted, it is not easy to remember this, given that we’ve been conditioned to experience Powerpoint used unimaginatively. But it is possible to adapt our ways for the better.

    We might start improving our powerpoint presentations by considering how we ingest information on our screens. Just take a moment, next time you are reading an article online or watching a YouTube clip, to assess whether you are taking in what you are seeing, whether you are impressed by the content, and whether you could improve on your habits in any way. All of these considerations will feed fruitfully into your plans for improved Powerpoint design and sales presentations.

    Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/