carlseibert

Hi, I have a MacBook Pro at work that's plugged in all the time and the little 12 inch I'm on right now is always plugged in, too. Nothing terrible has happened to either. My guess is that the batteries will last until the end of their float life and that's that. We replace a LOT of the magnetic-plug chargers at work. They're not the greatest design in the world (Which is galling. We don't go through Dell chargers like popcorn. Apple needs to make their chargers a little less pretty and a lot more sturdy.) But there's nothing to worry about. The failures are mechanical. The little square connectors simply part from too much use/abuse. If you keep your machine always plugged in, that's not a factor. (And I suspect that using one's own money to buy the machine has some sort of mysterious effect that minimizes cord-yanking damage. Just speculating, mind you :-) -Carl

Hi, I just noticed this. Amarok is in beta now for Windows and Mac. I grabbed a copy for PPC Mac and it seems to mostly work. The new interface in V2 throws me a little, but it seems that the nice hierarchal explorer and the easy to understand playlist window are present and accounted for. The smart playlist algorithm-building gizmo looks great. A couple of widgets were obviously still out in beta land somewhere. I think showing song lyrics in the middle pane is pretty cool. It plays 16/44.1 FLACs and 24/88.2 AIFFs, as well as WAVs and WMAs right out of the box on my Mac. That's encouraging, since I haven't had much luck finding Mac apps that play FLACs in particular or much of anything hi-res. (Cog works, but it's a tad spartan. I haven't looked at Songbird in a while, I must admit.) There are bug reports complaining about the lack of high-res FLAC support on the KDE bug tracker already, so hopefully that will get worked out soon. -Carl

Great article Bob. Required reading. As a sidelight, if anybody else was wondering how it is that digital cables can affect sound, here's an answer. -Carl

Hi Kerry, I'm with you here. My understanding of the playback chain is that jitter is a hardware-dependent distortion. I thought (think) that data is stored in the file in a "time-less" fashion: each number sits there nicely until called upon by by the reading device's clock and is then sent down the road, hopefully with an exactly consistent time gap between it and the samples ahead and behind. Then the little parade gets bunching up or spread out in the imperfect physical world. If there really is a way for a file to store time domain errors, would somebody who is really well versed in file formats jump in and let us know? Perhaps there can be something non-obvious about a certain file can cause hardware to induce jitter as a symptom of some other disease. Now, of course we may be looking in the wrong place altogether. I remember when all digital playback was "perfect" and jitter didn't exist. (I think it helped a lot in those days if your hearing rolled off really badly at about 5KHz.) Then, all of sudden, somebody invented jitter, a measurable digital distortion, and everything went egg shaped. My point here is that everybody feels uncomfortable talking about a problem for which nobody has a solid scientific explanation. And indeed, there may be such an explanation, but maybe we're seeing some symptom of a phenomenon that has yet to be understood or quantified. In the meantime, the best we can do is try to identify repeatable steps that make things sound better and get on with the music. Of course alcohol will be served. Mistakes will be made. And advertising copy writers will say embarrassing things. That's OK, we not talking about life support systems for the space station here. (I wonder what they listen to up there? Hmmm.) -Carl

Chris, A couple dozen posts back, somebody mentioned another forum where a bunch of people who know just enough to think they know more than they do spend all their time insulting each other. Life's just too short. It's to your great credit that on this site everybody is civil and feels free to ask questions that need answers, even if the only honest answer is "it doesn't make sense, but I hear it, too". Keep up the good work! There's a lot in audio that defies easy explanation. That doesn't mean we can't deal with it. There's stuff we can hear but can't really wrap our heads around or measure. Rather than deny that it's there, we need to keep at it and someday we'll be able to understand the phenomena and measure them and all of a sudden things are simple enough. Years ago, speaker design was something of a black art. Look where we are now. But, you know what, some people made some pretty nice sounding speakers long before they could model every last parameter on their PC before touching saw to lumber. That's the big point. We don't need to understand everything perfectly to have fun. If we all try some stuff and get together and compare notes we can make these things work and hear some good music. Right now that's the only way for computer audio. It's all pretty primitive now. Later, when some of it is demystified, we'll all say "Doh!, so THAT"S how it works!". But by then there will be new mysteries. Sorry about getting all philosophical, but it's been that kind of week. Again, keep up the good work. -Carl

This is a bit scary, simply because it isn't part of my normal routine. I wouldn't want to casually plug in my work laptop into the system one day and blow a speaker or headphone diaphragm (not to mention my head) to bits. <br /> <br /> So, do I have this right that SPID/F transceivers automute if they lose the clock signal and are thus immune to this phenomenon? And that some USB implementations will do this and some won't? What about TOSLINK? <br /> <br /> Chris, I assume that with all the USB DACs you've tested, you haven't seen behavior like this if you, say, pull the USB cord when the device is playing, right? <br /> <br /> In the meantime, I'll try to remember to be careful with Windows. Egad. <br /> <br /> -Carl<br /> <br />

Hi Dan,<br /> <br /> I've been playing high-res FLACs on a Mac with Cog with no problem. Cog is super-simple. You use the file system to handle your music rather than a database as iTunes would. But I don't have tons of high-res files and probably won't for a while. So, I think it's perfectly OK until the time when my music server and its clients are up to the task. There are other methods of playing FLACs on a Mac (quite a few threads if you search this forum), especially if you want to play 16/44.1 material. And transcoding is an option, too.<br /> <br /> I'm no fan of Apple or Microsoft either (as you might guess from the avatar) but IMHO, they are both about equally annoying for audio playback. Linux is even less ready for prime time for high-res on the client end, but is dandy fine for running a server. Again IMHO, your mileage may vary. (That said, as an aside, I do have to say that I think Amarok is way better than iTunes.)<br /> <br /> If you have a paid-for computer that you like, I'd say stick with it. Spend your money on music.<br /> <br /> -Carl<br /> <br />

>Has anyone any experience of the really good ones or any recommendations - >has anyone found the cheapo home made ones are just as good? I'd love to hear an answer to this, too. I've been thinking (somewhat idly) of building a CMOY. It's not like it's a major undertaking, but it's not like I've got too much free time on my hands, either. If they really sound good, at thirty bucks worth of parts and an Altoids tin, how can you go wrong? Even if you already have a nice amp, it would be fun...... -Carl

- harsh, tinny, aggressive - YUK! And the damn things would not stay in. A bit more vivid than my description, but I think we're hearing more or less the same thing. As one rep rather candidly put it, "the 'smiley face' response curve". Sound so agressive you'd be afraid that if you lost them, they'd go off and invade a third world country or something. But then sometimes the next model in the same line sounds great. There's no telling. And there's the matter of if you don't get a good seal you don't get good bass. That makes tips and flanges a challenge in their own right. I should have mentioned that I use Comply tips on the Head Directs, althought the Head Direct multi-flange works pretty well in my ears, too. I've not quite ever arrived at a non-annoying tip set up for the Ulimate Ears. YECMV (Your ear canals may vary) -Carl

I have a Total Airhead that I use with Ultimate Ears Fi3s and Head Direct RE1s. My Total Airhead sounds very nice after it has warmed up, which sadly takes 20 minutes or so. It's a little hissy with low impedance 'phones, but it's quite musical. Mind you, mine's a couple of years old and Headroom updates its models pretty often. A buddy of mine who travels a lot more than I do, and thus cares a lot more about his iPod, is using a Ray Samuels Tomahawk to drive UE 11s. The Tomahawk is tiny - think the size of one of those little packs of matches they give away at restaurants - and sounds fantastic, easily besting my Total Airhead or my friend's Headroom Mini (which isn't very mini at all), and a lot of other amps I've heard. I can't comment on his UE 11s, as they are ear mold devices. I can't listen to his and I'm not a thousand dollars worth of curious, but between the two of us we've listened to just about every non-ear-mold in-ear monitor on the market. He claims the UE 11s trump every one we've both heard and are definitely worth the bug bucks. At CanJam this year I took a quick listen to most of the non-ear-mold in-ears there. What really struck me was how different they all sound. (To my ears. And then everybody's ears are different, not to mention their tastes) The other surprise was that I did NOT hear an incremental improvement as you climbed the price points in any given line. In Ultimate Ears, for example, I didn't hear anything in the non-ear mold line I liked better than my Fi3s. I was very impressed by the next-to-top-of-line Shures, but the most expensive ones left me cold. This is tough shopping. Amps you can at least try with your own 'phones. And you can listen to advice of the "I like amp A with cans B better than amp C with cans B" kind. And I've heard a bunch that I like. The little cans themselves are real tricky. Each one sounds so different to each person that unless you've tried a bunch of them in common with somebody and really know their tastes and abilties, their experience won't help you much. And then there's the matter of how the heck you try ear mold monitors without actually buying them. Asking around on HeadFi is probably a good idea. Nobody there has your ears, but somebody there has tried every piece of can goods in the universe. Good luck, -Carl

I guess there are some bugs yet to work out. In my case, the checkout page didn't work correctly with Opera. I had to use Firefox to get it to take my money and in the process I got it to take my money twice. I got a very quick response from Norman Chesky, who promptly refunded the duplicate charge. So even with some rough edges, it's a pleasant place to do business. <br /> <br /> Then, alas, I had trouble with the Java applet in Firefox, which I rarely use on this machine. (is it just me, or do you think maybe Sun's install script should have symlinked the plugin in the right directory?...) <br /> <br /> Which brings me to a useful observation: Once you have the transaction done, you can go back to your account page and start the Java application at your leisure. <br /> <br /> I do like that they use Java for their download manager. I take that as a sign that once they get everything completely in order, they'll be platform independent (insert happy Open Source rant here <br /> <br /> And use Firefox (at least for the time being). <br /> <br /> -Carl<br />

Hi All, I got an email today from SlimDevices touting a new boom box-like client for their music server. It doesn't look like it has digital or line out, so it's not a Squeezebox-plus-speakers. But it might fill the bill for a kitchen or the like. The B+W device (that one plugs an iPod into) of vaguely similar form factor sounds terrific, relatively speaking, so it is possible for something like this to be listenable. http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_boom.html ..or for a page made to a slightly different, and somewhat frightening view of the world, try the version on the Logitech site: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/wireless_music_systems/devices/4707&cl=us,en?WT.mc_id=e_logi-email_squeeze-boom_launch_0808_global&strf=Email# -Carl

A friend sent me this link. It's worth checking out http://money.cnn.com/video/ft/#/video/fortune/2008/07/23/fortune.brainstorm.neil.young.1.fortune -Carl

Hi Daina, That card sure looks like an up-rated version of the PCI version of my device, if that makes any sense. At the time I got mine, they had basically an internal and external version of the same product. Mine is the external. IIRC, the internal 24/96 card sold for about $100; the external USB version was $175, but a buddy of mine scored two of them at Guitar Center one day for ninety-nine bucks each. Of course, I can't find mine on their site today to compare the descriptions. But it looks to me like it will work the same way mine does. -Carl