March 2008 – Page 2 – Graves On SOHO Technology

The Path To Whole House Audio: Part 3 – The Logic Behind Powered Monitors

March 27, 2008
Michael Graves
Audio

Speakers + Amps = Powered Monitors

Powered monitors make sense for a lot of reasons. Except for very small models they are generally bi-amped, with an active line level crossover filter dividing the high & low frequencies before the amplifier stage. Then a separate amplifier is provided for each driver. In the case of Behringer’s B2031A, there is 150 watts for the woofer and 75 watts for the tweeter.

This approach allows the designer to tailor each amplifier design to suit the specific driver in question. Amplifier/driver interaction is one of the more complicated things in audio reproduction and optimization here can bring big performance improvements. With the amps right in the cabinets there’s effectively no speaker leads to further complicate the amp/driver relationship.

Is The Cisco IP310 Finally A Wifi Phone That Doesn’t Suck?

March 26, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

Not to belabor the point, but SIP Wifi handsets have been a pretty rotten product segment thus far along their evolution. While the concept is good the implementations have been lackluster. I suffered through 6 months with a Hitachi Cable…

The Path To Whole House Audio: Parts 1 & 2

March 25, 2008
Michael Graves
Audio

Part 1 – Death By Canine Misadventure

Perhaps I should title this series as “A Geeky, Mildly Unorthodox Approach To Whole House Audio.” I’m not kidding. That bit about the dog really happened…more or less.

This is Shadow our five-year-old purebred Labrador Retriever. He is responsible for very little around la maison du Espinosa-Graves, being the lesser quadruped of the group. Yet in January of 2006 he brought about the expiry of my older, much loved Carver stereo system. This set in motion a series of events that has me rethinking my understanding of whole house audio, home theater, networking and media.

Blogging Light This Month, Whole House Audio Series En Route

March 25, 2008
Michael Graves
Uncategorized

From mid-March until late in April is just crazy busy in my day job, so my posting schedule its likely to be light over this period. However, for a number of weeks I've been working on a series that rambles…

The Star2Star Distributed PBX & Astlinux

March 20, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

John Bartlett over at CMP's No Jitter blog has posted an item from VoiceCon about Star2Star's offering which he characterizes as a "distributed PBX." He's right, it's interesting stuff. What he didn't mention is that one of the significant people…

Updating Firmware On The snom m3

March 16, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

This afternoon I finally took some time to update the firmware in the snom m3 phone system. The phones arrived early in January loaded with v1.01, but in the eight weeks since then snom has released v1.07.