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An Elegant Solution to Meeting Audio: Indoors & Outside

I never really wanted to lead anything. In fact, I spent my career trying to be the second or third in-charge. The guy one tier down the org chart who got stuff done. However, back in May of this year I was once again elected to the board of the Woodland Heights Civic Association. From 2017-2021 I was on this board as director of Communications. This time around I was elected president. I was weak and allowed myself to be talked into it.

WHCA Members Meeting May 14-2024

The member’s meeting (pictured above) where the election was conducted was held outdoors in a nearby park. It was May, so the weather was nice. It wasn’t yet too hot.

The outgoing president used a small, battery operated, PA system to be able to address the gathering of  a few dozen. It looked like a tiny guitar practice amp. It had a wireless microphone with a very limited range. I suspect it was Bluetooth based. The range seemed to be about 6 feet. Take two steps away from the amp, or even turn to face away from the amp, and the signal faded. That made things a little awkward, but the business got done.

Given my background, I’m fussy about AV stuff. This experience stuck in my mind. It started me on the lookout for a better solution for meeting sound. Preferably one that was suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

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Revisiting an old love: JBL Studio Monitors

JBL 705P QuarterIt happens from time to time. I become entranced by some little thing. Something so special. An elegant piece of engineering. And admirable work of art. It’s happened again. This is the back story.

As a young person, I had a fascination with media technology. In fact, my teen years read like a rough draft of Wayne’s World. I volunteered/hung around the small town cable TV studio, learning to use their gear. Shot and edited little programs. Volunteered as a DJ. Lots of hands-on with the media technology the time.

So, when it came time to consider College, I decided that I wanted to study media production. There weren’t many options for media arts education at the time. My friend and I selected a private school in Toronto. It was good. All the teachers were active in the business. But it didn’t have its own facilities beyond classrooms.

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Reminder: Auphonic is still a terrific audio tool!

Auphonic on Lenovo X-1-Carbon copyIt now seems half-a-lifetime ago that I used to commit an hour or two every Friday to join Randy Resnick’s VoIP Users Conference (VUC) calls. That long-running project developed a global community of like-minded geeks, addressing a broad range of technology topics.

If you’re not familiar, VUC was a live call-in podcast that ran from 2005 to 2018. There were around 800 episodes, with numerous guests from the far corners to the communications ecosystem.

It started on a service called Talkshoe, accessible via telephone and SIP. After interviewing ZipDX founder David Frankel (VUC381) about his (then) new project it transitioned to the ZipDX wideband conference platform. Sponsor Voxbone (now part of Bandwidth) was able to provide dial-in access numbers in dozens of countries. When Google introduced Hangouts, VUC naturally transitioned to that new video platform, but always maintained integration with the telephony realm.

One of the things the project required was post-processing of the recording each week, to ensure consistent sound level for all the various participants. In a podcast, dramatic changes in level from speaker-to-speaker is very jarring to the listener.

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Unexpectedly Handy Gadget: USB A-to-C Adapter

Stella &I have been carrying Google’s Pixel phones since their introduction. Each time we bought new phones they came with some accessories. The Pixel 6a we currently use didn’t come with power supplies, but they did ship with a USB-C cable and little USB A-to-C adapters.

Google USB-A to C adapter

In earlier times we needed an A-to-C adapter to facilitate migration from the older phone to new model. Thereafter the wee widgets collected in a junk drawer. That is until recently. I’ve stumbled upon some uses for them.

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