skip to Main Content

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

DAC32: A New Squeezebox Alternative From Germany

This week I was tipped to the availability of a new streaming music player from PolyVection in Germany. Their DAC32 is a nondescript little device that emulates the venerable Logitech Squeezebox.

The company has a nice little historical explainer about the Logitech Media Server & Squeezebox. We got our first Squeezebox back in 2004 (I think) well before Logitech acquired Slim Devices.

DAC32 is essentially an embedded host for Squeezelite, the very same player that is bundled with PiCorePlayer for use on Raspberry Pi. DAC32 includes the host platform & digital-to-analogue conversion (DAC) in a tidy, integrated package. Connectivity is provided by onboard 2.4 GHz b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Power is 5 vdc via a standard coaxial connector.

DAC32 streamer front

Read More

Music on the Front Porch with HiFi-Berry Amp2

If you’ve been here before you may already know that we enjoy a multi-zone music system based upon the long-abandoned Logitech Media Server and Squeezebox network music players.

Actually, that’s only partly true. We still run LMS, but the Squeezebox hardware has gradually been replaced with a fleet of Raspberry Pi SBCs fitted with HiFi Berry DACs, paired to small, powered audio monitors. The four indoor zones all follow this pattern.

Read More
Back To Top