Year: 2010

Ok – after a week, the Onkyo amp is officially on Probation.

What’s the problem ? First movie played back just fine but when watching Attack of the Clones, the sound was repeatedly blipping out. There’d be a few minutes good and then a half a second where the sound cuts out. Revenge of the Sith tonight was better, only a couple of blips through the movie. Music afterwards was bad though, a couple of blip-outs per track. I suspect a few causes at the moment :

New cable isn’t up to the job. I got my new HDMI cables before watching Clones.
Heat – this is what I don’t want it to be because it’s cooler now than it will be in the summer.
Other cables went loose and are interfering.
(edit – add in “insane copy protection interference” to that list)

I have a big suspicion that it’s a heat problem because the top case of the amp is a little too warm for comfort. This is really not what I want the problem to be though because that’s a definite Return Of Goods scale issue. I have the amp sitting in reasonably open space on a wicker basket, so there should be no problems with cool air getting in to it.

I have my doubts about the cables too. When I first got the amp, the iTunes sound came in through proper wires. You can trust wires, they usually stay in where you put them. Not so much with the optical fibre method which I switched to on Monday. Point proven tonight, where for 20 minutes or so after finding out why the music was cutting out (fibre plug had come half out) the playback’s been fine.

What I said about wires holds true. Before, it was a little headphone jack. You’ll know what I mean by those, it’s how your headphones plug into iPods. Solid and reliable, unlike the gimmicky optical link that’s far too flimsy. I’d like to keep using the optical because it’s marginally better quality but may be forced to fall back to proper wire.

Crossing my fingers that the optical thingy was making the amp go “Hey ! New source, let’s check it”, which could be why the movie playback was cutting out. I shall have to test that Very Soon. (Star Wars A New Hope is next – but not tonight) I’ve power cycled (pull plug, walk away, count to 5, put plug back in) the amp and after 20 minutes it seems better. I’m a bit happier now because I have a supportable theory, I just really do hope it’s not a heat problem.

I have a few years of guarantee, so there shouldn’t be issues (except parking !) if I have to go as far as taking it back. I just dislike giving up like that. I see more evaluation time coming 🙂

(Techie PS bit – there’s no real difference between “proper” wire and optical fibre for domestic use. But there’s plenty for bigger scale data cabling. Optical is far superior when the distance is more than a few metres but again, the issue is in connections which are far more sensitive)

Firstly – Happy birthday Craziequeen !

Chipmunk ? I can get a bit excitable sometimes.

It manifests in a similar way to hyperactivity, in that I’ll suddenly become a lot quicker. I’ll react quicker, talk quicker (which isn’t necessarily a good thing cos I trip up over words more) and generally go for the harebrained solution that comes to mind first instead of thinking through what I’m about to do. I’ve hit on the word Chipmunk for it.

I have mixed feelings about Going Chipmunk. On the one hand, I have an energy and vitality that can be missing sometimes. But on the other hand, I can upset people by not thinking about what I say before I say it. And the wrong things come out. Hopefully I don’t do that too much. There’s a matter of focus too. At the moment, I’m itching to do “something” but when it’s come to testing Xbox through the new amp, that wasn’t what my subconscious wanted to do. It’s better than the alternative, which has me struggling to get the motivation to do anything.

Xbox play didn’t last long mostly cos my subconscious wanted to be listening to music 🙂 Which is what I’m doing at the moment (Robbie Williams greatest hits) while pondering what I do after blog post. I think it’ll be more book, as I’ve given up (for now) on David Weber’s Storm From The Shadows in favour of the 6th of 6 Jack Campbell Lost Fleet books. David Weber’s a fairly inconsistent author. Some of his books are action spectaculars, perfectly paced with plenty of the space fleet actions he’s good at writing. Others are deeply mired in politics which at the end of the day, are meaningless. I’m 300 pages into Storm and nothing’s really happened yet, apart from a bit of set up. Boring.

So I’m finishing the Lost Fleet saga instead 🙂 all the while doing more extensive “evaluation” of the new hifi gear.

What’s the main difference between hifi and the basic squawk boxes ? It’s the detail. Something basic will passably reproduce the more prominent bits of music. However, hifi excels in pulling out the bits in the background. That’s the intricate bits like the hundred different instruments in the orchestra. Tori Amos feet on piano pedals. Bits of voice on a Snow Patrol track that I never knew where there.

Had some late nights this week “evaluating” the bits with just … one … more … track 🙂 I think I have them trained now because I’ve found the “Pure Audio” setting that turns off all the processing. There’s still variation in quality because I’m listening to MP3’s which in pure music terms, just aren’t all there.

The alternative to book would be gaming. I’ve reawakened the gaming addiction but it’s being tempered by issues with my arms and fingers. I suffer from RSI in my wrist due to a long association with computers. It’s with me now and I manage it by keeping an eye on how much computer time I get. There’s also the shoulder issues which get better or worse depending on the game.

Or cleaning. Need to get the house tidied up “soon”. Something the Crazies haven’t done for a while is have a pizza + movie night, which is something we like to try and do around birthday or Xmas season. Could well be my place this time around so I can show off the new stuff. Plus rearranging stuff for it is giving more room. But before that, a good tidy and cleaning will be needed.

Gotta put down the Dust Bunny Rebellion. Or die trying ! Maybe I can put Chipmunk Syndrome to good use over the weekend.

Before launching into the main post, a few words for an Auntie who passed away this weekend. We always got a very warm welcome when visiting the Northern branch of the family and a lot of that was due to this lovely lady who I had the great privilege to have as an aunt. Very sad to hear that she’s gone, thoughts go out to the Rotherham people.

Cunning plan : head over to get new eleccy bits on a Sunday when, theoretically, traffic will be quiet.

Doh ! So much for the cunning plan, I ended up having my arms almost coming off carrying half of the new toys the couple of hundred yards to the car park. (I decided to take the Richer Sounds people’s advice on the other half and parked outside the store)

So – what have I got ?

I got bored of waiting for the Denon kit, plus I was reading reviews that said that their budget AV kit was a bit lacking compared to the competition. So I went for an Onkyo TX-SR508 and a set of Tannoy SFX5.1 speakers. This afternoon was spent setting it all up after this morning had me dismantling the old gear and moving things around a little. (there’s still a bit to do there)

<> Quick addon – the Onkyo is now On Probation. I’m getting regular sound cut outs of about 0.5 secs each time. Suspect that it’s a heat related that the amp has no business having because it’s in open space.

The Onkyo receiver is simple enough, you put the multitude of wires in and turn it on. I’m impressed with how seamlessly it has snuck in between my various bits and pieces. Cable box goes to telly as before, telly sends audio to receiver. Blu-ray goes through receiver to telly. Itunes will go in the front for now, until I get me another lead. Xbox will go in there too but is another that needs a lead because I got to scavenging. It has menus that can overlay on to the telly screen.

Let it do its automatic setup and it’s all sorted.

The speakers are a similar story, although I wasn’t really expecting having to cut the leads down to size myself. There’s a decent amount of cable included (looks like 42 strand thickness) and it cut down easily with normal wirecutters. Glad I found some of those, perhaps a scary sign of my maturity (maturity = scary bit) is that I wasn’t looking forward to going Old Skool (teeth) to strip the wires.

How’s it sound ? Telly sounded great, including not having the grating sound that’s marred the telly speakers since I cleaned the dust off.

There’s a lesson : Dust keeps vibration away

I’m now watching Star Wars Episode 1, which (with a little tweak to boost the centre speaker slightly) is sounding quite impressive. It’ll sound better when I have the room arranged to satisfaction as clutter tends to deaden sound. Getting good bass thrum from the loud stuff and it’s picking out the huge selection of noise sources (people in crowd, music from action, things like that) pretty well.

Music testing (extensive) will come later. For now though, I have to draw this post to a close cos the popcorn is getting cold. And the Boonta Eve Classic just started.

It’s getting closer …

That’s Techie Stuff buying situation. There’s people claiming to be selling the amp + speakers that is now definitely a ME WANT. Watching Iron Man 2 off blu-ray (awesome film) tonight kicked it up from “me would likey” to “ME WANT”. You see, most blu-rays come with a soundtrack that my current amp + speakers doesn’t understand, so I need an upgrade.

I also need to move a lot of stuff around, to make a new setup work better. Trouble is, there’s people claiming to be selling it but unless I see a box in a shop, I won’t trust them. I also prefer to buy local too, it’s just so much easier being able to drive to a shop than have to arrange time away from work (or weekends) to pick things up. The internet shop results have a couple of promising options but those options are 100 miles away on the way to/from where my mum & dad live (and 100 miles away from Mom 2 as well).

Local wins out in being able to head back to pick up the bits you should have bought but forgot. Like the 3 trips to B+Q to fix a weepy ballcock. (In this case, it’ll be picking up wire …)

It’s getting closer though. The PC upgrade is getting closer too. There’s now a 22/23″ touchscreen with decent screen performance on the market, made by Viewsonic. So there’s a couple of times (neatly coinciding with a couple of key dates) where I’ll buy stuff coming :

Birthday – the new Denon surround sound set. Hopefully they won’t let me down here.
Xmas – PC Upgrade. The later you leave PC stuff, the better the stuff that arrives. And then you don’t look at hardware or prices for at least 6 months because you depress yourself thinking about what you could have had if you’d waited a week.

The Denon gear will need to be shown off. That’s a given. Which means sometime over the next little while, I’ll need to clear the house out … I live in clutter, which is curious for an OCD tending person. I know where my clutter is though, including the stuff I should have thrown out a while ago. I have it mapped, so clearing it up weirds me out. It’s one of the many contrasting elements of my personality :

Order vs Chaos. Mad Scientist vs Methodical. Sprinter vs Couch Potato. (I do like the feeling of pinning the ears back and GOING FOR IT). Solitary vs Herd. I like my space but it does get awful lonely sometimes.

It’s just coming into Birthday & Xmas season at the moment too, so I’m trying to keep a lid on what I impulse buy. The PC and Denon are both way far out of the present bracket, which makes it safe for me to lust after them.

And it is lust too, lust in the way only toy loving engineers can have.

(We engineers have “normal” urges too – I went ~wibble~ many times earlier watching Iron Man 2, ~wibble~ moments strangely coinciding with Scarlett Johanssen appearing in the Black Widow outfit)

So – showing off the goods. What do I need to do for that ?

Make house presentable (urg). Rearrange lounge (easy). Break out the hoover (whereditgo?). Remove old telly (may need help or forklift). Pass on the old speaker set (see PS below). Find someone who will help me appreciate it (challenge).

I’ll settle for lusting after better bits for the moment and maybe, just maybe will get cracking on cleaning house & rearranging main room.

PS After I get the Denon, I’ll have a Creative Labs DTT-2500 set going spare to a good home … As good as most budget hifi setups at music (comparing to Rotel RA820A amp and Big Tannoy speakers – translation : very decent budget stuff) and it only cost me £160 new about 10 years ago. Very discreet too with small components on display with the big one hidden.

I'm amazed you haven't heard of a couple of these (Fleetwood Mac, Tori Amos, Kate Bush) but the Alisha's Attic's and All About Eves aren't likely to have broken through in the States.

A shame cos they're far superior to the manufactured X factory pop we get forcefed nowadays …

PS Hugs are always welcome 🙂

I gave her a few hugs today……

I've sent her a few too, Until I can administer the real thing of course.

Thank you, my darling boy. It's been a difficult couple of weeks but I'm still standing, sort of…

cq

Someone I know could do with one of these :

oy! I haven't heard of a lot of these guys, I feel old
or American LOL

thanks for all the great links to check out

been thinking about you
sending hugs