Welcome
Welcome to my blog, which is mainly gadget and toy focused. The posting are categorised and I hope that you find something that interests you. My hobbies include ham radio, computing, electronics and cycling and others)
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Review: Audio-Technica QuietPoint ATH-ANC3 Active Noise Cancelling Headphones
I’ve been using Audio-Technica ATH-CK5 -in-ear phones for about three years now, and the little plastic loop on one perished and so it doesn’t sit well in my ear any more. This is a shame because these earphones have great sound (considering the price) and have the bulk of the cord removable. They’re designed to be used with a remote control (such as Sony Ericsson make for their cellphones), or by themselves.
Time for some new earphones, and given that I’m going to be spending more time on trains and buses over the next few years I thought that I’d give some noise cancelers a go. I have a set of the original Sony MDR-NC20 noise canceling headphones (over ear) for the last 12 years and I was pleased with their performance, but they’re quite bulky.
After a quick look at Bluetin, an online retailer of headphones based in Singapore I found what I thought was the best option: the Audio-Technica QuietPoint ATH-ANC3. These are in-ear (so are smaller), come with a case, aircraft adapter and had good reviews. The like of Leo Laporte have mentioned these earphones, and given the amount of travel he does, I value his recommendations. Ordering was very easy: a confirmation of FedEx shipping cost, a bank transfer in AUD (no cost to me) and about 6 days later I had the earphones.
First impressions were that they were a bit chunky compared to the conventional earphones. I got used to this and the little control box clips nicely to my belt and so I can leave the iRiver B30 in my pocket.
To me it doesn’t matter what earphones look like (as long as they are not white) — it is the sound that matters. Without noise canceling, in a quiet place, the audio was very good. Quite a bit of bass, no fuzzing and the highs were there too. I’m not an audiophile, but I like the way they sound. With the noise canceling turned on there is a bit of a background whine, possibly a DSP artifact. In a quiet room this is annoying, but that isn’t the place that noise canceling is used. In a noisy place, such as the bus stop or on the bus, the whine is not noticeable. What is noticeable however is how quiet things are — these things are amazing!
The manufacturer claims upto 90% (20dB) reduction in noise, and it wouldn’t be too far off. Low frequencies (which are the easiest to phase match) disappear, but higher frequencies (such as cicadas chirping) are reduced a bit.
A nice feature is a ‘monitor’ button on the control box. When noise canceling is turned on, pressing the button disables the noise canceling and cuts out the music too. This would be good when you’re waiting for an announcement at the airport (or similar) so you don’t have to take the earphones out.
My ears are the ‘medium’ size that Audio Technica fit the earbuds for, but large and small are also provided. The fit is snug and comfortable (quite a lot more so than my Sony earphones). Most people should be able to get these to fit.
The extra weight of the controller is not a problem for bus/train commuting, but I’m not sure that I’d use it for anything more strenuous than quick walking. For fast walking (no backpack) or jogging I’d use some plain earphones so the plastic box wasn’t swinging around — and noise canceling is probably not the best thing on the street when vehicles and other people are around.
The earphones and the supplier are definitely recommended.
In: Toys · Tagged with: Review
Review: Cambridge Audio Sonata AR30 Receiver
Our old stereo amplifier finally got to the point it was taking too long for the right channel to turn on, and our hands were getting sore from thumping it, that it was time for a new amp. Decisions, decisions! Our requirements were quite simple:
- Had to sound good, but not superb
- AM/FM receiver built in
- No more than 150mm high
- Preferably stereo, but surround was an option
After some looking around, with quite a lot of frustration, we found the Cambridge Audio Sonata AR30 receiver. This has a Sirius satellite radio option in the USA, and DAB in Europe (called the DR30), but here in Australia you get nothing. We’ve got DAB+, so DAB won’t work and there isn’t any satellite radio service.
Anyway, the little amplifier is quite amazing, and for several reasons:
- It sounds as good as the old NAD C320 that we had before
- Inputs for CD, DVD, Tuner, AUX, MP3 and iPod (shared with MP3)
- It is tiny! 270mm wide, 67mm high and 285mm deep. It weighs in at 4kg and I think most of it is the toroidal transformer.
- 40W per channel, which drives the Tannoy M2.5 bookshelves quite capably.
- RDS radio is nice, showing song details
- The remote control allows you to turn the amp on and off
- An iPod dock came bundled with it, with full remote control capability.
There are some extra features worth mentioning as these really suit our situation.
- The AUX channel can be renamed. It is now called PVR, which is less confusing when people visit. The changing of sources on the front panel is through a single button, rather than one for each source.
- Gain can be adjusted for the AUX, MP3 and iPod channels. Our PVR and the iPod have output levels quite a bit less than the DVD and CD player. The adjustable gain brings everything up to the same level, so there is less ear stress when changing sources.
All in all, the amp/receiver does a very nice job in a tidy little package. There’s pretty much the same guts as the C320, but 10 years passing means that single-sided through-hole circuit boards have been superseded by surface-mount (and probably double-sided) and so everything is much smaller inside, while retaining the same sound quality. Win win!
In: Toys · Tagged with: Review
Review: Vantec NexStar LX Ultra NAS (Network Attached Storage)
My home ’server’ has been playing up and dropping off the network a bit lately, so I thought it was time for a change. I didn’t want a real server, taking up lots of room and using plenty of power, and so the old ’server’ was SME Server running inside a virtual machine on my ‘do everything’ Eee box.
After looking around on the net and the reviews out there it seemed that the big brand names were quiet expensive and have a few compatibility problems. Umart had the NexStar LX Ultra (also called the 475LX) quite cheap and so I bought one and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA drive to go in it.
The features of the NAS are quiet impressive:
- 3.5″ SATA-2 Drives up to 2TB supported
- Gigabit ethernet (speedy!)
- eSATA and USB2 connections for a local connection (not that I’ve tried it)
- Windows file sharing (SMB) and FTP server
- BiTorrent client (great for sucking down the latest Kubuntu DVD image when your PC is turned off)
- UPnP media server and iTunes server.
- Support for one USB printer (but I have a USB dual print server, so I don’t use the one on the NAS).
- 80mm cooling fan (needed for the Brisbane summer without air conditioning).
The manual showed how to put the drive inside (requires a screwdriver, so not as streamlined as the more expensive boxes) and that was pretty much it. The user interface is very basic, but does the job. Some guides would have been good, so this might help someone:
- Change the admin password before doing anything.
- The hard drive needs to be formatted first, before any shares can be set up. Go into ‘Disk Utility’ (on the left) and click the “Format” button (yep, the little one way over on the right hand side).
- In the Status page decide what services you want to have. SMB & FTP can each be turned on or off, and the host name and workgroup name should be set.
- Also on the Status page is a button for the time setting. If your firewall lets the NAS talk to the world it can set the time automatically with SNTP. The default server is clock.isc.org, but I’m using oceania.pool.ntp.org to spread the load. I’d suggest using an NTP pool near you.
- Setting up SMB shares is odd. The first thing to do is to create a user. Do that. Users can have read/write privileges, or just read only. Once the user is created, select that user and click on the Modify button. The sharing list has two panels. On the left are the available shares and on the right are the ones that the user has access to. The PUBLIC share is a default, but the Create button lets you make more. Once the share is created it can be added to the user with the arrow buttons. When the shares are set up, click the ‘Back’ button.
- FTP access is basically the same deal. Create a user or two, and then assign permissions for the various shares. The shares are common between SMB and FTP so you only have to set them up once.
- If you are going to use BitTorrent, you need to define where the files will go, and optionally set up the email notification for when jobs are complete.
- The media server can share three types of directories: photos, video and music. You can have the same share for each, or separate out your files.
Performance is pretty good. I’ve got it plugged into my router (which has a 4 port switch) but I connect wirelessly using an Access Point plugged into the router. Transfers of 15+GB when doing backups work quite well and don’t drop out. There is a programmable spin-down interval to stop the hard drive, and while the drive is spinning up there can be a delay of 5-10s before the shares respond. It works with my Beyonwiz DP-S1 PVR as a source of streaming AVIs and MP3s. This makes watching Vodcasts and Podcasts quite convenient.
Final conclusion is that it is a cheap, fairly quiet, not-ugly box that simply does what it needs to. No hot-swap, no RAID, no fuss.
In: Computing · Tagged with: Review
Review: iriver B30 Music Player
My old iPod Nano (first generation, 4GB) was starting to get a little long in the tooth and so I’ve had a good look around at the options for replacement. The choice came down to two: the latest ipod nano with video playback, and the iriver B30.
I’ve gone with the B30 for a few reasons:
- It has a DAB+ digital radio tuner built in. Extra channels, ability to record, great sound quality.
- There is a micro-SD slot so the memory can be increased
- I can use music software other than iTunes, or I can just copy files on and off it.
- It uses a standard USB connector for transferring files and for charging.
There are more photos of the B30 in the photo gallery.
The B30 has a built in speaker that is surprisingly clear and loud. The vibrating haptic feedback takes a bit to get used to, and since there isn’t any physical feedback it can be a little tricker than the ipod to drive — it isn’t possible to change volume or tracks with it in your pocket. There is a g-sensor that can tell which way the player is being held, but I found that it was worse than useless. The only place it worked was the music player (DAB and video are landscape all the time), and it would skip songs (the shake function) when walking along.
Having the full video screen lets you view album art, station logos and news/weather updates. The character based DAB+ players miss out on this, so even though the B30 is small, it has a heap of features.
It is possible to record to internal memory from the microphone (memo taker), FM radio, or from the digital radio. The digital recording pretty much pipes the AAC data from the transmission straight to flash so the quality is excellent.
DAB+ is transmitted from the Channel 10 site in Brisbane, and coverage is good in the western and northern suburbs where I’ve tried it out. I can listen to ABC News Radio on a train for the first time (25kV AC power and steel carriages don’t go so well with AM transmissions), and similarly at work the quality is better. On a bus about 5mm of antenna needs to be exposed, but iriver thought it through. The fat part of the antenna is at the top, and there is a hinge so 40mm or so of antenna can be laid across the top of the music player.
Video playback is smooth, even with AVC encoding like that used on vodcasts intended for ipod viewing. I’m a fan of Car Pool by Robert Llewellyn (or Red Dwarf and Scrapheap Challenge fame) and it plays back very nicely.
Now that I am free of iTunes, I am using Juice as a podcast manager and Songbird to manage music. SyncToy manages the file copying to and from the B30 — Songbird isn’t quite there yet with support for music players that mount as a drive, but is good for MTP players (although a new version is now out that I’ll try). If I want to share a podcast with someone else I can simply copy the file off onto their computer if they have a standard mini USB lead — it is that simple. The only hassle with managing files this way is that the database in the player has to be rebuilt when files are deleted or added. This isn’t required if you use the iriver software (iriver plus 3), but that software is sufficiently revolting that you won’t mind rebuilding the database by hand!
Two accessories I have purchased are pretty much the only two accessories there are: a screen protector film and a case. A silicon skin was supplied by iriver, but I prefer a full case so I can carry the music player in my bag without risking damage to its lovely screen. The screen protector came from Korea and the case is a Tuff-Luv, made just for it. The case supports the player with some rails on the side and these are very secure. A cutout has been made in the top (where the case ‘hinges’) to allow for the antenna to be extended.
The iriver B30 takes a bit of getting used to, and is not as polished as an ipod, but is more capable and less restrictive to go with it. There aren’t the docks, cables and car adapters that there are for the apple products, but it is a fairly cheap way of getting into digital radio (if it is transmitted in your city) with a good music & video player thrown in.
In: Toys · Tagged with: Review
Wire Doublet Antenna
I have built and installed a ‘doublet’ antenna for HF use at home. There is some rough details on the doublet at Hamuniverse, but basically it is two pieces of wire, fed from the centre with open wire feeder. Ladder line can be used (and many people use the 450 ohm ladder line rather than 300 ohm TV ribbon). The doublet is not tuned to any particular frequency — I sized mine at 29.5m simply by choosing the largest antenna I could fit between the two support trees. An antenna tuner is used to provide the match to the transceiver. I’ve used a couple of stainless steel thimbles to provide mechanical robustness in the ‘figure of 8 loop‘ knots that join the antenna wire to the guy wire (which runs down from the tree and is tied off at ground level). The thimbles are a little hard to see, but they make the coupling stronger. The guy line is ‘polycore’ clothes line, which has a non-conductive core (most important), a slippery outer jacket (slides through trees easier) and is designed for use outside.
Since the doublet is not tuned, there will be a VSWR mismatch in the feed line. It is for this reason that it is critical that the doublet is fed with a balanced feed line. I’m using open wire feeder that is made by Woodtech Electronics. This has a nominal impedance of 600 ohms and has very low loss, even in the rain because there is very little between the two conductors. A fibreglass t-piece is used to provide the mechanical coupling for the antenna and the feed line, as well as a place to bolt the conductors together.
It is best if the open wire feeder is kept away from metallic objects, such as the gutter on the side of my house. Fortunately the roof is concrete tile, so there is no interaction with any roofing iron. I’ve tied the feeder off to give some clearance. A 1:1 current balun (manufactured by Woodtech Electronics) is used to convert the BALanced feed line to an UNbalanced coaxial transmission line that connects the antenna to the antenna tuner. Coax is very lossy when there is a high VSWR, so it is important that this coax is as short as possible, and fairly chunky too. I have some RG213 to make new leads, but at the moment I am using some cheap & nasty RG58 from a local electronics shop (the light blue one, not the yellow one).
My station is nice and simple, and consists of the Yaesu FT-817 transceiver, LDG Z-11pro auto-tuner, SignaLink USB interface and my old Sony laptop. The computer headset is used to make listening a bit easier (the FT817 supports stereo headsets) and I’ve built an interface that lets me use the mic with the radio. A foot switch makes operating fairly easy too. I use Ham Radio Deluxe v5 beta for logging and to control the radio, with a home made CAT interface.
I’m happy with the performance, and have had a few conversations. I was able to easily monitor the Sydney-Hobart yacht race radio checks on 6215kHz prior to the race starting. This afternoon I had a rag-chew with three or four other hams scattered around Queensland (from Emerald, Kingaroy, Ipswich and Maclay Island), which is a first for me on 5W with the Ft817.
Thanks for supporting Movember
Movember has been and gone, and thanks very much for those of you who made donations.
Movember aims to “change the face of Men’s health”. The partners this year are the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue: the national depression initiative.
If you would like to support these worthy organisations please visit my donation page. I’m not sure how long donations are accepted for, so be quick if you’d like to donate.
Update: 1 November2009
Today is the first day of Movember, so the beard had to go. Here are photos of before and after. Click on the photo for the full size photo if you dare!
Update from 15 November:
Update from 27 November:
People reading printouts while walking back to their desk are dangerous
I’m getting sick of people burying their noses in their freshly printed papers while meandering back to their desks.
To combat this menace I have created a sign, to be afixed near a photocopier or printer.
Here’s the artwork for the symbol if you want to make your own sign.
The wording for the sign uses the RoadGeek fonts by Michael Adams. Thanks Michael for such a great set of fonts – it makes home-made look much more professional.
Firefox addons for small widescreen computers
The screen resolution on my Fujitsu P1620 is 1280×800, which is pretty generous if you’re back in 1999. Webpages tend to be designed for 1280×1024 or higher now, and there is a lot of a scrolling with the smaller screen. Two addons for Firefox that I discovered today take advantage of the wide aspect of the laptop screen.
These are:
- Tiny Menu, which replaces the standard ‘File Edit View …’ menu with a single button that the menu drops down from.
- Tree Style Tab, which moves the screen tabs to the side and builds a hierachial tree of web pages.
I moved the icons from the Navigation toolbar to be beside the menu button, along with the address bar and search bar. I then turned off the navigation toolbar. Tree Style Tab by default collapses the tree to be ‘less confusing’, but I found that it was distracting and I prefer to see all the windows that I have open. The setting for that is in the right-most tab in the addon’s Options.
The screen captures below show the difference that these utilities make:
'Before' using my desktop PC at 1280x800
'After' with the add-ons installed on the Fujitsu.
Every little bit of space helps!
Improving Vista performance – reduce visual ‘bling’
I was looking over a brand new Dell Studio laptop at work today and the owner was complaining bitterly about the performance of Vista on this 6 week old machine. The specs were good (4GB RAM and plenty of processor power). He was surprised how my ‘under powered’ Fujistu performed with only 2GB of RAM and a 1.2GHz processor.
All of the visual prettyness was turned on the new Dell, including the animated window motion and the Aero effects. I walked him through reducing the glitz, and it dawned on me that the ability to shut some of the unnecessary effects down was quite well hidden. Here’s how you do it:
- Open Control Panel
- In the search box (top right corner), enter ‘System’. Click on the System icon that appears in the body of the control panel.
- Click on ‘Advanced system settings’ on the left hand panel. Give Windows permission to run it.
- Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab at the top of the window that appears.
- Click on the ‘Settings …’ button in the Performance frame (the top button).
A new window titled ‘Performance Options’ will popup. Choose ‘adjust for best performance’ and then turn the following options back on:
- Enable desktop composition
- Show preview and filters in folder
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show thumbnails instead of icons
- Show windows contents while dragging
- Smooth edges of screen fonts
- Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons
The above settings will give a look very similar to what you had before, but with better performance. For ultra-fast (but basic looking), choose the ‘Best Performance’ option, but turn on ‘Smooth edges of screen fonts’.
Once these settings were applied things ran very quickly — more quickly than they really should have! I prefer to have the visual crud disabled as it doesn’t provide any extra functionality and is quite distracting. If you like the eye-candy then choose the ‘Best Appearance’ option and the computer will be back the way it was shipped.
