28 thoughts on “Fiddly Bits”

  1. 7s with a jack coming to stores near you as soon as $nApple fleeces the fanbots who just have to get the 7 to add to their collection. I guess $nApple does not like freedom of choice.

  3. More of the usual: elites know better than us common peasants about what we want. Apple is a raging lefty company too. Coincidence?

  5. No shit, Sherlock. But $nApple fanbots will scream that is the best “innovation” evah! $nApple can do no wrong. Evah!

  6. Well hey, they had to do something.

    Phone manufacturers are being “called out” (man I hate that phrase) for being teh Earth h8tRz because every time they release an upgraded product, you need to go buy a new charger & cord and toss the drawers full of the old ones you have into the trash…wasting Mother’s precious supply of PVC, see?

    So they are standardizing the charging jack and anyone’s earphones already plugged right in; there’s no proprietary loot to be had.

    So now, you’ll get a set of Bluetooth items which, as the comment correctly points out, you will lose (just one of) in the first week. Wanna Spotify bro? Get your skinny jeans down to the Apple Sto’ and pony up $30.

  8. as the comment correctly points out, you will lose (just one of) in the first week

    Could it be $nApple’s nefarious goal is return of mono?

  10. @Night Writer LMAO!

    Mono won’t work in 21st Century America JPA. Unless millennials have both ears plugged in, the beatz will travel straight through those empty skulls, out the empty ear and invade everyone else’s personal space.

    They’ll scratch one another’s eyes out.

  11. Sorry, not an Apple fan even before this, but the decision is stupid. My car’s too old to have a Bluetooth connection to the stereo so I use the aux input and a cord, which isn’t a big deal since I’ll usually throw the phone on the charger in the car at the same time.

    And yes, Bluetooth headphones can be good, but they are more spendy and frankly I’ve already found a pair of wired headphones that match my ears well and I don’t feel like trying N+256 new pairs of Bluetooth headphones to find ones that match my ears as well. The classical buffs in the audience will understand that while Dr Dre’s “music” will sound just as good(*) on a tin can with string as my Sennheisers, Bach’s Partita #1 doesn’t.

    (*) Actually, reflecting for a bit, Dr Dre would probably sound better in tin can mode.

    So no, the iPhone 7 isn’t on my list of candidates for an update anytime soon.

    Cool fact: you need wired headphones on some of the Moto phones to make the builtin FM radio work since they use the wire on the headphones as an antenna. That’s a great thing to have if you don’t feel like burning data to listen to the radio.

  12. Nerd, it is not just Moto phones. I believe all phones with FM app require wired headphones. But, I think you have just uncovered yet another nefarious $nApple motive – restrict access to talk radio. Intended consequence.

  13. Mitch probably ought to shout “Bad Joe, Bad!” for this thread-jack, but here goes . . .

    I loved my 1970’s stereo rack and Omega speakers, but that stuff has long since died. I now have hundreds of MP3’s on my PC but computer speakers suck. How do I get decent stereo sound around the house without tearing up ceilings to run wires from an amp and tuner?

  14. You can get decent wireless speakers. See here: http://www.pcmag.com/roundup/289429/. They do sound reasonably good. Of course nothing beats pipes, but remember, with MP3 you are not dealing with a continuous spectrum of frequencies, just 1 and 0, so if you lose a couple, meh, no big loss, it is a lossy format anyhow. Oh, and you do get what you pay for.

  15. You know, it occurs to me that if I broadcast the full mp3 or whatever format through wireless, the quality of the sound coming out will simply depend on the quality of the DAC, amplifier, and speaker, no? You can get, after all, nearly perfect transmission with a decent ECC, something you can’t get with wire and analog.

    Now of course, that leaves the question of whether you can get that DAC good enough in the size that will fit in your ear….and of course, the important thing IMO is the fact that independent ear buds will tend to get lost. Funny to think they didn’t get that in the FMEAs!

  16. Now of course, that leaves the question of whether you can get that DAC good enough in the size that will fit in your ear

    Is Bluetooth a digitally transmitted signal?

  17. I’ve read these will cost $160. POD posted on FB that he can’t believe anyone would spend that much on something like this. I replied “millions of fools paid $200-300 for a mediocre pair of headphones because they said “Dre” on the side (and made Dr Dre a billionaire in the process).”

  18. JPA; bluetooth is digital data transmission. So by definition, yes.

    I would also add that the sound quality will also be determined by whether the output stage to get to the desired impedance can be as good in the “ear tampon” (H/T NW) as it can be in the “cigarette pack”, and whether the weight of the DAC/receiver/output stage will impact the weight/quality that can be allocated to the speaker itself. But all in all, one should be able to do pretty darned good with Bluetooth.

  19. Now of course, that leaves the question of whether you can get that DAC good enough in the size that will fit in your ear

    The DACs aren’t the issue. Even a poor one will have a THD of -40 dB. The issue is nearly always how the speakers respond. Even high quality home speakers typically get distortions above -1 dB for certain frequency bands, and ear buds are even worse.

  20. Must. Stop. Geeking. On. This.

    But a couple of observations from someone who had to design these kinds of things at one point.

    The biggest source of distortion in almost any digital audio system is the speakers, which offer non-linear impedance and poor fidelity to a flat output spec. Speakers are nasty beasts to handle electrically, so even if you do a perfectly flat DAC some speakers will just sound better if driven by a lousy DAC whose spectrum just happens to complement the speaker.

    Board designers are a DAC designer’s worst friend. There has been many a time I’ve wanted to go into a board designer’s office with a 2×4 and close the door behind me. You would think that labeling a line “very sensitive, shield and route carefully away from any audio aggressor” would keep the resident board genius from routing another audio output right next to the line, but unhappy experience says otherwise. And that leads to some ugly hacks since “the design is already ramping so what can we do?!” And don’t get me started on, “Why can’t I share the power supply of the audio DAC with the ethernet controller?” ARGH!!!!!!!

  21. Guys, guys, hold up. I don’t want to MAKE my own HiFi like when my Dad was a lad, I want to LISTEN to it. Recommendations for actual products?

  22. I would think a refurbished Carver or Macintosh vacuum tube stereo amplifier would meet your needs.

  23. I agree, EI, but how do I hook it up to the PC without wires? How do I get the music out of the computer and into the stereo?

  24. @Joe: You can purchase a bluetooth transmitter that plugs into your PC. I have one made by Azeca that allows me to listen to audio on the PC with Bluetooth headphones. Granted, a wire is still involved: About 1″ from the headphone jack into the transmitter.

  25. Joe, there’s not enough info on your setup as to what you want, nor any info on a budget to make hard recommendations.

    If you want a new receiver, can live with 20A output, are willing to part with $100 and don’t mind streaming with Bluetooth then something like the Griffin Twenty (go look on Amazon) will work. That works fine from a PC but requires the receiver to be within 30′ of the PC. For streaming from a phone every phone call would interrupt your playing.

    If you have a receiver you want to use and it only has analog inputs there’s something like the Gramofon or Cobblestone (again, Amazon is your friend). WiFi based, they can be farther away from the computer source and are pretty easy to control with an app on your phone and will stream from the Internet or NAS. Early versions of the Gramofon were bad, newer ones are actually ok. You can use something like a Raspberry Pi HTPC for this, but unless you build it yourself (a 30 minute task) you run the risk of getting an older Pi board with a horrible board design with lots of distortion. Building it yourself won’t save you money as compared to the Gramofon, but it will be a lot more powerful, capable, and drive a 1080p screen just fine if you hook it up to a TV instead of the stereo.

    For a receiver with a digital input like HDMI there are tons of devices and I’m a fan of cheap Raspberry Pi based systems. Your mileage will vary based on your level of tech comfort, but I taught a 75 year old to build her own Pi HTPC without any trouble.

  26. Nerd, I only recently discovered the Pi. I have not purchased one yet, but it’s gonna happen real soon.

    What do you think about the kits that come with HMI’s?

  27. JD, your original question was about wireless speakers and I gave you a link to half a dozen. Now you are adding receivers? DACs? How HiFi do you want to get?

  28. I’ve not personally used them, but one of the guys at work built some temperature controller setups using it and liked it. Very easy to interface and writing the software was a breeze even for a hardware type since Arduino is so straightforward. He’s got two setups, one for the heater while brewing his beer and the other for controlling his smoker. His smoker is wood based so he needs the real time control of the venting and wants an alert on his phone for when he needs to add more wood. I’m far less hardcore and I buy my beer pre-brewed and I like my electric smoker since it’s easier to deal with adding chips every now and then when I walk by.

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