Category: audio

While I was waiting for my stereo to be installed, I wandered around Best Buy. I hadn’t done a full store tour in a while, and it was illuminating. After hearing about all of the tablets released at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (I think it was 40!) I wanted to see what a non-Apple one looked like. I could only find one tablet computer, the iPad. I think the competitors are going to have a difficult time, the iPad has a significant lead right now and it doesn’t sound like a lot of them will be out before the middle of the year. There was a lady getting some information about the iPad there. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Best Buy guy not talking nonsense. I deliberated a little, but decided not to be the jerk that cost him a sale by mentioning the free set-up at the Apple store:-)

Best Buy might as well be called the TV store. TVs were easily the biggest part of their sales floor. Once again, I was blown away at how good some of them looked. I had to keep repeating the mantra “You don’t watch TV, you don’t watch TV” in order to avoid buying one. I caught myself thinking that $2000 really wasn’t too bad a price for that TV… Yes, Hockey would be amazing on one of those, but really, I can spend my money on better things. If I were a bigger movie kind of guy I probably would already own one… I checked out the 3d TVs too. Some of them, especially from Panasonic, were impressive. I really can’t see wearing glasses all the time though. The LED backlit displays really do seem to be worth saving up for, there does seem to be a real difference.

Of course, places like that have always played games with TVs in order to mover certain ones. It was fairly obvious as I walked down the aisles that some TVs had their saturation turned down, brightness lowered, etc. There were several others that had the video equivalent of “boom and tizz.” In the audio world, speakers that have impressive bass and sizzling highs really stand out. Of course if you listen to them for a while, you get tired of them. The most natural speakers sound boring when you first hear them. People tend to buy the speakers that get their attention, subtle loudness adjustments are all it takes to steer people towards certain speakers. The same goes with TVs. The classic ploy was to bias the pictures towards blue, guys seem to be attracted to that. Nowadays, excessive brightness, garish colors, and lousy comparisons are the things used to get people to pick one TV over another. The TV section was the only place where people made eye contact with me, let alone offer any help.

What else… I saw several audio bits that were interesting. They sell Martin Logan and B&W speakers, both brands have long been high end audio staples. While I know that the models they sell at Best Buy aren’t their best models, it’s good to know that you can get decent speakers there. I also saw a pair of active speakers I had briefly considered getting called Rokit. They have gotten pretty good reviews… They are also carrying electronics that have always been considered solid mid-fi brands like Denon, Marantz, and Yamaha. Pioneer is still there, but I no longer see any Onkyo, or Kenwood. It looks like you can get a nice sounding system there. When I used to sell this kind of equipment, you really couldn’t.

I was shocked at how many of their electronic displays simply weren’t working. All of the cameras I picked up were dead, and all of the smart phones were static displays only. You couldn’t try any of them out, they just had a sticker showing you what it could look like. Pretty lousy way to show stuff. Honestly, after walking through there, I’m saddened at how low the bar is set in electronics retail. No wonder Apple is kicking tail. I don’t think I’d go there for anything but a TV. Even then, I’d have to have my guard up so that I’m not unduly influenced by their display antics. Are there any other big electronic stores around anymore?

I have been enjoying playing my iPod in my car ever since I got it. The factory CD player had an auxilery port in it and it allowed me to listen to whatever I wanted. After some early issues, I got the sound quality to as good as it was going to get. It was miles ahead of using an FM transmitter, but there were still a few problems. Factory systems are never any good. Even if you get a decent sounding one, you pay way too much for it. The amplifiers in those things are anemic and lead to irritating and headache inducing distortion when you turn them up. I was also using the headphone output from the iPod which while it worked, was hardly ideal from a sound quality perspective. Going though the iPod’s amp before the main one just added to the noise. The biggest issue was a control one. The only way to really change stuff was to pick up the iPod and fiddle with it while I drove. Hardly a safe situation. Well, all of that has changed…

This thing is awesome. There is no CD player in it. Along with plugging in my iPod, I could use the analog input, or pop in an SD card. It sounds like I could potentially plug a flash drive or portable hard drive into it as well, I’ll have to explore that a little bit more. The sound quality has gone up a ton, tighter bass, louder, cleaner, and more understandable. I can control the iPod with it, so no more fiddling with touch controls while driving. It also has some sound shaping controls, their “sound retriever” really does smooth out some of the rough edges that you get with compressed audio. I’m also looking into getting a microphone they make. Using it, the deck can create a custom EQ for your car. For $20 or so, it is probably worth it.

I had considered installing this, along with a pair of speakers, myself… for about 10 seconds. Crutchfield has assured me that it was no problem, but after looking at the instructions I decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I had Best Buy install it instead. Good thing too, they had to do a few things to make stuff fit, I wouldn’t have had the ability to do it. it’s funny, in these days of $300 headphones for iPods, installing a stereo that can control it in your car would seem like a no brainer. All told, the deck, a pair of new speakers, the hardware for installing it, and the install came to a total of $350 or so. If you didn’t get new speakers, it would probably only run a little over $200. Very, very excited about this. Oh, and thanks mom for the great Christmas present!

So, my Squeezebox Touch got here today. In a lucky break, so did my switch and ethernet bridge. To recap, the SB Touch is a network/internet music player you can hook up to your stereo. I can stream the music from my computer via the network to it, or I can use it independently to listen to internet radio stations.

Here’s how I set it up. Since I’m on FIOS, I was able to use a MOCA ethernet bridge to get the internet from the coax cable in my room. I took that ethernet cable and attached it to a 5 port switch. That gave me 4 more ethernet ports. I then simply hooked the computer and the SB Touch into the switch and I was done. I now have the music from my computer going over our network in the house.

I have been enjoying listening to my music without having it bog down my computer. I’ve also been enjoying the radio. I listened to my college’s radio station WICB for hours, they are still one of the best college stations I have heard. I can also get all the worthwhile local stations like WTOP for news, and the Public stations too. I need to figure out when a Prairie Home Companion comes on so I can start listening to it again… All of these sound much better than regular FM, and as far as I can tell I can get damn near any station in the US.

Of course the other great thing that internet radio allows is the ability to use services like Pandora or Slacker. Slacker is a really good internet service. They sound great and have a lot of diverse stations. Pandora is a service that allows you to make your own stations based on an artist or song. It will pick others like the one you picked and then you can tell it what you like and don’t like to narrow the view down. So far, I have made Buddy Holly radio, Silversun Pickups radio, Tito Puente radio, Beck radio, and Where is My Mind radio (from the Pixies song).

I overspent on all of this, but I am already really enjoying the experience and plan on taking the radio around the house since it ties into the wireless network as well. My iPod touch controls it through the wireless as well. This is the first audio toy I’ve bought in years, and it’s a winner. I’ll let you know if I find any hidden gems out there while “twisting the dial….”

I went into Best Buy today looking for a particular item. They weren’t really helpful, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for, but I did get a chance to wander around a bit. I hadn’t been in one for quite a while. The TVs were, as always, quite impressive. If I actually watched much, I would have bought one straight away.

The LPs surprised me. They didn’t have many, but there they were. I had heard that vinyl had made a comeback, but I had assumed that it was mostly for DJing. They had a Springsteen, GnR, and something else that didn’t really lend itself to mixing. Later o, I also saw about 5 or 6 record players, most with USB outputs.

The oddest things I saw were both from Sony. Did you know that they still make a cassette walkman? It’s 40 bucks! I don’t think I saw any cassette tapes around, but there were the players. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to use a cassette deck these days, mp3 players are around the same price and are oh so much better. Even the LPs included mp3 downloads of the albums. Why cassette?

The other oddity was a 300 Cd changer, it was around $300 if I remember correctly. If this was 1995, it would be the most amazing thing ever, but now? It would be far better, in all respects, to simply rip those 300 cds to your computer and then hook that up to your stereo. Even if you ripped them in a lossless format to preserve the sound quality the cost, the reliability, and the functionality would be far higher with the computer.

The sad thing is that the record players seemed more sensible than the cd players these days, how’s that for irony?