There's no Such Thing as a Good Remote

My perfect remote control is an old Marantz RC2000. It was a hungry beast when it came to batteries, but it was an awesome remote when it came to behaving just like you wanted it to, visibility and reliability.

The Logitech Harmony 520 remote, by comparison, was svelte, a battery miser, and an absolutely selfish, manipulative bitch of an appliance. I took particular glee in recycling it's innards when it froze up on me and no amount of replacing the batteries would work. About a week after I had thrown it out, Logitech sent me a very nice e-mail informing me about the remote's "safe mode" boot process. Sorry, too late. I've moved on. Damned if I want an appliance in my life which needs a "safe mode" to boot. Damnit, would it have cost them that much to include a reset button underneath?

I purchased a new Marantz 1400 from Accessories4Less which made it a bargain, and it arrived promptly, with no fuss.

The good news:

1. Easy programmability, not only text, and buttons but especially, the MACROS are a breeze compared to the lame ass browser/wizard based interface Logitech uses.
   
2. Most devices were built in.
   

The bad news:

1. Really poor visibility of the LCD
   
2. Won't learn new Samsung TV commands (but built in Samsung codes work), leaving me without the compass buttons.
   
3. Theta commands not built in.

Am I happier than I was with the Logitech? Yes! Am I completely satisfied? No.

For those of you out there with remotes which do everything you need, tonight, when you are watching Stargate SG-1 re-runs in Dolby Surround, hold the remote close to your breast, and tell it how lucky you really are.

The New Era of Low Quality Appliances

You know, I hate to say this, but my experience lately with high technology gadgets has been really terrible.

Let me explain. Over the last two years I've invested in the following:

• Samsung 50" 1080p DLP TV
  
• HP PC
• New NVidia 7600 video card
• Hauppague WinTV-PVR USB2 TV recorder
  
• Logitech Harmony 520 remote.
• Netgear USB Wireless adapter
• Netgear WGR614v4 Router (not so new)
• Pentax Optio pocket digital camera
• Lumix Digital camera
• Panasonic 3 station phone system
  

In almost every case, there was some disappointment involved.

First, I really didn't want a 50" TV, but my GF complained about the 37" TVs we saw being too pixilated, and Samsung was really the only brand she liked. So four hours of arguing later, she sees the latest 50" DLP and says "Oh, that's nice" and I'm so frustrated I say "DONE!" and we buy it, for our tiny living room with the couch 5' away from it! Take it home, lug it up the stairs myself, turn it on, and after it's finished scanning all the cable channels, it's working perfectly. For 6 hours. Call up Samsung on 6/2. 6/9 they call me and tell me that the parts they ordered aren't in yet, will have to wait until 6/15 or so to get the repair person out. I'm out $2k for six hours of TV. Also, now that the TV is in, my GF says she doesn't care if I get a small TV or not. The she tells me in the same breath they aren't as good. Lesson learned: Pay for the delivery, so that if the thing breaks you can have them haul it out and exchange it for you.

The HP PC which I am typing this on was sold to me as having half a gig of memory, expandable to 4. Well, the truth is, it had less than 512 Megs usable because part of that was used by the on-board graphics card. And despite the Staple's salesperson's confident assurance that it would take 4 Gigs, it won't. On the plus side, (probably thanks in part to the diligent work of US Attorney's before the Bush purge) the $50 rebate offer was actually paid in a timely manner.

The WinTV-PVR/USB2 appliance stops working if the CPU gets too hot, which is often unless you add a heatsink and fan.

For better performance with Half-Life 2 I purchased a new NVidia 7600 card at Best Buy. The NVidia card keeps having random stuck thread issues when replaying things recorded in Windows Media Player, it's especially bad if I have other windows open.

The Logitech Harmony 520 remote control is now sitting in the trash, because after having to change a configuration again through the stinking Hell Hole of a web site they use to manage your remote, it froze up on me and there's no way to reset it to the original factory conditions. No real "reset" button on the bleeding thing.

Both networking devices purchased from Netgear also are also having reliability problems. I know for a fact that the router overheats, and suspect the USB adapter does as well. How do I know? Well, after adding heat sinks and fan to the WGR614v4 router, the thing ONLY breaks down when the fan stops working. I would totally throw it out if the Linksys routers worked with my VPN software which I use to teleconference from work. But guess what? Even though Linksys and my VPN software are made by different divisions of Cysco, they actually don't work right. Also, I find Linksys installation software to be buggy, and din't integrate well with Windows XP on my previous PC. So I'm basically F*d.

The funny thing is, the Netgear wireless router appliance is about the same size, shape and has the same basic layout as the Hauppauge! WinTV-PVR appliance. Makes me wonder if they share the same industrial design house. Also, I've been really tempted to buy the new Netgear wireless media devices, so I can hook it up to my new Samsung DLP TV (if it's ever working again) but I read a couple of reviews online that complained about it inexplicably dropping out just like the problems I've had with their router and USB wireless adapter. Makes me want to stay away from it unless I can get an Ethernet cable run to the living room.

The Pentax Optio camera froze during a download and wouldn't come back until after I threw it into the trash. My GF rescued it so it's hers. The Lumix camera on the other hand has worked great, but it's sure bulky by comparison.

The Panasonic wireless phone works fine, but if the power is out for too long the base station forgets what time it is. Crap, it's 2007, don't they have that figured out yet?

So, I guess the point to all of this is, I used to like improvements and upgrades, but damn, with the low reliability of electronics being sold these days, I really am put off on ever upgrading anything again. I don't care if they release 100 Gbyte wireless routers. So long as the one I have works, I'm leaving them alone, because it seems to me that I'm going to have to buy 2 of anything in order to get 1 that works. So from now on, I'll double the price of anything I buy before I decide to purchase a new one or not.

Is it wrong of me to want things that are simple, and reliable? I don't want Microsoft running my refrigerator, I don't want a USB adapter in my car, I don't want an operating system in my camera, and I don't ever, ever want to wait for my phone to boot up. I press the button, and it is waiting for me to dial. End of story! No flashing lights, no slide shows as it figures out that it's a phone, nothing.

Based on all of this, go ahead and ask me how many years it's going to be before I give up my landline telephone.

Ebay Madness

About two months ago I ordered a vintage Yamaha amplifier to use for my surrounds in the home theater setup. I ordered it from a vendor with a fantastic rating who did a lot of business with pro audio gear.

It took him a month to get me the amplifier, and when it got here it had a bad relay. Honestly, I should have given him a negative rating, but since it gave me an excuse to open the amp up and do things to it, I only gave him a neutral rating.

Anyway, the point is, because of this, my next project is upgrading a Yamaha P2075.

I've already replaced most of the power supply caps and by-pass caps. I removed the relay, and replaced it with a relay in a socket. 20 years from now when this relay goes bad, it will take some one 3 minutes to replace it. I've also removed and socketed the op-amps with NE5532. Not top of the line anymore, but they were good enough to give the Benchmark DAC-1 a Class A rating from Stereophile. If this amp wasn't just for the surround speakers I might use the latest op amp from National semi, their much lauded LM4562.

Next week I'll be finishing up the capacitor upgrades, including replacing the coupling caps and also replacing cement resistors with top-of-the-line Mills 5 Watts.

By the way, I really really like the Mills resistors for reliability. I accidentally shorted a Tandberg supply with them in it, and it was only when I noticed smoke coming off one that I realised what I had done. That must have been 10 seconds of severe overload. Once I let everything cool off, the Mills resistor measured exactly the same value as it had started with. Because of this, wherever the reliability of a power resistor is in question, I always use a Mills. Plus, they have a great range of values. If I can't use those, I will use a severely over-speced Vishay Metal Film Power (PR02, 03, etc.)

Next time I'll post before and after pics.

Cheers!

High End Hi Fidelity: Surviving as an Industry

Lots of interesting things are happening to the Hi Fidelity Industry (HFI). By HFI I mean several different groups:

• Recording artists, and music labels
• Hi Fi equipment manufacturers
• Retail stores of CDs and stereo reproduction equipment
• Internet Radio
  

Some is positive, and some is negative, but I think that the negative will eventually become positive.

The advent of MP3 music players and online music providers has begun to destroy the bastion of power that were major record labels. The biggest contributor to this isn't the technology itself, but the ability of consumers to purchase single tracks at a time. While this may mean the end of the concept album in pop-music land, I think in the long run, it will mean the decrease of influence that major record labels will have on our culture and music.

Also, recently record labels have tried to destroy small mom and pop internet radio stations by imposing a flat fee per record played. This is a boneheaded move. The independent artists will quickly find this as an opportunity, and regroup, offering the independent radio stations a sweeter deal than they had before. The indy-radio station will return, only with even LESS pop music/major label influence. Instead of destroying the indy-station, they will just reduce the relevance and power that "major record labels" will weild.

Another interesting trend is that serious music listeners are buying local, and directly from artists. The closing of 800 CD stores in 2006 will mean that music listeners will be buying more from their local symphonies, and jazz ensembles than they did before, meaning at the end of the day that musicians, especially good musicians, will make more money than they ever did before. This coupled with the inddependent radio station revival which will occur, will mean we will at the end of the day get much better modern music than we ever did before.

I also think that we are going to see more classical music being actually recorded. Why? Because with the closing down of major stores keeping back-catalogs dating back 50 years, there will be more immediate demand for the purchase of CD's before, and after concerts today.

I was going to write this all together as a long post, but I think I will stop here, and post more tomorrow about how the equipment industry will survive as well.

Power Conditioners Go Green

A few years ago PS Audio and Richard Gray helped energize the market for power conditioning products. Both seemed to offer real, measurable improvements in sound and video quality. In a way they started a race which continues to this day.

While the Richard Grey appoach has always been inherently "green", the PS Audio approach certainly was not. By using class A/B amplifiers, they would burn a lot of electricity and fossil fuels just by being turned on and they were every expensive per watt. On the other hand, the Power Plants could guarantee the quality of the output signal, something RG's approach, being in parallel with your devices, could not do.

Because of this, when ExactPower showed up with a radical, green approach to generating perfectly clean AC power, I thought surely the Power Plants would have serious competition. By using a buck/boost transformer in the path of the AC, they could blow the Power Plants out of the water in terms of wattage, with efficiency's over 90%, compared to the 50% or so efficient Power Plants.

To my surprise, Exact Power doesn't seem to have made many inroads. They list one dealer and seem to want to do most of their business over the net. I have no idea how many units they sell a year.

In the mean time, PS Audio has come up with a much more efficient design. They aren't giving out many details on how they are doing it, but it sounds a lot like they are borrowing some ideas from Bob Carver's amplifiers. Carver amplifiers would use power supplies with multiple, fixed rails. A switch before the output stage would select one rail or the other based on the incoming waveform, and the output amplifier would be responsible for cushioning these fixed-step changes as well as generating the final output to the speakers.

My point to all of this rambling is just that I'm glad to see that more high-tech approaches to power conditioning are going beyond the brute-force approach and using technology which is not only better sounding, but better for the environment and for the consumer's pocket books as well.

Happy Listening!

Roger Sanders of InnerSound is Back

I found out through the web grapevine that Roger Sanders, founder of InnerSound is back, and has started a new company, focusing on electronics at Sanders Sound Systems.

For a short period of time I was the New England rep for InnerSound. In a way, I was the catalyst for good and bad things to happen to Roger. My girlfriend was producing ads for InnerSound, which ran in Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. When he ran full page ads in TAS, they often complemented Sara by copying the color schemes on the cover.

Anyway, around 2002 I was also the rep for a company I used to do some industrial and PCB design for, Smart Theater Systems (now Smart Devices). Norm from SMART called me up and said he wanted to go to the NY Home Theater Expo held in NY every year, but wanted to share a room with some one. SMART was producing a very nice performing (if industrial looking) line of power conditioners, as well as licensing the Hafler amplifier designs to produce a hybrid tube/solid-state amplifier which was well received. As it turned out, at the time InnerSound and SMART were both located in Georgia, so getting them together was pretty easy.

Anyway, Roger had the speakers, and SMART had the amplifiers, and together we had a budget for a complete room display. At this convention, John Marks from Stereophile spent a long enough time auditioning the InnerSound speakers to agree to finally commit to giving them a real review. You'd think Roger would have been really happy with me. Nope, he ignored me completely, and chose to have dinner with designers of a new tube amp that as far as I know was never sold.

Anyway, Stereophile gave them a great review, which is when Roger's fortune's changed for the worse. At some point Roger met a man with money to invest, who convinced him to move the factory from Georgia to Colorado. After this, as is well known, there was a falling out, and Roger left InnerSound. So, I was good for Roger, and I was bad for Roger.

My point to all of this, however, is that Roger is back in business, and seems to be quickly rebuilding products based on the original philosophy which he built his company on. Now if he can make electrostatics with the same smooth responses at the Eros and Isis with wider dispersion, he'll soon be the talk of the audio world.

Good luck to you Roger!

MK Speakers are No More!

Miller & Kreisel Sound has shut down it's doors. You can find some information at their website, MK Sound as well as the Stereophile article here.

There are allegations of counterfeit, Chinese made speakers being partly responsible for their demise, as well as innuendos of ex-business partners or employees being part of it as well.

I do not know if any of this is true, but I must say, I'm kind of surprised MK made it as far as they did anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my MK S-1B with the V-1 subwoofer combination that is the heart of my living room's home theater system. When I bought my main speakers, I happened to know the MK rep for the SE US, and since there were no dealers in Georgia, I got a deal. At the time I was a starving student, trying to make a business as an installer. I think they were great sounding, and well priced when I bought them, 15-20 years ago. Since then however, I never bought another pair, and ended up with Monitor Audio RS1s in the home office, and Cambridge Soundworks for surrounds in the home theater.

There were several problems with the MK speaker line for me as a pure consumer. The first was the complete lack of stores. I have run into 2 stores who even carried MK products. The second problem is just the cost. TINY speakers were running around $600-$800 each! And given the fairly standard Vifa tweeters they were using, I had a real trouble paying that much for them. Even when they had discounts and B grade products, I could find too many speakers that were cheaper and as good or better.

In addition, I think MK Sound suffered from another problem: Too many products.

They tried to spread their brand around to every conceivable type of speaker. Cubes to compete with Bose and Cambridge Soundworks, powered studio grade monitors, super sub woofers, and in-wall speakers. They experimented with every conceivable type of surround speaker. Bi-polar, di-polar, tri-polar, upward firing, behind the couch, you name it. Except for co-axial designs, and PA speakers, they did it all. On the innovation scale, they definitely get a 10+ rating. They were producing almost as many different types of speakers as Sony or Panasonic. The only other brands that I knew of that competed with this many speakers were Cambridge Soundworks, which I heard is in the process of closing many of its stores.

I really wondered how MK Sound could possibly control quality, maintain high prices, and get enough sales volume to keep the doors open. Having so many different models of speakers seemed like a nightmare for their reps. What DO you sell a new store? What products are you going to go in with? What are you going to promote to reviewers? To be really successful you need to have multiple good reviews of a single or closely related speaker models. How can you concentrate your marketing focus and generate brand excitement with 100 different models? This is the business model you would use to sell products to WalMart and Sears, not independent, high end stores.

Where MK Sound seems to have followed the high-end/specialty model is in their subwoofers. They got consistently great reviews on them, and they seemed to be a major part of their business as a result, selling to many customers who probably were not going to use MK speakers for the rest of their systems.

Honestly, this is all questions and conjecture on my part. For all I know they had solved all of these problems. I've never met Ken Kreisler, and don't have an MBA, but, if anyone has any ideas about this, please drop me a note, because I'd be fascinated to find out what really happened.

Take care!