Audio Federation

May 8, 2015May 8, 2015 by Michael

Mike’s new homepage favorite album

My new album is Threshold of a Dream, by the Moody Blues.

What’s with albums that we grow up with?

They get into your blood, into your bone structure, into your head.

They become like another appendage that you can barely use, like the small toe on your left foot.

“If we could just …try… harder… we will be sitting back in our old room, a kid again, but also an adult – grokking our whole life as just one single experience.

If we could just wiggle our nose like Samantha. Or blink our eyes like Jeannie.

[Ha. Good. The spell checker knows the word ‘grok’. At least Heinlein had more lasting impact than just ‘Starship Troopers’ 🙂 Though IMO Stranger in a Strange Land was his last great book. Just like Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd’s last great album. Getting rich changes a person / people / a band.].

This Moody Blues album is not so new agey, like many of their others, that it becomes inaccessible without leafy green balast. Just nice tunes with several, not all that arcane, meanings and comforting views of reality.

“I’ve miles And miles Of files, Pretty files, of your forefather’s fruit…”

Well, we [most of us] don’t use much magnetic ink on magnetic tape anymore, but they had the right idea.

I never noticed that ‘DERAM’ is DREAM, but it must have already been trademarked by someone else by the time the Moody Blues wanted it.

“Face piles and piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free”

And these days, perceiving the web they weave ain’t all that difficult, but keep smiling anyway.

Here is the album over on Amazon Smile

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May 6, 2015May 6, 2015 by Michael

A DIY 30-amp 240 volt outlet for your monster amps

Along one’s travels through the universe of audiophilia, one comes across 30 amp 240 volt amplifiers every so often.

But what if you do not have a 240 volt outlet in your listening room?

What to do?

What to do.

Here in the U.S., many homes do have a weird-shaped 240 volt outlet like that seen below.

This is the type of outlet that electric dryers use.

It just so happens that in our home, the electric dryer outlet was originally in a small room off of the dining room, which is open to the living room where is our main listening room.

Currently, this small room, formerly the laundry room, is now the ‘closet of boxes’. This is where we store boxes to be used for shipping small things like cables and HRS Nimbus and Couplers.

IMG_4041-entire-assembly

So what I did was let Neli make a box that effectively converted weird-dryer-outlet to two ‘normal’ 240 volt outlets. [It is just so wonderfully ‘convenient’ to have a wife that just runs off and builds things like this :-)]

IMG_3995-240volt-wall-outlet-with-plug

Where one end plugs into the dryer outlet…

IMG_3997-limber-20amp-240volt-40foot-powerkord

And the 40 foot power cords to the amps snake across the dining room and into the living room, along the wall finally plugging into the amps.

The 40 foot power cables we used are from Kimber.

In particular the Kimber Kable PowerKord Model 10 power cords.

The cool little box that Neli built was an in-wall 4-gang box and a 2-gang cover from Home Depot. Two of the holes in the cover have no matching holes in the chassis.

After spending some time in this section and looking at all the options, it is our considered opinion that our Home Depot just carries a bunch of random parts, the majority of which are either redundant or incompatible with the other parts.

If I remember right, the red 240 volt outlets are hospital-grade which we got from Amazon for about $20

The other end of these 40 foot power cords is a rather blue socket. These are 30 amp IEC connectors.

IMG_4045-open-20amp-240volt-connector

This is what the inside of the business end of these 30 amp IEC connectors look like. The amps we used this with are just prototypes, and I am not sure if they still use these same sockets in the production models.

in How-to 1 comments

May 1, 2015 by Michael

Interesting factoids from FutureSource on headphone uptake

Interesting factoids from FutureSource on headphone uptake…

Note that the average price for a ‘headphone’, in this survey anyway, is $30.

This means that the real growth is in in-ear headphones (currently 60% of the market).

As a point of reference, the original open Sennheiser headphones, the HD 414, in 1968 remains the best selling headphones of all time – and were my first headphones (but did not survive my transition to high-end audio in 1978)

“According to a new report by Futuresource Consulting, worldwide shipments of headphones grew by 8.5% in 2014 to 309.5 million units.

The report also found that, despite average retail price only growing by 4% in 2014, less than the growth in 2013, the trade value of shipments grew by 12%, generating revenues worth $9.4 billion. This is partly due to the falling cost to include certain features.

Despite increasing fragmentation in the headphones market, Sony, Philips, and JVC continue to secure the top three market positions, accounting for 31% of worldwide shipments. There is growing competition, notably from Apple Earpods, with a 5% worldwide volume share, and Beats by Dre, which has grown in volume by leveraging Apple’s strong distribution networks.

Futuresource Consulting has also analysed the different features and types of headphones emerging on the market within this new report. It notes that microphones have become a common feature across all types of headphones, especially as the ownership of mobile devices continues to grow. In 2014, headphones with microphones grew by 58%, to account for 36% of worldwide shipments.

In-ear headphones accounted for the lion share, 60% of worldwide shipments, with the inclusion of new features helping to drive growth in this segment.

During 2014, many brands introduced Bluetooth headphones to meet the growing demand of music on the go. This segment is forecast to increase over the coming years, with wireless headphones likely to account for 21% of worldwide shipments by 2018.

Sport headphones was another big area, with many headphone vendors introducing different designs for comfortable grip around the ears. We are seeing strong competition from specialist headphone manufacturers in this area, including Yurbuds, Jaybird, Jabra, and Parrot.

“The demand for headphones is increasing, especially as consumers are using their mobile devices for a plethora of content on the go, whether that’s whilst commuting to work, running, cycling, or simply walking into town,” Simon Bryant , Associate Director Consumer Electronics , Futuresource Consulting. “We are also seeing an increase in demand for more sophisticated features, which is increasing value and driving more sales for the vendors. In the coming months, we will likely see an increased presence from specialist vendors, which can add unique features.”

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