Vibration Isolation Cones and Audiophile Gear

As many of my readers know, I was lucky enough to have been given a then ¥450,000 Denon DVD-5910 <<link to specs here>> by Denon for my part in troubleshooting some serious playback quality issues in the DVD-A1 (5800), their previous top of the range player.

So I guess I can claim to know a bit about this kind of thing and don’t want to suddenly come off sounding ignorant. Well, here goes then…

<takes a deep breath>

Well, considering that the 5910 had been designed like a Sherman Tank, used practically the finest components known to mankind and then tweaked to eek the very last drops of detail from the disks (or so readers of this forum will gladly tell us) could you explain how a few little cones help to the extent that they cause a humanly audible difference? And if they do, why Denon didn’t incorporate a similar feature into its design, considering the 5910 was long the flagship, no holds barred player of choice for the discerning video-AND-audiophile.

I’m extremely curious as to how a little vibration management can “really enhance the already stellar performance” of a $4000 player that is to all intents and purposes, considering its construction, unlikely to suffer unduly from day to day vibrations of any kind besides those caused by a warped or damaged disc or a disc with a label stuck to one edge, or a small earthquake.

Of course, if one lives by a motorway, vibrations might be enough to affect one’s player… in which case the sound of the cars would all but drown out anything below 24 db or so in any case, making such an investment all but pointless.

I’m really sorry to sound sceptical, but I had friends who used to spray antistatic wax on their cables and made similar “really enhances XYZ” or the classic “tightens the bass/focus/pants” line.

One day, fed up with their constant “tweking”, when they were out, I cleaned the wax off the cables with some rubbing alcohol, but of course they continued to boast about the improvements when their mates came round. Not only that, but I had reversed the polarity of one of the back corner surround speakers, just for a laugh. And until the day I left, it stayed wired that way, unnoticed.

Obviously, in the days of valves, when the filaments could be excited by external vibrations, any isolation was bound to help, even more so with a turntable (which I demonstrated once by placing the needle on the receiver of a phone during a conversation and having a muffled version of the conversation relayed through speakers.

But come on, seriously, modern electronics being affected by vibrations to the point where the vibrations affect the device audibly more than the vibrations raise the sound floor of the room itself?

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a man who understands the value of floor to ceiling curtains, a thick carpet and a rather uncool, but audiophile tiled ceiling.

I also understand the importance of solid speaker stands, relative speaker distance and especially, of course, sub woofer placement.

I can also vouch for the efficacy of the auto calibration of a number of highish end amps.

But I don’t ever want to see a monster TOSLINK cable, or for that matter a 25% silver digital interconnect costing $1000 connected to a modern digital buffer with full ECC. I don’t want the smell of cable-antistatic spray in my room… And I do not ever, ever want to see another green rimmed CD in my freezer ever, ever again, Paul, do you hear me 😉 !

sorry… I’ll… erm… I guess I’ll be going then…

<<grabs his coat and shuffles out of the building quietly by the back door>>

Apple Software Bugs Rise to New Heights : OS X iCal Truncating days off the end of month.

I always thought that February was the shortest month of the year.

After all, ever since I could speak I’ve known the poem:

Thirty days has September, April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty one, except February,
which has 28 days clear and 29 days in a leap year.

If only Apple knew it, because apparently they think that January 2009 had only 24 days!

 

This is OS X Leopard iCal, the one which dispensed with the the side drawer in favour of a crappy pop-up box for editing calendar entries.

Here Apple are trying to work their way into the enterprise as a viable Outlook alternative with better Exchange support for Mail.app etc. but I’m sorry, if this is the best they can do, I’m sticking with Outlook/Entourage.

Is there anyone else out there who’s found that their months have been truncated with the last week missing in Leopard’s joke of a calendar application?

Now I’m sorry, but this kind of quality beggars belief! Apple, WTF are you playing at? GET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER.

Apple Aluminium Keyboard, Unresponsive Keys. (aka, Apple can’t even make a reliable keyboard any more.)

In This Post I talked about Apple products failing and it saddens me to say that my selection of products are continuing to play up.

I have three desktop Macs, my aluminium iMac, an intel Mac Mini and a G4 Cube. Of these, the iMac is the only one with the new aluminium keyboard. All of the others come with one of the more “traditional”, long throw keyboards.

Now, I originally raved about the keyboard, and still do. It’s beautifully ergonomic, and I swear my typing speed has increased by about 50% since starting using it. But unfortunately, for all its ergonomics, the reliability has been questionable.

Back in September, the left control key started to play up and became unresponsive.

I blew compressed air over the thing and even removed the key to see what was up, all to no avail.

I ordered a replacement keyboard on Apple Care. They very kindly sent me new one and I sent the old one back immediately.

So, you’re wondering if I’ve stooped to talking a faulty key on a keyboard and thinking, you’re really scraping the barrel.

But, bear with me…

WIthin weeks, the new one started to play up, with the “2” key becoming unresponsive and I ordered another replacement keyboard on Apple Care. Again, they very kindly sent me new one and I sent the old one back immediately.

This one has arrived and it has a spongey Return Key, that is only responsive on the bottom half, unlike the crisp Return keys of my previous ones.

So now I’ve ordered yet another keyboard. Let’s see if this is any better than the previous three.

For God’s Sake, Apple, it’s a bloody keyboard! You’re trying to tell me I can trust you to make precision built laptops with thousands of parts for the luxury market when you can’t even make a keyboard where every key works? On a keyboard, most is not enough!

Argh! Apple, sort yourself out.

After Mac OS X 10.5.5 – cannot reenable additional Screen Sharing (ARD) functions hack

[EDIT: Solution Found to enable screen sharing full screen, here ]

I’d reported that a hack existed to enable Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) alike functionality in the humble built in Screen Sharing client in this post.  Unfortuantely, this hack no longer works to enable the ARD like client functions in Leopard 10.5.5, which means:

• No more black and white or 256 colour (greyscale) quality for low bandwidth connections.
• No more clipboard copying.
• No more curtains for the remote screen.
• And: NO MORE FULL SCREEN VNC!

Oh! Unless, that is, you splash out $299 for a TEN LICENCE ADMINISTRATOR’S PACK!

Jeezus H Kriste and his twelve frollicking followers! Leopard must now have the world’s only VNC client that costs $299 to enable full screen.

Kind of reminds me of when Apple used to charge $29 to enable the amzingly awesome

• Quicktime “Pro” function:  playback video full screen…

Except that this costs more than 10 times the price!

As much as I still like Mac OS X, things like this are REALLY starting to get my goat.

Sorry, but I’m going to use large numbers of capital letters for a purpose other than acronyms. If you find them offensive, please stop reading, you have been warned.

APPLE: FULL SCREEN VNC IS *NOT* A PRO FEATURE FOR FROLICK’S SAKE!

It’s a feature required and wanted by practically anyone who uses an EFFING laptop to access their glorious BUT REMOTE computer at home with its Full High Definition screen. Or those need to access one Mac from another AT FULL SCREEN QUALITY WITHOUT GOLLYGOSHDARNITSTINKINGMUTHARUBBING SCALING!!!

IS IT SO FRICKIN’ MUCH TO ASK FOR BOUNCING BARNACLE’S SAKE?

Why is it on the PC I can have any resolution I choose, but with the Mac I’m stuck with a crappy frame grab of the whole fragging screen at full spiggotting resolution! For fume’s sake… (Can you tell I’m trying my best not to swear!)

Oh Blow it! I’m installing ARD… available for download from your nearest and dearest search engine.