Podcasts

I’m using Twonky Media’s media server to serve up mp3 podcasts, music and photos to my PS3. This works great, and Twonky version 5 is a great media server for a reasonable price. I used this a while ago and I got some errors on my PS3, but the latest version is great: Fewer errors and an easier install and setup.

However, Fast Forward in an MP3 is pretty messed up. As you can see from the following video, when you hold down fast foward, it skips and jumps and it keep stuttering and stopping so you can’t forward very fast. So, if for example, you play the first 40 minutes of of a 1:45 [one hour and 45 minute] podcast, then trying to get back to the place you were is a real pain. This feature probably works fine for a 4 minute song, but it’s not useful for a very long podcast.

Not sure if this is a problem with the PS3, or with the Twonky or the DLNA protocol.

I’ll try to contact the PS3 and Twonky support folks.

Video On Demand from Netflix

I’ve just discovered Play On which allows you to play videos from Netflix, YouTube and other places on your TV by using a PS3 or other DLNA Media Client. I’ve set up Play On on the same system where I installed Twonky and connected it to my NetFlix account. So now I can watch Instant movies from Netflix directly on my large screen TV and using my hi-fi system. My Media Server is a Win XP system running on a Compaq SR2020NX Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2GHz with 2GB memory. This is a $500 system that’s about 3 years old.

PlayOn is very easy to set up, although I had a glitch with the Media Player V11 that PlayOn required. The WMP11 installer kept reporting an error, but it turned out that it did install correctly. Once you install PlayOn, you configure it with your Netflix account, and then use a web browser to load up your Instant Queue in Netflix. To start with I loaded up a few movies, and TV series including Sanctuary, Ghost in the Shell, and a couple of other things. When you check the videos in the PS3 menu, you find the PlayOn server and the list of videos that are in the Netflix Instant list.

I’ve watched a couple of movies and the quality is very good with no noticeable sound or video artifacts. The video quality is not as good as a DVD, but it is at least as good as a SD quality Dishnet satellite broadcast. The PS3 display function reports about 4 mbps. The PlayOn software requires about 180MB of memory in two processes and takes about 50% of the CPU when the video is on pause. I’m guessing that the video is being downloaded and re-coded for the PS3.

BTW, the fast forward situation is much better with video than with music. Using PlayOn and the PS3 with Netflix, fast forward gives 10, 30, 120x fast forward and it works just fine to go back to a point deep into a movie. The PlayOn server did get stuck about 45 minutes into a movie, but turning off the PS3 and then reopening the movie fixed it up. The PS3 was reporting network errors. Not sure why. The server was working fine and the network was not having any problems that I could detect.

I’m catching up on Sanctuary and watched “In the Electric Mist” with Tommy Lee Jones this evening. When I added Sancuary, it added a folder with all the episodes.

I’m not clear on why the PS3 doesn’t support Netflix and other video sources directly, but since it doesn’t at least an inexpensive software addon, which runs on any modern computer, will allow a true video on-demand experience. PlayOn costs about $40. Since Netflix doesn’t charge for “Watching Instantly” beyond my normal subscription, I’ve got a fixed cost subscription to video on demand.

- Windy

Audacity 1.2.6
Vista x86 SP1

click for full size image.

To reproduce the problem:

1. Record a segment of audio.
2. Select a portion of the audio and
3. point to a point beyond the audio recording on the same track and
4. paste. Observe that the pasted audio is tacked to the end of the recording, not at the paste point.
5. Select the Envelope tool.
6. Observe that Envelope handles for the pasted audio are displayed beyond the audio data.

I have tried to reproduce this outside of this test project and was not able to reproduce the problem. However, the picture above indicates that this problem does exist for some series of steps.

I suggest that the audio paste should have occurred at the mouse position rather than at the end. This would require adding a segment of silence to the file.

Also, I’m not sure how one can move a segment of audio along a track without moving the entire track. For example, if the alignment of the pasted audio needed to be adjusted, then I’m not sure how this could be done. The Time Shift tool apparently moves the entire track, not just the selection. I’ll check the documentation.

- windy

Goldwave doesn’t cost much the first time, but it hasn’t really moved much over the past many years and the major updates cost.

Adobe Audition is very functional, but very expensive. and updates are costly as well.

My friend is converting some of her cassette tapes to CDs and MP3s and I’ve taught her to use  Goldwave. But with Goldwave you have to pre-create your audio file to record to. How long should you create your file? With Audacity you can just start recording. While the interface is different from Goldwave, she should have little problems in doing the transition to Audacity. I’ll see how she likes it.

Audacity also looks like it has some cool features for amateur musicians:

1. Lay down multiple tracks.
2. Label the parts of the tracks.
3. Slide the tracks in time to align with each other.
4. Set mono tracks to left or right channel.

If I knew more about the requirements of a home studio I would be more helpful in looking at these features. More later as we try it out.

- windy

Here is the crash info:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
Application Name:    audacity.exe
Application Version:    0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp:    455814e4
Fault Module Name:    ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version:    6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp:    4791a7a6
Exception Code:    c0000005
Exception Offset:    00068915
OS Version:    6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID:    1033
Additional Information 1:    fca9
Additional Information 2:    0dc2035d9f92c9e2614959a67b8ae723
Additional Information 3:    18f1
Additional Information 4:    3bfce306861458c8ad571409cb716cf8

Here is the AVI file that causes the crash: Audacity_Crash_1

When I got this audio cabinet about 8 years ago I put 3 fans in it. I got the best fans that I could find to reduce the hum that fans all make – Vantec Stealth 5″, and a Vantec Stealth 3″ for the center bay. There is a small transformer hooked up to the Aux power of the receiver so that the fans turn on whenever the receiver is on.

Here is what I came up with only now after all these years to quiet the fans:

The original scheme had the fans mounted on a piece of 1/2″ plywood and that is isolated from the very thin cabinet back with 4 screws through grommets. Notice the slot in the plate and cabinet back for cable access. While this doesn’t seal the fan to the cabinet, the cooling does not suffer and cable access is greatly simplified.

See the next photo for the grommets:

The grommets hold the plywood and fan away from the back of the cabinet, but the screw still allows hum to conduct from the fan plate to the cabinet back, which acts like a sound board. The hum was not very annoying, but you could hear it.

In the past the fans were screwed directly to the 1/2″ plywood plate. But the recent idea, which totally deadens the hum, is to isolate the fans from the cabinet back with thin sheets of foam. This is shown in detail in the next photo:

The new scheme adds two thin – door skin 1/8″ plywood – ears to the fan. Then two sheets of open celled foam is glued between these ears and the plywood plate. Using open-cell foam allows the use of wood glue to glue the foam to the wood. Elmer’s or TightBond both work fine. Closed cell foam might work as well if it is rough so the glue can work. Of course you can use contact cement as well to glue the foam. You should pick as swishy a foam as you can find. stiff foam obviously will conduct more vibrations to the cabinet back. Using the foam, there is no solid coupling between the fan and the back of the cabinet. So the sound is completely deadened. It would no longer be necessary to use the grommets at this point. The 1/2″ plywood plate could be attached directly to the cabinet back. If I were doing a new design, I would use thin plywood instead of the 1/2 plywood since the weight of that mounting no longer contributes to the sound isolation.

Finally!! No fan hum!!

Good luck and I hope this gives you an idea if you have a similar problem,

enjoy,

windy

After more than 15 years, my Audio Research AR9 speakers are toast. Actually the speakers are fine, the only problem is that the urethane driver baffle has rotted out. Of course all speakers of this age do that. I’ve replaced the baffle a while ago on my Infinity Powered 10″ Subwoofer. It turns out that you can buy the baffles on the web for any size driver and glue them on yourself. But it’s a pain in the behind to do this for 1 driver, let alone 4 drivers, so I’m going to retire my old AR9′s in favor of a pair of new Polk Audio Monitor 60′s.

Here is the AR9 that bit the dust. Took me a while to figure out how to pull its pants down, so to speak, so I could see the drivers.

Notice that the lower driver’s baffle has completely rotted away. Apparently the oxygen gets to the urethane and turns it into mush.

Here are some closeups.

and a normal driver – rotted but not yet completely fragged.

And here is what the whole setup looks like:

Not sure yet whether I’ll put the Polks on the top of the plywood boxes or not.

- windy