A big move!

After 6 years in the same place we have packed up and moved (all be it only one floor). I found it pretty sad to move out of our old place. I surprised myself with how emotionally attached I'd become to our old house. Even now I still have no real logical explanation for why, but it made it quite hard (and sometimes stressful) event.

A big thanks though to those who helped me lug all my gear around. It would have been impossible to get it all done without everyone (especially as we didn't have any movers)

Now to the important stuff... all the Tech....

Probably the nicest thing (well for me) is there is now a study to get all the Mac gear setup (including the very nice house warming gift of a G4 Cube).

And the arcade table has it's own dedicated nook which is probably best placement it's had since I'd got it. (Although it does have to share it with the new bike as well, jury is still out as to whether it gets cycloc'd to the wall)

The biggest question at the moment is what to do about rear speakers, the current thought is a wireless solution. The two best options I've found so far have been from JBL and KEF. The JBL one is the current pick (mainly because of price). The JBL WEM-1 looks like it would do the job perfectly but it's still an expensive solution vs tripping over wires.

The other option is to go for a sound bar (and the obvious choice there is the B&W Panorama) but there is a big expense in swapping out all the existing gear I have dedicated for surround sound.

Time will tell...

Almost a completely apple household

I've been having a few networking issues at home, partly due to my existing router getting on a bit and some new rules it randomly decided to implement to block most of my iTunes streaming and syncing traffic only over the Wireless Network. As a result I had some elaborate system to get ethernet to all of the devices that really needed to talk, ie the iMac iTunes Server and the AppleTV. This still meant that all of the iDevices were blocked out from being used as remotes etc.

This week I finally bit the bullet and got an Airport Extreme and a Time Capsule and put them into play. I have to say it was probably one of the easiest setups I've every had to implement (even for apple products). I picked up both the items from ebay and if the Time Capsule had come up first I probably wouldn't have bothered with the Airport Extreme but the solution is markedly better with both devices. Adding the Time Capsule wirelessly to the Airport Extreme extends the wireless network (genius) and acts as an ethernet bridge.

The only real problem is it now has me thinking about getting an Airport Express so I can Stream to the nicely wired Tivoli Setup.

The Tivoli Model Two gets rewired...

Now ordinarily this wouldn't rate as post worthy (or even tweet worthy) but it's on here because a. I didn't rewire it... and b. it looks pretty amazing... much better than my last effort.

The Mission FS2-AV one week in (part 2)

After blabbing on about how nice it was to install, now... the important bit how it sounds.

In a word amazing... not that they are the most amazing speakers you'll ever here but considering their size (and what they replaced) and price they are an amazing buy.

The integration with the sub is seamless (once you've tweeked the sub level and "closeness to the wall" setting) and is weighty enough to remind you why you need a sub. One of my original concerns was that the single sub would be too light after the 15" Jamo (i even had another matching sub in my watch list just in case). While it will never be able to move the walls (or floor) to the same extent as the Jamo the Mission sub has enough presence to handle even the largest explosion scenes of "Iron Man" and even rattle a window or two.

The biggest difference I noticed was the level of clarity that the speakers have even at low volumes. While never having trouble producing the dynamic range the voices always seem to break through crisply.

The Missions have turned out to be the ideal set of apartment speakers with a perfect blend of sonic weight, clarity and discrete installation. I've probably watched as many movies on the projector since I've picked up the new speakers than I have for the rest of the year.

Of course I could still be in the new purchase honeymoon period so the real test will be when a few more sets of ears come around to critique.

The Mission FS2-AV one week in (part 1)

A couple of weeks ago I made the call that the Jamos were just too big and too powerful for the space I can use them. So I started the hunt for a smaller lifestyle set of speakers and picked up a bargain set of the missions (a system I'd auditioned years ago and only rejected on price).

Firstly the install, to start with the speakers are small not bose cube small more an elongated DVD case (and just as thin) so mounting them was a breeze. I had mounts from the jamos for the left and right fronts which I just reused but for the rest 3M tape did the trick. The Added bonus with that is I could reposition them any number of times without fear of wall destruction. The sub is specifically designed to sit in the corner of a room which made placement super easy and the curved facade means it easily fades into obscurity. Last but not least was the wiring which comes supplied and is flat allowing you to run the cables flat against the wall. Admittedly the first attempt at this I didn't do such a good job of running the cables flat....

Fortunately without too much effort the cables were easily attached to the wall and fairly neat.

Of course the most important thing is the sound... but that will have to wait for another post....

Sent from my iPhone

New Toy Monday

This is something that is usually for Zachary, every month or so on a Monday he gets a new toy and we retire an old one. Today though (as well as Zachary getting one) my new Rotel RTC-850 Pre-Amp arrived. I spent a little bit of time wiring it into the system (to drive my Cygnett Unison iX-5 Speakers) but about 10 times that getting the Harmony Remote to play nice. It was a bit of a random purchase (somehow no one outbid me on ebay) but it does solve the problem of having to run the speakers for the headphone socket of the TV. The sound is noticably different (I wasn't the only one it the house to notice either). It's a great little edition (even if it is some vintage gear) to the setup and I've now pretty much exhausted every upgrade for the setup. Well until I swap out those Cygnett's for some Beolab 5s.

A return to vinyl

Some very kind people gave me some new vinyl for my birthday back in April and it's really spured me on to listen to my records a bit more and expand my vinyl collection. The BacktoBlack records also have had a lot to do with it. Being able to buy an album on vinyl and have it on my ipod as well with a few clicks is just brilliant... JB had a bit of a sale this week so the collection has been growing....

I fear this is just the beginning.

More Vinyl results in new toys

Since I moved my turntable from my normal stereo to the Tivoli I'd been borrowing a phono stage from Tom. Today while I was filling in time waiting for some Claritine to kick in (long story but let's just say the persian cat and I didn't get on) I popped into Video Pro. To my absolute suprised they'd actually started stocking some really nice gear including Cambridge Audio, B&W, Mission and even Rega. The thing that really amazed me was they had a Cambridge Audio Azur 540P Phono stage and even a DACMagic.

After a bit of haggling for the display unit I was the proud owner of my own phono stage. It hasn't had any setup time appart from seeing that it was the exact same dimensions as the Tivoli.

From What's in a Name?

I guess the Tivoli is next on the rewire list after I finally finished hooking the Jamo THX speakers back up.

AppleTV - A Story of Bandwidth...

This month I picked my latest (and possibly last... but more on that later) piece of gear for my home theatre setup, an AppleTV. Since having Foxtel I've cut down on the number of DVDs/Blurays I've been buying as most of the new releases I've been catching on the Foxtel Box Office. Although the sound quality on the Foxtel Service is not as high as some (but not actually that many) of the  Blu Rays (Dolby Digital vs TrueHD) realistically it's rare that I could have it at a volume level that it would make a difference.  This is where the AppleTV comes in.

Having never been big on *ahem* downloading movies I've never gone down the path of having a media server for my system. iTunes, however now offers a pretty wide variety of new release and older movies for download/streaming which makes the AppleTV pretty attractive. The cost of new releases is about the same as Foxtel (both SD and HD) but the big advantage of iTunes is they don't disappear off the watchable list after a period of time, they just get cheaper. You can also choose to download the movie on a more perminent basis for about the same price as a DVD.

The interface is great and you can start the movie as soon as you've queued enough of the show, which is surprising quick even with HD content (which is lucky as waiting for the full movie in HD to download could take a while... see D). I think it would even pass the Parental test for interface.

The big key though is that it's not just iTunes content available it also has all the podcasts and youtube videos so if you don't feel like shelling out for itunes content.

The only downside would be it's bandwidth sucking capabilities... 

My monthly usage

A - BSG Finale Episodes

B - Mad Men Series one and Eagle Eye

C - Dr Horrible's Sing along Blog

D - Prince Caspian in HD

Total - approx 19GB

On the plus side though I'm with iiNet which gives you all downloads from iTunes for free.

Overall I'm really happy with the unit, the interface is great and the range of TV, Movies, Podcasts and Youtube gives you endless viewing potential... oh and i almost forgot... the trailers.... so many trailers.

The reason it's probably the last gadget for my setup is because I've really run out of things I could possibly want.... JB Hifi is dead to me

Feel the Ebay Love

Yesterday a few (4 to be exact) packages made it to our house, 1 for Zach, 1 for Ness and 2 for me. Both of the big ebay purchase had arrived at the same day. First off, I picked up a set of speakers for the TV, I decided to go for something powered so I didn't have to mess around with multizone on the Sony (which confuses my harmony no end) or add another amp to my already overcrowded media cabinet. After a bit of searching I decided on the Cygnett Unison i-X5 or the Wharfedale Pro 8.1. Fortunately I found the i-X5 on ebay for less that half price (more than $250 off RRP). When they arrived yesterday, I was amazed to see them sealed in the original box with all the original (and unopened) packaging.

It's a very simple hookup, I'm letting the TV do all the audio switching and I'm simply taking the output from the headphone jack and plugging it into the Line in on the i-X5, that way the TV still controls the volume and audio selection.

From Sigma Zoom

I'm really impressed with the sound, even at high volumes very clear and tight. A little on the bass heavy side (as most of the reviews say) but that's quite good for most TV applications.

Onto the second toy for the day a new lens. The big thing that I'd missed coming to the Pentax from my Fuji Bridge camera was the Zoom. After not very much searching I stumbled across 28-200 Sigma Zoom on ebay. First impressions are very good. It gives me the lens convinence back (even with some macro capability) and the shots are still great.

From Sigma Zoom

Shot of the speakers at full zoom, taken from the same location as the shot above.

From Sigma Zoom

Macro shot of my Nokia 6110 Nav

I'm going to take the camera out with me today and take some shots in the afternoon, I'll post up some more then.

Some TV Speakers...

I know, didn't I just get 7.1 going? How could I need any more speakers?!?

Since we got the TV we've been toying with idea of some speakers to increase the sound quality (I say we, because although I want them Ness suggested it first). It's not the the TV speakers are un-listen-able but when you swap from the TV to either the Tivoli or worse still the Jamos it's very noticeable difference.

I've been looking at a couple of options, either running something from the Zone 2 output of the Sony or some separate powered speakers. I decided to look at some powered speakers and run them from the output of the TV simply because the looping everything out and back in through the amp was just going to be too many points of failure when the Harmony was involved, with surround modes, sub setup changes and listening position settings.

I started looking at some high end computer speakers, specifically (as much as I hate to admit it) the Bose Computer MusicMonitors. While I normally prescribe to Bose philosophy (Buy Other Sound Equipment) these seemed to fit the bill with pretty small form factor but decent enough sound. Their real problem was the exorbitant cost. I continued searching and I stubled across what I thought was the ideal set, Wharfedale Pro Diamond 8.1. I loved the old Wharfdale setup that I used to have and missed the sound of music tracks they produced in comparison to the Jamos (although the Wharfedales just can't compete in the movie front). These are the same speaker setup with an Active Bi-amp design with 60W LF and 40W HF power.

Yesterday however I was swayed with yet another set of amplified speakers, this time from an iPod Dock. The Cygnett Unison i-X5 iPod speakers.

No prizes for why these drew my attention... :)
They are an Australian designed speaker and (even in a black finish) look stunning. They are also (most importantly) no slouch in the audio department. With a number of reviews holding them in high regard. 

In the end it will come down to price, the Wharfedales will probably sound better (although not red) but are 200+ more than the Cygnetts.

Only time will tell (and by then I'll probably have found something else)

7.1 is on it's way

After blogging that there wasn't much on the way as far as tech was concerned. Well after some innocent ebay browsing I stumbled across some matching speakers for my Jamo THX system. They are the flush mount rears for the system, which means I'll finally have a >5.1 system after have 6.1+ amps for years.

Yesterday we had some new lights put in, (which is a continuation of the previous light change over) we added some halogens on the roof in the bedroom (which look fantastic) and a big fluro in the study (which finally gives us some usable light)

Today is also the Aircon day! Hopefully by the weekend we'll be kicking back in some chilly A/C!

What's wrong with surronding surround speakers?

Anyone coming over for the next Roar match?

A post because I haven't

I meant to post a few times over the last few days, but as my title suggests I haven't. There isn't any real reason. We had a pretty good weekend, we started a little earlier that we liked when the fire alarm when off after someone burnt their toast. It did mean we actually got out and about and pick up our new lounge chair.

From The New Chair

Even though it's orange it still works into the room really well, that and it's really comfy. It's so comfortable I've labled it the new DVD chair (or maybe it should be the Blu-ray chair). 

I also had a bit of a glut of TV on the weekend. I finished off the Forth Season of Dr Who (which was great, but I'm not sure that Catherine Tate was the best companion) and the Third of Battlestar Galactica. The fourth season is on TenHD at the moment but after watching one episode I think I'm going to wait until it comes out on DVD, the constant stream of ads and the poor timing of the show makes it pretty hard to watch (even on the PVR).

Gaming was also slotted in there somewhere with some dedicated time to CoD4 multiplayer and Smash Bros. (not quite as dedicated as some though.... :P)

Yesterday I was pretty sick so asside from work I didn't get up to much. 

That's pretty much the wrap up for the week so far (apart from our neighbours discovering their subwoofer, which is so loud at the moment that it rattles the paintings on the walls... I haven't called the 15" jamo into battle yet but I don't think it will be long now)

An Electronics Sellathon!

After a recent run of upgrades I've started to put a few of the replaced technology, I've put a whole group of stuff up on Ebay, there is a few more things to come but it's a start.

• Pioneer DV-S969AVi-G Audiophile DVD-A/SACD player
  
• Yamaha RX-V1200 Surround Receiver
  
• Sony PlayStation 2 Slimline Console
  
• Microsoft Xbox Console with Advanced AV & 2 Controllers
  

Back at the airport... guess not much has changed..

So only about 36 hours after I left BNE airport I'm back... I'm off to Sydney. Fortunately this time I'm flying Virgin and not my other favourite carrier. I must say I am really getting sick of the continual flights, I'm due back in Sydney on Thursday.

Another plus so far is that I'm not suffering too badly from jetlag, although I haven't really had much of chance to let it take hold.

One of the big distractions on Sunday was setting up the new receiver I bought just before I left. The setup process was a breeze and with all the great video scaling I managed to eliminate about 50m of cables from the current setup. I have to say that the auto speaker calibration is just amazing. I'm not sure I could ever own another amp without it!

Well looks like my flight is going to be delayed today so I could be in the lounge a little longer.

And the winner is...... SONY

After a fair bit of deliberation I finally chose a new amplifier to replace the Yamaha. The Sony STR-DA3300ES finally won out, basically on a features versus price it was hard to beat... Especially when I managed to shave a few more dollars off the already reduced $981 price tag.

It was bad timing from a setup point of view as it's now just sitting in the lounge room until I get back from the US.

The B&O finally comes to life....

It may have taken several years but finally the Beogram 4002 is making some sweet music when the new stylus turned up today....

The Beosound Lives

And I must say... some sweet sounds indeed...

Gadget Overload (is there such a thing)

I know I haven't blogged for a few weeks and now I've got two in a row but I'm trying to avoid doing work on the weekend so stick with me. Amyo raised the notion that I'm close to gadget saturation. I must admit that I reluctantly have to agree a little.

After much delay my new flat panel TV turned up and I'm really at technology saturation level.

Not to let that stop me I've been working on a bit of a technology cull to allow for some replacements.

The Loewe has found a new home and the Pioneer DVD-A/SACD player is soon to have a new life on Ebay, along with a few of the double up consoles. The big change is going to be the retirement of the Yamaha amp. With the new TV and the plan to hide the cable runs to the projector I'm looking for some upscaling to reduce the cable runs to just HDMI. As well serving as the Yamaha has been over the last 6 years it's lack of video processing and support for the HD audio formats means that it's time to look for an update.

The current contenders are the Yamaha RX-V863, Onkyo TX-SR606 and the new comer (from today) Harmon Kardon AVR 255.
I considered buying at the same level Yamaha as I have now (the Yamaha RX-V3800) but with all the improvements in technology the lower end amps now do more (power wise) than my old amp could. The HK is a great looking amp and has the best video scaling of the 3 but there is little in the way of reviews. Fortunately I've found someone with all 3 in stock so I can do a bit of a test run.

Stay tuned... there could be a new amp unboxing just around the corner....

A new site to let the time pass

After a bit of pestering from Amy, I finally signed up for Twitter. I must admit she was right it is just the perfect amount of blogging space...

You can check out my few twittererers.... what is the plural on that? here....

I haven't integrated it into my blogger yet... we'll see how well it holds up first.

In other news I finally got around to getting a new stylus for my old Beogram 4002 turntable. I was mostly spurred on by our trip to the design market in Melbourne and discovering that it's actually in the Museum of Modern art in NYC. Thought it might be worth restoring rather than just throwing in the bin. Of course that now means that I have 2 turntables, well I don't remember anyone saying you couldn't have 2 stereo rigs?