Tag: Audio

Alert! Alarm!

My beloved bride had a cool idea today. We have a Sonos audio system in our living room. It’s how we get surround sound and movie theater audio goodness. She wanted to upgrade the system. Good idea, right? She ordered a new beam and we went to Best Buy to pick it up.

After, while we were still in the parking lot, she had another great idea. Wanna go for a mini road trip somewhere? Sure! How about the ocean? Sure! Off we went. 

When we got home a couple hours later, Jen heard a noise. Oh wait! You don’t know the back story. Hold on a second while I fill you in.

Back story: Our house used to have a garage. Years ago we had it remodeled into a primary bedroom suite with an attached bathroom. The outflow pipe from the bathroom was far away from the outflow for the rest of the house and we had to have a pump installed. The pump is under the floor with a little trap door to get to it. That trap door had not been opened in the 500 years since we finished the remodel. It is located in a closet and we had put a big closet organizer into the closet and part of it was sitting on the trap door.

Okay, back to the main story. When we got home from the ocean a couple of hours later, Jen heard a noise. She was standing next to the bathroom and I was on the other side of the room. I thought the noise was a bird being loud and obnoxious outside. She said no, it wasn’t a bird. I then thought it was the mini-split system’s door being squeaky. She said no, it was not the mini-split. I stood next to her so that I could hear what she was hearing and I heard it too. 

There were two sounds. One as an alarm beeping like crazy. The other was the pump running more or less continuously. I went into the closet with the trap door and sure enough, the beeping was coming from there. Well, shit.

We both had a job to do from that point. Mine was to clear almost everything out of the closet (there was a lot of stuff in there) and open the trap door. Jen’s was to find a plumber. Oh yeah, it’s Independence Day. A national holiday. Almost everyone in the country had the day off (except for the poor staff at Best Buy). 

I was able to get to the pump. I had to move almost an entire wardrobe and partially disassemble the organizer but I did it. Jen was able to eventually get a plumber on the phone who could not come help tonight but did offer to help talk us through shutting down the pump until they could come… on Monday. While she was giving the plummer the details I found that the alarm beep was tied to a flashing red light with a label that said to open the unit to see what was causing the alarm. Well, I wasn’t doing that. There was also a button that said push to silence alarm. I pushed it. Oh what a relief.

So the alarm was still going off but it was silent now and at the plumber’s suggestion we killed the power to the pump from the circuit box. The situation has been remedied for now. On Monday the plumber will come and tell us that we need to replace the unit which should cost $10000000000000. Would that be preferable to finding out there is a clog in the sewage pipe? I don’t know. Would it be preferable to finding out there is a leak in the sewage pipe? Probably. I mean, our house doesn’t smell like donald trump so I don’t think our en suite bathroom is shitting itself. We’ll find out on Monday though.

Eventually we were able to relax and that lead to us putting up the new Sonos system. It got a little annoying trying to link everything together in their app, but eventually it all worked and now we are watching Project Hail Mary (again) and enjoying the kick ass audio.

Tomorrow I think I am going to go into Boston really early in the morning and wander around Beacon Hill and the riverwalk along the Charles with my cameras. I’m also officially into the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge, so there will be music to make too.

One thing is for sure… we are not going to use the primary bedroom suite’s bathroom for a couple of days.

It is Not Friday

Why is it that every time I work from my parents house I manage to convince myself that it is Friday. The last time I worked here it was Friday, but today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and here I am thinking about the things I want to do tomorrow when I don’t have to work because tomorrow is Saturday.

No, asshole. Tomorrow is not Saturday. Today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and tomorrow is Thursday.

My parents are both watching TV. Dad’s in the living room. Mom is in the bedroom. They are watching the same show. He is watching the HD channel. She is watching the SD channel. There is a fraction of a second delay on one of them (I can’t tell which) so the audio isn’t lining up. It’s close, but it’s off, and it is driving my auditory nerve up the fucking wall.

I have a meeting in two minutes. Headphones, blessed headphones, save me from this noise!

USB Fail

I tried to add something to my work desk and I failed. Temporarily, but still failed. My work desk is in my bedroom. It used to be in the office with Jen’s, but early in the pandemic when both of us started working from home full time we were stepping on each other’s toes, figuratively speaking, when we both had conference calls at the same time. At first I started taking calls in the bedroom and then working in the office, but after a really short time I moved everything into the bedroom and setup a second desk. I still have a desk in the office, it just doesn’t have a computer on it anymore.

Pre-pandemic, when Jen was working off hours and I wasn’t, I would sometimes sit on my computer in the office with headphones on doing whatever. Music, surfing, writing, watching TV shows or movies. Whatever. Now I do that in the bedroom which means I don’t need to wear headphones. I had a DAC and some nice speakers in the office but I didn’t really need them in the bedroom, and they also took up more space than I had available. We have a homepod mini in the bedroom (two of them, actually) and when I’m on my MacBook I like to air play all of my audio through them. When I’m on my work laptop I run the audio through my headset mic that I use for conference calls. I don’t like to run my work machine through speakers, I like to keep it to headphones. While I work though I often listen to music or podcasts and for that I use my iPad and air play through the homepods.

Recently, for non-work time use, for steaming video I have been choosing to use the speakers built into my monitor rather than air play to the homepods. I think it’s because the homepods are on the other side of the room and in order to watch TV through them I have to crank up the volume quite a bit. It sounds great, but I feel like everyone else in the house can hear what I’m listening to (even though they can’t) and that bothers me. If I use the speakers in the monitor I can keep the volume way down. Unfortunately, they sound like shit.

So yesterday I ordered a little pair of USB speakers for my work desk. The plan was to plug them into a USB input on the monitor so that I could use it for both computers without having to switch any plugs. Unfortunately, I failed miserably in this attempt.

The speakers are USB powered… but they don’t connect to the audio via USB. They have an eighth inch phone plug for that. Shit. My monitor doesn’t have an input for that, and neither does my MacBook (I honestly don’t know if the work laptop does or doesn’t and I am too lazy to check, even though the laptop is literally an arm’s length away from me as I type this). I was on amazon, saw an inexpensive set of speakers that said USB and bought it. I didn’t read it close enough. Ironically, Jen has the same speakers and bought them for the same reason and made the same error. We’re kinda awesome like that, aren’t we? We finish each other’s sentences AND we screw up our computer audio plans in the same way.

The solution is easy. I have two USB inputs on my monitor, so I just need to grab the DAC from the office desk and use that. That’s what Jen did. That’ll work fine. I just didn’t want to have to add three things to this desk instead of two (two speakers, of course).

I had another item delivered by amazon today too. I didn’t screw this one up. It was Tide Pods. Let’s do some laundry, kids!

The only other outstanding online order I have is the attenuator I ordered for my 30 watt amplifier. I got a notification that it’s shipping label was printed on March 9th. Running the tracking number tells me that it still hasn’t shipped. It’s been a week and it hasn’t shipped yet. It’s just sitting there, missing me. Not a complaint, of course, there is a pandemic going on. I ordered from a home business and life is rough. I just really want to get this thing so I can crank the amp without causing injury and property damage.

And that, my friends, is what’s up with me today. Well… that and work and everything. Whatever, you know what I mean, right?

What Does Mars Sound Like?

NASA has answered an age old question: What does Mars sound like?

It sounds like a microphone without a wind screen and the fact that we can listen to it, even though there is basically nothing there, is one of the coolest things that has ever happened in the history of Earth.

Air Pods Pro

I got a set of air pods pro for Christmas. I like them, but were they better than the original air pods? I couldn’t really say. I think the originals fit better, or at least were a little more comfortable. They feel more secure in my ear. Sound wise, they were about the same. If the seal on the pro’s isn’t good the sound is really toppy and a little tinny.

Last night though, it all changed. Last night I seriously bonded with the little suckers. I was sitting up in bed watching an episode of The Stand (I’m still a bit behind) and I literally couldn’t tell if I was hearing the audio through the air pods or not. It was so clear and perfect, I thought it was coming through an actual speaker. Nice. I had the noise canceling on, which was okay. The transparency thing is good too, but I was the only one awake. The spacial audio… well… as someone who used to be an audio engineer (at least in his head he was) I find the very concept offensive. Some kick ass audio engineer worked his or her ass off to place every sound within the stereo spectrum, and then here’s Apple saying if you turn your head the air pods change the perspective with you. Ummmm… no. I think I’ll go with the audio professional’s opinion of where the sound should be coming from.

Anyway, the point here is that I’ve finally had a break through moment with my air pods pro. For the first time, to my ears at least, they lived up to the hype. Nice!

HomePod Mini

I have an old Sonos speaker in my bedroom/office. I’m listening to an episode of the StarTalk Radio podcast through it as I type this. It’s too old to support Apple’s AirPlay so I have to use the Sonos App. It’s fine for the most part. I can run AppleMusic through it, but not Apple Podcasts. I had to setup Stitcher in order to play podcasts through the speaker.

The lack of AirPlay has meant that I have always wanted to upgrade to something newer so that I could just play my iPhone or my iPad directly through the speaker.

Along with the old Sonos speaker in the bedroom, we have additional Sonos speakers in the living room, and in the office proper. Our home theater system is all Sonos. Those are all newer models that support AirPlay.

We also have an Apple HomePod in the living room. It’s a great speaker, but more often than not the Sonos is the go-to when we want to play music through a speaker.

Yesterday Apple had their media event for the new iPhones. The iPhone 12 Pro Max looks awesome. That’s not what really caught my attention though. The standout to me was the new HomePod Mini. Not because of anything it does, but because of the price.

Given my interest in upgrading the speaker in the bedroom/office.. the original HomePod sells for about $300. The Sonos One runs for about $180, and the Move costs about $400.

The new HomePod Mini costs $99. That’s interesting. It does exactly what I want it to do, and it ties into my existing system, and it’s a lot cheaper than the alternatives.

Interesting………

Bose

We bought my wife a nice set of Bose speakers for her computer for her birthday last year. Since then she bought a high end sound system that blows the system we got out of the water. She gave me the Bose set a few months ago but I took my sweet time hooking it up.

Until today. It’s a massive upgrade over what I had before. Now I just want to sit at my desk with the volume cranked, feeling the sub woofer shake the floor.


Awesome!