Dismal Manor Dispatches

Home Networks for Streaming Audio

Post author By davehamby
Post date December 27, 2018

I’ve not written on audio and networking in a while but over the holiday I read Jason Stoddard’s Schiit Happens about his return to the high fidelity equipment industry as co-founder of Schiit, a maker of personal audio and value oriented high end audio. I found the book after I had ordered my Schiit Gungnir Multi-bit DAC. Over the break I had also watched a video in which Mike and Jason (the founders) talked about how Schiit came to be and this, that, and the other thing. They are toying with the notion of offering a new product which Mike kept calling Schiit Pi. This got me thinking I should write about my streaming environment again as I had improved it significantly in 2018.

Audio Music

Roon and Tidal

Post author By davehamby
Post date December 18, 2018

About a year ago I installed Roon Audio and began using it without Tidal. In my original configuration, Roon Audio ran in a VM hosted by my FreeNAS storage server. It delivered audio to either an Apple TV or a Google Chromecast Audio. Both were connected to a Cambridge DACmagic converter by TOSlink. For the first year I passed on the Tidal subscription, assuming that it, like Apple and Amazon streaming, sounded horrid. Then I got curious.

Holiday Letter

2018 Holiday Letter

Post author By davehamby
Post date December 1, 2018

Best wishes for a wonderful 2019. Boy has it been a busy year. As 2018 closes, Dave, Nick, and Missy are well. Dave remains busy with club activities while the Greyhounds continue to keep our garden zombie free.

I’m now officially a Moocher

I turned 70 and started collecting Social Security. This should be a good bet as monthly benefits increase by about 30 percent. The design is neutral from an actuarial vantage point. Social Security will pay out the same total from commencement to median life expectancy. The bet you make is that you will live past median life expectancy, a good bet as most relatives who dodged early canecer have done so on both sides of the family. Most cancer cases involve risk factors like tobacco use, agent orange exposure, or alcohol abuse. I now actually have some income. Surprisingly, Social Security covers about 1/2 of my income needs.

Personal Computing Technology

UniFi Updates

Post author By davehamby
Post date November 2, 2018

A new switch, cloud key, and updated network video recorder joined the Dismal Manor UniFi stable this October. The Moocher checked firmware to discover that updating the core POE switch to the latest firmware required updating UniFi Controller. At that time, UniFi controller ran in a FreeNAS jail. So, the cheap intrepid Moocher tried to update UniFi controller in the jail. He quickly discovered he was in dependency hell. Find out how he got out after the jump.

Personal Computing

The Moocher’s New Printer

Post author By davehamby
Post date October 13, 2018

After many years of using a Canon Pixma printer, the Moocher decided that the time had come for its retirement. Like many things in computing, changing interface standards rather than aging led to its replacement.

Greyhounds

Moose’s Sight-hound Trust

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 26, 2018

Moose, one of my Twitter buddies, is a disgustingly cute Italian Greyhound (I believe) who has attracted an unseemly number of Twitter followers. Somewhere along the way his minions had the notion to start a Sighthound Welfare Charity in the UK. Being in the UK and (for the moment in the EU) my peeps are well aware of the plight of the Spanish Glagos (a field bred coursing hound) and the UK is awash in lurchers (deliberate greyhound crossbreeds bred as field dogs). Strong regulation and a strong network of adoption charities support the UK racing greyhound population but the hunting bred dogs are not well regulated and don’t have the industry assisted adoption network enjoyed by the racing dogs. It is with the field bred Galgos and Lurchers where I see Moose’s Trust filling a need.

Audio Music Personal Computing

Transferring CDs to FLAC on MacOS moocher style

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 18, 2018

The Moocher is a music collector with a growing CD and record collection. In this article, the moocher describes how he transfers CD to FLAC to play using Roon Labs Roon Player. We’ll look at the motivation behind FLAC, the tools used to turn a CD into FLAC encoded tracks, and how to get the tools.

Audio

Furman Power Elite 15 PFi Listening Impressions

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 28, 2018

Featured image courtesy of Furman Power. This is the Elite series over-voltage protection board.

The Furman Power Elite series of power conditioners features a modular design that easily allows Furman to offer products with differing capabilities. Furman Power offers 3 versions of the Elite 15i

The Elite 15i is the base version with series over-voltage protection, extreme voltage protection, and linear filtering of line noise. This device includes an AC voltmeter showing line voltage.
The Elite 15 DMi provides the same power conditioning but adds a second meter showing the current being drawn. This is of interest if the outlet or the Elite 15 is heavily loaded. You can identify the straw breaking the camel’s back
The Elite 15 PFi removes the meters and adds power factor correction to the standard protection functions.

Audio Technology

Furman Power Elite 15i Impressions

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 18, 2018

Background

Although the house has full-house surge protection in the panel, I elect to use a second line of defense for the computers, network electronics, and audio and video systems. In the past, I had used APC power conditioners for this task but another 5 years had passed and it was time for battery replacement. Being tired of messing with lead acid gel cell batteries, I looked around and settled on Furman Power conditioners. After all, something robust enough to protect a $40,000 church PA should be good enough for home, right? Turns out, it was more than good enough. Product impressions and listening impressions follow plus a bit of EE tech.

Home automation Personal Computing Technology

GDS3710 Part 4: Opening the door

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 2, 2018

This is the 4th post in a series chronicling a small church’s experience with the Grandstream GDS3710 Door System. We like the product but the deployment has been like solving Rubik’s Cube. We found we had to do a lot of tinkering to get things working, something that shouldn’t happen with such a sophisticated product.

This article summarizes some of our lessons learned, particularly with regard to use of the keypad to enter PINS, the interpretation of the virtual number field and the various way the doors can be opened using the GDS3710.