Stereo Update

My back is getting over carrying the Subwoofer, and then the Onkyo Receiver home from the local 'Post in a Shop', up the steep hill to my house. The back pain came a day or two later, and I'm just getting over it..

Of course, deciding to refurnish the 'stua' to suit the stereo system didn't help any, as I have a hell of a lot of books, and boy are they heavy!

I've moved the bookcases and shelves to their end sites, but there are still large 'movers boxes' of books waiting to take their new places on the shelves.

Moving the bookcases and a few pictures uncovered some pretty resistant dust stains that had to be washed as well as possible where they had become exposed.

So, the end wall of my stua now has three book shelves, where the TV takes centre place on top of a now unused Soundbar. On its left is the Onkyo NR-535 Receiver, and to its right is the Pioneer Blu-ray player BDP-450. All in rather uninspiring black boxes.. oh yes, and I have an Airport Express providing audio from iTunes to the PC Input. Hardly any visible wires these days with HDMI cables between the devices, and a short Optical from TV to the Receiver :)

The basic 2.1 sound is surprisingly good! Those old Sony SS A-705s are remarkable. Mind you they cost a bit back there when the kids were young.

Only snags/Cons; the Blu-ray Remote (like many) is hopeless. It was ages before I pressed something and suddenly saw SACD video.. come to think of it, they might have an Android app, though I don't feel like spending more on a Pioneer Wifi option. Why couldn't they have built it in like Onkyo do?

BUT, I'm damned happy with the result, and can recommend both the Onkyo and Pioneer devices to anyone reading this.

The Onkyo NR535 plays well

I nearly killed myself carrying the Jamo SUB 260 up the steep hill home, and a day or two later I made the same trip with the Onkyo NR535, which was a few kilos lighter, but my back was beginning to react.

Putting the system together physically was no problem. The same Sony SS-A701's 45-20000 Hz. Unfortunately there was no -3dB or whatever indication on the sheet I had. So things ended up being more manual than I thought it would be, considering the advanced nature of the Onkyo!

The Jamo SUB 260 caused more trouble than it should. Some text to go with the installation diagrams might have helped.

I did a lot of surfing for help on the latter, and was surprised to find little, though that little led me to manual adjustments via Setup which fixed the problem :)

"If it is a negative figure then turn the gain on the sub down a bit and rerun the auto setup. This will mean the amp will send a stronger signal to the sub which should help it to wake up."

The problem?

The SUB worked OK for 20 minutes with the On/off switch in Auto On. You couldn't turn the auto aspect off ! The Automatic Speaker Setup using a microphone at the listening spot did its work, but came up with two errors; it found the SUB to be 33 cm beyond the Front Left instead of 50 cm nearer the listener. Not sure what that contributed to ref the 2nd more important error. It set the SUB level at -5dB. This wasn't enough low frequency umph to trigger the SUB back on after its 20 minute time out even though the SUB was working somewhat right up to the Off point.

So I manually adjusted the subwoofer level in Hardware settings until the SUB reacted at ca +11dB, and then I backed off a touch to +10. Might be able to drop that a touch more after some days experience.

It has been working fine now for an hour or so, banging out Art Blakey drums, and Count Basie big band stuff. Not my favourites, but good test pieces :)

That's it for now. My middle back is still uncomfortable..

My Sony Stereo system has given up the ghost

After many years of excellent service it has retired to the cellar room, and I've ordered a reasonable replacement, an Onkyo NR535 5.2 Receiver, together with a Jamo SUB 260 Woofer.

The Sony SS-A701 Front speakers are still going strong, with 45 Hz to 20 KHz response :)

I spent a couple of hours searching for the latter's specifications without luck, but eventually found them inside the old Stereo manual, which I nearly threw out. There was a single sheet which I'll copy here in case it'll help someone else locate them some time in the future..

I'll continue in a few days time with a mini review of my experience setting the new system up.

Where have you been Fraser?

I''m afraid 2013 was spent mostly with visits to the Drammen Eye Clinic, where I had cataracts fixed in both eyes, trips to a skin specialist in Asker concerning an itchy spot on my back, which she operated on. The biopsy showed more needed to be removed, so next it was a trip to Bærum Sykehuset Clinic, first for a check by the surgeon who would operate, then for quite a deep operation on the same area of my back to remove everything.

Once that was done, I was able to start a treatment for the results of too much sun in Singapore back in the 1950s, and later in Qatar during the early 60s. The treatment was horrific, turning my forehead into something you didn't want to look at! It took a month, and left me with clear baby skin on my forehead :)

The repeat trips to Drammen concerning my right eye, proved to be a Lamellar Macular Hole, and unfortunately could not be fixed, unless some major issue crops up. I can't complain though, as my colour vision is phenomenal, and with 20/20 cheapo glasses I can read really clearly close up :)

Otherwise, 2013 was the return of my interest in photography, triggered by Susan purchasing a new Nikon D7100. I had done quite a bit of reading about the various alternatives, and decided in the end to go Micro Four Thirds, by buying another Panasonic Lumix, the GX7. Then in quick succession I came across another Lumix, a demo LZ200 Superzoom going for a song at Komplett.no.

Both of these gave me lots of opportunity to add new neuron circuitry..

Later, I came across another bargain, this time for 5K, an Olympus OM-D E-M5 with a good Kit lens. This camera has a fantastic Optical Image Stabilization system, which operates over 5-axes or directions, and takes super photographs.

Of course, all told the above cost a bit, though much less and lighter than typical Canon DSLR gear.

More about this anon :)

PS The next episode will be about my purchase of a Samsung TV (another bargain) in order to try Google's Chromecast.

The Lumia 1020 has arrived

Yesterday I walked down to Nærsnes bay, where a few boat owners were putting finishing touches to their yachts. Luckily there were still a few boats on the water, and it was a perfect Fall morning.

I had both my LX5 Compact and the 1020 with me, so I could compare photo quality.

This morning I was surprised to find an amazing panorama picture Google+ had automatically produced from two of the snaps!

I'll try and import it here. First attempt looked OK but changed later into some odd negative symbol..?

Nærsnes Bay

My experience with a Lumia 520

As I am thinking seriously about buying a Lumia 1020 I thought it would be an idea to get to know what WP8 is like, in case I hated it after paying a bomb for a 1020.

Then I saw a special price for a black one at NOK 999. Pretty good! So I ordered it and hopped over to MyTrendyPhone to pick up some coloured back covers and a spare battery.

It arrived last Saturday 17th August in a tiny box.. opened it up and immediately had finger trouble with the SIM card. Finally solved that and away it went :)

Must say the Tiles interface is quite intuitive, as is the flip to the side for the Apps drawer, one of which is Settings, which naturally got quite a bit of use on Sunday. Battery use seemed to be impressively low, until later.

I use Skydrive with my 808 Pureview, so I installed that. I use Dropbox everywhere, so I found BoxFiles for Dropbox and added that. Then I noticed a comment saying that not only did apps get installed to the Phone memory, but the App files remained there too, so it was best to use the SD card for that.

Thats when I discovered my Prime CON with the WP8 OS.. the Store only shows you SD card IF you have manually downloaded apps to your PC and dragged them across to the SD card root!!! What...

Hopefully Microsoft will resolve this in the very near future as there is an enormous number of unhappy users asking for this 'feature' ASAP.

So, I again downloaded the few apps I had already installed, deinstalled those, and after restarting the phone was able to see my manually added apps under SD in the Store window.. yes!

All was plain sailing from there on in, though I quickly learnt that adding too many apps as Tiles soon had the battery running down.

I like the phone. Readability is great. The camera is OK in daylight. Things are pretty easy to set up, Gmail works, and a Software Update to GDR2 is just around the corner...

So bring on the Lumia 1020 'camera' :)

Edit: There was a problem I forgot. After using the camera OK with the Black cover I swapped to the Red one, and when I had visitors, we discovered the Camera button did not function. All but the Red worked fine, but I must say, the covers do NOT meet Nokia Quality in my opinion. Perhaps its a Chinese issue, as all these parts are made there.

Unloadable Macbook AIR cleaned up

The MB AIR on loan to Hege & Ada was reported as being unusable , and sure enough there were only 800MB free out of the 80GB drive!

To access my account I started in Safe Mode by holding Shift during the boot process. Once there, I started looking for things to delete. Ada's Movies folder held quite a few GB, so I moved that over to my Black WD drive for a while.

Finally. I made a new Admin account, checked it worked OK before de-authorizing my iTunes account on the AIR, deleting the Music folder contents.. that got rid of a LOT, then from the new account I deleted 'gfraser' leaving the Home folder's remaining contents for the time being.

Have completed the job by making a fresh Superduper backup to Black 1 :)