WOW. I think I have just un-earthed some archaelogical site with this post.
But I guess it is fitting to use this place as my sounding board for my latest PC project. As most readers (if there are still any left) here know, I haven't been dabbling much into the world of PCs for a while now.
I found the regular upgrade cycles to keep my PC fast enough to run the latest games to take too much investment, when a console would be able to give 80-90% of the best PC graphics without all the issues of drivers, heat and stability that most PC enthusiasts deal with routinely. Just witness the problems of GTA4 on the PC
To be honest, I haven't really built a new PC in almost 3 years now.
I have, admittedly, refreshed a few systems here and there. I cobbled together a Socket 939 based Athlon64 X2 4800+ system based on spare parts I had in the office in my last job. I also redeployed my HTPC to be a 24 hour server after what I saw could be done with AMD Live! suite of programs.
I left the PC on all day. I could log on remotely from the office to use IM (when IM was either disabled on the office network or logged for monitoring). Could also monitor downloads, retrieve files from my home to be used in the office, etc. When I was travelling overseas, I was also able to use Orb to stream my TV shows and music to my notebook in my hotel room.
But the main issue with running PCs 24/7 is that they eventually die. It's not an IF but WHEN. And WHEN they do, it's painful. I guess PC based HDD just aren't reliable for 24x7 operation for long periods of time. And despite all my best efforts, there'll still be files I haven't yet put on the NAS.
This wasn't the first time the HDD died on me for this HTPC/server. It happened about a year ago, when the SATA HDD konked out on me. I went off and bought a spanking new 1TB drive but as it turned out, the motherboard's SATA controller couldn't support this disk size. Then I tried to upgrade the firmware, but the motherboard manufacturer of that tiny HTPC motherboard had gone out of business. Luckily I was able to salvage a IDE HDD of comparable size from a disused USB HDD enclosure. It was this IDE HDD that finally crashed on me a couple of days ago.
I had in mind a simple solution. Buy an Asus eeeBox. After all, I already had the keyboard, mouse and display that was salvageable.
The main concern with the eeeBox was that the internal HDD was pretty small.
When I went to the shops, I was surprised that the main dealers of the eeePC no longer stocked the eeeBox. I finally managed to track some units down at Fuwell, my usual haunt of choice in the past. I was all ready to buy the eeeBox when I spotted a Lenovo box just next to it. So I asked to have a look at the Lenovo box instead. The Lenovo box, unlike the Asus one, had a spec list. I was surprised to see that the Lenovo box only stated it had a 10/100Mbit connection. This really surprised me. I tried to verify if the Asus eeeBox had a Gbit connection cos I recalled it did have. But I was also stumped as to why Intel would offer a standard Atom chipset with two configurations for Gbit and Fast Ethernet. In the end, I was unable to get a confirmation on the Asus eeeBox's LAN connection so I started looking at the new stuff that had just been brought in.
Enter - AMD's Phenom II 940 Black Edition.
This was AMD's 45nm shrink of the old 65nm Phenom processor. But along with the new process, AMD threw in another 4MB of L3 cache. The 45nm provided a cooler processor with the ability to clock higher speeds.
I know most of the benchmarks show the new Intel i7 processors to be faster, but the i7 processors cost a lot more to start with, before you even start adding the cost of premium DDR3 memory and the pricier motherboards. In Singapore, the premium for i7 is even higher than that in the US.
In any case, I have often found that many times, a benchmark or application developed with Intel compilers, when run on non-Intel processors would often disable many of the optimizations that would work on other x86 processors. IMHO such benchmarks don't really represent the actual performance capable on each processor architecture.
In any case, this finally gave me the chance to upgrade to a true quad core system. I bought the Black Edition running at 3GHz along with 4GB of OCZ Reaper DDR2-800MHz (CAS4 rated), a Gigabyte 790GX motherboard, 2x500GB Green Power HDD, a cheap CoolerMaster case along with a 500W PSU with 80+% efficiency.
By this time, I was already WAAAAYYYYY WAAAAAYYYY over budget (remember the eeeBox)
On a whim, decided to add an LG BluRay/HD DVD reader with DVD-writing capability into the mix. Then I figured... just in case I ever want to add some decent graphics cards in there, upgraded the PSU to a MODXSTREAM-PRO 700W.
Got back home, and after getting everything sorted, I configured the 2 HDD as a RAID1 configuration and started Windows XP installation and hit my first snag. I needed
- AMD's RAID drivers
- floppy drive
- floppy disk
Now, the first two are fairly easy to fix. I have a Sony USB floppy drive and I can easily unzip the RAID drivers there. Unfortunately, none of the floppy disks I have were readable!
Damn. The only way I could install Windows was to configure the SATA drives as IDE. But I wouldn't be able to use them in RAID 1 configuration which would eventually lead me back to this path again in the future!
So today, out at lunch, I was contemplating my options.
I started out looking for new floppy disks to buy. But floppys have gone the way of the dodo. My first port of call was Challenger. Nada.
As it turned out, I walked past Memory World and spotted their Solid State Disks. I figured Solid State Disks should be more reliable than their magnetic platter cousins. So I could install the OS first on the SSD, then configure the 2 HDD using the chipset RAID and install the right drivers.
And so, it finally came to fruition Now typing this on my spanking new PC. One thing I can't quite get over is how QUIET this new PC is. My old HTPC was a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, and even with the esoteric cool and quiet copper/silver heatsink fans I bought, it was a HUGE racket. This new QUAD CORE processor runs even quieter than my Dell desktop in the office!
I did have to flash the firmware BIOS to the latest one from Gigabyte. Otherwise, the CPU name was not displayed during POST, and worse, I had intermittent problems booting up. The manual said the beeps indicated a power issue. I suspect it could be because the CPU wasn't getting enough juice to run cos it was still an unknown type to the motherboard with the old BIOS. Thankfully, Gigabyte's BIOS is pretty good. It even includes a built in flash utility that can be triggered during POST. All I needed was to load the files on a USB thumb drive.
In any case, am well pleased with this setup. Now all I need is a 4870X2 card and an Asus HDMI 1.3 audio soundcard, and I am all set
Recently I was into flashlights, especially after acquiring the Fenix L2D 180 lumens model. The Fenix runs on the Cree 7090 XR-E LED and is powered by two AA-sized batteries. This little puppy just puts my past flashlights in shame, and I really regretted not getting it earlier. Like the saying goes, you only need one real's man flashlight and the Fenix could possibly be just the one I need.
I4U News has an article on a new 4100 lumens flashlight which is so bright that it can convert light energy into heat energy, thereby setting paper on fire!
It is capable of melting plastic, lighting paper on fire within seconds, and if you like, fry an egg or a marshmallow on a stick. See a video below that shows how the flashlight burns up a pile of paper.
At 4100 lumens, The Torch is 100 lumens more powerful than The Polarion Helios, the former most powerful flashlight. Apparently Wicked Lasers has The Torch currently in review at the Guinness Book of World Records.
Measurements of the torch are 57mm x 230mm. The battery lasts for 15min. The 4100 lumens can be adjusted via a high efficiency reflector. The casing is made from aerospace grade aluminum.
In an article from BankInfoSecurity, a Philadelphia bank and two Washington State credit unions revealed that their customers had been solicited in new, telephone-based phishing attacks aimed at stealing personal account information. These fraud attempts are examples of a new trend known as "vishing" – a combination of "voice" and "phishing", which refers to the use of Voice over IP to launch attempts to separate unsuspecting customers from their personal information. The callers use social engineering techniques to prey upon consumers’ trust of telephone-based alerts from institutions. And because they are computer-based, the vishing attempts are difficult for legal authorities to monitor or trace.
“As banks tighten up security on the Internet channel, the criminals are increasingly using the phone channel," says Avivah Litan, Gartner distinguished analyst. Vishing is just one of an array of clever and devious social engineering techniques the crooks are using to steal customer credentials and account information.
Information security analyst Nick Holland at the Aite Group predicts a similar direction for this fraud. “It [vishing] certainly looks to be the next attack vector. Customers have gotten to a point where they’re savvy enough (but not entirely so) to avoid the email phishing attempts,” he says.
Given the “spam-like” reach of phishing, it doesn’t take many positive hits on an email to make a profit for the phisher, Holland adds.
For the criminal, vishing is appealing. The customer is diverted to a fake call center, complete with a spoofed caller ID name appearing on the telephone's screen. “As a bank customer, you would not expect a phone call that appears to be from your bank to be fraudulent,” Holland says. “The key here is it appears to be legitimate.”
As institutions increasingly move into mobile banking and mobile payments, the vishing trend also brings into question the methods used to authenticate users over the phone.
Financial institutions are not the only targets of vishing. Gartner’s Litan sees vishing spreading out to other businesses. “The crooks will use all types of social engineering techniques leveraging brands such as eBay, PayPal, wireless telecommunications providers, charitable organizations, and medical service providers,” Litan says. “They will also make up brands, as they do with straight phishing, pretending to be sweepstakes contests, lottery games, and the like.”
In the end, however, the thieves are trying to get consumers’ money, so regardless of the technique used to steal credentials or account information, the bank or credit union account is the ultimate target.
I am pretty sure the stuttering I am encountering with the Creative XMod and my HP TabletPC/notebook is due to Vista and not the AMD processor.
I just used my wife's HP notebook which is also a Turion64X2 based model, but it runs Win XP Pro instead of Vista like my TabletPC. Not a single stutter.
Damn Vista!!!
In other news, I got the Motorola battery pack with the mini USB jack and tested it with the XMod, and it works brilliantly. So for about $220 bucks (Creative XMod and the Motorola battery pack), you get a pretty decent earphone/in-ear-monitor amplifier for the iPod.
You do need to get the Mylar dock with lineout connector and a short interconnect cable to complete the picture but you'd need that anyway with any pocket amp.
Only downside is that the Motorola battery pack plugs directly to the XMod. Ideally, you need a short mini USB (female) to mini USB (male) cable but I haven't found it yet.
I think I may have found a pretty affordable headphone amp solution tho audiophiles may actually scoff at this approach
In my quest to get some decent audio from my notebook, I bought this little device today...
It seems to be a decent and affordable headphone amp and USB DAC with some Creative XFi processing built in.
OK, so it didn't work with one of my notebooks (still encounter slight stuttering with the HP) but seems perfect with the Dell. This could be one of 2 things (or both):
a. HP is running Vista Home Premium, Dell is running XP Pro
b. HP is AMD, Dell is Intel
This may not be a CPU issue per se. I notice that USB ports on some AMD chipsets tend to have less "power" than those powered by Intel chipsets, so am going to find a "dual headed" USB cable for the HP tomorrow. See if that fixes the stuttering issue.
Of course this is a Creative box and some "audiophile" guys may have issues with it. But the truth is that it isn't a bad USB DAC converter.
First impressions... the XFi Crystalizer actually makes the sound more "full" but to be honest, it just seems to make the music louder. I am getting pretty much the same thing if I turn the Crystalizer off and dial the volume knob a bit more. Bass is a tad more pronounced, but that's it. I am still not convinced with the CMSS3D mode, though. Sounds like bad echo effects.
But the XMod is not really a portable solution. It needs to be powered by a USB port from a PC.
In any case, my PocketPC phones all ship with a charger with a mini USB tip and I found out I could just as easily power up the XMod without a PC by using that charger. Hooked up my iPod Nano to it and surprise! It works surprisingly well with the Nano driving my UE 5.pros. The XMod was able to drive the Alessandro MS Pros as well, but the power output meant it was only able to do it at moderate levels.
Which brings me to this:
This device actually is a pretty large capacity battery and has a USB jack (also comes with a USB cable). And this gives the XMod the power it needs to be portable!
May go to SLS or Funan tomorrow to pick one of these Motorola power packs.
It's a pretty affordable solution compared to some of the more esoteric headphone amps I have been testing.
Had a family emergency today, so had to rush back to Malaysia. My Evo had been sold and the little Mitsubishi i that has become my daily drive isn't really designed for Singapore highway duty, much less over 5 hours on the North South Highway, so I ended up hitching a ride with my brother-in-law and sister.
To take my mind off other matters, I used the quiteness of the car cabin to run some experiments, comparing how the UE 5.pros sounded, driven directly off the Nano and through the Hornet headphone amp (running with low gain)
IMHO, the key differentiators are:
Separation, Clarity and Resolution detail
Staging
Separation, particularly in the midrange was pretty impressive.
With Damien Rice's The Blower's Daughter, I found it so easy to distinguish the second harmonizing guitar, playing alongside the main guitar, even in the bridge section when Damien's voice is normally more prominent
And in the same passage, with so much going on, the strings managed to not only stand out, but also sounded fuller and warmer and more natural than when driven by the Nano alone.
Even in faster tracks like Cassie's Me And U Remix and Chris Brown's Run It, the vocals, the back up vocals, and even the "echo" effects are resolved more cleanly.
In N.E.R.D's Rockstar (Nevin Blaster Club Remix), the separation also extended to the higher frequencies, making it easy to distinguish the cymbals with the main synth (bass guitar repeating the main theme), the sampled "whistles" and "vocals"
Bass is generally tauter too in most of the R&B mixes I tried.
It may be odd to refer to Soundstaging in a highly remixed track like N.E.R.D.'s Rockstar but I am amazed by what the recording engineer did. During the transition in the beat patterns, the earlier beat faded gradually, almost into the distance, while the louder newer pattern emerged. This wasn't apparent with just the Nano alone.
If there has been any downsides, it is that the trebles sound overly emphasized with the Hornet at the moment. This could be because it has not been properly run in yet. Most users suggest a much warmer sound after 400 hours
Can't wait to finish running in the Hornet so the high end isn't as shrill. Even now, can see there are gains in midrange and even high end separation and tauter bass. It's an incremental gain, not as big as the switch between the E2Cs to the UE 5.pros, and you really have to do an A:B to tell the differences.
As Leonides would say... "THIS IS MADNESSSsssss..."
But first, a brief recap.
I was never particularly discerning when it came to audiophile quality reproduction for audio. After all, I was an early adopter of MP3 and even ATRAC3 Network Walkman I always liked the convenience of a small enough package to lug along virtually my entire CD collection. Sure, some modicum of quality was important, so like many, I bought into the Sony marketing and got some midrange earphones like the MDR-E888 and when that was discontinued, I got the EX series.
When I got my iPod Nano for long business trips in cattle class, some research in the forums got me acquainted with Shures. At that time, I thought it was crazy that anyone would pay so much (over S$150) for a earphone, and that was just the entry level one.
But I noticed I was going through my Sony earbuds at the rate of about one a year. They just weren't as well built. According to some good friends, the Shures seemed better built, so I figured they may actual make for better value for money in the long run. That, and I needed an excuse to try something new.
So I got the entry level E2C. I have to say, I was really amazed when I got it. The bass was sooo much better than all those "alleged" MegaBass Sonys I had in the past. Bass was pretty good once you got the right foam/adaptor for your ears.
The Shures kept me happy for a number of years.
Then, I noticed on one of my trips earlier this year, that the wire on one side had been frayed. There was nothing wrong with the sound reproduction, but the frayed wire sheath just over my ear caused a lot of discomfort, and using sellotape to seal the area didn't improve things.
As luck would have it, that business trip put me in Hong Kong, home of geek and gadget-dom. But I was surprised to find that the famous PC malls in Kowloon didn't stock Shures. Just the usual Sony's and budget Seinheisers.
But I did find a mall in Hong Kong Island which was a treasure trove for ear and headphones. Squirreled away in a corner was this shop selling a bunch of esoteric brands I barely heard of. After my experience with Shures, I got more comfortable with the brand, and contemplated getting a higher end E3 or E4 to replace the E2Cs. The sales guy was a geek too and he recommended the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5.pro with dual driver design which he felt were a much better bang for the buck than the Shures.
I was a little sceptical, but whipped up my PocketPC Phone and hammered away at Google over GPRS and found quite a number of pretty good reviews. So on a gamble, I took the plunge.
I brought it back to the hotel and began playing back stuff from my Nano. Just before I dozed off, I was listening to a Jeff Chang playlist and there was this song that I was pretty familiar with, but I just was amazed with the details that I was never aware of before, it was like I was listening to it for the very first time.
Since I had a 3 hour flight with nothing really great on the inflight entertainment the following day, I decided to look for the song and do an A:B shootout between my 2 earphones.
First, I listened to the song "Lang Man Shou Ji" with the super.fi. Again, I was wowed by the incredible separation of all the instruments and vocals. The bass was, again, really tight and distinctive and with great presence, yet it never overpowered the other components.
The vocal track was clear and precise and completely distinct from the midrange of the guitars. I really loved also how easy it was to pick out this harmonizing second guitar track that I never noticed before.
So I got out the Shures to listen to the same song again.
And it sounded pretty bad in comparison. Bass felt totally underwhelming, and all the instruments and vocals were all muddied together. And there was totally no clarity in the vocals. And the second guitar track? I finally managed to pick it out, mainly cos I was looking it out for it, but it just was difficult to make it out from the muddied midrange.
Along the way, I switched to a faster tempo playlist. First up was Buttons from PCD. The resolution of the super.fi brought out a backup vocal track that I never noticed.
Could swear I picked up some additional background instruments in Eminem's Lose Yourself. And in Cassie's Me and U with Ja Rule and Harry-O, could make out the odd adlibs from the male singers more clearly (often drowned out by Cassie's primary vocal track when I listened on the Shures), and even when Cassie sings the backup for herself, you can discern the 2 different layers.
To be honest, I never thought the Shures were bad. I really loved them when I first got it. But this 5.pros were just damn amazing.
And so began the slippery path into the dark side.
To be fair, the UE 5.pros satisfied the upgrading itch. Even though I was tempted by the 10.pros with triple drivers or the upcoming Westone UM3s with triple drivers and triple crossovers, it was only a daydream, gone in an instant.
But the problem with the 5.pros were that they were soooo detailed and so clear that you started noticing small niggling problems that slowly became bigger annoyances gradually, like there was more hiss on my notebook headphone jack, and I could occasionally make out EM interference. Annoyed me no end.
It was during this time (well actually last week!), that I knew of Jaben Network in Adelphi.
I began spending more time there and got to know Wilson. He's a really friendly guy, and always offered really good and sane advice. He's more like "a trusted advisor" (a term most sales people in the enterprise use as a buzzword, but in this case is the real deal) than a sales guy
He first recommendation that I try the Firestone FUBAR III. This was a USB DAC integrated with a headphone amplifier.
This used the USB to supply a pure digital audio connection from the notebook, bypassing the internal audio. The internal DAC of the FUBAR III then gave a much cleaner analog output, with its own cleaner power supply, and partnered it with a good headphone amplifier.
Wilson wasn't wrong. There was an incredible amount of detail revealed by the USB DAC that the notebook's internal audio just obscured. The clarity and staging were so much better. It's weird, you know. I never once expected the puny notebook to be this competent.
Unfortunately, I noticed that my office issue Dell notebook produced intermittent "clicks" that were barely audible, but noticeable with the newfound clarity of the FUBAR III.
We then unhooked the FUBAR III and used the internal audio of the notebook. With the Grado/Alessandro Music Series 2 I loaned from Wilson, I could make out the same intermittent clicks as well. It was really annoying. Wilson suggested disabling File Indexing which helped, a little, but never quite fully rectified the issue. Looked like there was something with the loaded software that was causing the problem, and since it was a company issue, I couldn't just uninstall different pieces of software to troubleshoot the problem.
In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to conduct the test using the Grado
The MS2s were surprisingly comfortable and I liked that I could just slip them on and off in the office when people came a knocking in the cubicle. Using my 5.pros were great, but it was a real pain putting them back on every so often.
And the sound quality nicely run-in MS-2s were seductive, to say the least.
But unfortunately (or fortunately?), the MS-2s were not in stock. But the highly sought after MS-Pros surprisingly were. And after a very long wait to boot. Guess there's something abt being in the right place at the right time.
Wilson offered me a swap and top up to the MS-Pro, and it didn't take me long to decide.
I decided to partner it with my old Nano, which was taken out of storage (normally kept with my travel gear) and just forget all about using the notebook. But this was a miscalculation on my part.
The 5.pros I had were very very easy to drive and the Nano was a good match. The MS-Pros, unfortunately, were notoriously much harder to drive.
So, that prompted another trip to Wilson's.
It looked like a headphone amp was needed to partner the Nano.
I was initially drawn to the Emmeline Tomahawk by Ray Samuels Audio for its mammoth-like battery life. But it was really designed for easy to drive IEMs, not the Grado.
Wilson was a little unwilling to reveal his prized possession, the Emmeline Hornet from the same company. It was his last piece, but he was nice enough to let me test it out.
Listening to the MS-Pros and female vocals like Corrinne May (Safe in a Crazy World, Fly Away) and Sarah Brightman (Phantom of the Opera's Point of No Return) was a new-found revelation. The Hornet was able to drive the MS-Pros so beautifully. With my 5.pros and the Nano's internal amp, Brightman's high notes suffered a little bit of distortion at higher volume levels. Not so with the MS-Pro and the Hornet partnership.
So I pleaded and cajoled with Wilson until he let me have the last piece. Thanks again, bro
Am so loving this setup now. It's not the most portable solution (primarily due to the size of the Grados), but it is very very very satisfying. If there is only one drawback to this whole system, it is that the noise leakage from the MS-Pros are pretty high, and it's driving my colleague nearby nuts.
WOW. I think I have just un-earthed some archaelogical site with this post.
Now typing this on my spanking new PC. One thing I can't quite get over is how QUIET this new PC is. My old HTPC was a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, and even with the esoteric cool and quiet copper/silver heatsink fans I bought, it was a HUGE racket. This new QUAD CORE processor runs even quieter than my Dell desktop in the office!
Print Today's News
Recently I was into flashlights, especially after acquiring the 
In an article from 
tho audiophiles may actually scoff at this approach
Had a family emergency today, so had to rush back to Malaysia. My Evo had been sold and the little Mitsubishi i that has become my daily drive isn't really designed for Singapore highway duty, much less over 5 hours on the North South Highway, so I ended up hitching a ride with my brother-in-law and sister.
According to some good friends, the Shures seemed better built, so I figured they may actual make for better value for money in the long run. That, and I needed an excuse to try something new. 
