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Thursday, November 22 2007
By Greg on Thursday, November 22 2007, 16:33
sells 192 kbps without drm mp3 songs and full albums (cheaper than buying all songs individually) on Amazon.com MP3 Downloads. Unfortunately as the screenshot below shows, this is not for people outside US. And if you are a linux user, you can't natively - which means without virtualization or emulation - download full albums.
Sunday, October 14 2007
By Greg on Sunday, October 14 2007, 13:04 - hardware
I'm looking for good headphones. If I follow my good design mood I'll probably buy the Skull Candy Hesh Black at 49 euros (yes, $49 USD is 49 euros when imported by a reseller...). I'm not an audio expert and I mainly know brands like sony, akg, korg, sennheiser and beyerdynamic. I have never heard about Skull Candy. Here are some technical details and a picture:
Max. Power Handling: 100 mW
Driver Unit Size: 50 mm
Frequency Response: 100 Hz - 18 kHz
Impedance: 32 ohm
If I follow my best quality mood I may choose the Beyerdynamic DT-440 Edition 2007 at 111 euros. Quality has a price :(.
[edit] I've finally bought the Skull Candy Hesh Black. Hope they are as good looking as they are in pictures and the quality confirms what I read in most of the reviews.
To understand how headphones work an how to evaluate them, I found these resources:
Friday, October 12 2007
By Greg on Friday, October 12 2007, 12:39 - hardware
If you knew the early ages of the PC, Turtle Beach must remember you something! It seems they are yet manufacturing high quality sound cards. Please apologize if I ever thought Turtle Beach was dead :p.
Why am I writing about this brand? I was not sure audio ports of my MacBook were S/PDIF ones. Now I know this is the case and I can directly connect the audio S/PDIF output of the MacBook to a amplifier. The doubt led me to seek a good USB sound card. Why USB? Because a MacBook has no PCMCIA (PC Card II nor ExpressCard) port. After a quick search I found the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage SRM and Amigo. There is a small comparative of the 3 USB sound card models produced by Turtle Beach. here is a review from overclockersclub.com.
Ok I can plug a S/PDIF cable between my MacBook and an amplifier. The problem is... I don't have an amplifier and don't plan to buy one soon. However, I want to listen to music with a decent quality on my laptop, and also to hear good audio when I watch a movie. That why I'm considering to buy a Turtle Beach AA SRM.Any feedback and experience are welcome! I hope it works fine with GNU/Linux and Mac OS X, Alsa natively supports it through snd-usb-audio module. I'd like to check that all features are supported because TT provides a proprietary win32 Control Panel and no linux tools :(.
Next step: find good headphones.
