Digital Dad®

Solving the Simultaneous Audio Problem

Back in July I posted about my new Kitchen PC an sound system. At its heart is a (Red) Dell ZPS One, now running Windows 7.

The challenge I had was that I could not simultaneously drive the XPS One speakers and drive the external stereo system for the kitchen at the same time. 

I was using a USB to audio peripheral to connect to the stereo as an RCA L/R audio jack, but the system would only let me select one audio output device – the USB port or the internal sound system.

Therefore, you would have to go through this jumbly right click, change default audio scheme every time you wanted to play the PC through the stereo speakers in the ceiling of the kitchen – not good!

I came up with a solution, more of a hack, that gets me what I need. I ran a headphone jack audio line out from the back of the XPS One and I split it with an adapter. One one leg I connected a simply PC speaker (powered, not battery operated) and placed that behind the XPS One. On the other leg I ran the the cable to the stereo.

Now, the PC has audio all the time through the speaker behind the screen, and you can simultaneously drive that audio through the stereo by simply turning in the stereo. Not ideal, which I think could still be done by software, but at least it’s simple for the user (my family).

Simultaneous Audio

Well the Kitchen A/V system is rockin'. I actually eliminated the living room amp and ran the living room speakers off of the kitchen set up. Perceptive readers may wonder "but that's two sets of speakers in the kitchen and one set in the living room." Yes! I wired the kitchen speakers in series, so they are effectively one set as far as the amp is concerned (plus to minus is one line, minus to plus is the other). Now the kitchen is Speaker A and the living room is Speaker B.

The Dell XPS One is driving most of the music, although I have a tuner on the amp and I also ran a Zune dock straight into another input to bypass the PC. This makes it easy to play tunes while someone else is on the PC.

One challenge is how to p;lay the audio from the PC speakers and the external audio simultaneously. Right now I have to pick a default audio playback device - the internal speakers or the external USB to RCA audio adapter. What I really want is to run both at once so that I can just turn on the amp to add big speaker sound when I want, rather than right clicking on the speaker icon and changing the default!

I haven't figured it out yet . . . any suggestions?

Welcoming back the Harman Kardon 550i

I lived in a tiny cinder block dorm room during my freshman year at Boston University. I was an audio buff and decided to spend the bulk of my Bar Mitzvah money on new audio gear for the room. A completely irrational decision, to be sure, but one that I still benefit from to this day.

Back in the day I picked up a Denon turntable (made of rosewood), a pair of Ohm Wash 2 speakers (sorry I sold those), an Aiwa tape deck, followed by a Luxman CD player, and finally the engine - a champagne faceplate Harmon Kardon HK 550i receiver.

The HK served me well in college and served as the cornerstone for a number of systems. Eventually it was sidelined in lieu of Dolby Digital receivers, ones with digital audio input, and ones with remote controls! The HK was shifted to the garage to power the outdoor system when we moved up here to Bellevue. The moisture out there wasn't a good match.

I recently posted about my kitchen A/V upgrade. After installing those awesome SpeakerCraft CS3 I needed a solid amp to power them. After poking around eBay I thought about the old HK in the garage. I brought it in and wired it up. The balance pot was dirty and noisy but after a bunch of turns it sounded clear. I lined in my Zune and sure enough the HK cranked up and sounded superb. I gave it a good cleaning and it's now glowing comfortably in the kitchen.

Welcome back HK.

Embedding Zune Cards

The new Zunes are here and I am enjoying the Citron one. One of the cool things for me is my Zune Card. I've embedded it here so you can see what the fuss is all about. You can see what I've been listening to, similar to an XBox gamer tag card.

Instructions on how to do this, including detailed Facebook instructions, are here.

The Boss

Bruce Springsteen's new album "Magic" is out on October 8th. Hard to believe The Boss is 58! A.O. Scott has a great write-up in the New York Times. I love one of the opening paragraphs:

The feeling, no less potent for being self-induced, had been with me all morning. Bright and early, me and my girl — my wife of nearly two decades, that is — had let the screen door slam, dropped off the kids at school and set out on the open road, blowing through the E-ZPass lanes on the Garden State Parkway in our Volvo station wagon. We had an advance copy of Mr. Springsteen’s new album, “Magic,” in the CD slot, and most of his back catalog in reserve on the iPod. And now we were driving down Kingsley, figuring we’d get a latte. One more chance to make it real. Tramps like us, baby!

I had a terrible time with his Devils and Dust "Dual Disc" - what a joke. Hopefully Sony will smarten up and just have a plain old CD out on Monday.

Zune 2

Well by now you likely have heard about the news release regarding the new Zune experience. My connection to this project is twofold - first as a person who has tried to get a handle on my collection, digitally, in and out of my home for years, and second as a Microsoft employee who was involved in early Zune strategy and ongoing items.

Speaking to the first part, and as a music enthusiast, I am really psyched about the new Zune updates. I've had hands on time with the devices and they are cool - nice fit and finish and great screen and controls. But the best thing for me, and I guess you will have to take my word on it for a little while longer, is the software. The PC experience is just great - smooth and compelling, not too flashy but simple and elegant with some very cool and surprising touches. It's great to see the progress from last year.

I've been a ZunePass holder for a while and the new software really makes that worthwhile. It's like jumping into one of the old record stores I used to haunt in Boston (Nuggets?), but this time I get to stuff as many albums as i want into that paper bag - old Steve Winwood, Ray Charles, some Monk, and yeah some of that new stuff, too. I take it all with me or stream it in my house or over my XBox in the family room.

More info at ZuneInsider.

Kiss Army's darkest day

I've been a member of the Kiss Army since I was twelve, plunking out God of Thunder on my cheap electric guitar.

But oh, how they have fallen - giving a Cisco shpiel on the "Connected Life" including Paul's comments on mobile device screen size. Hey I am all for campy corporate entertainment but this just takes the cake.

Playing Zune content through your Xbox - without a Zune

I recently took my Zune on our family road trip and at one of the stops I downloaded some new Gwen Stefani tracks for playback in the car.

I copied those tracks off my notebook when I got back home and copied them to my music directory on my music server PC. That PC runs Windows Media Connect and basically sits there serving up music, video, and photos to my Roku, my Xbox/TV and a couple of PCs and a Mac G4 in the house.

Now, as you may know, when you buy music from Zune or from iTunes it has DRM, or Digital Rights Management, code around it (except for the new EMI tracks on iTunes that are DRM-free). DRM requirements don't come from Microsoft or Apple - they come from music labels and movie studios. Them's the rules.

In this case, as you can guess, the files show up in my Xbox library off this PC but you can't play them. What I did to solve it was install the Zune software on that PC and login using my LiveID. That "opened" the tracks and voila - now they play back like any other DRM-free track. Nice.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Zune player software does not need to be running on your server, and in fact I disabled all of the sharing settings in the Zune player and just kept the Windows Media Connect running in XP.

 

Revenge of the SoundBlaster Wireless....

Well it looks like Logitech is about to throw its hat into the ring for wireless music systems.

I posted about my trials and tribulations with the Creative SoundBlaster Wireless thingy a while ago, although its one key feature was being able to use the remote to browse/select the music.

Logitech has taken a cue on this and the remote looks pretty slick. Some questions from me on this:

• No home network required. You would think that the target market for this would have a network already, but this uses a proprietary 2.4Ghz spectrum radio connection. That probably makes set up a snap. I wonder how it will do on range?
• Performance issues? Soundblaster Wireless was notorious for delays in browsing music on the remote. Hopefully Logitech has tackled the problem.
• How many times can the remote be dropped by a two year old and still function?

$250 price point seems reasonable, although it's still above the $99 spouse factor. Looking forward to trying it out, at least (save the receipt!)

New XBox360 dashboard speeds music directory

One of the things that grinded my gears about the XBox360 was the fact that traversing through a large music library took forever.

You would sit there endlessly, slowly scrolling all the way to Ray Charles.

Like everyoine else I was anticipating the new dashboar update last week but I hadn't checked with my peers to see if they had anything up their sleeve on this issue.

Sure enough, it's fixed. As you scroll for a few seconds it goes into high speed mode and you can zip all the way through in seconds.

Kudos!