Posted on Tuesday, 26th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

Last Sunday, I visited Car and Home Entertainment Expo or CHEX 2006 at Balai Kartini, Jakarta, Indonesia. That was an annual expo for car, home theatre, and high-end audio in my country.

I got chance to audition the Kharma CRM 3.2, powered with Burmester Integrated and Audio Aero CD Player. The sound for Kharma itself was almost excellent. The room has a lot of acoustic problem, so almost in all room the equipment couldn’t perform at their best, except if you put a lot of treatment.

I was surprised because the Burmester could sound very liquid and musical. As far as I know (I’ve audition the Burmester system for few times), IMO, the Burmester is quite “stiff”, live in sound, and not very liquid. Suddenly, Kharma changed my mind when I heared this combination. I believe Kharma should be able to sound better with better (more liquid and musical) amplifier.

The staging and imaging was excellent, despite of the poorly untreated room. The depth amazed me (though I saw to treatment behind the speaker). I wonder how Kharma will perform on highly treated room on Mr. Bing’s house I will visit you Mr. Bing…

Picture below was taken in Mr. Bing’s room. Inside you can see very simple setup. The Kharma CRM 3.2, Burrmester Integrated, Audio Aero CD Player, a power distributor, and of course me and Mr. Bing himself.

Posted in Personal | Comments (3)

Posted on Thursday, 21st September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I’ve just finished building my new speaker cable. Nothing special here. Just want to post the photo.

I will test it soon and post the result.

Posted in Personal | Comments (2)

Posted on Thursday, 21st September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I’ve just received one comment from someone at one of my post. Then, I replied the comment. Suddenly, I got error on my reply. Not a catasthropic error, it’s just a backslash error.

All of my comment that contains non alphabetic character will have backslash character in front of it.

So, “green” will be printed as \”green\” and I\’ll instead of I’ll.

Bad, this is bad!

Then, I Google around and found this:
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/wordpress-203-tuneup/ 

or this is the direct link:
http://txfx.net/files/wordpress/2.0.3-upgrade/wordpress-2.0.3-tuneup.phps

Click download on the top. Save the file in to your PC. Rename the file into .php extension (your browser usually will add .htm extension, so rename it back to .php). Upload to your “/wp-content/plugins”. Activate it from your WordPress admin control panel.

Several bugs fixed:
#2760 “Are you sure?” dialog for comment editing no longer appears
#2761 “Are you sure?” dialog no longer adds slashes to info passed through it
#2764 After editing a comment, you are properly redirected back to your original location
#2776 New in version 0.2: “Are you sure?” dialog for user editing no longer appears
#2782 New in version 0.3: “Are you sure?” dialog for link editing no longer appears
#2806 New in version 0.4: Deletion of links works when JavaScript is turned off

Special thanks for everyone who has helped making this tune-up. Very helpful

Posted in Personal | Comments (2)

Posted on Tuesday, 19th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

Well, this is one of the latest product from Altec Lansing, the FX4021. At first, I don’t see anything special from this speaker, until I see the subwoofer’s design.

(more…)

Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (14)

Posted on Thursday, 14th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I’ve just bought few parts for my stock yesterday. Now, I gather all of my stock components list them here. I found some unique, vintage “well known” good components, and expensive one (some old, some new). If you need assistance how to get these components, feel free to drop me an e-mail.

Elna Cerafine. Cerafine is well known as a premium quality capacitor. I’ve stocked some of popular values like 47uF, 100uF, and 220uF (25-100 Volt).

(more…)

Posted in DIY Audio, Personal | Comments (108)

Posted on Tuesday, 12th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I was asked to be a speaker at Makassar. The topic was “Blogging for All”. The event was held at MTC Karebosi on 9 September 19:30. The audiences were quite newbie about blogging, so they asked a lot about this topic (and I was running out of time to answer all of their question because I have about one hour only). Here’s some photos from Makassar.

This is Elex Makassar representative building. Not the best building here, but it’s quite big in this area.

(more…)

Posted in Personal | Comments (0)

Posted on Thursday, 7th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

Well, a friend of mine, Donovan told me about AutoStitch software few weeks ago (thanks Don!). I gave it a try and got very satisfactory result. The original photo was taken with Canon EOS 350D, 1/30s, f/6.3, and ISO800. Few adjustment done with Photoshop (some sharpening, level adjustment, and cropping).

I recommended the AutoStitch for all of you who want to create a panoramic photos. Quite comprehensive and professional features included, but also worked fine for newbie like me ;). Choose the input file, make some noise sample, then let AutoStitch works for you.

A suggestion from me. Take as many photos as you can. Don’t have to think about how to stitch it, because it will be done automatically. I took only 3 photos for the sample below (I should take more to create wider panorama). More photos means more (wider) photo could be created. Don’t have to worry about overlapped sample because AutoStitch knows how to handle it.
Click the image to get the original size. My WordPress forces the image to be resized. So, if you want to see the bigger size, just click on the the image.

Posted in Personal | Comments (0)

Posted on Tuesday, 5th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I’ve installed Windows Vista few months ago, but I don’t use it for typical daily use. Today, I examine the audio option and find few interesting things.

It looks like Microsoft has done a good job improving the audio feature on Vista. As the picture shows below, you can see more options for your audio. I think Microsoft has same idea with all of us: PC will merge with HT to establish a HTPC generation. Surely, Vista should support this platform better in the future and Microsoft just did it.

(more…)

Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (0)

Posted on Tuesday, 5th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

A subwoofer is very common in audio system. In your car, in your home, in restaurant, anywhere. It’s not difficult to find a subwoofer. But this one is crazy. We are talking about MTX Audio JackHammer Check the picture below.

(more…)

Tags: car audio, jackhammer, mtx, subwoofer
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (110)

Posted on Monday, 4th September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

Later these days, I saw many new sound cards claiming itself as an audiophile’s card. Few of the sample are Onkyo SE-90PCI, SE-150PCI, and some from Audiotrak like Prodigy 7.1 XT Gold or HiFi version.

Very interesting to see what is real thing behind this phenomena.

Onkyo SE-90PCI, 2 channel sound card from Onkyo. Claims 110 dB SNR and 24 bit 192 kHz. High quality components used on board.

(more…)

Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (98)

Posted on Saturday, 2nd September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I’ve just watched the “Snake on the Plane”. Well, I saw some interesting (but not a new innovation) on the movie: The in-movie commercial.

On one scene, the FBI agent (forgot the name) wanted to identify the snake to his boss. But it was hard for him to inform his boss about the snake just by describing the snake’s color. One of the passenger told him that she could send an e-mail with the photo inside. The others complained that she needed a computer and digital camera to do that. She replied that “This could do that!” and showed her Treo 600 or 650 (it’s a Palm based PDA with digital camera).

(more…)

Posted in Marketing | Comments (1)

Posted on Friday, 1st September 2006 by Jimmy Auw

I remembered this thing when we conducted the blind test last week. The RCA Splitter shouldn’t be used when examining the character of two cables. Read more to understand the scenario.

(more…)

Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (5)