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» A Day With Kindle and a Free Kindle Book
» Too Good to Pass Up - Pen Spy Camera $25
» MicroSD Adapters for Cheap - $2 Delivered
» Is this a gadget? The PedEgg rules.
» Samsung Messager vs. Kyocera Lingo -- No Contest
» Intriguing 8GB Insignia Pilot Bluetooth Player - $100
» Almost Gone-- 24" Soyo DYLM24D6 $220 Shipped
» Loving Imageshack's Torrent Service
» Free Standalone File Recovery
» Inoi HV670 DVD/HDD Media Player for $80


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Friday, February 25, 2005

Awards, Rebates and Other Useless Incentives

Recently I bought a D-Link DSM-320 MediaLounge, and I couldn't have been much more disappointed. It simply didn't do whait it claimed (play video) correctly (in sync), and when I wrote in to their support with a very detailed, friendly question, I got zero response. Not in 72 hours, not in 1000 hours, not ever. It is a known issue and there is no solid date for a fix.

So how did I end up with a piece of equipment that was worthless to me? For one thing, I do tend to buy anything I see that's being cleared out. But in this case, I had seen the awards this thing had won, and it really looked to be exactly what I needed. It won the AEA "Most Innovative Product Technology for Consumer and SOHO Markets", and the CES 2005 "Innovations Honoree Award". It looked like a no brainer for $150 or whatever it was.

Well, it was a no-brainer. Those awards are meaningless, as they often are. I recently purchased ClickTracks Professional, a logfile analyzer that has won any number of awards, and it simply can't analyze a logfile as big as mine. Until it's updated, it's 5000 flushed dollars.

Another thing I need to watch out for is the mail-in rebate. There's a reason they are getting so popular with merchants: they are a good deal for them. Most people don't send them in, but even those that do religiously help the store out by cutting off the UPCs from their boxes, so the store can guarantee many fewer returns. Had I been less lazy I'd still have that garbage MediaLounge playing out of sync video in here.

So in general, don't be swayed by awards on boxes and rebate signs on shelves, you'll end up with piles of good intentions and terrible products. Just like me.

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5.6" Ziga PictureFrame "Media Player" for $155

So I've got to stop using things for purposes other than their intended ones, but this picture frame looks like it has some potential, especially in the car.

It takes 12V in, takes Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SmartMedia, and SD Cards, from which it can play mp3s, MPEG1, and MPEG2 (?!) files, along with JPEGs of course. Obviously the limited format would be a limitation for some, but the resolution can't be much better than 640x480 anyway, so VideoCD quality would be alright I'd bet.

Well, $155 delivered, I guess worst case scenario it ends up like my Audrey and so many others.

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Friday, February 04, 2005

Using AudioGrabber with Car MP3 Transmitters

In testing the VFM7 MP3 player/transmitter, I noticed a little too much overload-sounding distortion. Quiet passages were actually very good, no hiss or buzz, but louder things sounded like they were maxing something out along the way.

I also noticed what is a common problem for me: riding the volume control to maintain the relative sound levels between tracks. I have the controls on the wheel, but it still stinks.

Both of these problems, and I'm sure a lot more, are solved by the excellent, free, AudioGrabber. It's free, it's easy to use, it's got good documentation, it's flexible, and it has exactly the features I needed, namely dynamic range compression and average level normalization. Amazingly enough, even though it's come uo in the forums, I can't find a donate button anywhere on the site. Just a nice guy, I guess.

Dynamic range compression is basically reducing the difference between quiet and loud passages. In the car, this is necessary to move the quiet stuff up off the noise floor of your engine, tires, and open exhaust. It's different from normalization, where the highest sound level in a track is set to one and everything adjusted relative to that. Compression, used carefully, can help the sound in your car immeasurably.

Average level normalization, instead of setting the peak to the highest sample, sets it to the highest portion of a song. The effect is that the volume feels roughly the same from track to track across different albums and artists. Many mp3 encoders have normalization, but it just sets the peaks to the same level, and that's not always a simliar perceived volume.



So I would use AudioGrabber now in my car regardless of my player, just for those two things. But with the VFM7, it really does cure all the problems I had with mine. I reduced my average level for normalization to about 37, add some compression, and now I get no pops, I have no need to crank quiet tracks and listen to hiss, and in essence I've only lost maybe 3db of absolute dynamic range with the normalization because it's about half the regular average sound level on most of my tracks.

Depending on your receiver, your settings may be different. But I'd bet, since my 740i has perhaps the worst radio ever, that my settings will work for just about any car.

All this work really begs the question of whether saving some money on equipment is worth all the time spent getting it to work right. For me, no, it isn't. But it's fun, and you shouldn't have to, since I did it for you.

Also, my other transmitters have had very similar problems, like the Aireo, that crummy Samsung Napster deal, the Anydrive, and the iGo, so I'm sure these problems exist for more people, and now they're solved the best I can. So get your VFM7, Renamer, AudioGrabber, and some cheap pen drives, and keep some music with you for a rainy day drive.

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Thursday, February 03, 2005

512MB Pen Drives for VFM7 - $44 With Lanyard!

Newegg has the Dane-Elec 512MB Pen Drive for $39 and $4.81 shipping, which isn't newsworthy in and of it self, but it does look good with the VFM7 FM transmitter. So good, in fact, I bought two. It's shorter than most pen drives, it's black, it's plain, and when you're playing your tunes through the transmitter it pumps out a nice blue LED light. Bad news? It doesn't change color like the picture, and as if that weren't enough, it's French.

But now for $74 you get a 512MB MP3 player and transmitter with no cables and 4 buttons, you really can't go wrong. I tried it out this evening and other than the limit of 89MHz and below for channels, it's great. It fades in and out between tracks, and it keeps it place so long as it stay plugged into the lighter adapter. It's also easy to operate while keeping your eyes on the road.

For a fast easy solution with no wires, installation, or trouble, it's great.

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