August 2022
Snake oil: balanced headphonesDo balanced headphones provide an improvement in sound quality over conventional, single-ended designs? Unlikely. In fact, the increased complexity of these designs may actually reduce the accuracy of sound reproduction.
Do different CD transports sound different?Bits are bits, right? If a CD transport just sends digital data to a DAC, is it even possible that different transports sound different?
Command-line hacking: Assigning folder icons to directoriesHow to use basic Bash constructs, along with the Gnome gio utility, to assign folder icons to a set of directories.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: displaying news headlines in the manual viewerHow to use tools like curl and xsltproc to retrieve news headlines from the BBC, and display them using the manual viewer
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: paced breathingUsing a Linux Bash script to generate audio/visual cues for timing paced breathing exercises.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: querying an Internet radio databaseUsing Linux command-line utilities to query an on-line database of Internet radio stations.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: extracting audio metadata (tags)How to use Bash shell techniques to extract metadata (tags) from various audio file formats.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: creating a tide tableHow to use Bash shell arithmetic to create a simple tide table
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: displaying a weather summaryHow to use tools like curl, sed, and groff to retrieve a weather forecast from the BBC, and format it for the terminal.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Command-line hacking: timezone conversionsUsing 'date' and 'timedatectl' to build a utility to help with scheduling meetings in different timezones.
Categories: Linux, command-line hacking
Are Flatpak, et al., saving or drowning the Linux desktop?Desktop Linux will take off next year -- or so people have been saying for years. Do desktop containerization technologies like Flatpak make this more, or less, likely?
Categories: Linux, containers
A skeptic's guide to headphonesUnderstanding the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of headphone that are currently available, without all the audiophile silliness.
Categories: hifi
Why you can't improve your hi-fi system by upgrading the mains cableYou really can't improve your hi-fi system with a fancy mains cable. But why? And why do people think you can?
Is high resolution audio really worth the effort?The availability of better than CD audio recordings is driving, and being driven by, more expensive and elaborate audio hardware, even in the consumer market. Is this a good thing?
A review of the Leak Stereo 130 and CDTA number of reviews of the Leak Stereo 130 and CDT can be found online, but they are short on practical details. I've been using mine eight hours a day for several months; this is what I think of them.
Categories: hifi
Does it matter how we rip audio CDs?Copying an audio CD -- perhaps to a portable music player -- is a common enough operation. There are strong opinions on how to do this, and what software to use. But does it really make any difference? Or is one bit the same as any other?
Why your vintage turntable could kill youVintage vinyl records ought, perhaps, to be played on a vintage turntable. Although such appliances are still widely available, and can work well, they fall short of contemporary electrical safety standards.
Categories: electronics, hifi
Why is there a vinyl revival?Why are sales of vinyl records increasing, when digital streaming services provide access to almost any recording ever made, in superior technical quality?