Audio Amplifiers

So, last episode I told you about my successful quest for better computer speakers and my failed crusade for a better amp. This week, I'll continue with more boring ramblings about audio amplifiers. As I said last time, I'm looking for a small amp that will fit on my computer desk, produce very good sound with minimal power requirements at a decent price. Easy you say? Ha!

There are a lot of resources for HiFi audio on the web, it's a lot different from when I bought my last stereo and speakers back in 1995. The only problem is wading through all of the crap, and believe me, there's a lot of crap out there. I think I've learned one important fact: Audiophiles are generally crazy people that have no sense of reality. There are a lot of people out there that think that certain >$600 speaker cables made from the same gauge wire and same materals as $6 cables sound better, much better, but that you can't actually tell in the store because they need to "burn in". WTF!

One of the better places to find info about hifi audio is the ESP DIY Audio Page.

I first looked into getting a tube amp. I'm not one of those crazy people that believe tube amps are superior to solid state amps, but you can usually get small tube amps that do sound great, and how could you possibly not think that having a small old-school tube amp being driven by a Mac Mini that's pulling the music from a massive RAID fileserver in the closet not the coolest thing you've ever heard of? Ok, that's a little overboard, but I still think it would be cool.

Anyways, I started looking into it and you can't really get a tube amp for less than $500. That's more than I wanted to spend, especially for something that that has 1% total harmonic distortion at 1 watt. Superior to solid state indeed!

As I was looking around I noticed the word "Gainclone" show up all over the place. Gainclones came about when people noticed that a popular several thousand dollar amp was being powered by a $4 chip amp. They were amazed that such a good sound could come from something so cheap. So they started building clones.

I decided that I could do the same thing. I know how to solder. Ok, I don't understand much about how amplifiers work, but at least I could work from schematics or a kit. Ahhh, a kit it is. I bought the BrianGT LM3886 based amp with a "snubberized" power supply. I quickly soldered the pieces together. I can't believe that I hadn't soldered in something like 15 years.

I also bought a 330 VA 35V + 35V toroidal transformer and a few other parts like switches and fuses. Man, the transformer is really heavy. I'm very close to putting the thing together and plugging it into the mains but I'm scared shitless. I've never built anything electronic that actually plugged into the wall. If I ever get over my fear I'll let you know what happens.

Laptop Theft Protector

I've never owned a laptop of my own. I've always had desktops at home, I never thought that the added cost wasn't ever worth it, and they are a pain in the ass to use. The keyboard isn't a real keyboard and the trackpad really sucks compared to a mouse. Of course I could plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse but it never seemed worth it. Work has been providing me with a laptop for several years but Amazon is so paranoid that it's locked down too much to be useful for anything other than work stuff (which I guess is the intent).

But since it's The Summer of Guido I've decided to forget about my no-laptop policy and buy a new MacBook Pro. Well, actually, it's not new, it's refurbished. (Man, Apple sometimes has amazing prices on refurbished computers, I saved $400.)

One of my friends recently had three laptops stolen from his house so I'm a little paranoid about this new shiny piece of aluminium. He pointed me to Undercover, a nice little $30 program that quietly pings their servers anonymously unless you tell them that the laptop has been stolen. The client is told by the server during the next ping that it's been stolen and transmits data about the location and even transmits screenshots and photos from the built-in iSight to the server.

This sounded really cool but it kinda scares me to put this kind of software on my computer when I can't see the source code. So I decided to write my own script to do the same thing. Yippie, my first coding project of The Summer of Guido.

But, before I waste my time I made sure to search around to see if anyone else has beaten me to the punch. Shit, they did. Laptop Theft Protector is a pretty cool little script, and it works too! It doesn't yet make use of the iSight but the screenshots can definitely be useful.

Also while I was searching around I found iAlertU. It's hysterical and probably useful. See the video of it in action.

Summer of Guido

Today I officially started The Summer of Guido, my two month long leave of absence from work. I'll be taking off the months of August and September and returning to work on October 2nd. I'm very excited. Originally when I started planning the time off I listed out a bunch of places that I wanted to travel, but it ended up turning into me spending a lot of time in airports, which was not my idea of The Summer of Guido, so I decided to cut down my travelling to only 2 weeks so I could spend the rest of the time in Seattle just chillin'.

My plan so far is to not have much of a plan. I hope to wake up every morning at a reasonable time, have a slow breakfast at my neighborhood coffeeshop, and spend the rest of the day either reading or writing code for myself. I hope to make a big dent in my queue of books. If anyone has any suggestions for reading material please let me know.