Category: Tech

Casting About With Bluetooth

Tornadoes are killing people in the south, Russia continues to pummel Ukraine, children are being shot to death at school, and I spent the day playing around with home audio stuff.

Breaking News: A former president has been indicted on criminal charges, not yet disclosed.

One of the annoyances with Windows 10 (I don’t know about Windows 11) is there’s no way to know if a Bluetooth protocol other than standard SBC has been negotiated.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/what-are-bluetooth-codecs-a-guide-to-everything-from-aac-to-sbc

Android 13 is more informative. My Sony Bluetooth speaker on the porch supports Qualcomm aptX, and the Onkyo receiver downstairs has Apple AAC.

I prefer Chromecast over Bluetooth with the Onkyo. That way the phone doesn’t need to be near the receiver. It’s probably been almost a year since I began experimenting with Chromecast audio on the Onkyo, along with the Chromecast Audio device hooked up to the Harman Kardon receiver upstairs.

When I first connected the Chromecast puck the sound level was low. I knew its Full Dynamic Range setting would increase the output to the line level standard of 2V, but I couldn’t find the setting. The only explanations online were for older versions of Google Home, and the new app was keeping the option hidden.

I gave up looking for an answer and figured out that rooms had to be defined for the house. After I assigned each Chromecast device to its own room, the Full Dynamic Range setting appeared for Chromecast Audio. Enabling it kicked the volume up to CD level.

Out of Phase, Out of Time

There’s no escape from folded mono sound. This morning, Boss Radio 66 played the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time”, a song that’s used very effectively in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

The song was taken from the indifferently produced Metamorphosis album that ABKCO put out in ’75. Stereo elements were added to the original mono track that was given the worst sound treatment ever devised, re-channeled stereo.

As heard on the mono speaker of my Logitech Squeezebox Radio in the kitchen, the sound had the distant, hollow effect that’s typical of fake stereo when out-of-phase channels cancel each other out. On YouTube, the official copy of the recording is called the “Strings Version.”

L+R=M

Stereo records were introduced in 1958. In November, 1968 the White Album was released with both stereo and mono mixes. There is only a stereo mix of Abbey Road, released just ten months later. The end of true mono mixes for popular music had begun.

Ten years later, when I was working in radio, the DJ promo singles that came to the station had a stereo side for FM…

… and a mono side for AM. (The picture sleeve had a strawberry scent!)

Hitting the mono switch (a feature sadly now lacking from receivers and amps) when playing the stereo side of this record produces the same sound as playing the mono side.* Folded mono had been heard for years, with stereo recordings played on mono FM radios, and stereo records played on mono record players.

Early stereo records had this warning.

The problem with most mono cartridges of the time was the stylus only moved sideways. The vertical modulations in the stereo grooves would not only be missed, they could be damaged by the heavy downward pressure of a stylus that wasn’t able to move up and down.

This notice appeared on later records, when mono cartridge styluses (nobody says “stylii” anymore, do they?) were made to be compatible with stereo records.

But folded mono sound can have issues, especially if there are phasing differences between the channels. I heard this effect last Monday night on Big Planet Noise. Bob Irwin played a mono 45 DJ copy of a song. In high school, when the song was new, I heard it in stereo on WBCN, listening with my Pioneer SX-440 receiver and SE-20 headphones.

There’s a lot of intentional out-of-phase sound between the channels, and I would switch the SELECTOR knob to FM MONO to hear what it did. The effect I heard 50 years ago was pretty much the same as I heard Monday night. This is the song.

Windows has a mono switch under the Ease of Access audio settings. Put on headphones, switch to mono, and you’ll hear most of what I heard, but not all. I suspect the misguided Haeco-CSG process was applied, which was a case of the cure being far worse than the problem it attempted to solve.

* The Haeco-CSG audio process was developed at A&M Records. Thankfully, by the mid-70’s it was no longer being used for mono DJ promo records.

The Big Bangs of 1973

1973 saw the creation of Disco and the Xerox Alto system. Disco may no longer be a thing, but everything created at Xerox PARC is very much with us today. I am reading this book.

The IEEE, in charge of the WiFi technology you’re probably using right now, and also Ethernet if that’s what you’re using, has this brief history of Xerox PARC.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-alto

Here’s some Disco. TSOP — The Sound of Philadelphia — by the late Thom Bell.

Teri on TAMI

I’m watching a DVD I bought in the summer of 2010, that I probably haven’t watched again since then, so today’s viewing is long overdue. It’s the famous T.A.M.I. Show.

Re-reading the DVD booklet, I’m reminded that loveable Teri Garr, just 19 at the time, was one of the dancers. That’s Teri with blond hair, wearing a sweatshirt. Toni Basil arranged some of the show’s choreography.

Here’s Teri during the Supremes set.

Everything about the T.A.M.I. Show is significant, even the way it was filmed. Using the last word in Kinescope technology, customized TV cameras with resolution equivalent to 720p were recorded directly onto 35mm film. I can’t embed the movie, but you can watch it on YouTube, complete and in excellent quality.