Faux fact: Designations for virus variants were inspired by model numbers for audio gear from the heyday of hi-fi.
Category: Tech
What Was I Thinking??
Being a responsible adult, I’m getting a new driveway and front walkway for $14,400, instead of taking advantage of this incredible clearance price at Best Buy.
https://www.projectorreviews.com/jvc/jvc-dla-rs3000-4k-projector-review/
Oinkyo No More?
As I mentioned in March, my excellent Onkyo TX-NR676 receiver has Chromecast Built-in. I was about to write more about what I’ve learned from using Google Chromecast for audio, when news of Onkyo’s demise appeared.
The iPod has been discontinued, Bose is laying off, and now Onkyo is no more. Onkyo’s trouble can be blamed on their staying stuck in the classic receiver-centric model of home hi-fi. They did a great job of succeeding in the A/V receiver market, but most people now favor sound bars over true surround-sound systems. My thanks to the Onkyo software developer(s) who pushed out a final firmware update a few months ago, before the axe fell.
Follow-up: The Onkyo and Pioneer audio brands were sold last September to VOXX/Sharp, with Sharp itself being a brand that has gone under in the past. It remains to be seen how well this new business arrangement will work out in the long run.
https://www.klipsch.com/news/pac-response-to-onkyo-bankruptcy-filing
You Are Standing at a Blog Post
Before Myst there was the interactive text game Adventure. Introduced in 1976, I first played Adventure on an Infoton dumb terminal in 1981. I can’t find a picture of the Infoton, so here’s a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A, also introduced in 1976.
I became an expert on dumb terminals (Dumb Terminals for Dummies?) and asynchronous data communication at the suggestion of the co-founder of my employer. My thorough understanding of 7-bit ASCII, RS-232 interfacing, start bit/data bits/parity bit/stop bits, and Xon/Xoff flow control served me well for about ten years, until it was rendered irrelevant by the PC revolution. I never got all the way through Adventure, but it’s available to play online for free.
Tough Times at Bose
There have been layoffs at privately-held Bose Corporation. They stopped producing home stereo loudspeakers a while ago, with the model 301 being the last one. I won’t be surprised if the unique Wave Music System is discontinued.
Something I didn’t know until reading this article is that MIT has majority ownership of the company, but it has no say in management.
Recast
Here is yet another post about Google Chromecast for audio. The eBay seller who sold me a new Chromecast Audio player for $50 started charging $75 for them, and now they’re sold out. So I was lucky to get one when I did, at the price I did.
Considering the utility and quality of this inexpensive product, it’s a shame it was discontinued by Google. Amir at Audio Science Review had high praise for the technical quality of Chromecast Audio, especially when used with a Toslink cable connecting to an external DAC. And he had no complaints about its internal DAC, which is how I use the player.
When I started testing my Onkyo receiver’s Chromecast Built-in feature, I noted the difference between the behavior of the SiriusXM app on my phone and the TuneIn app.
The tech site reviews I’d read agreed on one point about Chromecast Audio. That it establishes a direct Internet connection between the audio renderer and streaming services. The app doing the controlling is just that, a remote control. The reviewers should have done some deeper digging.
It was very curious to me that TuneIn had some success with the Onkyo, but the SiriusXM app didn’t, requiring the workaround of using the Google Home app. I wanted to know exactly what was going on. To my satisfaction, the excellent HiFi Cast app not only revealed why SiriusXM failed — which turned out to be the Onkyo’s broken Eventing Mode — but also why TuneIn had some success. The answer is in this screenshot.
Casting has an option the reviewers missed — that it can play through an app. The stream comes to the phone and is then redirected to the audio renderer in the player. Switching to “Via Hi-Fi Cast” causes the same sputtering effect I hear when casting with the TuneIn app. The sputtering disappears when I use the Google Home app to do the casting. The implication is the TuneIn app is redirecting by default. That’s why it was somewhat successful with the Onkyo, whereas the SiriusXM app apparently runs in direct mode.
That’s enough for now. To the exasperation of at least one of you, there is even more about Chromecast Audio that I will explain later.