Gadget Review Of The Year - 2012

Well, it's that time again. Seems like only a couple of months ago that I was writing the 2011 version of this post, but here we are at the end of 2012. My good intentions of posting more frequently on this blog have gone by the board, but at least I haven't abandoned it entirely. Anyway, I suppose I had better get on and tell you about the gadget comings-and-goings at Low Fidelity Towers over the past twelve months.



At the start of the year, we embarked on the grand Home Cinema project. You've probably seen the photos that I posted (here and here) documenting its conversion, but needless to say it was quite an exciting time. We completely revolutionised the room, turning it into a proper cosy home cinema complete with full 5.1 sound. I used the amp and speakers that I already owned, but the new gadgets came in the form of a Samsung 40-inch UE40D5520 TV and a new Sony BDP-S380 Blu-ray player.



After that fairly hefty financial outlay, things remained quiet on the gadget front until April, when I purchased a first-gen iPad from a friend. I couldn't justify buying a brand new one, but this was the perfect antidote to keep my iPad desire at bay (at least for a while).

After getting rid of a few old bits on the mighty eBay, I decided to get a USB MIDI keyboard to try and kickstart some music-making. I've not really done a lot of music in the past few years, and I decided it was time to try and get back into it. I bought the M-Audio Keystation 88es, which has semi-weighted full size keys and it has been a good purchase. I don't think a "proper" pianist would think much of it, but it's ideal for me to tinker on.

I bought a new digital-to-analogue converter to use with my hi-fi in September. I had been using my Firestone Audio Fubar IV, but I felt that the system would benefit from a proper, dedicated DAC to handle the audio conversion between my Apple TV and separates. I opted for the Arcam rLink - it's a very simple device, but it works very well, and it's so small you can hide it away behind your other components. I was so pleased with it all, I splashed out on a very nice hi-fi rack to put it all on.



Speaking of the Apple TV, as you may know I had two of these for Airplay duties - one in the lounge and one in the bedroom. They were second-generation ones, and I hadn't ever seen the need to upgrade them to the latest 3rd-gen ones, as I didn't really need the extra 1080p capability. However, when Twitter friend Sam told me that she had sold her 2nd-gen Apple TV for £150 (substantially more than the original £99 RRP) I decided to follow suit and sell both of mine. (In case you're wondering, the 2nd-gen is sought after because it is possible to jailbreak it, something that I was never interested in). I re-purchased two new 3rd-gen Apple TVs and sat there with a tidy £100 profit in the bank, and an urge to spend it on yet more gadgets!



The opportunity to spend it came in the form of the iPad Mini. As soon as I saw it announced at the keynote in October, I knew that it would be mine (oh yes, it would be mine). I had the £100 from my Apple TV sales, but where would I get the remainder from? I decided that the first-gen iPad that I had bought back in April would have to make way for the Mini, so I stuck it on eBay. Within an amazing 13 minutes of listing it, it had sold, and there I was with enough cash to buy the Mini. After much internet searching, I finally (just before Christmas) managed to secure the black 16GB wifi model, and it found its way under the tree to be unveiled on the big day.

The final gadgets of the year also came at Christmas, in the form of a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface and a Behringer C1 condenser microphone. Alongside the MIDI keyboard, I'm now all set up to make some music and hopefully this will bear fruit in 2013.

Anyway, happy new year to you all. Thanks for reading, and hope 2013 is a good one.

Powerful stuff

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my purchase of the Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC/headphone amp, and the new lease of life it had given to my digital music setup. I won't repeat myself here, but needless to say I was (and very much still am) incredibly impressed with its performance. I also mentioned in that post that I was considering getting the matching add-on power supply for the Fubar - called The Supplier.

Several Firestone Audio customers were reporting good things on internet forums about the performance gains that the dedicated power supply brought to their original components. This is something that I've always been a little sceptical about, because electricity is electricity, right? Surely it doesn't matter where it comes from, as long as it comes from somewhere. However, I was thinking that the "wall wart" mains adapter that shipped with the Fubar IV looked a bit cheap in comparison to the quality of the unit itself, and with it being a European unit it shipped with a 2-pin plug. This meant I had to use a 2-pin to 3-pin adapter as well. I figured that this combination probably wasn't the best source of power for a component that was all about audio detail and fidelity.

Anyway, it came to my attention that Firestone Audio's website were doing another of their crazy price drops on The Supplier (you need to keep an eye on the site, because these deals are worth looking out for) and it was reduced from 115 Euros to 75 Euros. Taking into account currency conversion and shipping charges, that still meant £25 off the price from any UK dealer. Needless to say, this was the nudge I'd been looking for, and I went and ordered one. I figured that for that relatively modest outlay, I could take a risk and it would be an interesting experiment. If all else failed, there was always eBay!

There was a bit of a delay taking delivery of The Supplier. A combination of popular demand and the Icelandic volcano meant I had to wait three weeks to get my hands on my new purchase. However, the lovely people at Firestone more than made up for this by also sending me their newly-released FRX-001 dedicated audio rack that they've designed exclusively for their components for me to review.

The first thing that I noticed on opening up the box for The Supplier was that again the mains cable was a 2-pin European one, with an adapter to turn it into a UK 3-pin. No matter though. Wanting to really give The Supplier a chance to shine I declined to use this option. The Supplier has a standard figure-of-8 mains socket on its rear, so I simply grabbed a UK-plug figure-of-8 cable that I had lying around and plugged this in instead. I then unplugged the Fubar's original mains lead and hooked up the output of The Supplier to the input on the Fubar, and we were up and running.

With my Grado SR80i's plugged into the Fubar, I decided to leave the system playing some tunes on repeat to give it all a chance to warm up and "settle in". I've absolutely no idea if this actually makes a difference or not, but I thought I'd give it a try. Certainly when I first got the Fubar IV it became better over time, gaining some warmth and clarity as it got run in, so I figured I'd give The Supplier the same benefit.

Itching to try it out, later that day I settled down for my first proper listen. I'd anticipated flicking through a few well-known tracks to test things out. In actual fact, I ended up listening right through four of my favourite albums all the way through from start to finish. I was loving the music so much, I just kept going. The sound was just so natural - warm, yet detailed. Not in the slightest fatiguing. Most of all, enjoyable!

With a more critical head on, the next day I decided to be a bit more analytical. I did some straight A-B swapout testing of The Supplier. Listen to a track with Fubar alone, then listen again with the Supplier. I tried a range of music - electronica, acoustic, rock, classical. All had a definite improvement in clarity and dynamics when listened to with The Supplier. The improvement is, I will admit, subtle - but it's definitely an improvement.

Onto more aesthetic matters, I've now also got my two Firestone components at home in their new dedicated Firestone rack, as you can see in the main photo. Cleverly, the rack has a system of rubber stoppers on the underside of each shelf which stops the components from sliding around when plugging in headphones and the like. The fact that my little head-fi system looks so amazing on its new miniature rack is just the icing on the cake. Superb stuff.

Frankly, this little setup is brilliant on so many levels. It brings genuine hi-fi quality to the world of digital audio convenience, it's relatively cheap and amazingly small. I love it!

I just can't help myself...

So I've been sat here for the last few hours, "organising" an assortment of files on my computer. I've been going through and creating new folders, moving files around, renaming stuff to make more sense and generally "tidying up". I had loads of individual files just thrown into my "documents" folder and it was starting to get unweildy, and I didn't know what was in there. Despite the fact that OSX's wonderful "Spotlight" search feature makes it a doddle to find stuff, I felt like I needed to get a handle on what I had, and where it was.

After doing all that, I decided to start on a few iTunes files to make sure they were organised sensibly too - particularly the ones that I've bought from the iTMS store. I cannot stand it when things are all categorised using different conventions - it makes things really untidy. Again, iTunes itself does a pretty good job of organising things for you but occasionally it does things wrong. Well, maybe not "wrong" per se, but certainly not the way I'd do it. Particularly the way it handles compilation albums does my head it, so I take matters into my own hands for those.

Whilst going through, I then noticed that virtually every track you buy on iTunes has different metadata embedded in it - I think it depends on the record label, but some tracks have the bare minimum, some are stuffed to the gunnels with irrelevant bits and pieces. So, me being me, I've had to go through and standardise things a bit. You'd think this was easy wouldn't you? But I've come up against all sorts of headaches - there's a lot of hidden data in some of those files and it's a bitch to get to. But eventually I've managed to go through and wipe a lot of the unnecessary stuff, and then complete the more important bits.

A few weeks back, when Apple announced that they were making the entire iTunes Music Store 256kbps non-DRM files, they offered the option of upgrading your existing purchases for 20p a track to change them from 128kbps DRM-protected tracks to the new non-DRM higher bit rate ones. I was quite pleased about this (I hated the 5-burn limit on those tracks more than anything) so I duly clicked the "upgrade" button and prepared to take a hit for about a tenner's worth of non-DRM goodness. However, things are never that simple. Seven of my purchased tracks are not yet available in the new format, so they're still the 128kbps versions. That's annoying me immensely, as you can imagine. Apple reckon they'll soon be available to upgrade too, but I don't know when.

This has presented me with another issue though. Now I have these new shiny versions in 256kbps, but I've ripped the rest of my library as 128kbps and that means THEY NO LONGER MATCH.

I'm quite convinced I can't/won't hear the difference between the two bit rates, but knowing that they ARE different makes me uneasy. I'm seriously considering reripping my CDs at 256kbps now. You see, this is why I'd never be able to get rid of my CD collection in favour of digital versions - there's too much to go wrong in the virtual world. One day, (Apple heresy coming up here...) there will be no iTunes. Then what will we all do?

And then I got to thinking - why am I bothering with all this? Why don't I just leave stuff alone? I've come to the conclusion that I have some kind of computer-related OCD. I need help. Seriously.