RimBlock

This is a bit of an issue for us at the moment. The area under the stairs is pretty small and fills up quickly. Some people extend this to fill the void area between the living room and the stairs making a bigger space which you can put shelves in. The utility room which people use for maids or now remove could have also been used for storage. We use it as a study area so no luck there either. The only other option we can see is putting some cabinets on the wall around the dining area or living area and using those. RB

Even better...... Info on aircon installation from HDB here. Saying that a few people in my block have two condensers and we are not upgraded for power . We are not exactly hidden so seems HDB turns a blind eye unless problems are encountered / reported. RB

I went to one at Expo recently done by Courts (the shop of endless sale). On going through they had people on a microphone giving very special only 3 sets mega sale only special offer of XXXX dollars. On returning home and looking at their website the price was the same as you could by that model for online. The biggest thing apart from a few loss leaders they throw in to a couple of people to draw the crowds and reinforce all the prices are very cheap is the freebees which in a lot of cases the buyer was not really wanting anyway. Reminds me of a convo with my work mate. me (m): So you see anything at the sale. Him (h): Yeah there was this good TV only got 5 sets at very special discount price. Wanna buy but not sure. m: tap, tap, tap... see their website.... same price. h: yeah but the one at the show also come with freebees m: like what. h: Sony headphones, picture frame. m: Headphones better than yours. h: nah look quite low end really. m: you were looking for a picture frame. h: not really. m: so you want to rush to buy now for what..... h: Cheap price and freebees. m: [dead silence biting tongue]. . Check you prices before you go as a lot of sales are not really 'special sales' but more selling off old stock at normal prices but making the public more aware. RB

You have some suggestions on what to go and try, so go and try. Then choose the one you like best. Go have a listen then decide. Cannot decide the roll a dice or flip a coin . RB

I think we can both agree that PC music has come a long way and is vastly better than before. Playing music through a PC with reasonable PC speakers can now be a much more rewarding experience. Sure, that would be good. If you are around the Citihall / Suntec area during the week or Tampines around the weekend let me know and we can set something up. RB

If you have enough storage then you can store the raw M2TS file(s) but you are looking at 20->30+ GBs per movie. That soon fills up a hard drive. M2TS (Mpeg 2 Transport Stream) is the standard for Bluray and holds multiple audio, video and subtitle streams in one file. If you use something like TSMuxer, you can strip the ones out you do not want (like Thai/Korean etc). You can also reorder the sound and subtitle tracks so if you like Chinese subtitles you can move those to the top of the subtitle list and it will be the first one when you turn them on. A M2TS stream does not hold any chapter information though . MKV is also very popular as it allows minimal loss of definition with a reasonable reduction in size of the file. It is not uncommon to find 8GB movies around although the sound side of things usually suffers with it only having stereo or at best standard DD / DTS sound. MakeMKV or ClownBD are popular choices to convert to MKV. If you are doing it yourself then you can choose the sound tracks etc and so get what you want. Most people use this as a good compromise between quality and space. MKV can contain chapter info but last I heard, you had to process subtitles separately. There are lots of guides out there though to walk through the process. Of course you need to get access to the movie files which are copyright protected. You will need to search around for a program to 'unlock' the files. There is one which has worked very well for me but you need to pay for it. It also works on ..... Any DVD ..... . I use m2ts to save having to re-rip when better formats come out for compression and just in case the discs get damaged. I also only rip the movies so do not have the menus etc. I have just filled a 2TB drive with movies but that is the backup drive. My main media array is 3TB (3x1 drives). I need some more drives now . If you have the movies on a portable hard drive then you should be fine with most HD players. AC Ryan and WD Live TV players are both good. Streaming from a PC or server over the network can be an issue with very big files. My WD Live HD is fine with 30+GB files (Avatar) but my AV Ryan HD Mini could not handle it via the network connection (USB hard drive was fine).

Not sure what you mean here. The speed at which the laser can read the data from the disc is the slowest part of the ripping process. The converting to another format process will be determined by the processor / memory etc of the machine doing the conversion. Only ripping a disk 'should' be slower than converting the files unless you have a slow machine and a complex encoding scheme. THis is assuming a clean defect free CD as the ripping will take much longer if the disc produces errors when using software like EAC which will prompt multiple re-reads to get enough data to correct the error. And a perfect waveform can only be produced accurately by a speaker that can attain those frequencies without distortion at the desired volume. Feed PC speakers a perfect signal and sit 4 meters away then try to listen to it at a level with a high enough SPL that you can feel the music. Now try the same with HiFi speakers. It is chicken and egg. You need good source and good speakers. The question now is which has the most impact. The answer is that both do depending on the situation. The DAC is no use without a reasonable transport to read the disc and this is no good without a prefect (within tolerances) disc. But the processor is not the only thing that changed. Intel defined the HD Audio standard which Realtek and the like now use. There have been advances in DAC tecnology both for standalone DACs and for DACs inbuilt in to audio cards for PCs. CD drives have improved. The "true" waveform is only recorded at 44.1kHz (standard CD) and so anything that creates the waveform at that rate is producing the "true" representation of the music captured on the CD. Any other processing done is above and beyond the specification of CD audio and whether it improves the result is subjective. Yep they are meant to be very good but they are designed for limited range. Would have loved to have got them then saw the price tag . More than a low-mid priced PC. I think PC music will improve greatly but HiFi will still have its place. Just depends if you want to listen in front of a PC or in the living room. One question.... have you tried your HiFi DAC with the digital out from your PC and connecting it to your PC speakers ? That may be interesting depending on how old the PC sound card is and how old the HiFi DAC is. RB

Ok, seem to be talking about a number of things here so will try to discuss each separately . Sure but that is for the given output obtainable for the use. A PC speaker needs a very low output as you are generally sitting right next to it. My Creative speakers have 14Watts RMS, my Wharfedales have 100Watts RMS. Horses for courses. You would not use PC speakers to fill a normal living room with distortion free sound. Hooking up a reasonable HiFi to a PC and only sitting a foot from the speakers would also not be sounding very good as the volume you would drive the HiFi speakers at considering the distance from them will be very low. But did you listen to the two systems side by side. HiFi and PC. PC sound has come on leaps and bounds and if you only listen to music a few feet from the speakers whilst sitting in front of the PC it would seem a little silly to spend masses of money on a big HiFi setup, just as if you watch TV shows via a TV tuner on a PC then why buy a 55" LED TV. This is probably more of an improvement in speaker and sound card design from how terrible it used to be before now catching up with HiFi. Take some generic cheap PC speakers Output: 0.8W/channel Frequency Response: 60Hz to 20kHz I used to have some of these Yamaha speakers which were very good at the time Output: 5W/channel Frequency Response: 90 Hz - 20 kHz I now have the Creative T20 IIs Output: 14w/channel Frequency Response: 50Hz ~ 20kHz Now, we can see the frequency response of recent speakers is better than that of older speakers (the cheap and Creative speakers are better) but does anyone really believe the US$9 cheap speakers would sound better than the Yamahas which sold for around US$100 at the time ?. The cheap speakers could only put out 0.8w and so to get the volume to a decent level you had to overdrive them resulting in distortion. THis would be especially true during peaks in music or movie soundtracks. Of course, HiFi is a great example of diminishing returns. The more money you pump in to it the less difference you will get from the previous level. $100 -> $1000 big improvement. S5,000 -> 10,000 not so big taking the speakers to be reasonably priced. Only up to a point. The error correction and conversion of the bitstream from the laser only needs to be able to correct and convert the signal at a rate needed for accurate playback. Now with jitter we are talking about the mistiming due to power fluctuations on the drives motor, fluctuations on the laser tracking motor and other small changes which knock out the timing of the digital signal. With most standard CD players, the clock used for the error correction and control of the drive is used for the master clock and is susceptible to these fluctuations. The CD players DAC usually does not realign these signals. More expensive players have the DAC as the master clock and so the player reduces / eliminates jitter by re-clocking the signal. Using an external DAC with a cheap player can do the same if the DAC is set as the master. From that we then move on to the DAC chipset and the firmware it runs. On external HiFi DACs you are usually constrained by the set firmware within the unit and the hardware. As time goes on you cannot easily change these (some may allow firmware updates but they will still be hardware limited). With a PC you can upgrade the software / firmware usually pretty easily to take in to account recent changes in technology. If needed you can easily change the sound card. The software ability via drivers do give the PC a big advantage but this could be added to a DAC which could be just a mini pc on a chip. Info on jitter here for those of a tech mind. Again to a point. Up/Oversampling information here. Guess that depends on the environment. Now you suggested in the context of your PC desktop. I would be interested of how you setup your Krell equipment and listen to it at your PC desktop. If you are not then you are comparing apples to oranges.

Halogen is also hot. We had a dining table ling hanging light and never used it as the halogen bulbs made it uncomfortable to sit under. I would be wary of halogen unless it is coupled with a fan or aircon. The light quality is nice though. RB

Your wrong, or old or both . You are also around my age . But that is ok as I am confused as to how you define 'parameters of your desktop environment'. I agree to an extent what you are saying about a DAC and its ability to transfer the digital representation of the music back to an analogue form used to modulate the speaker cones but I think, for me at least, one of the biggest impacts is the speakers ability to turn those analogue wave forms in to sound waves. Desktop speakers have limited frequency response compared to full on HiFi speakers. The DAC will need to translate the 44.1kHz digital music signal back in to the audio waveform. The processor in the DAC therefore needs to be able to handle a 1,411.2kb/s (176KB/s) stream and process it if running as a real-time converter. Redbook CD Audio standard. This is why most computers can 'rip' and convert cds in a few seconds if their cd drives spin fast enough. 176KB/s is very slow by todays standards of computing. I have some Creative speakers on my computer going through my Realtek onboard sound card. They are good... much better than standard cheap speakers you generally get with computers but I could not begin to compare them to my main HiFi speakers. The dynamic rage of the speakers on the computer are very small compared to the bigger better quality HiFi speakers. I also have a Logitech 5.1 setup and that also sounds very good for computer speakers but again, not a patch on the HiFi speakers I have. To me the limiting factor here is the speakers and their ability to reproduce the frequency range stored in the data on the CD. Chopping of the top and bottom end will take away a lot of the harshness that may be exposed in a badly mastered CD and make it more listenable again. The curse of good HiFi being its ability to expose faults with the source material easier. The other influence will be the RF noise within the PC affecting the signal. A more expensive card should be better shielded and more accurate in its reproduction. The Asus Xoner range of soundcards are well spoken of. I think a more accurate test would be to break out the Krell and hook the CD player to one input and the PC to the other. Rip the WAV from the CD and play both together switching between inputs. This should give a better idea if someone wants to know if a PC chipset or an off-board DAC is giving better results. Hey, pass the Krell to me and I will test it ;) . The bigger point that I think Bluefly has made quite well even if it is a little hidden is that you don't need to spend masses of money on HiFi to get good results. For him, he is happy with some decent speakers on his computer which is where he listens most of the time. This is partly why I suggest setting a budget but also test one level below that budget to see if you need to spend all that money to get the sound you want. Interesting read Bluefly. Thanks RB

Not so much but never hurts to look. The other one I missed from the list is the Behringer A500 which also comes highly recommended. Update: Local supplier has no stock and lead time is around 2-3 months. RB

Some suggestions from AVForums on S$3k setups here. RB

When looking for power amp options for the Yamaha 667 the Audiolab 8000p keeps popping up. Wouldn't mind the Audiolab 8000X7 but that is going for 1.2k second hand . Still with (second hand); Yamaha A1 (multi channel) - around S$700 (seen for S$550 locally a while ago) Quad 405 (stereo) - around S$700 inc import. Not sure of local 2nd hand price. Audiolab 8000p (stereo) - around S$600 locally. Of course if I bought the Quad or Audiolab then I would need 2 to bi-amp. That is without the centre channel upgrade and the sub I need to buy. RB

You might wish to invest in a new keyboard. Your '.' key seems to be sticking although is it good to see you managed to sort out your stuck [caps lock]. The Arcam Alpha 5+ is a great little entry level amp from the 90s and British designed and built. Like many great bits of older HiFi it was built to last and as anyone with any idea about the history of home HiFi will know, this equipment can go on for years and years if not abused. There is stacks of equipment from the 70s still happily supplying their owners with great sound. Only someone trapped in the "newer must = better" consumer trap would discount older HiFi. The Primare is a better amp but can be a bit picky about pairing and costs over twice as much. Better amp and ok speakers or ok amp and better speakers ?. The smart money goes for better speakers, cheaper amp which can be upgraded later. Unfortunately we can see where your money would be spent FKN. RB

All are pretty well liked. Choose any of them and you wont go far wrong. If you want to find the one best for what you like then you really need to go listen and decide for yourself. RB

Ok, looking at the packages you mentioned I suspected something like that. So 3K for bedroom 80% movies. Tannoy HTS101, Boston Acoustics Soundware XS 5.1, B&W m1s might all be worth a look. Thread here from AVForums asking more or less the same thing as you want. Look at the Yamaha 667 or Onkyo 608 but try the Denon as well for the amp side of things. Try to make sure you listen in a room roughly the same size as your bedroom else the sounds will change quite a bit. You are likely to get more bass and reflections the smaller you go so if something in the listening room seems a bit bass heavy, just be aware it may get worse when you take it home. RB

Yep we did that for the last 3 years with our old place and vowed not to take any loans for this one. Of course my wife does not include credit cards as loans . RB

Sorry, I mean the common combinations are regarded as being a good solid choice but you have looked outside of those choices and as are thinking 'outside of the box', i.e. you are having different thoughts about how you can reach your goals rather than following the common path. This is by no means a bad thing and can produce great rewards as long as you are careful. Just wondering what made you choose those setups. Smaller speakers ?. RB

Sure although I believe he is a bit young to understand the opportunity. It also does not help that they have just done the Boys Brigade annual donations, we have the little one due in a couple of months with delivery expenses there and not we have just heard that the Boys Brigade camp this year will be in Taiwan..... It is going to be hard to get back on our feet for a few months with all these costs going out. Life of a parent is measured in part by the sacrifice for their children. RB

We suspect the previous owner also had the lower 'budget' model of flooring which just makes things worse. You can get waterproof laminate flooring and I installed this type with my father in the kitchen of the place I had in the UK. Never an issue with it. Laminate flooring is pretty big in the UK where people cannot just sand the floor boards down for natural exposed boards. The shops like Homefix here sell the packages and materials so you can install yourself. Not so surprising when d.i.y. is a national past time for a lot of people there. Not so expensive but can be a big job. There were 4 people doing our EM and they too 2 days working late in to the night (without my knowledge until the owner down stairs complained to me personally). It is one way to meet the neighbours I guess but we now chit chat in the lift and his daughter happens to be in my sons class . The main UK d.i.y. store link here. Take a look around, might be interesting for ideas or products not available in Singapore. We also have concerns about the window being left open but more with us being out or overnight and it rains. As long as the water is not left to stand so it soaks in then it will be fine. It will not absorb like paper but more like wood so just need to put a floor cloth over any wet patches within a few mins or so and it will generally be fine. Again it also depends on the quality. RB

Some magazine reviews of speaker packages. These should help give you an idea of stuff to try but just because the mag says the speaker package is fantastic, use your own ears and try for yourself. Take these as a starting point rather than a conclusion of your speaker package search. Mix and match with suggestions from the shops you audition in. Compact speaker system group test here and individual tests here. Surround sound speaker package tests here and here. RB

Now, I am a little surprised as most are going for the standard Denon/Yamaha/Onkyo with Wharfedale/B&W/MA etc combinations and you have moved right out of the box. Nothing wrong with that at all but just curious as to why ? What is it that appeals to you about these packages ? RB

Ely found three systems for around 2k with all the speakers. It may be possible to work out a deal to exclude the rears and centre and try to get them within your budget. People reported that shops in Adelphi were selling the Onkyo 608 for around S$680 IIRC so that would leave around S$820 for speakers. Check with some of the shops in Adelphi to find out what they also recommend. Another option is to ditch the sub and get a stereo amp and some very nice speakers. For your room size and considering you are streaming from the internet it may be a bit of overkill to go for a home cinema amp especially when you only want 2.1 speakers. There is a Primare A20 MkII Integrated Amplifier on sale in xtremeplace for around S$800 here. An Arcam Alpha5plus here for S$350. Review of the Alpha 5 can be found here. Spend the rest on some nice speakers and you should have a great sounding starter system. Even got some B&W 685s going for S$550 here. Call the shops and see what they suggest as they have access to many different systems and let us know. RB

Full list finally completed and emailed. Anyone interested then please let me know and I will send a list. I will also be posting them on vr-zone. RB

Think the problem is allowing access to the people doing the reno without someone having to be there all the time or having lots of keys cut for all the different workers . Combo padlock the best option although those supplied by IDs are usually quite old and could be warn and so easier to guess the numbers. A new lock may be better but still need a way to secure it. RB