Category: music

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A new PC build – just in time

Thanks to a friend who sent me a present lately (you know who you are), I decided to build a new PC for myself. I had built one for my wife earlier this year, and after waiting for the first reports about newer stuff like the new AMD Ryzen processor family I thought that that’s *not* the direction I wanted to go – these newer ones consume power just like Intel processors, and I wanted something a bit less power thirsty. ARM is the future (see Apple), but for normal PC builds we don’t have anything usable yet, so I decided to take more or less the same parts of the build for my wife, but in a smaller case. Here’s what I chose:

Parts for my PC build in October 2022

Here’s a parts list in case you’re interested:

So that would be my first Mini-ITX build, and I was really looking forward to it when the first of these parts arrived last Tuesday:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52418483914/in/dateposted-public/
PC parts for a new build, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

The case (and mainboard) arrived a day later:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52418484249/
PC case for a new build, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

And last Friday, I had the new machine up and running beside the old one:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52417690992/
My finished and running new PC, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

Of course, building a machine and setting it up to use it are separate steps. First I thought about what I’d need or want, and after copying over my Windows 10 partition it offered me to upgrade that to Win11 more or less right away. I thought: “Why not?”, since I use that only for the Olympus (now “OM System”) raw image converter. In the end I decided for a clean installation tho – you need a Microsoft account even for the Pro version of Windows I had, so it made no difference, and I wanted to start with a more clean plate. So soon enough I was done with that, and greeted by that newer operating system:

Finished my Win11 installation on late Saturday
Ooops – not quite done yet…

First impressions of it are positive – in my opinion it got the looks almost like Apple does, and for its internals they borrowed many good ideas from both the BSD and also the Linux side of things. Even their Edge browser which I tried only briefly seemed to show me less ads and other annoying stuff than (Google’s) Chrome would. But ok, this ain’t the OS for surfing, not for me anyway, so on to more pleasant things…

After looking at many options like Arch, the new beta of Fedora Workstation and so on, I decided against a triple boot this time. I wanted to keep things easy and just set up for my personal use (music, photography, blogging, and so on), so except for Windows which didn’t get that much space I took about three quarter of the space on the new SSD for Debian, so here you go:

Debian 11 “Bullseye”, but with a newer kernel

What you see is Debian stable (which is currently nicknamed “Bullseye”). In the upper right hand corner you see the processor temperature and fan speeds reported by a Gnome desktop extension called “Freon”, and under that you see that I have installed a kernel 5.18 from the Debian bullseye-backports repository, otherwise you wouldn’t see those fan speeds, and the Intel WiFi chip which is integrated into the mainboard wants a newer kernel as well – I knew that already from Mitchie’s machine where wireless and Bluetooth started working with Ubuntu 21.10 (instead of their older 20.04 LTS).

So this morning I was about ready, and short after lunch I was greeted by TEE-KWA’s pretty cover picture on Wikiloops:

Wikiloops’ album of the day on my new machine

Of course I also installed and tried Ardour, my Digital Audio Workstation of choice, and within it, the headphone correction by Sonarworks:

Ardour with gimproviser’s wonderful song “Cloudy“
Sonarworks correction for my Sennheiser HD560S headphones in the monitoring section of Ardour

So, regarding music and photography and blogging, this more or less completes my build.

Which was, coming back to the headline of this article, just in time. I wanted to give my old machine to my brother, but alas, it gave up its ghost just after I was finished building this one. Broken heart syndrome on a CPU? Hm, that would be something new even for old timer PC doctors like me… anyway, I tried lots of things today, but it seems we’re out of luck with that one. So yeah, phew, that *was* just in time! To really ‘nail it down’ to a single not working component, I’d need to have a bench and spare parts like Jay so I could change each part and see what/who the culprit is… still sorting out if my brother – who lives in a much bigger city than we do – maybe has neighbours who are hobby PC builders with enough parts for that.

So for me, and thanks to my friend, it’s this new one from now. So cool… and by the way, 8 cores and 16 threads are way more than enough for what I do… still these machines are waiting for us most of the time, not vice versa 🙂

And like always, thanks for reading.

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Three hours with Paul Davis of Ardour

I reported about yesterday’s interview event, and in case you haven’t seen it, here are three hours of talks and interesting news about the upcoming version 7.0 of Ardour. Starts at 30:11 according to unfa, one of the hosts.

Enjoy…

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What a cool photo of Paul!

Paul Davis, creator of Ardour and Jack, in the Scottish Highlands

You can listen to him and to ‘unfa’, a vlogger from Poland tomorrow, see here.

As always, thanks for reading / viewing.

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Surprisingly good… so they stay

Zuleikha – or “Aki” as she prefers to have her called instead – has some original Google earbuds from the Pixel 3a phone. Yes, the ones with cables, and from a time when manufacturers still added those goodies (like power adaptors and headphones) to their expensive products.

Sadly, one of them is dead, so she can hear only one side when she’s out and about, time to get her new ones (or so we thought, more to that later).

First I wanted to get her the new Truthear Crinacle Zero for around 50 bucks (Euros/Dollars), but these were sold out immediately after being on the market for a few days. Out of further options, two stood out, the Moondrop Aria (~80€) and the Moondrop Chu (20€). So after a short brainstorming with Mitchie, I ordered the latter, and yesterday they arrived:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52296383855/
Fancy IEMs, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

I’ve read and seen some tests about them, so I was very curious how these would sound. Turns out, very good – but these aren’t for Aki.

Further explanation: these are maybe *too* good for her – she immediately heard some “hissing” sounds from her phone (Pixel 4a 5G), and also from mine (Pixel 4a). Not so much from the older Nexus 5 or from a Huawei 8″ tablet we also have, but for her own phone she found them unbearable. Neither Mitchie nor me heard that, but then again, Aki’s ears are almost half a century younger than mine…

And why do these stay? Well, for me. I’m no big fan of in-ear monitors or headphones, my own Sennheiser CX 1.00 which I still have are terrible, *for me*. That must have to do with my ear canals, I’ve never had or heard anything which would have the most remote hint of bass, even not with the biggest rubber or silicon “plugs” mounted. Until the Chu, with their biggest “spring tips” (which cost 13€ alone). These still aren’t comparable to good over-ear headphones like the Sennheiser HD569 or HD560S, but at least they don’t sound “shrill”, or produce only treble. There’s a hint of bass even for me, and that’s why I decided to keep these for myself. Maybe those “Crinacle Zero” – with lots more bass under 200Hz – would be even better? I don’t know, but honestly, these kind of IEMs aren’t that important, I don’t use them often enough to justify further expenses for myself. Plus the Chu we ordered came with a microphone in their cables, so I could even take phone calls with these, with the phone in my jacket pocket – so I’m sold.

And Aki? Well she’s still not sure, she absolutely loves the sound of her old cable Pixel buds, so we don’t know, can’t replace these because they’re not made anymore… hints & tips anyone?

As always, thanks for reading.

Update from Saturday, 18:35:

I have to revise my first judgement about these Moondrop Chu IEMs: they are awesome! Get them if you need 20€ in-ears. Writing this from the old Nexus 5 phone on which I’m listening…

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A working bass player’s desk

Mitchie and Zuleikha are out, and I’m alone with one sleeping cat, my computer, and instrument(s). Waiting for a delivery, so I’m not always under my headphones… this is how it looks during a coffee break:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52294218784/
A working bass player’s desk, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

As always, thanks for viewing.

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It all adds up

Or: your low latency is not my low latency

With makers of mobile phones and even notebook computers ditching the headphone sockets, more and more people have come to accept in-ears and headphones without cables, most of them using Bluetooth technology to transmit the audio to and from your phones, notebooks, computers, and so on.

And some people – like those playing games – noticed that it takes some time to get audio “streamed” to your wireless cans or in-ears, and that there can be lags between the picture they see, and the sound they hear.

But that’s not the worst. Even with “low latency” Bluetooth codecs – aptX speaks of 40ms – they still forget that there are people for whom this is much too much.

Musicians for example – some people claim that they can hear latencies of around 10ms (I can’t), and so we all set our audio interfaces to the lowest possible settings to achieve latencies of possibly 5ms or better – otherwise it would be hard to play in time with what you hear from others’ tracks coming from your DAW (digital audio workstation). We spend quite a lot of money to get interfaces like from RME or other professional vendors which can give you these low latencies – and then we should add 40ms for the Bluetooth cans only? No way.

Which is why musicians like Zuleikha or myself will always stay with cables, and only buy devices which offer a proper headphone jack. There’s no way around it. KISS principle anyone?

You probably don’t mind the lag if you’re listening to your phone while jogging. But we do – we simply have to. And we’re the ones you’re listening to (or so we hope, but I speak for all musicians here).

So please stop these claims of having ‘low latencies’ if you don’t even consider musicians.

Thanks.

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Deep Dark Blue is album of the day again on Wikiloops

My friend and fellow musician OliVBee from Wikiloops made an exceptional album in 2017, that was before I even had joined the ‘loops. He called that album after one of the songs’ titles, Deep Dark Blue, and I had written about and reviewed it some 3 years ago already. It’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard *anywhere*, and this one is available only at the ‘loops:

Deep Dark Blue by OliVBee

You can listen to it on Wikiloops in its entirety. If you’re a member in Wikiloops you can also download it including a cover, so you could burn this onto a CD if you like. You can do the same as a non-member of the ‘loops if you get what we call a download ticket, starting at 2,40€ like here (you’ll get this when pressing the download button on the album’s page):

Wikiloops download passes

I *am* a (paying) member, and I’ve still also paid for some of these albums, because they’re worth it, and because that way, we support ourselves with keeping that platform alive and running. This is especially important since these days of Corona, and because not everyone can go out and meet other musicians (and not from around the globe as here). So if you can, go and pay for an album or two of your choice, that would help us all – thanks.

Being at it, I’ve cleaned up the home screen of my phone yesterday, and this is how it looks now:

My phone’s home screen

And I don’t know if you can see it in that image, but I’ve replaced the standard Chrome browser button with one of Firefox, which leads directly to the Wikiloops start page:

Wikiloops in Firefox

Even if not that many people see my phone’s home screen, I’m still putting an ad for Wikiloops proudly in the middle of its screen. This is to say thanks to my friends and to Richard, the founder of the ‘loops.

And before I forget it: thanks also to Anne, and to all of the other wonderful musicians on Oliv’s great album! Last not least, this album is also a master class for us bass players… *and* with top pro drummers to boot! 🙂 Did I mention that I love that fretless guitar which Oliv is playing?

As always, thanks for reading (and probably for listening or even supporting us).

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Memories…

I remember this track as one of my favourites from ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, heard it again yesterday on “Stranger Things” 407 (for the complete sountrack infos, see here):

PHILIP GLASS – Prophecies

As always, thanks for viewing.