seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Apr 3, 2022 5:47:17 GMT
I think that this is a very good and timely question, I have been living in Qingdao in China for 2.5 years. I do not have a car here and I have no need for one. The city has a metro which is growing all the time. There are a number of uber like services and I have a fold up bike which can be taken on the metro. Importantly, while the climate is "overall UK like". It is much more predictable with much less rain which helps!
The metro costs me about 30p to go "down town" about 7km. It is harder to spend much more! I recently heard of friend who spent £1.50 on a single metro journey... honestly that is crazy money! However, the trip was end to end and took nearly 3 hours! Buses are cheaper. Everything is app based and with a little thought you can turn up at a random bus stop and have an instant idea of when and where the next bus is
Didi is the equivalent to uber. most of my journeys are around £2.50. Again all app based and they generally arrive faster than I can get from my apartment to the front gate. You can book different sizes and types of cars... i.e. luxury or > 4 seats etc. Many of the cars are electric or hybrid. Often the locals will speak to the driver and a single car will drop people off along the way home for no real extra cost.
My reason for pointing this out is that it is seriously making me consider my options when I return to the UK. For example, I live within walking distance of a large mainstream car hire place. While it is not quite 24/7, it is open long hours and easy to access since it is in an industry park. Obviously, a service like zipcar or similar would potentially improve on this. Supermarket deliveries and online shopping have also reduced the need for regular/frequent use of a car.
About 7 years ago, I saw Renault Twizzys in use in Portugal. While I accept that these are odd, probably ugly in most people's eyes and a lot less than "a car", I do feel that one would be adequate for many of my short journeys. I would then only need to hire a proper car for long journeys. My mum is 210 miles of motorway away, this is still probably an awkward distance for the current generation of small fully electric cars. Realistically, I would have to stop (I think? maybe that has changed???)
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Sept 29, 2021 1:02:49 GMT
Jules, I just wanted to say thank you for recommending the X2HRs.... I am now starting my 3rd year here in Qingdao China. While I have access to my music via cheap 'n' cheerful kit purchased here, I was looking to treat myself to a decent set of headphones and a DAC / headphone Amp to go with it so that I have access to one higher quality source. I was prepared to spend some "real money" on this but there are two problems. There is a chance that any expensive headphones maybe fake and there may not be space in the my luggage when I depart. The price of the X2HRs seemed very reasonable. I coupled them with a Hidizs S9 Pro DAC headphone Amp I am very pleased with the results from both. The DAC is based upon the ESS9038Q2M chip. I am still discovering new detail in music I know well. So for a relatively small amount of money I achieved my objective. As previously mentioned, the headphone really leak sound in both directions but I knew this and these are for solo home listening which is fine. Back in the UK, I have had headphones costing x1.5 to x2 the price of the X2HRs and they did not sound anywhere near this good (of course this could be the DAC headphone amp helping). It turns out that a colleague has a number of expensive headphones / IEMs and DAC/Amps and so in the near future we will be doing some comparisons which will allow me to comment more fully on what I have.
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Apr 23, 2020 0:35:25 GMT
Thanks for posting.... there is probably a Physics lesson in there somewhere..... if only I has an open school and pupils!
Randomly, this year, I have many students who have selected Materialscience at Uni for next year. This probably counts as a novel material!
Cheers
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Jan 12, 2020 2:02:34 GMT
Happy Birthday Paul from Qingdao
Cheers
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Dec 7, 2019 4:37:50 GMT
Sorry if this has been posted before (just delete), I do not regularly read this thread but I like coffee and this is shiny
Cheers
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Oct 21, 2019 9:38:56 GMT
Happy Birthday Martin
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Oct 4, 2019 1:17:45 GMT
Slinger,
I have to agree with you... Totally captivating.... Instantly. Then I asked myself why? For me it sort of worked backwards very quickly from the least to the most relevant. The videos are great, with stars being irrelevant and a large collection of faces and places to choose from, you do not know where the videos are going next. Sometimes there is an air of suspense... Hang on a minute, I can hear strings, but I have not seen anyone playing any... ah there we go, a cello in Red Square Phew! The arrangements are great, they have a large palette to choose from. Little bursts of classical guitar, uncommon percussion and other world music instruments work really well IMHO. All in all great music... video and audio recordings which capture the original live performance despite being sliced up into tiny pieces and then nailed back together again.
beautiful performances, by beautiful humans, from beautiful places....
OK... I have rambled a bit... I think you said it more concisely, when you said "well executed"
Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Oct 3, 2019 1:32:42 GMT
Jules,
Thank you very much for the review. Interesting reading.
Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Oct 1, 2019 23:22:25 GMT
Julesd68,
I am looking forward to you experiences with the Bosc mono amps. They have piqued my interest. Sadly, it is only academic interest since, my nomadic lifestyle prevents purchase in the short term.
Cheers
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Aug 12, 2019 4:11:19 GMT
Dear All,
Just a little personal update... My 2 year teaching job in Northern Cyprus came to its natural conclusion and I have signed up for a new 2 year gig in Qingdao China. I arrived Saturday morning UK time. Two years ago, I was on here asking for tiny bookshelf speaker recommendations to accompany my Pi, Allo Boss and allo Grandaughter amp hat. This worked well for two years. But I did have to bring some spare speaker stands when I returned from my first trip home. Disassembled, in hand luggage, even I thought that they looked like some nasty sort of shoulder launched weaponry on the xrays!
Further luggage restrictions and the likelihood of fewer return trips to the UK means that none of the above music kit made the final cut for inclusion in my luggage. In the immediate term, music will have to come through my Alexa (if she works here) or similar bluetooth speaker.
However, given the vast array on curious and amazing value Chinese sourced audio bits on ebay, I am optimistic, that I may be able to get my hands on some of this locally.
I will still lurk and read the posts each day, I will just have less first hand experience with Volumio etc.
Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Jul 24, 2019 12:12:05 GMT
Martin,
I read about your rollout with interest.... what happened to the fireFly VLE?... My interest is that I am once again moving job having completed my 2 years in Northern Cyprus. I am pondering my options for the future... I am spending too much time moving between exam boards and different (or missing) VLEs.... I am considering publishing my resources myself in an exam specification neutral way once and for all. Situation is confused by the next gig being in China... many things such as dropbox and google are not directly accessible.
Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Jul 15, 2019 14:40:44 GMT
A "suitable"* Amazon fire tablet plus the associated "show dock" charging port/stand more or less equals an echo show. I have this for a 8" fire tablet purchased last summer.
* suitable, from memory, last summer, it was the 8" or 10" fire tablets
Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Jul 3, 2019 5:04:06 GMT
Gentlemen,
Thank you for the interesting read.... I do like a good detective story.
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on May 10, 2019 15:11:53 GMT
The album was the soundtrack for the prototype of this film www.imdb.com/title/tt0097372/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2I have the original CD and possibly vinyl. There was a typical Eno quote on the album cover which said something like, "I like everybody else remember watching the apollo landings, but was disappointed with the fast edits in the news coverage which made the whole thing feel like an inferior episode of star trek rather than enjoying the majesty of outer space" I do not have physical media with me here, I have tried googling for the quote. Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on May 6, 2019 8:14:55 GMT
Although, isn't using Bubble accessing my phone storage doing the same job? In a way it is doing a similar job. But.... It is likely to be using the DLNA protocol (Digital Living Network Alliance). This is very good for playing media of all sorts across all sorts of platform.... It is excellent at giving universal access to things... for example, from a smart telly However, the universal openness can come at a cost, For example it is quite possible to play files in formats which are not supported by a limited/primitive playback device. It does that by transcoding on the fly. So for example, if you want to playback FLAC files on a device which cannot play FLAC files, the DLNA server might helpfully transcode the FLAC to mp3 on the fly so that is magically playbacks without further ado. Similar things happen for video formats. This is brilliant for interoperability, but not ideal for "HiFi" where we do our best to maintain bit perfect playback from start to finish. Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on May 5, 2019 12:13:28 GMT
I have used my Pi / Boss combo playing flac files in two different setups. Firstly, a proper QNAP NAS and secondly a large 4TB USB3 drive hanging off of a decent Asus router pretending to be a NAS. It does a rather good job and suits my nomadic lifestyle.
In both cases all the network connections are wired ethernet and SMB "windows networking shares" is the file sharing protocol. A few years ago, I read that NFS, the Unix file sharing protocol was better for our needs, but never tried it. Currently, I am not in a position to do so.
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on May 1, 2019 18:24:49 GMT
Volumio has introduced an Alexa skill volumio.org/volumio-alexa-skill-find/I cannot test this at the moment, the home internet is 99.9% dead Hopefully, by the weekend... You need to sign up to a paid level of myVolumio Cheers Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Apr 28, 2019 8:06:59 GMT
"801 Live", Brian Eno with other Ex Roxys has always been one of my favourite live albums
The 1974 "David Live" album which sort of bridges the transition from Diamond dogs to Young Americans has always been a favourite and at a young age set me thinking about the underlying R&B / Soul music in rock and pop.
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Apr 27, 2019 9:43:07 GMT
As I said earlier, it outperforms my Ayre player of old, but then the reclocking and DAC pull way ahead now. Martin, I have been pondering this for a couple of days... I conclude that the benefits are down to the change of emphasis and where the effort is being focused. My recollection of a potted history of CD playback: - Late 80's legwarmers and Digital is digital, CD players are just boxes
- Ah! some players (possibly the expensive ones) sound better than others, need to listen to them and read reviews
- Oh... CD players are really two parts... transport and DAC
- Maybe better to have an (expensive?) box for each one
- DACs are (expensive?) black boxes, need to listen to them and read reviews
- fast forward to 2019... the DAC is now a white box... there are lots of promising DACs, some of them very reasonably priced
- What effect on sound does fettling the power supply, clock, screening, smoothing, isolation, DAC chip, digital interface have??? I will fiddle until I find out!
I conclude that the cheap CD drive can be made to sound good, because you now understand, at a component level, where the limitations are and what can be done to improve them.
Cheers
Sean
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seanm
Rank: Trio
Posts: 162
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Post by seanm on Apr 27, 2019 9:24:35 GMT
Well, I sprung for the Allo Katana + Isolator. Wannarock, I am pleased to read this, when I started this thread back in July, it was only to highlight the product release. As I said at the time, my nomadic life currently means that I am not in a position to try out new kit. However, it's fair to say that were my circumstances to change, this could well be the route I would take at this time. My compact, transportable system here, is based around the initial version of the Allo Boss and Allo's volt amplifier grandaughter board. As far as I know, none of the regulars here have a Katana. It is an intriguing product, which output stage did you go for? ("Pure THD" or "Sound quality"). Martin and the majority of regulars have gone with the digital out route with offboard DACs. However, what is interesting is that the "Research" (that really is what it is) conducted by Martin, Stanley et al and Allo for these different approaches, are all centred around common themes : separation/quality of power supplies, reducing clock jitter, smoothing, isolation and using more recent DAC devices. The DAC daughterboard approach suits my current needs and is in keeping with the budget nature of the system here and even what remains in the UK. However, what is nice is were I to change and take Martin's approach it causes little upheaval to the overall topology of the system. The Pi and Volumio (or similar) remains the conduit at the heart of the system and isolates the hardware changes. Equally, should a new whizzy streaming or download service happen along, it only takes the availability of a suitable plugin for it to slot in to this set up. I love the open nature of this. Well done and good luck, please continue to comment on your findings. Cheers Sean
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