Microsoft Ends Windows 7 Retail Sales

Microsoft quietly announced that it officially ceased sales of Windows 7. This is the first time I am actually sad to see a previous version of Windows come to an end. Windows 7 has been my favorite incarnation of the popular OS to date. I have called it "Vista, done right". With Windows 7, Microsoft solved a number of nagging problems from earlier versions, including performance, security, usability, and so on.

Originally, I was anxious to know what Windows 8 would bring. But not anymore. Windows 8 is a huge regression, in my humble opinion. I have been using Windows 8, side-by-side with Windows 7 on various machines. I still stand by my assessment that Windows 8 is a usability disaster; a schizophrenic OS that does a poor job as a tablet interface and as a desktop interface, and forces users to switch between vastly different UIs to accomplish tasks on the same platform. It's just dreadful.

I write software for a living, so I feel that I have some knowledge of which I speak. I'm sorry to see Win7 die, and I hope Microsoft can see fit to give Windows 8 some much needed treatment for its schizophrenia.

High Fidelity Hobby Becomes Necessity

I have been an audiophile all my semi-adult life, getting into it in a big way while I was in high school. I just bought the most sophisticated sound system that I have ever owned: a Phonak Audeo Q90-312 system. That's right, they're deaf-aids. I have been struggling with hearing loss for about a decade, and I finally got fed up with not hearing offhand remarks in meetings, and asking people to repeat themselves. My music enjoyment was never affected much, if I turned it up loud enough. But my family objected to that.

I resisted getting hearing aids because I figured the fidelity would be low; optimized for speech intelligibility over fidelity. I had already decided what I wanted: Something like the Dolby S encoder for cassette tape. And it had to be high fidelity, wide band and low distortion.

The Dolby S encoder is essentially a multi-band, equalized compressor, whose job it is to keep low-level signals above the tape hiss, backing off once the input signal gets above the noise level. In my case, the noise is tinnitus - ringing in the ear. For me, it's like narrow band pink noise, centered on about 4 kHz. Sounds need to be louder than that, in that spectral region, in order for me to hear them.

One of the features I like about Dolby S is that the design was based on the principle of least action (Ray Dolby borrowed the term from physics, but it makes sense in a different way, in this context too). As the signal gets above the noise, further expansion isn't necessary, so Dolby S gets out of the way, and lets the system behave normally. Of course, my hearing is compromised, so while the encoder (hearing aid) brings the signal up above the ringing in my ears, there is no corresponding decoder to undo the encoding. Or is there? As a matter of fact, there is: my brain! I'll get back to that.

Hearing Impaired Musician

I started researching hearing aid technology, asking in particular, what do hearing impaired musicians use? Well, they use high-fidelity, WDRC-TILL (wideband dynamic range compression with treble increase at low levels) devices (or they did a decade or so ago). So, armed with this information, I sallied forth to my local audiologist, and told her that I'm her worst nightmare: a well-informed electronics buff, critical listener and opinionated & demanding audiophile. That news didn't seem to upset her in the least.

She took me back to the soundproof room and we did a hearing test. She keyed the data into her desktop computer, which displayed my hearing chart and calculated the necessary correction. We discussed various models of deaf-aids, and I explained that I would require the highest possible fidelity, and that I was very skeptical that anything could meet my requirements. She finally selected a sample and put them in my ears. She then radioed the prescription to the devices, configured them with the necessary gain, equalization and compression (in 20 bands). I could instantly hear better, and they sounded great (w00t)!

These devices have FM transceivers, so they can communicate with each other, and with a Bluetooth ComPilot that I can wear around my neck if I want to use my cell phone hands-free, or listen to a TV or iPod through my deaf-aids. In normal operation, they radio audio information left and right, to continuously triangulate on stereophonic directional cues, just as our brains do. So they can classify noise sources, as well as speech sources, that the digital signal processor on each ear can then sort out in real time. It's quite amazing, and all that in a package that is so small that the casual observer cannot even see I'm wearing unless I point them out.

The electronics (7/8" long) tuck behind each ear, and the tiny loudspeakers, pictured above right, on the other end of the wire, go in each ear canal. They have excellent fidelity - at least for frequencies above 300 Hz or so. Below 300 Hz, where I don't require any assistance anyway, the direct sound just goes right past them. They're driven by a super high-efficiency class-D amplifier, so battery life is about six or seven days (if I turn the devices off at night when I'm not using them). Batteries are mercury free air-zinc type 312.

For the first two weeks, I was delighted that I could understand speech so much better, even in noisy restaurants, and in conferences at work. But I did notice some distracting artifacts: the stereo image seemed to move around, and I noticed a strange "warble", kind of like the sound I would hear when I was a kid, and my brother and I would talk to each other through a rotating fan. Some people describe the sound as being like talking in a corrugated pipe.

The first artifact was undoubtedly due to the devices trying to make voices more intelligible, by changing their directional characteristics. It's great for speech, but for music, not so much. The second artifact, I found after doing a bit of research on the web, is probably caused by the anti-feedback algorithm being set too high. This chipset (code named Spice) has a characteristic sound when feedback cancellation kicks in.

So when I went in for my initial two-week tune-up and oil change, I told the audiologist that I need a "stable platform" for music; I described the warble, and what I had found on the web. She pulled up the configuration software, and I was pleased to see, there was a "music" program right on the menu. So she added it to my configuration options. When I listen to music, I can push the button behind my ear to select the music mode.

The audiologist also noted that anti-feedback was set rather high. She turned it off, and we experimented with various feedback-inducing scenarios, none of which set them off, so we disabled anti-feedback, and the warble is gone. My hearing loss probably doesn't require enough gain to risk feedback. That could change if my hearing continues to decline, but for now it isn't a problem.

When I first started wearing the devices, it was like having new glasses: everything sounded freakishly clear, and I noticed details that I hadn't heard in years. This is like listening to a Dolby S-encoded cassette without the decoder turned on, only more so. But after a while I became accustomed to the sound, until now it just sounds natural - except that I can understand speech and hear soft music. My brain has adapted and provides the necessary decoding.

The fidelity is spectacular - and I'm speaking as an audiophile now. I can listen to music and enjoy it more, and the hearing aids only enhance the experience - they don't get in the way, as I feared they might. Low-volume live music is audible and enjoyable again. I have noticed zero distortion or overload with loud music, and no compression artifacts with sudden dynamic changes. My family appreciates that I don't have to turn up my sound system or the TV to deafening levels. Now I wonder why I waited so long to do this.

Confessions of a Frustrated Audiophile

Magnavox Portable Stereo Record Player

I have been an audiophile ever since my Grandfather gave me a homemade cabinet containing an Electro-Voice SP12B speaker with an Atlas horn tweeter. At the time (1970), I had a portable Magnavox stereo.

I think the Magnavox had about 3 watts per channel into those 3x6 oval speakers shown in back. Well, I found some RCA plugs and just paralleled the outputs together and hooked them to my Grandfather's single mono speaker (not recommended for audiophile work). But it worked, and the amplifier didn't seem to mind. The sound blew me away. The high end and the low end were like I had never heard before, even from the "hi fi" my parents had in the living room. I was hooked.

The next task was getting back to stereo. So I hunted down a source of EV SP12B speakers. Unfortunately, the one my Grandfather gave me was from the late '50s, and the new ones were of a slightly different design. No matter. I only had $50.00, so I could only afford one. I built some cabinets from a project in Popular Electronics (I think it was), that used some mail-order tweeters from Mouser Electronics. The cabinets were designed for some Radio Shack woofers, but the specs were similar enough to the EVs that I decided to go ahead. I finished building the cabinets, and now I had full range stereo. At 3 WPC. With a ceramic cartridge. Still, I remember it sounded great! I got a lot of enjoyment playing Nilsson Schmilsson, Abbey Road, Ram, Straight Up, The Best of the Guess Who, and ... and I think that was the extent of my record collection then. I had some singles, Joy to the World, American Pie, Albert Flasher, a few others.

BSR 610 Automatic Record Changer

I started reading Stereo Review, and from there I realized that I would need a magnetic cartridge. Also, I started to notice thumps and rumble coming from the record changer in the little Magnavox. Plus, I wished it could play a little louder. My fascination with electronics had led me to get on the Heathkit mailing list, and they always had the most beautiful audio gear (for the time). It was time for an upgrade (such as my meager income could afford). So I bought a Heathkit AA-1214 amplifier and a BSR 610 record changer (with a Shure M71 cartridge). I eventually got matching woofers and purchased EV "building block" midrange horns, tweeters and crossovers.

BIC 980 Belt Drive Turntable

The BSR turntable also had thumps and rumble, so eventually I upgraded it to a BIC 980 with a Shure V15 Type III (I was making more money by then). I used the BIC until about 1984, when CDs started coming out. I bought a Magnavox 4X oversampling CD player (which was actually a Philips, which contained very good electronics and converters). In those days, it was nearly impossible to build a 16 bit D/A converter that was actually accurate to 16 bits. But Philips made 14-bit oversampling converters. The 4X oversampling produced the additional 2 bits by duty cycle modulating bit 0 of the 14-bit converter for 16-bit accurate output. It was ingenious, and it sounded great. So much so, that I started to wish I had a better turntable. Which brings me to the subject of this article. (That's the longest intro I ever wrote).

Dual 505-2 Belt Drive Turntable

Here's my confession: I love my Dual 505-2 turntable! I think it cost me about $300.00 in the day. The salesman talked me into a Denon high-output moving coil cartridge. Moving coils were all the rage in those days. But the Denon never sounded great to me. For one thing, my Heathkit AA-1214 had kind of a noisy phono preamp, and even though the Denon was "high output" for a MC design, it was lower than any moving magnet cartridge. So I purchased an Ortofon OM-20, which is one of the highest output moving magnet cartridges out there. I was kind of a Shure bigot, though. I only went with Ortofon because of the high output, and I had read that Ortofon and Dual had teamed up to match the 505-2 tonearm with the OM-20.

Ortofon OM-20 Phono Pickup

When the cartridge arrived in the mail, I hooked that baby up, and put on my Mobile Fidelity copy of Abbey Road. Wow! I was hooked. That was about 1986. My vinyl collection didn't get as much use in the CD era, or in the MP3 era, for that matter. But what I didn't have in digital format, I have played on vinyl. Over the past few weeks, I have been spinning a lot of vinyl, and really enjoying it, on a turntable and cartridge that is now 27 years old. The OM-20 stylus is still in good shape (I used to replace my old Shure stilii every year or two - don't ask me why the Ortofon has stood up so well). Fortunately, OM-20 replacements are still being made.

Here's the bottom line: Audiophiles and vinylphiles are quick to poo-poo any turntable that costs less than $1000.00, and is built with anything less than unobtanium parts and magical wire, broken in for three months. Well, the fact is, that old Dual is still kicking (after a belt replacement and a few other maintenance repairs), and it is capable of producing sound that is as good as can be stored on vinyl. A 50-lb platter just doesn't turn any more evenly or quietly than a well-engineered lighter one.

Thorens TD 235 Semi-Automatic Turntable

And here's a really interesting tidbit. I was looking at Thorens* turntables with the thought of updating (just because). Guess what I found? One of the midrange Thorens turntables is a dead ringer for the Dual 505-2, and I'm not just a-woofin'. Check it out: The tonearm is identical (right down to the gimbals and headshell), and the semi-automatic operation is as well. The plinth as been redesigned slightly (possibly for easier manufacture), but the look is nearly identical. MSRP: $1000.00 US.

I might buy the Thorens TD 235 someday, but for now, I still love my Dual 505-2 and that sweet sounding Ortofon OM-20. As long as I can still get parts.

* Thorens makes very high-end turntables for the rarefied audiophile community.

WxService Update Available

WxMonitor ow4j130929

• Modified the Wind Vector to show the wind direction in blue when the average wind speed is zero. The reason for this is that when there is no wind, the wind direction is meaningless. The wind vane will be pointing somewhere, but the direction is completely arbitrary. What's more, without the wind and its turbulence to buffet the wind vane and dither the data, the displayed direction will only be precise to the nearest compass point. When the average wind picks up above zero, the indicator turns red to indicate active status. 

(Download...)

Going Down! (For Maintenance)

I will be taking the weather station offline for a short time while I upgrade my weather server computer. I hope that this interruption will be brief (less than a day).

Update: We're back!

WxService Update Available

WxMonitor ow4j130826

• Fixed discrepancy with event intervals when wind speed and wind direction both contribute to a single composite value (wind history).  
• Changed wind history display defaults to 120000 msec. (two minutes) interval and 3600000 msec. (one hour) length; updated config.html to document this.  

(Download...)

Building Your Own Computer? Important Safety Tip!

If you are building your own computer, or replacing a motherboard, or moving cables around, here is an important safety tip: Due to atrociously bad engineering, motherboard headers are physically identical for USB and firewire. However, the power and signal assignments are quite different. If you accidently connect your front panel USB ports to a firewire header on the motherboard, then any USB device that you connect to those ports will be destroyed instantly. It may also destroy the firewire port on the motherboard as well. My son and I found that out the hard way, but if you Google it, you will find that we are far from alone.

USB Header Pin Configuration

Firewire Header Pin Configuration

This is an easy mistake to make, especially if it is not the initial build, where you have the motherboard layout docs handy. The headers may not be clearly marked, and often the header nomenclature will be obscured by other components, and board real-estate for silkscreened labels sometimes puts the labels ambiguously far from the thing being labeled.

Update: It is also possible to sabotage your front panel USB jacks by plugging the internal connectors on backwards if the case uses connectors split down the middle. On such a connector, there is no key to prevent reversal, in which case the data polarity is reversed, and worse, +5 goes to GND and vice-versa. The power swap will destroy any attached USB devices.