Music - some tips

What value does the best speaker have without the right music to be played through it?

I am no music expert by any means, but I listen to a lot of different music and I sometimes find interesting artists that are not known that much, but might be interesting for others too.
It is a sad fact that the best artists are rather kept secretly in the background while shit-music is commercially promoted and pushed through media and radio stations...

Here I would like to present some recent albums from this and last year that I think are really worth to be listened to. The style is my own preferred music style, which lies somewhere between Jazz/Funk/Electronica/Groove whatever.

First comes a very fresh release, just released this week: "Resolution 88"!
Tom O'Grady's jazz funk band sounds as if the original Herbie Hancock Headhunters band had rejoined together to record another album. The sound is very retro 70s sounding, but with modern mastering and a very thick bass heavy mix done by another Rhodes-wiz Dan Goldman aka "JD73", who will hopefully also be releasing his new album soon (if you don't know him yet, you have to check out his previous 2 albums).
If you like the old 70s Herbie Hancock fusion sound, you will definitely love Resolution 88.

Another pretty inspiring artist (and British as well) is Carl Hudson with his album "Zoology for Martians". The album is very Fusion-Jazz/Funk oriented too, but with more of a spacy atmospheric sound. Carl Hudson uses vintage keyboard sounds as well as some vocoder effects which makes it also quite reminiscent of Herbie Hancock's own experiments from the late 70s. The drums on this album are played by ex-Jamiroquai member Nick Van Gelder. If you liked the spacy sound of Lonnie Liston Smith or Christian Bruhn's soundtrack for the 80s TV-Cartoon "Captain Future" you will love Carl Hudson, but with a more groovy and more sophisticated sound.

If you are into Brazilian jazz and funk with acts like Azymuth or Marcos Valle, you should have a listen to Lucas Arruda's masterpiece "Sambadi", which is a mix of modern Brazil-grooves, with electronic acid jazz elements. Lucas Arruda played all the instruments by himself which proves him to be one exceptional artist!

This is the first real solo album of Jean Paul Maunick aka "Bluey", the mastermind behind the legendary Acid Jazz/Nu Soul band "Incognito". Leap of Faith is a pretty straight forward Nu Soul, R'n'B album where you can still hear some Incognito elements, but with all vocals parts sung exclusively by Bluey. Some tracks have an 80s vibe to them, while others remind me a bit of 90s Massive Attack. My favorite is "Why did I let you go", a kind of house-track bearing Simon Grey's signature.
Overall a bit short for a full-length album, but definitely worth listening to!

Jeff Lorber started to add "Fusion" to his band name recently like he originally did in the 70s. Jeff Lorber Fusion sound is indeed more groovy and jazzy than some of his previous smoothjazz albums, nevertheless there is still some easy smoothjazz-vibe floating around here and there.
The highlight is definitely the cover version of Frank Zappa's original "King Kong" that was originally played by Jean Luc Ponty who also plays the lead violin part here.

After all those hot and groovy albums, now something to float and chill. Aandra aka Alexandra Hampton shows how sophisticated chill-out and lounge music should sound like. The vibe is soft and a bit jazzy with nice laid back grooves sounding a bit like Naoki Kenji. I am already looking forward to her upcoming release that should be out any minute according to her website.

Review: Bose Soundlink III - the best Soundlink yet?

I have been playing around with the new Soundlink III for the last days, comparing it to the old versions as well as to the Soundlink Mini, and I think I can state that it is the best sounding Soundlink so far. This should already have been the Soundlink when the first version was announced in 2011.

Bose Soundlink Bluetooth Speaker III - hands on and first impressions

Bose announced the new Soundlink III speaker!
The third generation comes 1.5 years after the Soundlink II and 2.5 years after the original one, which was announced in September 2011.

Review: Bose Soundlink Wireless Music System - oldtimer redux!

 
Bose has the habit of very long life-cycles for their products. I have no idea how long their Waveradio has already been on the market without much changes in design or acoustics (not to mention their nearly 50 year old 910 speakers).
The same is true for their Bose Sounddock, which now is revived within the 3rd vesion, but didn't change much from the very first version that came out 10 years ago.

Review: TDK A26 "Trek", Yamaha NX-P100, Panasonic SC-NA10 compared

This time I would like to present some recent portable Bluetooth speakers in the price range from 100-200$ and compare one to each other including my current favorite at this size: the Bose Soundlink Mini.

Review: Klipsch KMC-1, the big letdown!

I started becoming interested in Klipsch speakers, when I heard the KMC-3 my friend brought along so we could compare it to my Altec Lansing MIX.
Infact the Klipsch wiped the floor with my Altec Lansing producing an overall louder and more punchy sound despite being smaller. But for portable use the KMC-3 needed battteries and for my taste it was still a bit large to really being taken with me.

Then Klipsch announced the smaller KMC-1 which looks nearly like the big brother, but much smaller sizewise, which should allow to be taken everywhere easily. It also includs a rechargeable battery, so that I thought I should give it a try if this could be the best mobile boombox so far?

Review: August SE50 - A 'Tivoli' costing only a fraction?

August International sent me a sample of their new tabletop radio SE50 for a review.
As I have heard lots of different radios, I thought I might give the SE50 a try, as it is a very inexpensive unit that even includes bluetooth streaming for under 40$. At the same time it is quite classy looking due to a faux-wooden design. In Germany you'll have to pay a little bit more, as you can find it on Amazon.de for around 45€.
A comparable Tivoli One radio with bluetooth will cost you more than 200$ and you'll only get mono sound. Is the high price for the Tivoli really justified? Let's find out.

Minirig and the new Minirig Subwoofer

I must confess that I have not heard the Pasce Minirig yet, although I have only read positive reviews about it so far.

The Minirig is a compact but powerful mono speaker with very loud and clear sound, according to most who own it. The speaker has a built in rechargeable battery but no wireless mode, it only works wired. But you can also daisychain several speakers to push output even further.

Now Pasce finally lounched the new Minirig Subwoofer which should push the whole system a step further. The Sub is claimed to provide bass down to 48Hz (+/-3dB) which is quite impressive regarding the size.

Soon Pasce will provide a whole 2.1 system consisting of 2 Minirigs and 1 Subwoofer together with all needed splitter-wires, so that you get real stereo-sound.

The whole set reminds me a lot of my mighty and meanwhile sold Thinkoutside Boomtube (formerly Virgin Boomtube Ex) which was quite an impressive 40 Watt speaker system when launched (the volume dial went to 11!), but due to all the wires it was hardly portable anymore once set up. If you wanted to reposition it, you had to disassamble everything again or you needed at least 3 hands.

The fine thing with the Boomtube was that for transport you could screw the satellites on the sub for transport. A pity this is not possible with the Minirigs. At least Pasce could have built in some magnets that held the satellites in place. Though they will probably come up with some special carrying bag with place for everything.

The Minirig 2.1 could become a serious contender in the crowded boombox market, but it comes at a price, as the whole system will cost you about 350£. You can get a Klipsch KMC-3 for 299£, which I am sure will blow the Minirig out of the water regarding bass response and loudness although nerd factor seems to be higher with the Minirig set of course!

Here you can see the whole Minirig system in action thanks to Digital DJ Tips:

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Audiorecording through microphone - Olympus LS5 vs. Yamaha PR7 vs. Zoom H1

My initial idea of recording different speakers under the same conditions had the goal to give objective results and maybe help others in their decision which speaker sounds better etc.
But it turned out not to be that easy.

The biggest challenge would be to create a controlled enviroment, so that recording of different speakers over time with directly comparable results was possible. But this would imply an own recording room, maybe even acoustically optimized and a controlled recording procedure with fixed positions for speakers, microphone etc, similar to that Dpreview is doing with their test-scene to allow the comparison of different cameras.
I am not sure anything like that has ever been done with speakers. There are lots of speaker-measurements in various Audio and Hifi-magazines, but I have never seen audio recordings of them.

To really allow perfect results such a recording should be done with the best possible recording-equipment that is able to record even the finest sound-nuances. This does not only mean lots of effort and time, but also costs. I have no idea if something like a microphone with linear frequency response exists at all. Here you can see the (claimed) frequency response of the Zoom H1 microphones:

When I started doing my recordings I tried out different audio-recorders. Although the Zoom H1 is overall very popular, I assume this is probably because it is one of the cheaptest, therefore I wanted to try some other ones and added the Olympus LS5 and Yamaha Pockettrack PR7 to my test. 
In the following Video I recorded the Sonos Play:1 with all 3 recorders and also mixed in the original recording (from 2:39), so that you can compare which recorder comes closest. I am really not sure, first I thought the Zoom H1 sounded best, but compared to the original recording it also sounds most different. Of course the speaker also distorts the original signal, so the sound characteristics of the speakers adds up to the characteristics of the microphone, not to mention the acoustics of my room, which is not optimized by any means for such a recording.



Still I would like to know which recorder you think gives the best representation of the original recording.
Maybe some of you even own the Play:1 and could listen to the original track through their speaker and compare to the recording. The original track is "Get Back" from "Silent Partner" and is taken from the Youtube Audio library to avoid any copyright issues.
The final idea would be to create a kind of "database" where all speakers can be selected and compared. Unfortunately I am afraid that my know-how is not high enough, and I don't have the money for that. You would also need to have contacts to Hifi-dealers that might lend you speakers for a recording session etc....

Maybe someone else will do this once, so far you have to be satisfied with my amateur-ish approach.

News from Philips/Woox Innovations

Philips was facing quite a bit of financial and structural problems during the last years. The planned acquisition through Funai was finally cancelled and Philips seems to have decided to found a new subidiary for its multimedia products called "Woox Innovations". So far the term "wOOx" was mostly used by Philips for speakers with passive radiator design.
I wonder if new launched products will still carry the "Philips" branding, or already be marketed as "Woox", as there are some interesting products coming.

I already reported about the Philips DS9800W/10 Airplay speaker several times and did a short review and comparison with the Parrot Zikmu speakers. Overall the Philips Soundsphere are pretty fine sounding speakers, with only some software flaws, but also hardware issues. I experienced the popular blinking red LED on my own set as well, but it could be fixed for free during the warranty period. Since then the speakers have been working well, with only some rare crashes.

My biggest wish was always to get the speakers in different colors than black and finally Philips seems to bring a new revised version to the market named DS9830W, which really looks gorgeous in white:

Not sure if something changed with the hardware, I assume they still sound the same, but Philips now added Spotify-connect support, so that the speakers can directly stream songs from Spotify without the need of any further device running.
A pity they didn't add additional inputs like HDMI for example, to allow connection of TV sets etc. The DS9830W should be available soon for 799$/€.
If you can live with black and don't need Spotify, I would grab the old version, which can already be had for under 300$! Soundwise they blow any B&W Zeppelin or A5 or A7 out of the water, just pray that your set doesn't brake out of warranty.

HDMI is probably left for the more expensive and even more funky looking version Fidelio Soundsphere PS1/12:

This speaker only supports Bluetooth (though with Apt-X), but has also HDMI inputs and is claimed to produce "virtual surround" sound. The PS1/12 is more powerful with 2x100 Watts instead of 2x50, but both speakers still seem to need a speaker-wire inbetween.
The PS1/12 will be offered for about 2500 bucks, and although I would love to hear them, I definitely cannot afford them. For 2500 you already can get some high quality audio stuff, the price seems a bit utopic for me. If they come down for under 1000 (or under 300 like the DS9800) I might have another look maybe.