Audio & Music

Audio & Music

Audio & Music

I love music. Unfortuneately, my passion for music must be satisfied mostly through listening since my talents as a musician are very limited.  I appreciate all genres of music and actually enjoy most of them.  In my earlier years, I played (using the word loosely) a few instruments including piano, trombone and guitar, but I never spent enough time practicing to master any of them.  The guitar is the only instrument I continued playing past Jr. High School, but since the end of college I haven't played the guitar much either.

In the 70s and early 80s I built up a decent collection of LPs (many of which I still have) and since the mid 80s I have been collecting CDs.  The advent of digital music formats such as MP3 finally made my collection easily organized and accessible.  My MP3 library now stands at 25,000+ songs and continues to grow, although I find less reason to buy music now that I subscribe to music services like Slacker and now have a multi-million song library.

In addition to enjoying music, I enjoy the hardware aspect of audio listening. I built my first set of speakers when I was about 12 years old and while in college I designed and built a 250 Watt per channel audio amplifier.  In recent years, I have bought rather than built my equipment though.

Below I provide a few additional details about the hobby aspects of music and audio that I enjoy.

Musical Instruments

As I mentioned above, I am not much of a musician.  This doesn’t stop me from playing around with musical instruments from time to time though.  In addition, our kids are interested in music.  Our oldest daughter took piano lessons for many years and although she no longer takes lessons, she still sits down and plays fairly often. Our son plays piano and drums. He plays the Snare Drum in the in Jr. High School Band and Bass Drum in the school drumline. Our youngest daughter played piano for a couple of years and also plays Saxaphone in the Jr. High School Band. Below is a list of musical instruments in our home.

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• • 1926 Knabe Ampico Grand Piano – This is my pride and joy.  It is a beautiful sounding piano.  As an added bonus, it is an AMPICO “Reproducing Piano”.  For those who don’t know what a reproducing piano is and are interested to find out, details can be found on my Knabe AMPICO page.  The piano mostly gets used as a practice piano by my son now, but it also played by my oldest daughter and is used regularly to play music rolls.

  • Takamine EF360S Acoustic Guitar – I have owned a number of guitars over the years – acoustic, classical, and electric.  This was the second guitar I ever owned (I was still in high school) and is the only one of my older guitars that I still have.  I bought it new in 1979 (S/N 79061583) and it's a great, easy playing guitar.  It’s a traditional dreadnought design and is a knockoff of the Martin D28.  It has a solid Spruce soundboard and the back, sides and fingerboard are Rosewood.  It has inlay and a rosette with Padauk and Jakaranda.  Its an great sounding guitar with superb tone and amazing volume.  It was a very close copy of the D28 in both design and materials and as a result it compares well against many much more expensive guitars.

  • Yamaha DGX-300 Keyboard – I’ve had this keyboard for about seven years now and it mostly gets used for playing around with MIDI compositions on the computer.  It’s just a mid-level consumer model but it is actually quite capable and more than adequate for my use.  I wish it had weighted keys though.

  • Olympia OP-2 3/4 Scale Acoustic Travel Guitar - I bought this guitar about ten years ago when my oldest daughter expressed an interest in playing guitar.  Her hands were still too small for a full sized guitar and this little guy was the perfect solution.  It doesn't get played much, but if I start playing more it will make a decent little travel guitar.  There are certainly much better travel guitars available, but they are also more expensive.  It's a good guitar with decent sound for its size.  It I had to sum it up I would say "good value". 

Digital Music and Online Music Services

As I mentioned above, I have a rather large library of digitally encoded music.  Nearly all of my library is in MP3 format and I try to avoid any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection in music that I purchase.  My reason for avoiding DRM is simply that I want to avoid the hassle.  I have tried DRM protected downloads in the past and inevitably it seems I alway end up in a situation where I can’t play a song that I legally purchased.  As a result, I simply avoid DRM protected content.

I believe strongly in paying for content.  When adding to my music library, I typically buy and rip CDs or I pay for download music that is not DRM protected. 

Nearly all of my 20,000+ music files are ripped at 192 kbps (variable) or higher using the LAME or Fraunhofer encoders. With the LAME encoder set at 192 kbps the digitized music is virtually indistinguishable from the source material and in some cases when ripping from an LP, I can sometimes actually improve upon the sound with some additional processing of the music.

Recently however I have found that my music library, the one I spent decades and thousands of dollars creating, has become obsolete almost overnight. Times change, and just as CDs replaced LPs and MP3s replaced CDs, I find now that online music services are replacing my digital music library. Presently my music service subscriptions include both Slacker Premium Radio and Rhapsody. These subscriptions allow me to access their entire library of music (millions of songs) and I can even cache local copies of music (songs, albums, or entire playlists) to my mobile devices for playback when I don't have a Wi-Fi or phone connection. Given my home audio setup and my mobile devices, I can play music from these services throughout my house, around my pool, in my car, at my office, or for that matter anywhere in the world! Slacker Radio has a smaller music collection (a mere 10 million songs vs. Rhapsody's 14 million), but Slacker has excellent professionally programmed "radio stations" in numerous genres and sub-genres that help me to find new music that I probably would never have been exposed to otherwise. Now the only MP3s in my library that are still of value to me are the tracks that I can't find on these services -- some really obscure older artists, personally recorded tracks, or music from a few artists that are still not allowing streaming of their music (there are still a few).  

In my opinion, digital music and the new breed of online music services are the best thing to happen for the listener since the invention of the phonograph.  Given the capability of today's mobile devices, I can now access nearly any song, from any artist, in any genre, from almost anywhere in the world. In addition, I have access to great professionally programmed, genre-based music stations if I don't feel like playing one of my many playlists. The price of this capability? A monthly subscription that is about the same as the cost of a CD (a fraction of what I used to spend every month on music).  That’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

Audio Equipment

My audio system is made up of good quality equipment but it would certainly not be classified as audiophile quality.  The heart of my system is now a Pioneer V-822 home theater receiver.  It’s located in the family room with the TV, DVR, and a Blu-ray player. I have gotten rid of my CD changer and DVD changer. I still have a truntable, but it is hiding in a closet. The receiver is tied into my LAN so it can access services on the internet and play music stored on one of my network drives.

Soon after we moved into our house I pulled extra RG-6 coax, CAT-5e and speaker wire throughout the house and much of it terminates in the family room wall behind the cabinet that houses the home theater system.  As a result, I can drive speakers throughout the house from the family room. I also have a separate receiver that drives five pair of speakers throughout our backyard, and it (like the inside stereo setup) is capable of streaming from Airplay. With that capability I can steam music in the yard from my phone and use the phone as the remote to control the streaming music.

Below I provide a brief description of some of the unique aspects of my setup.

• • Pioneer V-822 Receiver – Until recently, I had gone through nearly half a dozen streaming media players that were connected to my old home theatre receiver. I recently purchased a Pioneer V-822 receiver and between its network streaming and Airplay capabilities, I found I no longer used a separate streaming media player. The receiver does a good job driving the whole-house setup, has great home-theatre capabilities, and it's pretty cool to be able to source music wirelessesly from my pockket all over my house and yard.

  • Network Attached Storage (NAS) –  My NAS allows music streaming throughout my house without any computers powered on and it frees up the internal hard disks of my computers.  If buying NAS storage I recommend buying a unit that is labeled as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certified for maximum flexibility with streaming media equipment.  My NAS unit used for music is a Buffulo LinkStation Pro Duo.

  • Indoor Speakers for Whole-House Audio - I’m a firm believer that speakers are the most important part of a audio system.  Sound quality is obviously the prime consideration when selecting speakers, but in my case there are at least two other important considerations – cost and aesthetics.  Although my wife also enjoys music, she doesn’t share my interest in audio equipment so it is difficult for me to justify spending a small fortune on a couple of speakers.  She also doesn’t want to see huge speakers sitting in every room.  This drove me to in-wall or in-ceiling speakers in most rooms.  In-wall speakers are not an ideal solution in terms of audio quality, but given the right speakers and installation the sound can be quite good.  What I ended up using throughout most of the house where “critical listening” is not expected were 8” 2-way in-wall speakers made by Audio Source.  They are good (not great) speakers but provide excellent value.  For our family room home theatre, the surround channels are provided by 3-way, 8 inch in-ceiling speakers.  The center channel is a Yamaha, the front L/R speakers are NHT SB3s and the subwoofer is a powered Yamaha.

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• • Outdoor Speakers - Most of the year we spend a lot of time outside and music needs to carry into the yard also.  To accomplish this, I have 5 pair of outdoor stereo speakers throughout our backyard.  This may sound like overkill and most people reading this are probably thinking “I wouldn’t want to be his neighbor”, but in actuality it is my desire to stay friendly with the neighbors that partially drove the installation of so many speakers.

  • We have a number of locations in the yard where people congregate – the outdoor kitchen, the gazebo, the patio table on the pool deck, the pool itself, and the Jacuzzi pool.  If I only had one or two pair of speakers in the yard, the stereo would have to be turned up quite load to hear music all these locations.  With a set of speakers at each of these locations and the ability to turn on or off any pair of speakers, music can be heard throughout the yard without it being turned up too loud.  For example, we have two large pots with small palms (and speakers) in them on opposite sides of the jacuzzi pool.  Late at night we can be in the Jacuzzi and have just those two speakers turned on.  Since the speakers are right next to us, even with the noise of the jacuzzi jets, we can hear music at a low enough volume level that the neighbors don’t hear it at all.

  • Here are a couple of tips for outdoor speaker installation.  If you getting ready to pour a concrete pad in your yard, think about if you want potted plants or speakers somewhere in the middle of the pad.  It is easy to run conduit under the pad and to bring it up in strategic locations.  The palm trees around our Jacuzzi appreciate the drip irrigation that comes through the conduit and the same conduit provides an underground path for the speaker wire.  As for underground speaker wire, I have found that standard outdoor low voltage lighting wire works great and is much less expensive than most other options.

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Last Updated: 11 Nov 2011