Category: tech
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in search of the ultimate headphone – update
My search for the perfect headphone continued with me buying Shure SRH 840s. These are great everyday headphones, workhorses. Easy to wear, not fatiguing, comfortable, come with a nice carrying pouch, and are really affordable (100€). But, they’re not great. So I kept searching, listening to stuff like Chambers by RZA, HD 700 by Sennheiser,…
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My vision for mobile computing – 2015
I’ve been carrying around a vision of where mobile computing could go in the next couple of years. 3 trends shape that vision: mobile devices are increasingly location aware – geospatial big data. more and more of our activities are organized, shared and conducted online. economic development suggests fewer full jobs – the rise of…
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Why High Definition digital audio matters
Today I found a very well-researched, well written article on xiph.org, that basically said that 16/44.1k should be enough for everybody. I was slightly irritated, because I’m a firm advocate of DSD and 24/96k; having heard, and been able to spot the differences many times. The author, Monty, argued that the human hear is unable…
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Hearing in a relative world – perception bias
I’ve been reflecting on the process of hearing, a lot, lately, and most of all about how we hear frequency response. When do we percieve a song or a mix to be flat spectrum, when do we think a song is “phat” and when is it just bass-heavy? I think the human brain strives towards…
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Jazzfest Vienna, Staatsoper and Fernwärme
No started working at the Jazzfest Vienna this year. First was a Gig for 5k+ people at the Fernwärme Wien, Viennas main waste incineration plant that produces heat for over 200,000 households. You can see pictures of the enormous waste-storage cavern below. That was pretty spooky. The stage location there was terrible, with one of…
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donauinselfest 2012 – FM4 Stage – tech
Last weekend I did system tech for the FM4 Stage at the Donauinselfest in Vienna. For those of you, who don’t know about it, the Donaunselfest is one of Europe’s largest music festivals. It’s hosted on an Island in the Danube river in Vienna, lasts 3 days in June and attracts close to 2 million…
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my shoebox NAS – update
So I installed Windows 8 as an OS, the Consumer Preview, to be exact. I’ll update it to an RC as soon as one becomes available. The installations was a breeze, and I haven’t looked back ever since. Setting up an FTP-Server was easy and hassle-free thanks to FileZilla Server, Media Player does UPnP Streaming…
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building the perfect NAS – in a shoebox
So, I finally got arround to assembling everything that I bought for my perfect NAS. I assembled everything in a shoebox, just for fun, looks terrific, see pics below. Everything gets held to the shoebox by cable ties, and since cardboard tears very easily I reinforced it with duct tape… ha! I’m using 2 Harddisks,…
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in search of the ultimate Headphone
Since I’m working in the field of audio recording and reproduction in its various forms for more than 12 years now, I often find myself in the need of an excellent headphone. Checking signals, tracking, mixing, or just listening to music while traveling, I often need headphones. Working in studios with excellent monitoring for years,…
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building a home WFS system
I’ve been into spatial audio and especially Wave Field Synthesis, ever since my neighbor Simon Katzböck introduced me to the concept in Mörbisch, some years ago now. There, at the Seefestspiele, I was stunned to see how well it worked, how the voices seemed to originate from the singers, not the PA, and how realistic…