Android 4.2, tablets, and related thoughts

Posted Nov 20, 2012 22:32 UTC (Tue) by frhart (guest, #26508)
Parent article: Android 4.2, tablets, and related thoughts

General consensus seems to be that this release feels a bit rushed. They forgot to include the month December in the people app, Bluetooth seems less reliable and an app like sixaxis (for connecting a controller over Bluetooth to the Nexus) can't connect anymore. The auto brightness function is erratic at best. But the new keyboard is indeed a good improvement. I am curious though, what our editor's new stereo component is.

The toy

Posted Nov 20, 2012 22:43 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (3 responses)

It's a Sonos "Connect" box. The sad thing is that it can only be a board with a decent DAC and Linux; it should have been possible to build this system for a lot less money and maybe get something better. It's on the longer-term project list; in the meantime I get to listen to my music outside of my office.

The toy

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:06 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

Since I need neither synchronous output from multiple speakers nor any kind of Web streaming, my audio system consists of a heap of music on the home server, a couple of old Debian-ized NSLU2 bricks I've had lying around with MPD as clients, and a small script that builds the MPD database from MusicBrainz metadata. Total cost 1/8th of a Sonos Connect.
Free Android apps to control the thing exist, so …

The toy

Posted Nov 21, 2012 14:26 UTC (Wed) by imitev (guest, #60045) [Link]

[offtopic]

If you want (very) good sound quality then you need a good DAC, and these are not cheap, although they're not as expensive as they used to be. But if you listen to low/medium bitrate compressed music, then yes, any cheap "plug" computer with an integrated soundcard would do. IMO an old netbook/nettop with a decent USB DAC/soundcard is the way to go if you don't want to buy specialized hw.

On a side note I've always preferred Logitech Squeeze * products over Sonos, but I guess I should have gone the Sonos way: Logitech EOL'ed their product range a few weeks ago :(

Use the DAC on a receiver

Posted Nov 29, 2012 23:05 UTC (Thu) by Pc5Y9sbv (guest, #41328) [Link]

Now that even SOHO routers have a USB host port, you could probably just run an audio server on a $100 router with a $50 USB digital audio adapter and have as good a sound as is possible with your receiver's built-in DAC.

I've been running the same little USB to TOSlink adapter for about ten years, feeding input to various receivers I've used along the way. In my case, MythTV supports pass-through Dolby Digital and DTS surround from HDTV recordings or DVDs, which is likewise decoded by the DAC on the home theater.