I love music, and used to play the guitar and currently play the banjo and piano. I now have my Hifi setup in the end room which has been turned in a music/library/studio room.
I also have some decent powered speakers in my office linked to my MacPro and my iTunes library which mostly consists of ripped CD’s. Where we listen to the most music is in the kitchen which with our love of cooking and baking we both spend a lot our time.
For my birthday last year we have had a Sonos One in here, its pricey for what it is but does perform very well and needs little else to make it work. It came with one years free Deezer subscription which is now coming to an end, and so I was pleased to see that Apple music in beta has now arrived for the Sonos. Once my Deezer subscription expires i’ll give the Apple music a trial and see how that goes.
The think to remember with most of these streaming systems is you need to invest in the time and energy to let the service learn about your musical tastes. Of course once a service is setup how you like its hard to move and go through that again which is what most of them are hoping.
Just to quick snaps of the end room, now with three large book cases at one end. This means we can finally unbox our books that have been in storage or blocking up the wing hallway for the last two years.
Not only that but I have unboxed my hi fi so we now have music in there. Currently only two sources set up, CD and a wired input from my iPhone. I am thinking about moving the main Apple Wireless Extreme from the living room into hear and getting a newer model for the living room.
I love good music and HiFi, since getting my new Mac setup the sound quality was not quite as good as I thought it should be. It was then I remembered that the default output was not as good as it should be. You need to go into the Audio Midi setup program and configure it to the best settings.
See above.
Having the new Mac Desktop I now have the line out direct into the active speakers giving me better sound quality then Apple AirPlay.
Our spare end room over the last few months has been stripped down to bare walls and concrete floor. We have plastered painted and decorated. Including painting the roof and open roof beams.
This weekend we finally laid the new floor.
We just have the beading left to put round the edge and its finished.
Then its new book cases and we can unbox the books and also finally setup my hifi. Then we have a smart new space which we can use as a reading room, music room and when necessary a studio space and even somewhere to layout quilts.
So with the new Sonos speaker in the kitchen I got for my birthday last year, we have decent music in the house again that is until I finally get my separates system setup in the room we are currently decorating.
Enjoying the Sonos made me think about my office, how to get decent quality sound from the PC without too much cost.
I wanted stereo so another Sonos was not going to cut it, purchasing two would be more then a quality set of active speakers, plus I also wanted to stream from other sources not just using the Sonos app.
Quality wise, CD was good enough, most of media is either vinyl or CD and also sat in my iTunes library at 16 bit at 44 kHz which is CD quality. I do have a few other audio files which are at studio master quality 24 bit and 192 kHz but thats just over kill for a simple budget office system.
I am lucky enough to have an Apple AirPort Express in my office, as well as providing wireless internet I have my large format Epson 3880 printer plugged into one of the ethernet ports. The device also supports Apple Airplay at 16 bit / 44 kHz so it could act as the music source for the speakers.
So first I set a budget, then looked at small desktop active speakers that fitted that budget. By active I mean with built in amplification. Basically it would be a simple setup. Apple Airplay sending my music collection from laptop, or iPhone to the AirPort Express and direct into the speakers. This meant I could keep my current cheap computer speakers and have the computer sounds come from them leaving just the high quality audio of my music streamed to the speakers. Longer term I might upgrade and add a high quality USB DAC into the system, driving that from the USB port in my computer.
So what did I pick, well first job a trip to the website WhatHiFi and look at what they liked, then a web search to find the best prices. After that it was a trip to my local Hi Fi shop who offered to price match. We had a listen, using my iPhone as a source and I picked the Ruark Audio MR1.
I cannot believe its June already. Where is the year going? For us its being a very quiet/busy May; I know that sounds conflicting but we have just not had time to get anything really done.
Caroline’s father has been in hospital having a new knee, so things have been focussed round him, which is why we have been busy. So on the house and garden front its been very quiet.
I can say that the Peas, Beans, Leaks, Lettuce and Potatoes are going great. The cabbages though are not surviving, someone is eating them big time and stripping all the leaves off.
Hopefully June will see us back in the garden and also finally laying the new floor in the music/library/studio room which apart from the floor and some furniture is finished. I cannot wait to have my first studio shoot in there.
I love listening to music, I also loving playing music (badly, but I enjoy it), I have a very nice separates Hifi system but with having to de-clutter to help sell the old house, it was in storage for over a year, and since we moved house, its been sat in boxes while we finish (well start) decorating the end room that will be the library and where the Hifi will be set up.
So for several years now the nearest I have come to listening to good music is whats on my iPhone or listening to music coming out of my basic computer speakers. In other words, hardly Hifi.
So for a joint birthday and Christmas present I asked for and got a Sonos speaker. Now there are lots of wireless speaker systems now on the market, but after reading up on the different systems and more importantly listening to some, (Sonos, Bose and B&W being the top three), I decided on the Sonos.
Their basic Sonos Play1 has excellent sound quality for the price and while others sounded better you had to pay a lot more. There is also the fact that this will be for convenience listening, most of the time this will be sat in the kitchen while we listen to the radio streamed to it.
So far I am really happy with it and can see why people like their Sonos. For easy listening it gives a good performance and only if fed a more complex base line, does the base start to become muddy and indistinct.
Its made me think now about music for my office, do I add another Sono speaker or maybe something like a pair of powered speakers such as a pair of Audioengine A5+, at a later date you could upgrade them with a nice separate DAC such as the ARCAM irDAC and bring my office up to a decent budget Hifi level a lot cheaper then another Sonos.
Something to think about, but until then we have the Sonos and a room that now is stripped to bare walls and a concrete floor. All doors and windows have been replaced and we have french doors leading out onto the rear patio so its going to a lovely room when finished and our next major project on the house now we have the vegetable garden in place and our hens.
We have now lived in the new house for a year and a lot of work has been done. The dream we had was a new bungalow in the country, with cosy real fire, a dedicated formal dinning room, plus kitchen diner. There was also our hobbies, Caroline wanted her own craft room and I wanted an office to use as my digital darkroom, plus we wanted a room to use as a studio, music room and library.
Around the house we have replaced all the doors and windows, had the chimney reworked so we can have a real fire and replaced all the major lights with low energy 1 to 1.5 watt LED lights. Caroline’s craft room and my digital darkroom are complete so the house is well underway, with only what we are calling the sun room still to start. This room will be a second living room used for music, a library and my studio.
The garden has been a major focus for us this last year, and just this month we finally completed the raised beds. They have been successful and we have now had our major harvest of butternut squash, courgette, beans and peas, plus lettuce, cauliflower, beetroot, leeks and carrots. We learnt a lot, things we raised in the cold frames then transplanted to the garden worked well, things we direct sowed into the raised beds got attacked by birds. Everything worked except the cauliflower, we had netted them off to protect them from the birds, but all that did was protect the caterpillars, which enabled them to decimate them.
One the garden front as well as the vegetable plot we also wanted to keep bees and raise chickens. We bought two flat packed hives, but apart from the stands and the brood box we did not find the time to finish them so thats on hold for now.
At the bottom of the garden behind the garage we built a large compost bin, beside that was a rather nice looking but very rickety garden shed. The plan was to tear this down and in its place build a chicken coop.
The old shed took a lot of getting down, it seems that ivy is the perfect way to hold up a building.
Once down we dug over the area and laid a rectangle of paving slabs. These would help discourage the foxes from digging under to get at the chickens. The bed of the coup run was made up of soil, gravel, sand and topped with bark.
If your on a budget then you can find plans on the internet for building your own coops and runs.
We took the easy root and purchased a coop with integrated run; it came in prefab’ed sections that just needed putting together.
It went together easily and then it was ordering the feeders, waterers, and other accessories.
It was not long before we were ready to get the girls. We purchased four Copper Black’s a modern hybrid cross based on the Maran.
With the girls moved in, we let them have lots of peace and quiet, but did hand feed them a treat just before they put themselves to bed.
By the next day we were surprised to find an egg, so its safe to say the girls are settling in.
I have my photographs all in a single master Lightroom catalog not counting my yearly backup catalogues, and for me that works well.
My main computer is also my laptop and it’s getting on a bit now so I have started to think about either replacing it or supplementing it with a new desktop.
I’ll need to keep the laptop and would also like to use Lightroom on it too.
This brings up the issue of operating with two Lightroom catalogues and keeping work in sync.
After the Collingham show I decided to give a two catalogue two computer workflow ago.
I borrowed Caroline’s MacBookPro, logged in and created a blank Lightroom catalog, I then dragged and dropped my Lightroom settings folder into the Catalog folder from Dropbox where a script I have keeps it all in sync.
This then quickly and easily gave me a working environment just like my machine.
Now for the easy part, import the Collingham pictures and get editing. I used my presets for an initial edit and gave them a quick rank, then selected my picks with the flag option.
Now to get them onto my main computer.
I exported all the photographs as a fresh catalog so as to preserve the original to the desktop folder on the laptop included raw files.
If I do adopt a two machine strategy I’ll create a shared area on the main desktop computer to put the files onto but for this test I just used AirDrop and dragged and dropped the exported folder to my main machine.
Now time to start work on my main machine.
First job was to launch Lightroom and import the catalogue and files, I now had everything up to date and in the master catalogue. I then did a little editing on a couple of the picks.
Later that evening I picked up Caroline’s laptop and launched my Lightroom with the small catalogue just containing the Collingham pictures and reviewed them again. I found a couple more picks and did a quick edit on them.
Now this was the interesting bit. I had two Lightroom catalogues on two different computers, both with different edits. Could Lightroom cope.
Once again I exported the Lightroom catalogue but this time only exported the database not any files, they were already on my main machine and if any metadata updates in the case of jpegs or dng’s had taken place the overwrite could loose me data (Note I sometimes shoot RAW + JPG but never just JPG).
Again I transferred the database over using airdrop, a very useful and fast way of transferring documents on a adhoc nature if your on the same local network.
Now for the import on my master catalogue, first job, backup my master catalogue, just in case it went horribly wrong. Then for the import, how would it handle duplicate entries?
Dealing with duplicate files on importing another Catalogue
Well it turns out very well, as you can see above there is a tick box to preserve the duplicated files as a virtual copy. Also my fear of overwriting the files and not exporting the actual files is not an issue as the database can also be imported at this point with the option to bring in Metadata and develop settings only and not the original files if you so wish.
Since moving villages I no longer get a mobile phone signal at home. My current mobile phone contract is up next month and the excuse of not getting a signal at home plus the fact they will not unlock phones for free has pushed me away from my current provider.
So this month I had my phone unlocked and have been trying other networks.
As part of this testing I made a number of interesting discoveries.
Dependant on whose sim you have in and if you restore your phone from a backup or set up as new you get a few minor differences.
The first thing I spotted was the Cellular Menu became a Mobile Menu, also the options in here differed but not really surprising. No the surprising thing was things like security options, on the old sim I only had auto lock from instant to 15 minutes, but when the phone was setup as new with the sim from another network it had options up to four hours!
I would have thought the functionality would have remained fairly constant.
Now that my testing has finished I have a few choices to make. A review of the main UK networks was published this week, and the one I am on came top, but this network does not work at home and I still need to use my mobile at home. The network that works best at home came worst and in my testing was worst for data.
With those results in mind I am not quite sure what I am going to do. I could remember to put a divert on my mobile before heading home but what if I forget, and there is the cost.
I could just change networks and put up with a better service at home but poorer data elsewhere (though things are looking like changing in the coming year). Or even go to two phone. A basic mobile with my main number on it and the best data sim in my smart phone.
Not sure yet but I have till the next month to decide.
