April 28th, 2008 SkyHorse 
I finally got my headphones back from warranty. And as with all things in life, you only appreciate them when you don’t have them. I’ve been using my standard iPhone headphones which not only look naff with their all-white-look-at-me-I’ve-got-an-iPod style but also have the same terrible sound you get from standard headphones.
The v-moda vibe duo, on the other hand, are the Maserati of the headphones world: furious, stunning looks and awesome sound. They have great a sound-reducing capability and very good bass, which means you can turn the volume down and enjoy more of the music’s richness.
This makes the journey on the Underground a much more pleasant experience for you and for your fellow passengers who don’t have to listen to your loud music any more.
But as we all know Maserati’s also have a downside: they predictably break down too fast too soon. From the enquires I’ve made to my fellow iPhone fans I discovered I wasn’t alone. Quite the opposite, every single one of them had already sent back theirs for replacement, which gives the v-moda an empirical failure rate of 100%.
After sending mine back 3 weeks ago I sadly found out after a trip to the Apple Store that the v-moda are the only in-ear headphones for the iPhone available in the market. Sure you can get loads of headphones that *work* on the iPhone but nothing with a built-in microphone or a control button. On the up side, the one-year warranty means you can send them back (remember to keep your receipt) and you can expect to receive a replacement within 3 to 4 weeks.
What is a guy to do… stick to the reliable white vw or keep sending the maserati for repair… can someone else (Sony, hello??) please make a decent and reliable pair?
If you buy one, remember to budget for an extra £20 per year on top of their retail price of £70, as that’s how much it costs to send them back 4 times (every 2 to 3 months).
They do have great sound, maybe I’ll just buy another pair to use in the 4 weeks I have to wait for them to come back ;)
Tags:
apple,
headphones,
iphone,
v-modaRelated posts:
Posted in Hardware | 1 Comment »
September 23rd, 2007 SkyHorse 
I’ve bough myself a Sony SRS-BTM30 (nice little speakers with built-in bluetooth stereo receiver) thinking Apple, as it boasts bluetooth on all their peripherals, would obviously support this (MS already does for a long time). I was of course very very wrong.
There are several forums and threads with half-baked solutions mostly around the a2dpcast and jackd and all require multiple geniuses to make it all work, with a high probability of frustration to find the CPU usage at 100% or, worse, long latency in sound (terrible for films), or many other problems.
I decided to just wait for the Jaguar update, which already has built-in support for a2dp, and simply use a wired connection to my speakers.
But today I found exactly what I was looking for: a very very easy to use solution that actually has almost no latency (still not perfect for films, but you can easily fix that with the audio synchronization compensation option in the VLC media player).
Credit goes to ‘asae’ who posted this originally on David Connolly’s blog:
First, 2 files needed,
a. a2dpcastAudioDevice.tgz: http://www.coolatoola.com/a2dpcastAudioDevice.tgz
b. the updated a2dpcast: http://www.coolatoola.com/a2dpcast-0.3.zip
Then run terminal from Application/Utilities/terminal and install the kernel extension for the audio device (replace DOWNLOAD_DIR with the path to where your browser downloads stuff to) – you need your admin password to do sudo:
1. cd /
2. sudo tar -zxpf DOWNLOAD_DIR/a2dpcastAudioDevice.tgz –same-owner
3. sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AudioReflectorDriver.kext
Copy a2dpcast to /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin (replace A2DPEXTRACTDIR with the path to where your extracted the downloaded a2dpcast-0.3.zip) – you need your admin password to do sudo:
1. sudo cp A2DPEXTRACTDIR/a2dpcast-0.3/a2dpcast /usr/local/bin
Run a2dpcast with your Bluetooth address. To find your address go to bluetooth preferences (system preferences) and click on the speakers in question , it should have a line saying ‘address’:
1. a2dpcast aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff 27
Keep a2dpcast running, leave the terminal open, then run whatever program that you want, the sound will be streamed automatically to your headset. Again, do not close the terminal until you have enough enjoying your bluetooth headset ;)
If the sound breaks all of the sudden, or if you have any interference, try reducing the encoding rate from 32 to 16 by running this instead:
1. a2dpcast aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff 27 16
Tags:
a2dp,
bluetooth,
Hardware,
mac,
wirelessRelated posts:
Posted in Hardware | 2 Comments »
June 23rd, 2007 SkyHorse Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘I can’t configure Debian’…
Tags:
GNU/Linux,
Philosophy,
ubuntuRelated posts:
Posted in GNU/Linux, Philosophy | No Comments »
March 4th, 2007 SkyHorse WordPress, the software powering thousands of weblogs on the web, has recently seen it’s download files modified by an unknown “cracker” who changed the code to include code enabling those in the know to gain access to the websites running such software.
Only version 2.1.1 was affected.
WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2
Tags:
hacking,
hacking,
hosting,
wordpressRelated posts:
Posted in hacking, hosting | No Comments »
