What started out as a weekend in London with Waveskill to play Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo in the Casino (an arcade), has eventually mutated into a meet up with various other players, and a tournament thrown in for good measure.
I'll keep this short and to the point. Myself and Waveskill were travelling down from Chesterfield and Sheffield to London for what should have been the weekend, however due to working arrangements, we shifted it forward a day and extended it by a day too, so we will be on the road from 27-29th November, which is Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
I found out the other day that there is a tournament happening in Bristol, which just so happened to be on one of the days we were going to London, so we decided to make a detour and take part in the tournament. More information about the tournament can be found here. Here is a brief plan on what we intend to do, and where we intend to be:
Sunday 27th November - Sodium Showdown 4 @ Bristol
We will be leaving earlyish to try and avoid the traffic, although the exact time hasn't been decided. I'd like to arrive before 12:00 which means setting off at around 08:30 since I am picking up Waveskill, but the venue doesn't open until 14:00, so not sure what I will do to kill time. Perhaps if anyone else is going to this tournament we could meet up and go and do something. Drop me a message on Xbox live if you are.
This tournament features Blazblue CS2, Mortal Kombat 9, Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, SSF2T (HDR I presume), SF3 3rd Strike and of course Super SF4 AE. Entry to the venue is just £3, and it's only £1 to enter each tournament, so don't expect big cash prizes. I haven't heard of this event before, but I presume it's going to be pretty small scale, so hopefully I can finish top 3 again! The line up is quite big for an event I haven't heard before, so I hope they aren't being overly ambitious. The organiser has also said, "Arc System Works EU will also be there with copies of BBCS and AH3!", so if that means free copies, then I'm definitely there.
Once the tournament is over, we will be heading over to London in the evening where we are staying at the Cumberland Hotel Harrow, which is the I used in 2010 for SVB. £92 for 2 nights is reasonable, but not including breakfast. The hotel is in a good location with shops, cash machine and train station all within walking distance. It will take around 2 hours from Bristol to London, so I'll hopefully set off for the hotel at around 19:00 providing the HDR tournament is done, and spend a couple of hours in the on-site bar, then have some locals in the hotel room once we reach kicking out time as I'm bringing my Xbox.
Don't forget to check the tournament information here
Monday 28th November - Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo @ Casino
Once we've sobered up and had something to eat, we'll head over to Casino. It's about 45 minutes drive from Harrow and I intend to stay there most of the day, or if the likes of orf, kaos flare or Ryan Hart are there, as long as my money lasts. I'm guessing we will be at Casino from around late morning (10:00?) to early evening, after which we will check out some of the pubs (around 3 in staggering distance) and probably make our way back to the hotel close to kicking out time with some more HDR casuals.
The address for Leisure Casino Centre is 69 Tottenham Court Road. Check the full information here or Google maps here.
I will probably be meeting Herbalholic at some point for some arcade ST action, and there's the possibility of TryDodgingThis and/or AnxiousBrute showing up too. You can get the tube to Goodge Street Station, and as you exit the station turn right and there is a KFC literally next door with Casino being one of the next buildings.
Tuesday 29th November - Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo @ Casino part 2
I haven't planned much for Tuesday but it will likely be a similar setup to Monday with us being in Casino a good part of the day, but we might take some time out to check out some other things, or if anyone is kind enough, to crash at their house and play some locals.
There will be no hotel casuals on Tuesday as we have to check out around 10:00 so we won't have a base for the day. We will probably make our way back around 20:00 as I'll be dropping Waveskill off, so I'm allowing 3 hours for the return trip.
Don't forget that if you drive into central London, you may get hit with a £10 congestion charge per day, unless you drive a milk float.
If anyone wants to come along and meet up with us at some point drop me a message on Xbox live, by text or facebook. I also have a twitter now, so keep an eye on that for updates during the 3 days as to what our plans are and where we will be.
https://twitter.com/#!/Zero1_ST
Hope to see you there.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Saturday, 23 July 2011
New Pickup: Victor HP-FX500/JVC HA-FX1000
Some time ago I was looking for some new IEMs to replace my expired Sony MDR-EX90LP. It was never going to be an easy task, because the EX90 were a very nice pair of earphones. They were very comfortable, looked great (I'm not exaggerating when I tell you people would stare at them trying to find out what brand they were as I walked past), had very nice build quality, and a nice tone and fair sound stage. The only thing I could say against them is that they didn't have quite as much bass response as my previous Sony earphones.
In fact I liked them so much that as soon as they started to show signs of dying (the left earpiece would lose connection, which I found was due to a loose connection in the mould where the single cable splits into two), I looked around online to try and buy another pair. Sadly, since I had owned them for around 2 years, the range had been revised, cycled out and replaced by the MDR-EX500, which didn't look as comfortable.
The Sony started to die a little while after I bought my K701, so my first point of call was AKG. I checked out their range and had set my sights on the AKG K370, which cost £50, the same as what I paid for the Sony. Knowing that AKG is typically more expensive than the equivalent products from other major manufacturers (Harmann is a large company, but in comparison to Sony, could be considered small), and that the K370 also had an inline remote control, I made the assumption that the audio quality might not have been quite as good as my old Sony, so I decided to aim higher and splash out a little more.
During my searching, I came across some very high end/expensive earphones called the Victor HP-FX700 which had gained a lot of attention for being made from wood. Not only was the enclosure made from wood, but the cone itself was made from a very thin layer too - the theory is that it would help replicate the sound of instruments more accurately. I knew as soon as I saw them that I wanted these, but at 29,000 yen ($370/£230) the price was too high for me to justify for in ears.
Fortunately, I learned that Victor (known as JVC in the West) offered a less expensive version called the HP-FX500 (which I think was simply an earlier model with the FX700 being a beefed up version released later, rather than the FX-500 being a trimmed down FX700). The main difference being the driver size, and aesthetics, but at a much more reasonable price of 10,000 yen (or 13,000 yen/£100/$170 by the time I had imported them).
Victor HP-FX500 First Impressions
The retail package for the earphones comes with 3 sizes of silicone tips, a medium sized pair of foam tips, carry case and an extension cable (since the main cable is just 0.8M long) - pretty standard fare as far as earphones go.
The earphone cable is quite short, which I presume is so that people can connect them to remote controls for portable players and mobile phones. An extension cord is supplied, but it's thinner and feels of a lesser quality than the main cable. If you believe things like this make a real difference you might prefer to buy your own extension cable, but I couldn't tell a difference between using the extension and not. On the subject of the extension cable, a minor annoyance is that the combined length is a little too long to have the cable hanging free with a player at pocket height. I tend to find the cable swings around what with the weight of the connectors, so you will probably end up bundling it in your pocket.
The headphone cable is the traditional "Y" type, meaning the left and right ear pieces have equal cable length, unlike the more recent designs where the left cable is shorter than the right, so the cable sits on the left and the right earpiece cable goes behind your neck. I prefer the "behind the neck" type of headphone cable since you can pull the earpieces out when needed and they sit in place around your neck, in contrast to the "Y" cable which you'd have to fuss around and put in your pocket or something. A minor point sure, but one that could save daily frustration.
They are as comfortable as most other earphones, but my ears felt a little irritated after long term use, but that could be simply because I haven't used canal style earphones for months. I gave the foam tips a try and they were a lot better, although I prefer the sound I get from my Sony silicone tips. I also found that after extended listening that they had gradually worked loose since I don't insert them fully into my ears but that might be something to do with the size of the Sony tips, being designed for 13mm drivers and the FX500 being 8.5mm.
At 16 ohms the FX500 are very easy to drive, as is the case with the virtually all in ear earphones and have a frequency response of 8Hz-25kHz, which seems to be about what to expect from decent IEMs. Something to note about frequency range though. Frequency range, and frequency response mean different things. The frequency range tells us the spectrum of frequencies the driver can produce, from lowest to highest. Frequency response tells us how loud each frequency is played (or how well the driver responds) when a continuous volume sine sweep is played. This means that you can get some product A can have a frequency range of 25Hz-20kHz and product B can have a range of 5Hz-25kHz, yet it's possible product A will have better bass response. It may be louder for a given volume, but the driver won't be able to go quite as low as product B.
Check out my section on frequency response graphs
Out of the box the FX500 come with the medium tips attached, which I immediately switched over to the large tips. The reason for the change was purely sound related, as in the past I have found I get better bass when using the larger tips, and sure enough I did some testing and it still held true for the FX500. Using the largest provided the best bass out of the supplied tips, and out of interest I tried the tips from my old Sony EX90 which gave even better bass still.
I would have to put these earphones in the "coloured sound" category, as they aren't neutral. They exhibit a smiley face style frequency response, which means they have better than average bass and treble response, but the side effect to that is that it can often feel like mids are lacking. It's not always the case that mids actually are lacking, but more often a case that the bass and treble boost creates that effect. That's not to say that the sound is flawed or that you would be wishing for more neutrality, this is my opinion purely from an analytical point of view.
The sound signature of these earphones is highly enjoyable. The bass is deep, detailed and strong. It's almost akin to the effect a subwoofer gives at low levels but without sounding muddy - an impressive achievement, especially for earphones with a 8.5mm driver. The treble sits at a good level, giving the higher frequencies a clean, pronounced sound without causing additional silibance (the hissing sound at the end of some words in recordings).
Some people have commented that the treble can be fatiguing, but I have not found this using my Sony tips. There are also aftermarket foam tips from Comply that have a "wax filter" that also acts to attenuate treble, so if it is an issue, there is always that option.
To sum it up, the sound is crisp and powerful but would have benefitted from a slight boost to the mids. You will particularly enjoy these earphones if you listen to any bass heavy music or use them outside where bass typically gets drowned out.
The only real sonic weakness of these earphones is the slightly recessed mids, but if that's the price you pay for deep, punchy bass without vocals becoming muddy and crisp treble without silibance, then it's a price worth paying. I may experiment with some after market tips and post my findings.
 |
| Victor HP-FX500, originally only available in Japan, but also sold as JVC HA-FX1000 for almost double the price in the West. Bargain! |
In fact I liked them so much that as soon as they started to show signs of dying (the left earpiece would lose connection, which I found was due to a loose connection in the mould where the single cable splits into two), I looked around online to try and buy another pair. Sadly, since I had owned them for around 2 years, the range had been revised, cycled out and replaced by the MDR-EX500, which didn't look as comfortable.
The Sony started to die a little while after I bought my K701, so my first point of call was AKG. I checked out their range and had set my sights on the AKG K370, which cost £50, the same as what I paid for the Sony. Knowing that AKG is typically more expensive than the equivalent products from other major manufacturers (Harmann is a large company, but in comparison to Sony, could be considered small), and that the K370 also had an inline remote control, I made the assumption that the audio quality might not have been quite as good as my old Sony, so I decided to aim higher and splash out a little more.
During my searching, I came across some very high end/expensive earphones called the Victor HP-FX700 which had gained a lot of attention for being made from wood. Not only was the enclosure made from wood, but the cone itself was made from a very thin layer too - the theory is that it would help replicate the sound of instruments more accurately. I knew as soon as I saw them that I wanted these, but at 29,000 yen ($370/£230) the price was too high for me to justify for in ears.
Fortunately, I learned that Victor (known as JVC in the West) offered a less expensive version called the HP-FX500 (which I think was simply an earlier model with the FX700 being a beefed up version released later, rather than the FX-500 being a trimmed down FX700). The main difference being the driver size, and aesthetics, but at a much more reasonable price of 10,000 yen (or 13,000 yen/£100/$170 by the time I had imported them).
 |
| It wasn't until I took these photos that I realised the logo on the earphones is the same logo as HMV use. HMV Japan is owned by JVC Kenwood holdings. |
Victor HP-FX500 First Impressions
The retail package for the earphones comes with 3 sizes of silicone tips, a medium sized pair of foam tips, carry case and an extension cable (since the main cable is just 0.8M long) - pretty standard fare as far as earphones go.
The earphone cable is quite short, which I presume is so that people can connect them to remote controls for portable players and mobile phones. An extension cord is supplied, but it's thinner and feels of a lesser quality than the main cable. If you believe things like this make a real difference you might prefer to buy your own extension cable, but I couldn't tell a difference between using the extension and not. On the subject of the extension cable, a minor annoyance is that the combined length is a little too long to have the cable hanging free with a player at pocket height. I tend to find the cable swings around what with the weight of the connectors, so you will probably end up bundling it in your pocket.
The headphone cable is the traditional "Y" type, meaning the left and right ear pieces have equal cable length, unlike the more recent designs where the left cable is shorter than the right, so the cable sits on the left and the right earpiece cable goes behind your neck. I prefer the "behind the neck" type of headphone cable since you can pull the earpieces out when needed and they sit in place around your neck, in contrast to the "Y" cable which you'd have to fuss around and put in your pocket or something. A minor point sure, but one that could save daily frustration.
They are as comfortable as most other earphones, but my ears felt a little irritated after long term use, but that could be simply because I haven't used canal style earphones for months. I gave the foam tips a try and they were a lot better, although I prefer the sound I get from my Sony silicone tips. I also found that after extended listening that they had gradually worked loose since I don't insert them fully into my ears but that might be something to do with the size of the Sony tips, being designed for 13mm drivers and the FX500 being 8.5mm.
At 16 ohms the FX500 are very easy to drive, as is the case with the virtually all in ear earphones and have a frequency response of 8Hz-25kHz, which seems to be about what to expect from decent IEMs. Something to note about frequency range though. Frequency range, and frequency response mean different things. The frequency range tells us the spectrum of frequencies the driver can produce, from lowest to highest. Frequency response tells us how loud each frequency is played (or how well the driver responds) when a continuous volume sine sweep is played. This means that you can get some product A can have a frequency range of 25Hz-20kHz and product B can have a range of 5Hz-25kHz, yet it's possible product A will have better bass response. It may be louder for a given volume, but the driver won't be able to go quite as low as product B.
Check out my section on frequency response graphs
 | ||
| These graphs can be misleading with the dB level since drivers have different impendances, and testers may use different sound levels. What's important here is the shape of the line. |
Out of the box the FX500 come with the medium tips attached, which I immediately switched over to the large tips. The reason for the change was purely sound related, as in the past I have found I get better bass when using the larger tips, and sure enough I did some testing and it still held true for the FX500. Using the largest provided the best bass out of the supplied tips, and out of interest I tried the tips from my old Sony EX90 which gave even better bass still.
I would have to put these earphones in the "coloured sound" category, as they aren't neutral. They exhibit a smiley face style frequency response, which means they have better than average bass and treble response, but the side effect to that is that it can often feel like mids are lacking. It's not always the case that mids actually are lacking, but more often a case that the bass and treble boost creates that effect. That's not to say that the sound is flawed or that you would be wishing for more neutrality, this is my opinion purely from an analytical point of view.
The sound signature of these earphones is highly enjoyable. The bass is deep, detailed and strong. It's almost akin to the effect a subwoofer gives at low levels but without sounding muddy - an impressive achievement, especially for earphones with a 8.5mm driver. The treble sits at a good level, giving the higher frequencies a clean, pronounced sound without causing additional silibance (the hissing sound at the end of some words in recordings).
Some people have commented that the treble can be fatiguing, but I have not found this using my Sony tips. There are also aftermarket foam tips from Comply that have a "wax filter" that also acts to attenuate treble, so if it is an issue, there is always that option.
To sum it up, the sound is crisp and powerful but would have benefitted from a slight boost to the mids. You will particularly enjoy these earphones if you listen to any bass heavy music or use them outside where bass typically gets drowned out.
The only real sonic weakness of these earphones is the slightly recessed mids, but if that's the price you pay for deep, punchy bass without vocals becoming muddy and crisp treble without silibance, then it's a price worth paying. I may experiment with some after market tips and post my findings.
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Upgrading the Wireless LAN on a Vaio - Follow Up
As you may have read last time, I had taken on the task of upgrading the wireless card in my Vaio to take advantage of the new 3 stream 450mbps wireless N routers coming out. The second part of this task was to actually get one of these routers, and get everything running smoothly at the new link speed.
The router I decided to go for is the Linksys E4200. It's very small and unoffensive, with no glaring LEDs flashing on the front as is the case with so many routers these days. Apparently, blinding blue LEDs are cool. No, instead the activity lights on the E4200 are hidden on the back as part of the ethernet ports. They don't emit much light at all, but you can even turn those off if you like.
Setup was really quite easy. I never bother with the installation CDs and I just jumped straight into the web interface. I was surprised to be confronted with a page that looked as though it wanted to force me to install the Cisco Connect software, but there was an option to bypass that. Something along the lines of, "Continue with an unsecured network". I guess they are trying to frighten ordinary folk into installing their (presumably dummy proof) software.
Once I had set up most of the stuff using the supplied CAT5e cable (which was nice since it saved me some rummaging), I enabled the wireless and connected. The moment of truth aaaand.... It connected at 300mbps.
All kind of things were going through my head at this point. Was the antenna supplied (as a free gift) with the wireless card compatible with 5GHz? Had the antenna broken once I put the laptop back together? Did it simply become disconnected from the wireless card? Are my router settings wrong? Do I need to do a fresh install of the drivers?
It was frustrating stuff, and worrying thinking of what I might have to do to put it right (ie installing a new antenna - again). I reviewed all my settings. I know from researching a bit before hand that the 450mbps link rate is only available on the 5GHz band at 40MHz width, so I set the 5GHz radio to enabled at 40MHz width, disabled 2.4GHz entirely and set the network mode to N only.
Still no joy. So I pulled up the wireless connection info to see if while I was messing with the settings, if I could find the right combination to get the 450mbps link rate. I didn't manage it, but as the router was saving its settings, I noticed the link rate jump up from 300mbps to 450mbps. That was a big relief. At least now I knew the wireless card was working right and was able to pick up the 450mbps signal. I googled around a bit and found some suggestions saying that I need to go into the properties for my wireless adapter and set the channel width to auto, otherwise it will force 20MHz, which I had done previously.
There isn't much worth changing in the wireless adapter driver, but I recall a feature called WMM being enabled in the router, but in the wireless driver it was set to disabled. I don't see what correlation this has to the link speed (since it's just software QoS), but I set it to enabled in the wireless driver and the link speed jumped up to 450mbps.
Of course wireless is subject to things called walls and distance, so I unfortunately don't get the 450mbps speed at the other side of the house. That said, I still get 240-270mbps of rated speed, which is a huge improvement over the embarrasing 108mbps the so called "Super Hub" that Virgin supply. While I haven't done any proper bandwith testing yet, I do know that I can get my full 100mbps download speed, which was my main motive for performing the upgrade.
This was of course, an expensive upgrade overall (£130 for the router and another £30 for the 3 stream wireless card), but for me tinkering with stuff like this is as much a hobby as it was something that needed to be done.
I had intended to upgrade my network for some time now and never got round to it. Soon I will buy another E4200, flash DD-WRT on it and replace my old WRT54GL to be used as a wireless bridge, so that then my Xbox 360 and PS3 can also have a taste of 100mbps. I might actually bother downloading demos then.
The router I decided to go for is the Linksys E4200. It's very small and unoffensive, with no glaring LEDs flashing on the front as is the case with so many routers these days. Apparently, blinding blue LEDs are cool. No, instead the activity lights on the E4200 are hidden on the back as part of the ethernet ports. They don't emit much light at all, but you can even turn those off if you like.
Setup was really quite easy. I never bother with the installation CDs and I just jumped straight into the web interface. I was surprised to be confronted with a page that looked as though it wanted to force me to install the Cisco Connect software, but there was an option to bypass that. Something along the lines of, "Continue with an unsecured network". I guess they are trying to frighten ordinary folk into installing their (presumably dummy proof) software.
Once I had set up most of the stuff using the supplied CAT5e cable (which was nice since it saved me some rummaging), I enabled the wireless and connected. The moment of truth aaaand.... It connected at 300mbps.
All kind of things were going through my head at this point. Was the antenna supplied (as a free gift) with the wireless card compatible with 5GHz? Had the antenna broken once I put the laptop back together? Did it simply become disconnected from the wireless card? Are my router settings wrong? Do I need to do a fresh install of the drivers?
It was frustrating stuff, and worrying thinking of what I might have to do to put it right (ie installing a new antenna - again). I reviewed all my settings. I know from researching a bit before hand that the 450mbps link rate is only available on the 5GHz band at 40MHz width, so I set the 5GHz radio to enabled at 40MHz width, disabled 2.4GHz entirely and set the network mode to N only.
Still no joy. So I pulled up the wireless connection info to see if while I was messing with the settings, if I could find the right combination to get the 450mbps link rate. I didn't manage it, but as the router was saving its settings, I noticed the link rate jump up from 300mbps to 450mbps. That was a big relief. At least now I knew the wireless card was working right and was able to pick up the 450mbps signal. I googled around a bit and found some suggestions saying that I need to go into the properties for my wireless adapter and set the channel width to auto, otherwise it will force 20MHz, which I had done previously.
There isn't much worth changing in the wireless adapter driver, but I recall a feature called WMM being enabled in the router, but in the wireless driver it was set to disabled. I don't see what correlation this has to the link speed (since it's just software QoS), but I set it to enabled in the wireless driver and the link speed jumped up to 450mbps.
 |
| The upgrade was a success. Can you believe it? I can't. |
 |
| The Virgin "Super Hub" on the left, and the Linksys E4200 on the right. Same location, same wireless card. |
I had intended to upgrade my network for some time now and never got round to it. Soon I will buy another E4200, flash DD-WRT on it and replace my old WRT54GL to be used as a wireless bridge, so that then my Xbox 360 and PS3 can also have a taste of 100mbps. I might actually bother downloading demos then.
 |
| At almost half the rated link speed, the Intel 6300 and Linksys E4200 still manage over 11MB/s |
Monday, 20 June 2011
Upgrading the Wireless LAN on a Vaio
Just recently, I upgraded my internet connection to 100mbps, but I found I wasn't getting the full speed over wireless. I was downloading at around 80mbps max despite the fact both my wireless card in the laptop, and the modem/router itself are both wireless N devices and connected at a supposed 300mbps.
Surely if it's connecting at 300mbps, and is in the same room, it should reach 100mbps download no problem, right?
That's what I thought too. I decided to look into it, and it turns out that this is just the way wireless is. There are a number of reasons for this and I don't know them all, but I'll offer some suggestions as to why. The first thing that I found is because wireless is effectively half duple - that means it cannot transmit and recieve at the same time, so that halves your bandwith to 150mbps right there. The next big one is the CPU in the router itself. Right now they are operating at around ~500MHz and it has to deal with everything from routing to encryption. Another thing that will have an effect on quoted speeds are retransmissions due to transmission errors.
The theoretical quoted output of 300mbps is something you never see in real world situations, and in fact, you are lucky if you get 1/3 of that. Just take a look at this chart. Not even the fastest dual band wireless N device breaks 90mbps, so where does that leave me?
Well fortunately there are wireless N devices starting to come out that offer higher bandwidths up to 450mbps (which I'll take to mean a real world maximum of 150mbps if my previous experiences are anything to go by). It is much the same as the current 300mbps wireless N, but where the 300mbps variant of wireless N uses 2 antennas (known as dual/two band/stream), 450mbps uses 3 antennas. However as you might expect, it's not simply a case of buying a three stream router and expecting it to work. You need a wireless card with three antennas too.
That presents me with a little problem. Swapping a two stream wireless card like for like is easy. Just take the back cover off, remove the old card, install the new card and connect the antennas. However if I want to upgrade the wireless in my laptop to three stream, not only do I have to take the back off to install the card, I also have to remove the media keys, keyboard, LCD assembly and eventually the LCD panel itself to install the new antenna, since they are installed behind the display. This was an ambitious upgrade, and essentially entailed a complete teardown of my laptop.
This guide details the process of upgrading a Vaio F12 (but should also work for F11 and F13 models) from the stock wireless card (in this case a dual stream 300mbps Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200) to a three stream 450mbps Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300. If you are simply swapping a dual stream (2 antenna) card for another dual stream card, you may still find this guide of use.
Please note that this upgrade may not be an option for some laptops. Some manufacturers (eg. HP) lock the BIOS to only recognise certain brands and model numbers of wireless cards and will reject upgrades. Even if this isn't the case, there is always the possibility that there will not be enough room in your case, cable path or behind the display to install the extra antenna. Proceed at your own risk.
The Upgrade Process
Replacing the wireless card is easy, but the difficult part is installing the new antenna. Do not proceed if you are uncomfortable with taking your LCD apart.
Make sure that you have earthed yourself and that you are not wearing any clothing that generates static electricity.
Things you will need:
The service manual is for the Vaio VPCF1 series, which appears to cover the F11, F12 and F13. It contains exploded views and part numbers, so it's worth keeping just in case.
Drivers should be downloaded before hand unless you plan to connect via ethernet.
Please refer to this website for detailed images on opening the laptop. It's fairly simple, so I shall just talk through the process. Refer to this other website for details on removing the LCD later.
Installing the Wireless Card
1) Before you start doing anything to your laptop, create a system image and restore disk Windows backup and restore. This can be found in Start > Control Panel > Backup and restore.
2) Next go into the device manager and uninstall the old wireless card. You can get to this by right clicking the Computer icon and selecting Properties. In Windows 7, there is a link to Device manager in the top left of the window. Alternatively you can press the Windows key and type device manager in the search box.
Expand Network adapters, right click your wireless card and choose Uninstall. When the next prompt is shown and it asks if you would like to delete the driver, select yes if you are installing a wireless card that is a different model or brand, or no if the wireless card uses a unified driver (for example, the Intel Advanced-N 6200 and Ultimate-N 6300 use the same driver).
3) Shut down, then remove the power cable and disconnect the battery. I waited a few minutes with the battery out, and then held the power button in for about 10 seconds to drain any remaining power.
4) Now remove the DVD/Bluray drive. This is secured by two screws, one in the top left near the power button, and one to the left of the RAM cover. These have 3 small dots above the hole.
5) Proceed to remove the HDD. Looking at the HDD cover, there are two screws at the bottom, remove these. Again these have 2 small dots above the hole. Once you have removed those screws, gently slide the door toward you to reveal the HDD. Remove the two screws at the top securing the HDD and slide it left. Once it is free from the connector, lift it out.
6) Remove the RAM cover. The screw that secures the RAM cover does not actually come out as there is a retaining clip under it. What you have to do here is unscrew the door as best you can and then lift it up from the screw side (you should be able to slide a nail under it).
7) Remove the remaining screws from the back cover. I placed them on a table in the same position that I removed them from the laptop, but it would be better to draw a quick diagram to save confusion.
8) Now to remove the back cover. This was tricky at first as I wasn't sure what to expect. The bottom 1/3 of the cover felt as though it was still secured by something. I thought that maybe there were screws under the rubber pads but that wasn't the case.
Joe Bleau suggests working from the HDD side and carefully sliding the cover. When I tried this it felt like it wasn't working (perhaps I was doing it wrong), so the method I used was to start from the opposite end and run my fingernail down the front of the case carefully forcing it apart, working from right to left. I stopped just as I got to the HDD bay and lifted the case at the right hand end a little which also seemed to lift some of the PCB with it. With the PCB clear of the lower half of the case, I was able to slide it right (as suggested) and get the back cover off.
I suggest going with the original instruction of Joe's of , "Starting from the hard drive bay side, slide the cover, shake & bake with care & patience & remove the cover."
Patience is definitely the key here. Fortunately getting the case back on is rather easy.
9) You should be able to see the wireless card easily. It's just to the left of the RAM and up a little. Remove the screws securing it and slide it left to remove it. Carefully turn it over and make a note of which antenna is connected to which port on the board. The Intel boards are numbered. It might not even matter which port you connect the antennas to, but if you can connect them to the same numbers, you might as well, right?
10) Disconnect the antennas from the original wireless card and then connect them to the new one. It's a very tight connection and you will find you have to apply a lot of pressure, so just be careful. Once they have snapped on to the new card, slide it into the slot carefully.
11) Work back from step 8 to reassemble the laptop. Put the back cover on and install all the drives and screws you took out so it is in original condition.
12) Power on and install the driver/software for your wireless card to ensure it works and is accepted by your laptop. There is no point going to the trouble of installing a new antenna if the laptop BIOS is set to refuse other brands or models of wireless card after all.
If you are using a wireless card that uses a unified driver (like my upgrade from an Intel 6200 to 6300) and you chose not to delete the driver when you uninstalled it earlier, Windows will detect the card and install the driver automatically. All that was left for me to do in my case was to enter my wireless password and set my static IP settings.
If you were upgrading an old two stream card to a newer two stream card, this is all you need to do up to this point. All further instructions will relate to installing a third antenna for three stream cards.
Installing Another Antenna
1) Power down the laptop and remove the battery and AC adapter. Hold the power button in for around 5 seconds to drain any remaining power.
2) Flip the laptop over and remove the screws show below. You do not need to remove any drives for this part of the install, just the battery (for safety, but there are some screws under that which we need to remove). Removing these will allow us to remove the keyboard, media keys/speaker cover and eventually the LCD assembly.
3) Turn the laptop back over and open the LCD in the normal positon for use. Starting with the media keys/speaker cover, start from the side nearest the power switch on the right. Using a sharp object or your fingernails, push it in and gently lift upward. Do the same to the left hand side, then run your fingernails across the front of the speaker cover to push in the rest of the tabs. Carefully lift it upwards once it is free. You may need to move it around a little or angle the LCD to get it free.
4) Now to remove the keyboard. Carefully lift up one corner for example near the escape key, then insert your thumbnail and work toward the bottom of the keyboard. You should feel the tabs pop out. Do the same for the opposite side. Carefully lift the keyboard up slightly, and pull it towards the LCD at the same time. You should feel it pop free of the chassis, but be careful not to damage the connector. Turn the keyboard over so it is resting on the palm rest.
5) Next we have to remove the media keys as the wifi antennas are actually routed underneath them. Just remove the three wide screws and unclip the power button connector on the right. This will give us enough space to move the media keys out of the way so we can lay the new antenna cable.
6) Now remove the screws securing the speakers. Do not worry if your right speaker only appears to have one screw, this is because it is secured from the other side with the screws that hold the back cover in place. Fold the speakers inward so they are resting face down. This will give you access to the LCD hinge screws, but we will come to that later.
7) Now that you have the speakers and media keys out of the way, you should be able to disconnect the wireless antennas and the LCD cables. The LCD cables are on the left. The leftmost cable should be pulled upwards gently, and the two smaller cables should slide towards the LCD itself. It's a really fiddly job and you may find it easier if you pull the cable out of it's trench first. Moving over to the wireless antennas, this is equally fiddly. I found it easier to ease them out with a sharp object, or if you want to be careful, whip the back cover off and disconnect them there. If in doubt, knife them out.
8) With the LCD and antenna cables free, you can now seperate the LCD from the base of the laptop. If you haven't already, move the speakers aside and that will reveal the hinge screws, 2 on the left and 2 on the right. They are really long screws and tougher than the others to remove. Be sure to support the weight of the LCD assembly with your other hand while unscrewing the hinges. Get someone to help is possible, or use a magnetic screwdriver to make life a little easier. Once that is done, you should be able to pull the display free from the base.
9) Now it's time to work on removing the bezel (that's the surrounding of the LCD). It is very flimsy, so be careful at all times. First take a sharp object for example a knife and prise out the screw covers. There are 4 in total, two square covers at the bottom left and bottom right, and 2 round covers in the top left and top right. Once those are out, remove the screws and place them somewhere safe.
Now work on unsnapping the bezel. It is held in place by a number of tabs. I suggest working it from the top left or top right where the round screw covers were and push it apart with your fingernail. Once you have got a bit of a gap started, go around the bezel unhooking the tabs by pressing inward with a little pressure. This is a long and frustrating job and is largely trial and error. Just take your time and be careful not to apply pressure to the LCD itself or scratch it. I had the most trouble unsnapping the lower half of the panel, in part thanks to the hinges. It's a similar story with the removal. Once you have everything unsnapped, pull the bezel toward you (if the hinges are facing away from you) and gently wriggle it free. This is not an exact science, but you can rest easy knowing that putting the bezel back on is about the easiest part of this whole upgrade process.
10) Now the bezel has been removed, it's almost time to install the new antenna, but first we have to unscrew the LCD panel so we can get behind it to install the new antenna. Just remove the four screws from the bracket securing the panel to the back of the case (two on the bottom left and two on the bottom right). When it comes to reinstalling these screws, just look for the arrows pointing to the holes in case you forget where they came from. You may also use this chance to disconnect the LCD from the inverter so you can completely remove it from the case, which would make life nice and easy, but I chose to leave it connected as the cable was slack enough to give me a enough space to work with.
11) With the panel removed (or propped up on a roll of tape in my case), we can go about laying the new antenna cable. We will concentrate on the connector end because we don't want too much slack cable in the laptop itself - slack cable is easier to store in the LCD as there is much more space. Align the ends of the connectors according to the mounting position on the wireless board, for example the third antenna connector on my Intel 6300, is between the first and second, so the connector for the third antenna needs to be somewhere between the existing cables in length.
Once you have the connectors aligned as you want, push the remaining cable into the side of the hinge and follow the existing cables to see how it's routed. This sounds like a pretty vague instruction, but once you see the hinge for yourself, you will know exactly what to do. This method will be pretty easy if you have removed the panel totally, but if like me you was lazy, you might find it easier to run the whole cable under the panel first, route it through the hinge and then pull it through to suit the required length. This part is mostly trial and error.
You may notice something that look like tabs. These are very sticky, and if you pull them up carefully, you can run the new antenna cable under them with the existing ones to keep it nice and tidy. If you don't have such tabs, normal sticky tape will probably do the job.
12) Once you have your cable routed, it's time to stick the antenna on. The suggestion is to place antennas at least 12cm apart. I placed mine somewhere in the middle as it allowed me to get a decent distance from the existing antennas as well as not getting too close to the LCD inverter. Unfortunately the cable is quite stiff and very curly so the finished result looks kind of rushed. I tried to route it on the inside of the other cables but it didn't quite work out. It probably would have been better to go to the right of the cables instead.
Rest your LCD panel in it's mounting position to make sure it fits flush and isn't affected by the new antenna (eg it's not resting on it).
13) Work back from step 10 to get your laptop back into normal working order. Pay particular attention at step 7 when reconnecting the cables associated with the panel (LCD cables and wireless antennas). You may find that it's a bit of a tight fit when putting the antenna cables back into their trench due to the fact you have an extra one. I was able to get around this by pushing them into the clips with a screwdriver. Once you have worked your way back through all the steps, power on and enjoy your new speed, but remember that you need a three stream router if you don't already have one.
Special thanks once again to Joe (check his website here) for his help. Without his guide and the excellent links he gave me, I doubt I would have had the confidence to attempt this upgrade.
Surely if it's connecting at 300mbps, and is in the same room, it should reach 100mbps download no problem, right?
That's what I thought too. I decided to look into it, and it turns out that this is just the way wireless is. There are a number of reasons for this and I don't know them all, but I'll offer some suggestions as to why. The first thing that I found is because wireless is effectively half duple - that means it cannot transmit and recieve at the same time, so that halves your bandwith to 150mbps right there. The next big one is the CPU in the router itself. Right now they are operating at around ~500MHz and it has to deal with everything from routing to encryption. Another thing that will have an effect on quoted speeds are retransmissions due to transmission errors.
The theoretical quoted output of 300mbps is something you never see in real world situations, and in fact, you are lucky if you get 1/3 of that. Just take a look at this chart. Not even the fastest dual band wireless N device breaks 90mbps, so where does that leave me?
Well fortunately there are wireless N devices starting to come out that offer higher bandwidths up to 450mbps (which I'll take to mean a real world maximum of 150mbps if my previous experiences are anything to go by). It is much the same as the current 300mbps wireless N, but where the 300mbps variant of wireless N uses 2 antennas (known as dual/two band/stream), 450mbps uses 3 antennas. However as you might expect, it's not simply a case of buying a three stream router and expecting it to work. You need a wireless card with three antennas too.
That presents me with a little problem. Swapping a two stream wireless card like for like is easy. Just take the back cover off, remove the old card, install the new card and connect the antennas. However if I want to upgrade the wireless in my laptop to three stream, not only do I have to take the back off to install the card, I also have to remove the media keys, keyboard, LCD assembly and eventually the LCD panel itself to install the new antenna, since they are installed behind the display. This was an ambitious upgrade, and essentially entailed a complete teardown of my laptop.
This guide details the process of upgrading a Vaio F12 (but should also work for F11 and F13 models) from the stock wireless card (in this case a dual stream 300mbps Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200) to a three stream 450mbps Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300. If you are simply swapping a dual stream (2 antenna) card for another dual stream card, you may still find this guide of use.
Please note that this upgrade may not be an option for some laptops. Some manufacturers (eg. HP) lock the BIOS to only recognise certain brands and model numbers of wireless cards and will reject upgrades. Even if this isn't the case, there is always the possibility that there will not be enough room in your case, cable path or behind the display to install the extra antenna. Proceed at your own risk.
The Upgrade Process
Replacing the wireless card is easy, but the difficult part is installing the new antenna. Do not proceed if you are uncomfortable with taking your LCD apart.
Make sure that you have earthed yourself and that you are not wearing any clothing that generates static electricity.
Things you will need:
- A PZ0 Screwdriver. Must have a thin shaft to fit inside the recessed holes.
- Something thin and flat to push tabs in (eg a flat screwdriver).
- A knife or something sharp to remove LCD screw covers.
- Some sticky tape (not required on the Vaio if you use the original sticky tabs).
- The service manual or a laptop with this website for more detailed information.
- A three stream wireless card (eg Intel Ultimate-N 6300).
- An extra antenna.
- Drivers for your wireless card.
- A backup of your drive just in case.
The service manual is for the Vaio VPCF1 series, which appears to cover the F11, F12 and F13. It contains exploded views and part numbers, so it's worth keeping just in case.
Drivers should be downloaded before hand unless you plan to connect via ethernet.
Please refer to this website for detailed images on opening the laptop. It's fairly simple, so I shall just talk through the process. Refer to this other website for details on removing the LCD later.
Installing the Wireless Card
1) Before you start doing anything to your laptop, create a system image and restore disk Windows backup and restore. This can be found in Start > Control Panel > Backup and restore.
2) Next go into the device manager and uninstall the old wireless card. You can get to this by right clicking the Computer icon and selecting Properties. In Windows 7, there is a link to Device manager in the top left of the window. Alternatively you can press the Windows key and type device manager in the search box.
Expand Network adapters, right click your wireless card and choose Uninstall. When the next prompt is shown and it asks if you would like to delete the driver, select yes if you are installing a wireless card that is a different model or brand, or no if the wireless card uses a unified driver (for example, the Intel Advanced-N 6200 and Ultimate-N 6300 use the same driver).
3) Shut down, then remove the power cable and disconnect the battery. I waited a few minutes with the battery out, and then held the power button in for about 10 seconds to drain any remaining power.
4) Now remove the DVD/Bluray drive. This is secured by two screws, one in the top left near the power button, and one to the left of the RAM cover. These have 3 small dots above the hole.
5) Proceed to remove the HDD. Looking at the HDD cover, there are two screws at the bottom, remove these. Again these have 2 small dots above the hole. Once you have removed those screws, gently slide the door toward you to reveal the HDD. Remove the two screws at the top securing the HDD and slide it left. Once it is free from the connector, lift it out.
6) Remove the RAM cover. The screw that secures the RAM cover does not actually come out as there is a retaining clip under it. What you have to do here is unscrew the door as best you can and then lift it up from the screw side (you should be able to slide a nail under it).
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| Back in the lab. Removing the HDD, BD and memory cover before removing the back cover |
7) Remove the remaining screws from the back cover. I placed them on a table in the same position that I removed them from the laptop, but it would be better to draw a quick diagram to save confusion.
8) Now to remove the back cover. This was tricky at first as I wasn't sure what to expect. The bottom 1/3 of the cover felt as though it was still secured by something. I thought that maybe there were screws under the rubber pads but that wasn't the case.
Joe Bleau suggests working from the HDD side and carefully sliding the cover. When I tried this it felt like it wasn't working (perhaps I was doing it wrong), so the method I used was to start from the opposite end and run my fingernail down the front of the case carefully forcing it apart, working from right to left. I stopped just as I got to the HDD bay and lifted the case at the right hand end a little which also seemed to lift some of the PCB with it. With the PCB clear of the lower half of the case, I was able to slide it right (as suggested) and get the back cover off.
I suggest going with the original instruction of Joe's of , "Starting from the hard drive bay side, slide the cover, shake & bake with care & patience & remove the cover."
Patience is definitely the key here. Fortunately getting the case back on is rather easy.
9) You should be able to see the wireless card easily. It's just to the left of the RAM and up a little. Remove the screws securing it and slide it left to remove it. Carefully turn it over and make a note of which antenna is connected to which port on the board. The Intel boards are numbered. It might not even matter which port you connect the antennas to, but if you can connect them to the same numbers, you might as well, right?
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| Wireless LAN card with the two antennas under it |
10) Disconnect the antennas from the original wireless card and then connect them to the new one. It's a very tight connection and you will find you have to apply a lot of pressure, so just be careful. Once they have snapped on to the new card, slide it into the slot carefully.
11) Work back from step 8 to reassemble the laptop. Put the back cover on and install all the drives and screws you took out so it is in original condition.
12) Power on and install the driver/software for your wireless card to ensure it works and is accepted by your laptop. There is no point going to the trouble of installing a new antenna if the laptop BIOS is set to refuse other brands or models of wireless card after all.
If you are using a wireless card that uses a unified driver (like my upgrade from an Intel 6200 to 6300) and you chose not to delete the driver when you uninstalled it earlier, Windows will detect the card and install the driver automatically. All that was left for me to do in my case was to enter my wireless password and set my static IP settings.
If you were upgrading an old two stream card to a newer two stream card, this is all you need to do up to this point. All further instructions will relate to installing a third antenna for three stream cards.
Installing Another Antenna
1) Power down the laptop and remove the battery and AC adapter. Hold the power button in for around 5 seconds to drain any remaining power.
2) Flip the laptop over and remove the screws show below. You do not need to remove any drives for this part of the install, just the battery (for safety, but there are some screws under that which we need to remove). Removing these will allow us to remove the keyboard, media keys/speaker cover and eventually the LCD assembly.
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| There are two screws under the battery that you need to get. |
3) Turn the laptop back over and open the LCD in the normal positon for use. Starting with the media keys/speaker cover, start from the side nearest the power switch on the right. Using a sharp object or your fingernails, push it in and gently lift upward. Do the same to the left hand side, then run your fingernails across the front of the speaker cover to push in the rest of the tabs. Carefully lift it upwards once it is free. You may need to move it around a little or angle the LCD to get it free.
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| Speaker cover removed. Excuse the dust, it gets everywhere once you've had the back cover off. |
4) Now to remove the keyboard. Carefully lift up one corner for example near the escape key, then insert your thumbnail and work toward the bottom of the keyboard. You should feel the tabs pop out. Do the same for the opposite side. Carefully lift the keyboard up slightly, and pull it towards the LCD at the same time. You should feel it pop free of the chassis, but be careful not to damage the connector. Turn the keyboard over so it is resting on the palm rest.
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| Now would have been a great time to install a sexy backlit keyboard. Why do I never think of these things ahead of time? |
5) Next we have to remove the media keys as the wifi antennas are actually routed underneath them. Just remove the three wide screws and unclip the power button connector on the right. This will give us enough space to move the media keys out of the way so we can lay the new antenna cable.
6) Now remove the screws securing the speakers. Do not worry if your right speaker only appears to have one screw, this is because it is secured from the other side with the screws that hold the back cover in place. Fold the speakers inward so they are resting face down. This will give you access to the LCD hinge screws, but we will come to that later.
7) Now that you have the speakers and media keys out of the way, you should be able to disconnect the wireless antennas and the LCD cables. The LCD cables are on the left. The leftmost cable should be pulled upwards gently, and the two smaller cables should slide towards the LCD itself. It's a really fiddly job and you may find it easier if you pull the cable out of it's trench first. Moving over to the wireless antennas, this is equally fiddly. I found it easier to ease them out with a sharp object, or if you want to be careful, whip the back cover off and disconnect them there. If in doubt, knife them out.
 |
| These are the only cables you really need to bother removing |
8) With the LCD and antenna cables free, you can now seperate the LCD from the base of the laptop. If you haven't already, move the speakers aside and that will reveal the hinge screws, 2 on the left and 2 on the right. They are really long screws and tougher than the others to remove. Be sure to support the weight of the LCD assembly with your other hand while unscrewing the hinges. Get someone to help is possible, or use a magnetic screwdriver to make life a little easier. Once that is done, you should be able to pull the display free from the base.
 |
| This is how the iPad was born, when Mr. Jobs thought, "Hey, let's take a laptop and remove everything good about it". Probably. |
9) Now it's time to work on removing the bezel (that's the surrounding of the LCD). It is very flimsy, so be careful at all times. First take a sharp object for example a knife and prise out the screw covers. There are 4 in total, two square covers at the bottom left and bottom right, and 2 round covers in the top left and top right. Once those are out, remove the screws and place them somewhere safe.
Now work on unsnapping the bezel. It is held in place by a number of tabs. I suggest working it from the top left or top right where the round screw covers were and push it apart with your fingernail. Once you have got a bit of a gap started, go around the bezel unhooking the tabs by pressing inward with a little pressure. This is a long and frustrating job and is largely trial and error. Just take your time and be careful not to apply pressure to the LCD itself or scratch it. I had the most trouble unsnapping the lower half of the panel, in part thanks to the hinges. It's a similar story with the removal. Once you have everything unsnapped, pull the bezel toward you (if the hinges are facing away from you) and gently wriggle it free. This is not an exact science, but you can rest easy knowing that putting the bezel back on is about the easiest part of this whole upgrade process.
10) Now the bezel has been removed, it's almost time to install the new antenna, but first we have to unscrew the LCD panel so we can get behind it to install the new antenna. Just remove the four screws from the bracket securing the panel to the back of the case (two on the bottom left and two on the bottom right). When it comes to reinstalling these screws, just look for the arrows pointing to the holes in case you forget where they came from. You may also use this chance to disconnect the LCD from the inverter so you can completely remove it from the case, which would make life nice and easy, but I chose to leave it connected as the cable was slack enough to give me a enough space to work with.
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| The hinges seemed more trouble than they are worth to remove, but the new cable just pushes in from the side. |
11) With the panel removed (or propped up on a roll of tape in my case), we can go about laying the new antenna cable. We will concentrate on the connector end because we don't want too much slack cable in the laptop itself - slack cable is easier to store in the LCD as there is much more space. Align the ends of the connectors according to the mounting position on the wireless board, for example the third antenna connector on my Intel 6300, is between the first and second, so the connector for the third antenna needs to be somewhere between the existing cables in length.
Once you have the connectors aligned as you want, push the remaining cable into the side of the hinge and follow the existing cables to see how it's routed. This sounds like a pretty vague instruction, but once you see the hinge for yourself, you will know exactly what to do. This method will be pretty easy if you have removed the panel totally, but if like me you was lazy, you might find it easier to run the whole cable under the panel first, route it through the hinge and then pull it through to suit the required length. This part is mostly trial and error.
You may notice something that look like tabs. These are very sticky, and if you pull them up carefully, you can run the new antenna cable under them with the existing ones to keep it nice and tidy. If you don't have such tabs, normal sticky tape will probably do the job.
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| Be careful when lifting these tabs. They are so sticky that they might tear. |
12) Once you have your cable routed, it's time to stick the antenna on. The suggestion is to place antennas at least 12cm apart. I placed mine somewhere in the middle as it allowed me to get a decent distance from the existing antennas as well as not getting too close to the LCD inverter. Unfortunately the cable is quite stiff and very curly so the finished result looks kind of rushed. I tried to route it on the inside of the other cables but it didn't quite work out. It probably would have been better to go to the right of the cables instead.
Rest your LCD panel in it's mounting position to make sure it fits flush and isn't affected by the new antenna (eg it's not resting on it).
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| Avoiding a cable crossover was next to impossible thanks to how short the cable for the antenna on the right is. |
13) Work back from step 10 to get your laptop back into normal working order. Pay particular attention at step 7 when reconnecting the cables associated with the panel (LCD cables and wireless antennas). You may find that it's a bit of a tight fit when putting the antenna cables back into their trench due to the fact you have an extra one. I was able to get around this by pushing them into the clips with a screwdriver. Once you have worked your way back through all the steps, power on and enjoy your new speed, but remember that you need a three stream router if you don't already have one.
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| Not a bad job in the end. |
Special thanks once again to Joe (check his website here) for his help. Without his guide and the excellent links he gave me, I doubt I would have had the confidence to attempt this upgrade.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Windows 7 Tips for the OCD
If like me, you are mildly OCD (or perhaps pedantic is more accurate), then you might appreciate these little bits of information that will help make your Windows 7 UI a little more pleasing to the eye.
If you have a large, high resolution screen, you might notice that Windows 7 doesn't look so hot in places, such as the login screen background being very low resolution and suffering from JPG artifacts. Similarly, if you have decided to change the default user icon/avatar to something of your own, you might find that it looks a little blurry compared to the preinstalled icons.
Fortuantely in my fiddling and tweaking with Windows 7, I've come across some work arounds and information that will improve this situation.
Windows Login Icon
If it's one thing I like, it's a crisp image. It has been a habit of mine to make sure I get the dimensions right when creating avatars and icons to avoid them being rescaled. In fact, this is basic and you no doubt already take this into account when selecting or making desktop backgrounds.
I googled around at first to save myself the trouble of trial and error, but all information was pointing to the icon size being 128x128 pixels. I created my icon with those dimensions and it didn't look as sharp as the supplied icons - I could tell it was being rescaled. I managed to find a screenshot of the Windows 7 login screen and measured the dimensions of the user icon space in Photoshop.
It turns out the correct dimensions for the Windows 7 user icon at the login screen is 126x126 pixels. I'm now using a 126x126 PNG as my login icon, and it's pixel perfect, no rescaling anymore.
You might want to note that Windows Live Messenger uses 96x96 pixels icons and also accepts PNG.
Desktop Background
It actually wasn't until last night that I noticed this. I've been using a scan of some Ocarina of Time 3DS promotional art as my background for a while, and I found a high resolution PNG of it on the Nintendo E3 press site, so I decided to recreate it as the original had some weird artifacting around Ganondorf's hair despite the image being very good quality. I didn't know why and presumed they were scanning artifacts.
After I had cropped and downscaled the new image, I saved it as PNG and applied it, but the weird thing was is that my recreated image didn't look as good as the image I was replacing. If anything, Ganondorf's hair looked worse now than before, and I thought I saw some JPG artifacts around Link's ear. That set some gears turning upstairs, so I pulled up the original PNG in window and compared them.
Sure enough the background appeared to have JPG artifacts and was evidently lower quality than the source file despite the fact that the source was a PNG. It turns out that Windows 7 converts BMP and PNG wallpapers to JPG, and after a quick google, I found it stores them in "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes" (paste that into an explorer window, or press the Windows key and R and paste it in there).
Fortunately there are two workarounds for this.
Method 1
Windows will recompress BMP and PNG images to a lower quality JPG, but it does not recompress images that are already in the JPG format, it simply copies it to the themes folder in %appdata%. Open your BMP or PNG wallpaper in something like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP if you need a free alternative, and save it as JPG using the highest quality setting. It's not lossless, but it's so good I doubt you will be able to tell the difference. Apply the wallpaper in the usual way.
Method 2
This method will allow you to use a lossless background (eg BMP or PNG) without ever converting it to JPG. Just get your image, drop it into an open Firefox window, then right click and choose Set As Desktop Background. The only real down side to this is that Firefox converts it to a 32 bit BMP, which uses around 8MB for 1080p. Ouch.
Microsoft, if people select BMP or PNG as a desktop background it's because they want a lossless image. Don't go around compressing it to a shitty JPG. My computer is supposed to do as I tell it to, not what someone else thinks is good.
Replacing the Login Screen Background
When I was testing the Windows 7 RC, I noticed that the login screen background was horribly stretched and full of JPG artifacts. It irritated me, but I let it slide, and assumed they would put lossless backgrounds in for the retail version. Well it didn't happen. When I bought my Vaio at the beginning of 2011, it was the first time I had used a full retail version of Windows 7, and I was surprised to see the same low quality background. It felt like a downgrade, because Vista certainly didn't have JPG artifacts, and I'm pretty sure the Windows XP login, as simple as it was, didn't suffer any quality issues either.
But one day my sister got a new laptop and to my surprise it had its own branded login screen. The quality was really good too. This gave me hope. I had previously not even considered the possibility of changing the login background because I presumed it would be hidden deep within the system files and be tied up within a DLL, a locked file or something that wouldn't be worth the effort changing.
I googled it anyway and it turns out it's stupidly easy to change the login background, however there are a couple of limitations:
How to use a Custom Login Background
1) The first thing you need to do is download this registry entry. You may need to show the file extensions in Explorer and delete the .txt that mediafire seems to have added to it (so it ends in .reg). Double click to add it to the registry (or right click and select merge). This tells Windows 7 to prefer custom backgrounds over the OEM background.
2) Open an explorer window and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\oobe\ At this point you may need to create another couple of folders if they don't already exist. Right click and make a new folder called info within the oobe folder. Open the info folder and make another folder in that called backgrounds. Once you open the backgrounds folder, your path should read C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds
3) At this point we need to prepare/compress the image. To prevent scaling of the image (which is what gives the default login background that pixelated appearance), you need to make sure the image is the same resolution as your display. Right click your desktop and select screen resolution to find out the dimensions of your display, and match these dimensions if you are downscaling or cropping an image in your photo editing software. If your image is smaller than your display, it is generally better to upscale it in your photo editing program than let Windows do it.
When you have the image at the correct resolution, it's time to compress it. We need to get the filesize under 249KB, but at the same time squeeze every last bit of quality out that we can.
For Photoshop:
To save the file, click File > Save for Web & Devices. This gives us much finer control over the JPG quality levels than the usual JPG export under File > Save As. Select the Optimized tab to see a preview of your compressed image and then pick JPEG high from the presets in the top right corner.
Taking note of the filesize in the lower left hand corner of the window, adjust the value in the quality setting (in the top right) until you get close to 245-250KB. You can also experiment by checking and unchecking Optimized and Progressive as these will usually save you 5-10KB for free. If embed colour profile is checked, uncheck it. When you have reached your target filesize, hit save and put it on the desktop for now.
For GIMP:
To save the file in GIMP, click File > Save As. In the save dialog that pops up, change the extension to .jpg and press enter (just save to the desktop for now). This will take you to the JPEG compression options. It's similar to Photoshop in that you have a quality slider with fine control over the amount of compression.
Check the box that says Show preview in image window. This will enable a preview of the image quality after compression, but more importantly the filesize. Move the slider left or right until you get to around 245-250KB. You can expand Advanced Options to gain access to things like Optimise and Progressive which will save a few KB without affecting the image quality. There are also advanced options such as subsampling which controls how the colour is encoded. If you are saving a JPG to use as a desktop background like earlier, I'd suggest using the highest quality level, and setting the subsampling to 1x1,1x1,1x1, but for the purpose of the login background, you might want to experiment with the other subsampling options.
4) Once you have your compressed image, it's time to move it to the C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds directory. The image should be named backgroundDefault.jpg.
Providing you applied the registry entry successfully and got the filesize small enough, your custom login background should now show when you Ctrl Alt Del or lock your system with Windows key and L. If the background does not show, you might need to reboot. If it still doesn't work after that, compress your image so it's a little smaller (I read the limit is 256KB, but it appears to be closer to 249KB or 256,000 bytes.
Once the registry entry is applied, you can change the backgrounds in real time without reboots by just changing out the image stored in the backgrounds folder as long as it has the same name. If it doesn't show, it's likely to be a filesize issue or the JPG settings (eg Windows doesn't like the subsampling or optimisations the program uses).
Disabling the Boot Logo
I had used Windows 7 on a 4:3 laptop (1400x1050) for quite a long time, maybe over a year, so imagine how many times I have seen the boot logo. Well now that I have a widescreen laptop, that boot logo simply annoys me. Why? Because it's the wrong aspect ratio. Apparently Microsoft can cram their OS with 10GB of redundant crap, but they can't be bothered to put in a boot logo for widescreens.
It's not as if widescreens are anything new either, and they are only becoming more popular as time goes on. Well there isn't really a fix for this, aside from unpacking a system file and resizing 105 or so images. It's just not worth the time (even if I automate it) and not worth the risk of screwing something up.
So my solution is to not look at it at all, and here's how you can do the same.
1) Press the Windows key and R.
2) Type msconfig and hit enter.
3) Go to the boot tab and check No GUI boot
4) Click Ok to confirm
Now the next time your computer boots, it just shows you a black screen (with some weird little dotted lines in the top left corner as it loads). I found that skipping the boot animation speeded up my boot by about 5 seconds, so it's a win-win.
The only downside to this is that I rebooted to run a surface scan on my HDD once, and because the GUI did not load, it just ran the scan with nothing on screen so I had no idea what point it was at. That wasn't too bad since the program was automated, but it might cause some problems if you ever require user input.
If you have a large, high resolution screen, you might notice that Windows 7 doesn't look so hot in places, such as the login screen background being very low resolution and suffering from JPG artifacts. Similarly, if you have decided to change the default user icon/avatar to something of your own, you might find that it looks a little blurry compared to the preinstalled icons.
Fortuantely in my fiddling and tweaking with Windows 7, I've come across some work arounds and information that will improve this situation.
Windows Login Icon
If it's one thing I like, it's a crisp image. It has been a habit of mine to make sure I get the dimensions right when creating avatars and icons to avoid them being rescaled. In fact, this is basic and you no doubt already take this into account when selecting or making desktop backgrounds.
I googled around at first to save myself the trouble of trial and error, but all information was pointing to the icon size being 128x128 pixels. I created my icon with those dimensions and it didn't look as sharp as the supplied icons - I could tell it was being rescaled. I managed to find a screenshot of the Windows 7 login screen and measured the dimensions of the user icon space in Photoshop.
It turns out the correct dimensions for the Windows 7 user icon at the login screen is 126x126 pixels. I'm now using a 126x126 PNG as my login icon, and it's pixel perfect, no rescaling anymore.
You might want to note that Windows Live Messenger uses 96x96 pixels icons and also accepts PNG.
Desktop Background
It actually wasn't until last night that I noticed this. I've been using a scan of some Ocarina of Time 3DS promotional art as my background for a while, and I found a high resolution PNG of it on the Nintendo E3 press site, so I decided to recreate it as the original had some weird artifacting around Ganondorf's hair despite the image being very good quality. I didn't know why and presumed they were scanning artifacts.
After I had cropped and downscaled the new image, I saved it as PNG and applied it, but the weird thing was is that my recreated image didn't look as good as the image I was replacing. If anything, Ganondorf's hair looked worse now than before, and I thought I saw some JPG artifacts around Link's ear. That set some gears turning upstairs, so I pulled up the original PNG in window and compared them.
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| Left: Original PNG, Right: Original when set as wallpaper in Windows 7. Notice the artifacts around his ear. |
Sure enough the background appeared to have JPG artifacts and was evidently lower quality than the source file despite the fact that the source was a PNG. It turns out that Windows 7 converts BMP and PNG wallpapers to JPG, and after a quick google, I found it stores them in "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes" (paste that into an explorer window, or press the Windows key and R and paste it in there).
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| Saturated colours are a huge giveaway. Who at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to convert lossless wallpapers into JPG of this quality? |
Method 1
Windows will recompress BMP and PNG images to a lower quality JPG, but it does not recompress images that are already in the JPG format, it simply copies it to the themes folder in %appdata%. Open your BMP or PNG wallpaper in something like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP if you need a free alternative, and save it as JPG using the highest quality setting. It's not lossless, but it's so good I doubt you will be able to tell the difference. Apply the wallpaper in the usual way.
Method 2
This method will allow you to use a lossless background (eg BMP or PNG) without ever converting it to JPG. Just get your image, drop it into an open Firefox window, then right click and choose Set As Desktop Background. The only real down side to this is that Firefox converts it to a 32 bit BMP, which uses around 8MB for 1080p. Ouch.
Microsoft, if people select BMP or PNG as a desktop background it's because they want a lossless image. Don't go around compressing it to a shitty JPG. My computer is supposed to do as I tell it to, not what someone else thinks is good.
Replacing the Login Screen Background
When I was testing the Windows 7 RC, I noticed that the login screen background was horribly stretched and full of JPG artifacts. It irritated me, but I let it slide, and assumed they would put lossless backgrounds in for the retail version. Well it didn't happen. When I bought my Vaio at the beginning of 2011, it was the first time I had used a full retail version of Windows 7, and I was surprised to see the same low quality background. It felt like a downgrade, because Vista certainly didn't have JPG artifacts, and I'm pretty sure the Windows XP login, as simple as it was, didn't suffer any quality issues either.
But one day my sister got a new laptop and to my surprise it had its own branded login screen. The quality was really good too. This gave me hope. I had previously not even considered the possibility of changing the login background because I presumed it would be hidden deep within the system files and be tied up within a DLL, a locked file or something that wouldn't be worth the effort changing.
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| One of the workarounds for the low filesize limitation is to decrease the brightness of the image. |
I googled it anyway and it turns out it's stupidly easy to change the login background, however there are a couple of limitations:
- The image type must be JPG
- The file size must not exceed 249KB (256,000 bytes)
- Must be named backgroundDefault.jpg
How to use a Custom Login Background
1) The first thing you need to do is download this registry entry. You may need to show the file extensions in Explorer and delete the .txt that mediafire seems to have added to it (so it ends in .reg). Double click to add it to the registry (or right click and select merge). This tells Windows 7 to prefer custom backgrounds over the OEM background.
2) Open an explorer window and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\oobe\ At this point you may need to create another couple of folders if they don't already exist. Right click and make a new folder called info within the oobe folder. Open the info folder and make another folder in that called backgrounds. Once you open the backgrounds folder, your path should read C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds
3) At this point we need to prepare/compress the image. To prevent scaling of the image (which is what gives the default login background that pixelated appearance), you need to make sure the image is the same resolution as your display. Right click your desktop and select screen resolution to find out the dimensions of your display, and match these dimensions if you are downscaling or cropping an image in your photo editing software. If your image is smaller than your display, it is generally better to upscale it in your photo editing program than let Windows do it.
When you have the image at the correct resolution, it's time to compress it. We need to get the filesize under 249KB, but at the same time squeeze every last bit of quality out that we can.
For Photoshop:
To save the file, click File > Save for Web & Devices. This gives us much finer control over the JPG quality levels than the usual JPG export under File > Save As. Select the Optimized tab to see a preview of your compressed image and then pick JPEG high from the presets in the top right corner.
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| The Photoshop Save for Web and Devices export screen |
Taking note of the filesize in the lower left hand corner of the window, adjust the value in the quality setting (in the top right) until you get close to 245-250KB. You can also experiment by checking and unchecking Optimized and Progressive as these will usually save you 5-10KB for free. If embed colour profile is checked, uncheck it. When you have reached your target filesize, hit save and put it on the desktop for now.
For GIMP:
To save the file in GIMP, click File > Save As. In the save dialog that pops up, change the extension to .jpg and press enter (just save to the desktop for now). This will take you to the JPEG compression options. It's similar to Photoshop in that you have a quality slider with fine control over the amount of compression.
Check the box that says Show preview in image window. This will enable a preview of the image quality after compression, but more importantly the filesize. Move the slider left or right until you get to around 245-250KB. You can expand Advanced Options to gain access to things like Optimise and Progressive which will save a few KB without affecting the image quality. There are also advanced options such as subsampling which controls how the colour is encoded. If you are saving a JPG to use as a desktop background like earlier, I'd suggest using the highest quality level, and setting the subsampling to 1x1,1x1,1x1, but for the purpose of the login background, you might want to experiment with the other subsampling options.
4) Once you have your compressed image, it's time to move it to the C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds directory. The image should be named backgroundDefault.jpg.
Providing you applied the registry entry successfully and got the filesize small enough, your custom login background should now show when you Ctrl Alt Del or lock your system with Windows key and L. If the background does not show, you might need to reboot. If it still doesn't work after that, compress your image so it's a little smaller (I read the limit is 256KB, but it appears to be closer to 249KB or 256,000 bytes.
Once the registry entry is applied, you can change the backgrounds in real time without reboots by just changing out the image stored in the backgrounds folder as long as it has the same name. If it doesn't show, it's likely to be a filesize issue or the JPG settings (eg Windows doesn't like the subsampling or optimisations the program uses).
Disabling the Boot Logo
I had used Windows 7 on a 4:3 laptop (1400x1050) for quite a long time, maybe over a year, so imagine how many times I have seen the boot logo. Well now that I have a widescreen laptop, that boot logo simply annoys me. Why? Because it's the wrong aspect ratio. Apparently Microsoft can cram their OS with 10GB of redundant crap, but they can't be bothered to put in a boot logo for widescreens.
It's not as if widescreens are anything new either, and they are only becoming more popular as time goes on. Well there isn't really a fix for this, aside from unpacking a system file and resizing 105 or so images. It's just not worth the time (even if I automate it) and not worth the risk of screwing something up.
So my solution is to not look at it at all, and here's how you can do the same.
1) Press the Windows key and R.
2) Type msconfig and hit enter.
3) Go to the boot tab and check No GUI boot
4) Click Ok to confirm
Now the next time your computer boots, it just shows you a black screen (with some weird little dotted lines in the top left corner as it loads). I found that skipping the boot animation speeded up my boot by about 5 seconds, so it's a win-win.
The only downside to this is that I rebooted to run a surface scan on my HDD once, and because the GUI did not load, it just ran the scan with nothing on screen so I had no idea what point it was at. That wasn't too bad since the program was automated, but it might cause some problems if you ever require user input.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Replacing the Audio Board in a Vaio F Series
It's a common problem, one that has probably happened to you, or you know someone it has happened to. I'm talking about broken or partially working headphone sockets. Unfortunately it seems to be a common problem with laptops (as far as common problems with laptops go). I'm not sure why, but I presume it's because the build quality of the headphone sockets is generally low.
It happened to me not too long ago. Not because of wear and tear or because the headphone socket was of poor quality, but because of an accident. Admittedly it was probably partially my fault. I was visiting family and decided to bring my laptop and K701 along. Since the K701 use a 6.3mm plug, I had to use the chunky 6.3 to 3.5mm connector AKG supplied (which is a decent weight in itself). That alone didn't prove too much of a problem, though I'm sure prolonged use wouldn't do the socket too much good. The problem was that with the size of the plug and the adaptor, it was protruding from the laptop maybe a good 2 inches. It got snagged on some clothing, and you can figure out what happened next.
Although I have a USB DAC, losing the headphone socket would have been a major inconvenience for me since the headphone socket also doubles as optical output (and I prefer optical over USB for the DAC, as I get some weird interference with USB). I also occasionally use the onboard audio with earbuds if I am watching something at night.
I hadn't had the laptop too long when this happened, and I had no idea of what it's internals were like, so naturally I raged. My fear was that the headphone socket was built into the motherboard, as is the case for some laptops.
The service manual is for the Vaio VPCF1 series, which appears to cover the F11, F12 and F13. It contains exploded views and part numbers, so it's worth keeping just in case.
The audio board in my F12 was a CNX 448 M931, but the replacement I am now using is a CNX 448 M930. Everything appears to work fine.
Please refer to this website for detailed images on opening the laptop. It's fairly simple, so I shall just talk through the process.
1) An obvious step, but remove the power cable and disconnect the battery. I waited a few minutes with the battery out, and then held the power button in for about 10 seconds to drain any remaining power.
2) Now remove the DVD/Bluray drive. This is secured by two screws, one in the top left near the power button, and one to the left of the RAM cover. These have 3 small dots above the hole.
3) Proceed to remove the HDD. Looking at the HDD cover, there are two screws at the bottom, remove these. Again these have 2 small dots above the hole. Once you have removed those screws, gently slide the door toward you to reveal the HDD. Remove the two screws at the top securing the HDD and slide it left. Once it is free from the connector, lift it out.
4) Remove the RAM cover. The screw that secures the RAM cover does not actually come out as there is a retaining clip under it. What you have to do here is unscrew the door as best you can and then lift it up from the screw side (you should be able to slide a nail under it).
5) Remove the remaining screws from the back cover. I placed them on a table in the same position that I removed them from the laptop, but it would be better to draw a quick diagram to save confusion.
6) Now to remove the back cover. This was tricky at first as I wasn't sure what to expect. The bottom 1/3 of the cover felt as though it was still secured by something. I thought that maybe there were screws under the rubber pads but that wasn't the case.
Joe Bleau suggests working from the HDD side and carefully sliding the cover. When I tried this it felt like it wasn't working (perhaps I was doing it wrong), so the method I used was to start from the opposite end and run my fingernail down the front of the case carefully forcing it apart, working from right to left. I stopped just as I got to the HDD bay and lifted the case at the right hand end a little which also seemed to lift some of the PCB with it. With the PCB clear of the lower half of the case, I was able to slide it right (as suggested) and get the back cover off.
I suggest going with the original instruction of Joe's of , "Starting from the hard drive bay side, slide the cover, shake & bake with care & patience & remove the cover."
Patience is definitely the key here. Fortunately getting the case back on is rather easy.
7) You will notice a lone PCB to the left where the HDD bay is. This is the USB/audio board. Remove the two screws securing it, and carefully turn it over and remove the cable. You will need to pull the metal tab toward you at the same time as pulling up on the plastic removal tab.
8) Replace the old audio board with the new one, and connect the cable. Secure it using the scews from earlier and then work backwards from step 6 to put everything back together. Power on and enjoy.
That's about all there is to it. It goes without saying that the information posted here is a guide and you should proceed at your own caution. I'm not a technician or anything, just a regular end user, so if you are worried about anything going wrong, have it serviced properly. This kind of modification will probably void any warranties, so it's worth bearing that in mind (that doesn't bother me since I deal with stuff on my own).
I want to say a big thanks to Joe Bleau at vaiofseries.com. Without his help and awesome guides, I probably would have ended up breaking something, so thank you.
It happened to me not too long ago. Not because of wear and tear or because the headphone socket was of poor quality, but because of an accident. Admittedly it was probably partially my fault. I was visiting family and decided to bring my laptop and K701 along. Since the K701 use a 6.3mm plug, I had to use the chunky 6.3 to 3.5mm connector AKG supplied (which is a decent weight in itself). That alone didn't prove too much of a problem, though I'm sure prolonged use wouldn't do the socket too much good. The problem was that with the size of the plug and the adaptor, it was protruding from the laptop maybe a good 2 inches. It got snagged on some clothing, and you can figure out what happened next.
Although I have a USB DAC, losing the headphone socket would have been a major inconvenience for me since the headphone socket also doubles as optical output (and I prefer optical over USB for the DAC, as I get some weird interference with USB). I also occasionally use the onboard audio with earbuds if I am watching something at night.
I hadn't had the laptop too long when this happened, and I had no idea of what it's internals were like, so naturally I raged. My fear was that the headphone socket was built into the motherboard, as is the case for some laptops.
 |
| Dell Inspirion Motherboard. Note that the headphone and microphone jacks are built into the motherboard. This would require specialist soldering or a new motherboard. |
I can't remember exactly how it went from there, but I recall searching for service manuals (PDF files that Sony service center staff use for repair), browsing forums and looking for images of the motherboard, to try and determine if this was something I could fix myself.
I got lucky. It turns out this laptop has the headphone/optical, microphone and USB ports on their own small PCB, meaning that as long as I could get into it, I should be able to swap the part out. After a little googling, I managed to find out the part number, and was able to locate a replacement that was sourced from another laptop from The Laptop Centre. It's also worth checking ebay.
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| Vaio F12M0E with the CNX 448 M930 USB/Audio Board (the board inside the laptop is a CNX 448 M931 but they appear to be identical) |
The Replacement Process
Replacing the audio board in this particular laptop was easy, and will take you 15 minutes or so.
Make sure that you have earthed yourself and that you are not wearing any clothing that generates static electricity.
Things you will need:
- A PZ0 Screwdriver. Must have a thin shaft to fit inside the recessed holes.
- A CNX 448 USB/audio board.
- Something thin and flat to push tabs in (eg a flat screwdriver)
- The service manual or a laptop with this website for more detailed information .
The service manual is for the Vaio VPCF1 series, which appears to cover the F11, F12 and F13. It contains exploded views and part numbers, so it's worth keeping just in case.
The audio board in my F12 was a CNX 448 M931, but the replacement I am now using is a CNX 448 M930. Everything appears to work fine.
Please refer to this website for detailed images on opening the laptop. It's fairly simple, so I shall just talk through the process.
1) An obvious step, but remove the power cable and disconnect the battery. I waited a few minutes with the battery out, and then held the power button in for about 10 seconds to drain any remaining power.
2) Now remove the DVD/Bluray drive. This is secured by two screws, one in the top left near the power button, and one to the left of the RAM cover. These have 3 small dots above the hole.
3) Proceed to remove the HDD. Looking at the HDD cover, there are two screws at the bottom, remove these. Again these have 2 small dots above the hole. Once you have removed those screws, gently slide the door toward you to reveal the HDD. Remove the two screws at the top securing the HDD and slide it left. Once it is free from the connector, lift it out.
4) Remove the RAM cover. The screw that secures the RAM cover does not actually come out as there is a retaining clip under it. What you have to do here is unscrew the door as best you can and then lift it up from the screw side (you should be able to slide a nail under it).
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| Just before removing the back cover |
5) Remove the remaining screws from the back cover. I placed them on a table in the same position that I removed them from the laptop, but it would be better to draw a quick diagram to save confusion.
6) Now to remove the back cover. This was tricky at first as I wasn't sure what to expect. The bottom 1/3 of the cover felt as though it was still secured by something. I thought that maybe there were screws under the rubber pads but that wasn't the case.
Joe Bleau suggests working from the HDD side and carefully sliding the cover. When I tried this it felt like it wasn't working (perhaps I was doing it wrong), so the method I used was to start from the opposite end and run my fingernail down the front of the case carefully forcing it apart, working from right to left. I stopped just as I got to the HDD bay and lifted the case at the right hand end a little which also seemed to lift some of the PCB with it. With the PCB clear of the lower half of the case, I was able to slide it right (as suggested) and get the back cover off.
I suggest going with the original instruction of Joe's of , "Starting from the hard drive bay side, slide the cover, shake & bake with care & patience & remove the cover."
Patience is definitely the key here. Fortunately getting the case back on is rather easy.
7) You will notice a lone PCB to the left where the HDD bay is. This is the USB/audio board. Remove the two screws securing it, and carefully turn it over and remove the cable. You will need to pull the metal tab toward you at the same time as pulling up on the plastic removal tab.
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| This is the view as you remove the back cover. Notice how under normal usage, the motherboard is facing down, making it very easy to upgrade and service. |
8) Replace the old audio board with the new one, and connect the cable. Secure it using the scews from earlier and then work backwards from step 6 to put everything back together. Power on and enjoy.
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| CNX 448 M930 and M931 side by side |
I want to say a big thanks to Joe Bleau at vaiofseries.com. Without his help and awesome guides, I probably would have ended up breaking something, so thank you.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Guidelines for Buying Headphones
Something I seem to get asked a lot is, "What headphones are good for <insert price>?"
That's not an easy question to answer, thanks to a number of reasons. I'm also reluctant to give direct recommendations due to the fact that a lot about headphones (quality, sound, value) is subjective. What I find good, someone else may find not so good.
With that in mind, I want to go through a few points which will hopefully help you to make your own, informed decision. Here are some of the things you should consider when looking for headphones.
Style of Music
This is possibly the most obvious point, but one that should be covered. Not all headphones are created equal, and by that I mean they have different sound signatures (a fancy phrase for the tone they impart onto the music). You are probably aware of the fact that headphones and speakers all have different sounds, and may have put it down to a difference in quality, but it's most often, simply down to how they respond at certain frequencies.
We can put headphones into two basic categories (there are more, but we are going to keep it simple for now). Those are neutral, and coloured. Neutral, as the name suggests, presents the music as close as reasonably possible to the original recording. It's difficult to make and tune neutral headphones due to various factors, so you do have a degree of variance between them. Not all neutral headphones sound exactly alike.
As for coloured, this basically describes any headphones or speakers that add their own tone to the music. The most common example of coloured headphones are those that boost bass, but it can also describe non-neutral behaviour in other frequencies, such boosting high frequencies which gives an impression of greater clarity.
We can determine for ourselves which headphones are neutral or coloured simply by checking their frequency response graph.
Here is a frequency response graph for 4 popular headphones. These graphs are generated by playing a standard frequency sweep through the headphones and measuring the output. What the graph shows us is that although the same frequency sweep is played through all the headphones, the output can vary a lot.
In a perfect world, neutral headphones would have a straight line at 0dBr, right across the frequency spectrum. However in practice this is extremely difficult, and even the $1400 Sennheiser HD800 can't produce a completely flat line. Generally, anything +/-5db relative to 0db would be considered neutral, and anything significantly higher or lower than that would indicate that the headphones either have a coloured sound or weakness. As we can see, given the +/-5db rule of thumb, the HD800 do amazingly well, staying within that range for most of the frequencies. The K701 do well too, but in comparison to the HD800, it appears that bass and highs are a little under represented (but when you consider there is a $1100 price difference, they don't do bad at all).
Moving on, we can see the Sony MDR-V700, which are sold as DJ headphones, have the weakest bass response of them all, and is lacking in the high frequencies/treble department. Ordinarily that would stand out to me as a weakness of the headphones, but given that they are designed to be used in clubs, and support up to 3000mw of power, I wonder if they were purposely tuned this way so they can be played at high volumes without piercing treble or ear rattling bass. For DJ headphones they are fit for purpose, but I wouldn't suggest these to any budding audiophiles (talking from first hand experience).
Conversely we can see that the Sony MDR-XB700 apply a large boost of +15 in the bass range. That much of a bias into one frequency range means that it works superb for certain styles of music (notably hip hop or drum and bass), but potentially not so well for others. The boost tapers off at around 250-300Hz which is the usual cutoff frequency for subwoofers, so it's obvious what these headphones were tuned for. The only downside with this much of a boost is that it may leave some low male vocals sounding a little muddy. While these don't appear to boost the high frequencies (in fact it's just below 0db), in comparison to most other headphones, it would sound as though they do since a lot of headphones tend to fall off to around -10db in the 10kHz+ range.
As the graph shows, the AKG K701 and Sennheiser HD800 are neutral headphones, whereas the Sony MDR-XB700 are coloured since they intentionally boost the bass. Coloured headphones are typically a lot more popular than neutral headphones as it's easier to notice a difference in tone between two headphones than it is to notice the quality difference between two that have similar frequency responses. To notice the quality difference between two high quality headphones, you would need an equally high quality source, but the difference between neutral and coloured headphones can be noticed on practically any output.
Protip: Coloured headphones work well on cheap players/output as their bass/treble boost can offset the rolloff associated with portable devices/underpowered amplifiers. See this for more detail.
That alone makes it easier to differentiate between them. Coloured headphones also give a false sense of quality. What happens when you go from a neutral headphone to one that boosts the bass and treble by +5db? You will easily notice the improved bass, and the extra high frequency response will give the impression of extra clarity. Then move to headphones that boost by +10db and you have the same issue again. The +10 boosted headphones will have even more bass and sound even more detailed than the last pair.
These kind of headphones are likely to grab your attention at first which is not something that happens when using neutral headphones. As such, these headphones are popular and thanks to their artificial boosting of the frequencies, can leave neutral headphones sounding dull or flat in comparison. That's not to say coloured headphones are bad or no good, but they serve a different purpose from neutral headphones. My personal preference is to listen to music as it was intended to sound in the studio, but if you are a bass head, then that's cool too.
If you listen to certain types of music (such as hip hop or drum and bass as mentioned earlier), then coloured headphones may suit your requirements. If you listen to a wide range of stuff and only want to invest in one pair of headphones, a neutral setup will serve well as a jack of all trades. The great thing about headphones is that they are small enough to own multiple pairs, so you may decide to go for one of each and alternate depending on what you are listening to.
Source Quality
As I touched on before in previous posts, your source quality is critically important. There's really no point in spending $1400 on some Sennheiser HD800 if you intend to run them off your onboard laptop audio or iPod. Your output will simply be way better than your input and your source will cripple the performance of the headphones.
Budget according to the quality of your setup if you don't intend to upgrade your audio. If you have onboard audio for example, then I'd advise spending $150 maximum. If you have a high end soundcard, then feel free to splash out a little more (let's say up to $250). If you still really want to spend a decent amount (over $300 for example) on a certain pair of headphones, consider buying a DAC first (or an amp if you already have a high end soundcard like the X-Fi Titanium). It makes the initial cost of upgrading expensive, but a high quality DAC is a long term investment and will out live numerous pairs of headphones.
A common mistake, and something I can speak about from experience, is that people think they can buy good quality headphones and expect significantly better sound. While high quality headphones will provide an improvement, they will potentially show you the flaws in your source too. I originally bought the AKG K701 and intended to run them from my laptop audio (insert laughter here). I thought that at $320, they would be good enough for me to not care about the pitfalls of onboard audio, or that I would be so impressed with the quality over my old Sony V700, that I wouldn't notice any flaws.
That of course wasn't the case, and I soon got the upgrade bug. The audio quality was obviously improved from the Sony V700, but the onboard amp lacked the power to properly drive the headphones, not to mention the poor quality of the DAC. I wanted to see what these headphoneswere actually capable of, so I went down the path of a seperate headphone amplifier and DAC.
Audio is a two way deal. Input is equally as important as output, so with this in mind, I'd recommend splitting your budget. I would suggest spending as much on a combined amp/DAC as you would the headphones. For example if you have a budget of $400, rather than spend that much on a single pair of headphones to use with onboard laptop audio, split the budget and buy a DAC too. It's a case of striking a balance since you are more likely to get better quality from a very good source with very good headphones, than a poor source with excellent headphones.
You may decide to split your budget dead in half, or something like $150/$250 for example (incidentally, $400 gets you a nice Maverick D1 and AKG K601 combo, which Findns can personally vouch for). I would advise biasing your budget split toward the amp/DAC as they are long term, and headphones come and go.
More information on the hardware side of audio quality and upgrading can be found in my previous post on amps and DACs
While I am on the subject of source quality, let's talk briefly about the music itself. Once you make the move to high quality audio, you may be left feeling that your 128kbps youtube rips don't quite cut it anymore. Joking aside, MP3 is an aging standard, and what was good enough for lossy compression 10 years ago, is poor now. Consider using at least 320kbps mp3, or better yet, AAC or FLAC. FLAC is a lossless compression method that retains all the quality of the original recording, but reduces filesize using similar algorithms to zip and rar, but specially tuned for audio. Typically it reduces the original bitrate of 1411kbps to around 900-1000kbps.
AAC deserves a special mention as it is the successor to MP3 and is rather impressive. It is said to be around 30% more efficient than MP3 at the same bitrates, and in an encoding test I performed, I found that 226kbps AAC retained more high frequencies than 320kbps MP3.
So if we consider that 226kbps AAC is better than 320kbps MP3, then how good would AAC sound at 320kbps? Even if 320k AAC isn't enough for you, you will be happy to know that AAC goes all the way up to 448kbps for CD audio, and I'd challenge anyone to tell the difference between the source and the AAC in a blind listening test. I'm confident it simply can't be done, especially if you consider that for most people, AAC reaches transparency at around 200-250kbps. I back this statement as I personally find it difficult to find any differences even with my gear. Watch this space for a listening test in the future.
AAC also supports multi channel, a range of bit depths and sample rates, and rather than being stuck at a fixed highest bitrate like MP3, it can scale depending on the input. I recently encoded a track from SACD (24 bit, 96kHz) which ended up at 2009kbps, so you don't need to worry that your high resolution sources will suffer from a maximum bitrate. AAC is here to stay for a while.
Moving on to the software side of things, I want to talk about a couple of things that affect the audio quality. These are quite important to get right, because they impact the audio before it is even sent to your sound card or DAC.
The first thing I want to talk about, and the one that can have the most bearing on quality are equalisers. In my opinion, equalizers don't have a place in high quality audio. When I was a kid, I was under the impression that CDs were simply mastered to sound a bit flat so that they didn't sound overly bright or bassy on different setups. Now that I have got a good quality setup, I realise that it wasn't the CDs that were made to sound flat, it was simply my audio gear that made them sound that way.
Consider recording studios. We know that they spend insane amounts of money on high quality headphones and monitor speakers. These are designed to be as neutral and realistic as possible, and the recording is mixed and levels adjusted, according to how it sounds coming from their speakers/headphones. In order to hear what they heard in the studio, we also need a high quality, neutral setup and equalizers have no place in obtaining this goal.
Disabling EQ and any other sound processing is especially important when using a DAC. EQ alters the audio levels (and in turn the quality) before it's even sent to the DAC, so the DAC is then forced to deal with pre-processed audio which will give sub optimal results. How can the DAC accurately decode the audio if the contents have been changed before hand?
Another, more detrimental effect of equalisation is clipping and distortion which can occur when the level of a frequency range is already close to zero, but is equalised to an extent that would ordinarily cause the level to go positive. For example let's take a bass range that is already at -5db. If we add 10db to that in an equaliser, it will cause it to clip since the audio cannot go above 0db.
There are two methods of equalisation. One is to boost the frequencies requested by the user, which can often lead to distortion (such as the example I just gave, and the awful EQ on the iPod). The other method is to reduce the amplitude of the other frequencies, so the higest level of boost actually becomes neutral, and anything lower than that is effectively a decrease. In the second method, adding 10db to the bass frequencies would leave the bass range at -5db to prevent clipping, but all other frequencies would be dropped by -10db to create the effective 10db bass boost over the rest of the frequencies.
Some media players with fixed EQ levels already do this, for example if the maximum you can boost a range by is +15db, then you will find that all the frequencies are already at -15db when the EQ is flat to prevent boosting causing clipping. The only downside to this method is that the volume levels are lower.
If neutral sound isn't your kind of thing and you would prefer coloured sound, then it's generally better to achieve the type of sound you want through careful choice of amplifier and headphones, rather than using an equaliser.
Finally I want to mention media players and codecs. As far as lossless codecs go, your choice of media player isn't that important, but for lossy codecs such as MP3 and AAC, there can be slight differences in quality due to the accuracy of the decoding. Fortunately most media players have a choice of plugins (such as Winamp) or software like Windows Media Player which uses the directshow framework and has a huge choice of decoders available.
Windows Vista also introduced a new audio API called WASAPI. In short this is ideal for DACs because it bypasses any OS processing of the sound and allows bit perfect transport. Also of interest is a feature called exclusive mode renderer. While audio is playing using WASAPI in exclusive mode, all other sounds are suppressed, so that means you can listen to music and not be bothered by system sounds, or audio from websites as you browse. Foobar 2000 has WASAPI built into it, and it is available in Winamp via a third party plugin from Maiko, although at the time of writing, Maiko's exclusive mode renderer is incomplete and somewhat buggy.
Specifications
As you are looking round for headphones, you will no doubt encounter some specifications. Although they aren't critically important, they can give us some clues and other useful information. Here are the specifications for the K701 which I will use as an example.
Headphone Type: Open
Headphones tend to come in two types; open and closed, which refers to the back of the unit. Closed headphones have a solid back and open are usually some form of mesh. Open headphones tend to offer the better sound quality of the two and generally sound more natural (I also feel that closed back headphones cause a little reverb from the sound rebounding off the outer case). Unfortunately, open back headphones typically don't have the same kind of bass punch that closed types have.
Open back headphones tend to be more comfortable for long use and your ears don't get stuffy since the air can get to them. The main down side to open headphones though, is that they leak a lot of noise, and also noise can get in easily which makes them poor for outdoor use. Although there isn't anything wrong with the bass reproduction on open back headphones, they can sometimes lack a bit of the punch that closed types offer. In my opinion, open headphones, despite their downsides, are still better than closed.
Frequency Range: 10Hz - 39.8kHz
This tells up the lowest and highest frequencies the headphones can produce, however there are a couple of things to note about frequency ranges and why they aren't as important as you might think. The first is that for CD audio, the normal frequency range tops out at 22.05kHz (although digital audio is sampled at 44.1kHz, the nyquist/effective frequency is half of that). The second is that the average range of hearing for a human is 20Hz to 20kHz. That makes the fact that these headphones go to 39.8kHz largely irrelevant when talking about CD audio since there are no frequencies higher than 22.05kHz, and most people can't hear above 20kHz anyway. If you are buying your setup to listen to CD audio, then you should be fine as long as your headphones cover 20Hz to 22kHz. The only thing I could say about headphones with such a high frequency response is that if offers a bit of overhead, so that you know if it can do 39.8kHz, then it won't struggle at 22.05kHz at all, compared to headphones that top out at 22kHz.
THD: <1%
THD, or Total Harmonic Distortion gives us information about how the headphone perform at high volumes. Basically, it is how the driver is able to respond under a load. A high THD will usually cause popping, cracking or general distortion in how the music sounds. Needless to say, you want this to be as low as possible.
Impendance: 62 ohms
Impendance is one of the more useful specifications as it gives us a clue about how easy or hard it is to drive the headphones. Headphones for portable devices tend to be 16 or 24 ohms, and the higher the rating, the more power you need to get the same volume levels. In other words, the K701 at 62 ohms are a lot quieter than my V700 at 24 ohms when using them on my mobile phone. I would say that anything over 60 ohms benefits from an amplifier, and anything under may get away with using the stock output. High quality headphones that have low levels of hiss usually have high impendance as a result, so don't assume that high impendance is a bad thing.
Max Power Input: 200mw
This simply tells us the maximum milliwattage the headphones can handle without damage. This is usually not of much interest since at the maximum power ratings for most headphones, it would be so loud it would be uncomfortable, and damage your hearing. Some headphones such as the Sony V700 and XB700 handle up to 3000mw (3 watts), which is probably two or three times louder than most laptop speakers. It should also be noted the the power your amp can deliver to the headphones depends on their impendance. The Yulong A100 for example can provide 1000mw at 33ohms at full volume, but drops to 343mw at 50ohms.
Efficiency: 105dB/V (99.8dB/mW)
Also known as Sound Pressure Level or sensitivity, this is a measure of how loud the headphones are at a given input level. This can also be a bit confusing due to the fact that manufacturers measure this in different ways. Sennheiser and AKG tend to use dB/V, where most other companies use dB/mW. You can convert dB/V to dB/mW with the following formula. Just change dB/V to the value supplied in the specifications and paste this in google search.
dB/V+10*log(300*0.001/1^2)
By comparison, the Sony XB700 have 106dB/mW compared to the K701's 99.8dB/mW. This is probably owing to the differences in impendance more than anything else.
Suggestions should come later.
That's not an easy question to answer, thanks to a number of reasons. I'm also reluctant to give direct recommendations due to the fact that a lot about headphones (quality, sound, value) is subjective. What I find good, someone else may find not so good.
With that in mind, I want to go through a few points which will hopefully help you to make your own, informed decision. Here are some of the things you should consider when looking for headphones.
Style of Music
This is possibly the most obvious point, but one that should be covered. Not all headphones are created equal, and by that I mean they have different sound signatures (a fancy phrase for the tone they impart onto the music). You are probably aware of the fact that headphones and speakers all have different sounds, and may have put it down to a difference in quality, but it's most often, simply down to how they respond at certain frequencies.
We can put headphones into two basic categories (there are more, but we are going to keep it simple for now). Those are neutral, and coloured. Neutral, as the name suggests, presents the music as close as reasonably possible to the original recording. It's difficult to make and tune neutral headphones due to various factors, so you do have a degree of variance between them. Not all neutral headphones sound exactly alike.
As for coloured, this basically describes any headphones or speakers that add their own tone to the music. The most common example of coloured headphones are those that boost bass, but it can also describe non-neutral behaviour in other frequencies, such boosting high frequencies which gives an impression of greater clarity.
We can determine for ourselves which headphones are neutral or coloured simply by checking their frequency response graph.
In a perfect world, neutral headphones would have a straight line at 0dBr, right across the frequency spectrum. However in practice this is extremely difficult, and even the $1400 Sennheiser HD800 can't produce a completely flat line. Generally, anything +/-5db relative to 0db would be considered neutral, and anything significantly higher or lower than that would indicate that the headphones either have a coloured sound or weakness. As we can see, given the +/-5db rule of thumb, the HD800 do amazingly well, staying within that range for most of the frequencies. The K701 do well too, but in comparison to the HD800, it appears that bass and highs are a little under represented (but when you consider there is a $1100 price difference, they don't do bad at all).
Moving on, we can see the Sony MDR-V700, which are sold as DJ headphones, have the weakest bass response of them all, and is lacking in the high frequencies/treble department. Ordinarily that would stand out to me as a weakness of the headphones, but given that they are designed to be used in clubs, and support up to 3000mw of power, I wonder if they were purposely tuned this way so they can be played at high volumes without piercing treble or ear rattling bass. For DJ headphones they are fit for purpose, but I wouldn't suggest these to any budding audiophiles (talking from first hand experience).
Conversely we can see that the Sony MDR-XB700 apply a large boost of +15 in the bass range. That much of a bias into one frequency range means that it works superb for certain styles of music (notably hip hop or drum and bass), but potentially not so well for others. The boost tapers off at around 250-300Hz which is the usual cutoff frequency for subwoofers, so it's obvious what these headphones were tuned for. The only downside with this much of a boost is that it may leave some low male vocals sounding a little muddy. While these don't appear to boost the high frequencies (in fact it's just below 0db), in comparison to most other headphones, it would sound as though they do since a lot of headphones tend to fall off to around -10db in the 10kHz+ range.
As the graph shows, the AKG K701 and Sennheiser HD800 are neutral headphones, whereas the Sony MDR-XB700 are coloured since they intentionally boost the bass. Coloured headphones are typically a lot more popular than neutral headphones as it's easier to notice a difference in tone between two headphones than it is to notice the quality difference between two that have similar frequency responses. To notice the quality difference between two high quality headphones, you would need an equally high quality source, but the difference between neutral and coloured headphones can be noticed on practically any output.
Protip: Coloured headphones work well on cheap players/output as their bass/treble boost can offset the rolloff associated with portable devices/underpowered amplifiers. See this for more detail.
That alone makes it easier to differentiate between them. Coloured headphones also give a false sense of quality. What happens when you go from a neutral headphone to one that boosts the bass and treble by +5db? You will easily notice the improved bass, and the extra high frequency response will give the impression of extra clarity. Then move to headphones that boost by +10db and you have the same issue again. The +10 boosted headphones will have even more bass and sound even more detailed than the last pair.
These kind of headphones are likely to grab your attention at first which is not something that happens when using neutral headphones. As such, these headphones are popular and thanks to their artificial boosting of the frequencies, can leave neutral headphones sounding dull or flat in comparison. That's not to say coloured headphones are bad or no good, but they serve a different purpose from neutral headphones. My personal preference is to listen to music as it was intended to sound in the studio, but if you are a bass head, then that's cool too.
If you listen to certain types of music (such as hip hop or drum and bass as mentioned earlier), then coloured headphones may suit your requirements. If you listen to a wide range of stuff and only want to invest in one pair of headphones, a neutral setup will serve well as a jack of all trades. The great thing about headphones is that they are small enough to own multiple pairs, so you may decide to go for one of each and alternate depending on what you are listening to.
Source Quality
As I touched on before in previous posts, your source quality is critically important. There's really no point in spending $1400 on some Sennheiser HD800 if you intend to run them off your onboard laptop audio or iPod. Your output will simply be way better than your input and your source will cripple the performance of the headphones.
Budget according to the quality of your setup if you don't intend to upgrade your audio. If you have onboard audio for example, then I'd advise spending $150 maximum. If you have a high end soundcard, then feel free to splash out a little more (let's say up to $250). If you still really want to spend a decent amount (over $300 for example) on a certain pair of headphones, consider buying a DAC first (or an amp if you already have a high end soundcard like the X-Fi Titanium). It makes the initial cost of upgrading expensive, but a high quality DAC is a long term investment and will out live numerous pairs of headphones.
A common mistake, and something I can speak about from experience, is that people think they can buy good quality headphones and expect significantly better sound. While high quality headphones will provide an improvement, they will potentially show you the flaws in your source too. I originally bought the AKG K701 and intended to run them from my laptop audio (insert laughter here). I thought that at $320, they would be good enough for me to not care about the pitfalls of onboard audio, or that I would be so impressed with the quality over my old Sony V700, that I wouldn't notice any flaws.
That of course wasn't the case, and I soon got the upgrade bug. The audio quality was obviously improved from the Sony V700, but the onboard amp lacked the power to properly drive the headphones, not to mention the poor quality of the DAC. I wanted to see what these headphoneswere actually capable of, so I went down the path of a seperate headphone amplifier and DAC.
Audio is a two way deal. Input is equally as important as output, so with this in mind, I'd recommend splitting your budget. I would suggest spending as much on a combined amp/DAC as you would the headphones. For example if you have a budget of $400, rather than spend that much on a single pair of headphones to use with onboard laptop audio, split the budget and buy a DAC too. It's a case of striking a balance since you are more likely to get better quality from a very good source with very good headphones, than a poor source with excellent headphones.
You may decide to split your budget dead in half, or something like $150/$250 for example (incidentally, $400 gets you a nice Maverick D1 and AKG K601 combo, which Findns can personally vouch for). I would advise biasing your budget split toward the amp/DAC as they are long term, and headphones come and go.
More information on the hardware side of audio quality and upgrading can be found in my previous post on amps and DACs
While I am on the subject of source quality, let's talk briefly about the music itself. Once you make the move to high quality audio, you may be left feeling that your 128kbps youtube rips don't quite cut it anymore. Joking aside, MP3 is an aging standard, and what was good enough for lossy compression 10 years ago, is poor now. Consider using at least 320kbps mp3, or better yet, AAC or FLAC. FLAC is a lossless compression method that retains all the quality of the original recording, but reduces filesize using similar algorithms to zip and rar, but specially tuned for audio. Typically it reduces the original bitrate of 1411kbps to around 900-1000kbps.
AAC deserves a special mention as it is the successor to MP3 and is rather impressive. It is said to be around 30% more efficient than MP3 at the same bitrates, and in an encoding test I performed, I found that 226kbps AAC retained more high frequencies than 320kbps MP3.
So if we consider that 226kbps AAC is better than 320kbps MP3, then how good would AAC sound at 320kbps? Even if 320k AAC isn't enough for you, you will be happy to know that AAC goes all the way up to 448kbps for CD audio, and I'd challenge anyone to tell the difference between the source and the AAC in a blind listening test. I'm confident it simply can't be done, especially if you consider that for most people, AAC reaches transparency at around 200-250kbps. I back this statement as I personally find it difficult to find any differences even with my gear. Watch this space for a listening test in the future.
AAC also supports multi channel, a range of bit depths and sample rates, and rather than being stuck at a fixed highest bitrate like MP3, it can scale depending on the input. I recently encoded a track from SACD (24 bit, 96kHz) which ended up at 2009kbps, so you don't need to worry that your high resolution sources will suffer from a maximum bitrate. AAC is here to stay for a while.
Moving on to the software side of things, I want to talk about a couple of things that affect the audio quality. These are quite important to get right, because they impact the audio before it is even sent to your sound card or DAC.
The first thing I want to talk about, and the one that can have the most bearing on quality are equalisers. In my opinion, equalizers don't have a place in high quality audio. When I was a kid, I was under the impression that CDs were simply mastered to sound a bit flat so that they didn't sound overly bright or bassy on different setups. Now that I have got a good quality setup, I realise that it wasn't the CDs that were made to sound flat, it was simply my audio gear that made them sound that way.
Consider recording studios. We know that they spend insane amounts of money on high quality headphones and monitor speakers. These are designed to be as neutral and realistic as possible, and the recording is mixed and levels adjusted, according to how it sounds coming from their speakers/headphones. In order to hear what they heard in the studio, we also need a high quality, neutral setup and equalizers have no place in obtaining this goal.
Disabling EQ and any other sound processing is especially important when using a DAC. EQ alters the audio levels (and in turn the quality) before it's even sent to the DAC, so the DAC is then forced to deal with pre-processed audio which will give sub optimal results. How can the DAC accurately decode the audio if the contents have been changed before hand?
Another, more detrimental effect of equalisation is clipping and distortion which can occur when the level of a frequency range is already close to zero, but is equalised to an extent that would ordinarily cause the level to go positive. For example let's take a bass range that is already at -5db. If we add 10db to that in an equaliser, it will cause it to clip since the audio cannot go above 0db.
There are two methods of equalisation. One is to boost the frequencies requested by the user, which can often lead to distortion (such as the example I just gave, and the awful EQ on the iPod). The other method is to reduce the amplitude of the other frequencies, so the higest level of boost actually becomes neutral, and anything lower than that is effectively a decrease. In the second method, adding 10db to the bass frequencies would leave the bass range at -5db to prevent clipping, but all other frequencies would be dropped by -10db to create the effective 10db bass boost over the rest of the frequencies.
Some media players with fixed EQ levels already do this, for example if the maximum you can boost a range by is +15db, then you will find that all the frequencies are already at -15db when the EQ is flat to prevent boosting causing clipping. The only downside to this method is that the volume levels are lower.
If neutral sound isn't your kind of thing and you would prefer coloured sound, then it's generally better to achieve the type of sound you want through careful choice of amplifier and headphones, rather than using an equaliser.
Finally I want to mention media players and codecs. As far as lossless codecs go, your choice of media player isn't that important, but for lossy codecs such as MP3 and AAC, there can be slight differences in quality due to the accuracy of the decoding. Fortunately most media players have a choice of plugins (such as Winamp) or software like Windows Media Player which uses the directshow framework and has a huge choice of decoders available.
Windows Vista also introduced a new audio API called WASAPI. In short this is ideal for DACs because it bypasses any OS processing of the sound and allows bit perfect transport. Also of interest is a feature called exclusive mode renderer. While audio is playing using WASAPI in exclusive mode, all other sounds are suppressed, so that means you can listen to music and not be bothered by system sounds, or audio from websites as you browse. Foobar 2000 has WASAPI built into it, and it is available in Winamp via a third party plugin from Maiko, although at the time of writing, Maiko's exclusive mode renderer is incomplete and somewhat buggy.
Specifications
As you are looking round for headphones, you will no doubt encounter some specifications. Although they aren't critically important, they can give us some clues and other useful information. Here are the specifications for the K701 which I will use as an example.
Headphone Type: Open
Headphones tend to come in two types; open and closed, which refers to the back of the unit. Closed headphones have a solid back and open are usually some form of mesh. Open headphones tend to offer the better sound quality of the two and generally sound more natural (I also feel that closed back headphones cause a little reverb from the sound rebounding off the outer case). Unfortunately, open back headphones typically don't have the same kind of bass punch that closed types have.
Open back headphones tend to be more comfortable for long use and your ears don't get stuffy since the air can get to them. The main down side to open headphones though, is that they leak a lot of noise, and also noise can get in easily which makes them poor for outdoor use. Although there isn't anything wrong with the bass reproduction on open back headphones, they can sometimes lack a bit of the punch that closed types offer. In my opinion, open headphones, despite their downsides, are still better than closed.
Frequency Range: 10Hz - 39.8kHz
This tells up the lowest and highest frequencies the headphones can produce, however there are a couple of things to note about frequency ranges and why they aren't as important as you might think. The first is that for CD audio, the normal frequency range tops out at 22.05kHz (although digital audio is sampled at 44.1kHz, the nyquist/effective frequency is half of that). The second is that the average range of hearing for a human is 20Hz to 20kHz. That makes the fact that these headphones go to 39.8kHz largely irrelevant when talking about CD audio since there are no frequencies higher than 22.05kHz, and most people can't hear above 20kHz anyway. If you are buying your setup to listen to CD audio, then you should be fine as long as your headphones cover 20Hz to 22kHz. The only thing I could say about headphones with such a high frequency response is that if offers a bit of overhead, so that you know if it can do 39.8kHz, then it won't struggle at 22.05kHz at all, compared to headphones that top out at 22kHz.
THD: <1%
THD, or Total Harmonic Distortion gives us information about how the headphone perform at high volumes. Basically, it is how the driver is able to respond under a load. A high THD will usually cause popping, cracking or general distortion in how the music sounds. Needless to say, you want this to be as low as possible.
Impendance: 62 ohms
Impendance is one of the more useful specifications as it gives us a clue about how easy or hard it is to drive the headphones. Headphones for portable devices tend to be 16 or 24 ohms, and the higher the rating, the more power you need to get the same volume levels. In other words, the K701 at 62 ohms are a lot quieter than my V700 at 24 ohms when using them on my mobile phone. I would say that anything over 60 ohms benefits from an amplifier, and anything under may get away with using the stock output. High quality headphones that have low levels of hiss usually have high impendance as a result, so don't assume that high impendance is a bad thing.
Max Power Input: 200mw
This simply tells us the maximum milliwattage the headphones can handle without damage. This is usually not of much interest since at the maximum power ratings for most headphones, it would be so loud it would be uncomfortable, and damage your hearing. Some headphones such as the Sony V700 and XB700 handle up to 3000mw (3 watts), which is probably two or three times louder than most laptop speakers. It should also be noted the the power your amp can deliver to the headphones depends on their impendance. The Yulong A100 for example can provide 1000mw at 33ohms at full volume, but drops to 343mw at 50ohms.
Efficiency: 105dB/V (99.8dB/mW)
Also known as Sound Pressure Level or sensitivity, this is a measure of how loud the headphones are at a given input level. This can also be a bit confusing due to the fact that manufacturers measure this in different ways. Sennheiser and AKG tend to use dB/V, where most other companies use dB/mW. You can convert dB/V to dB/mW with the following formula. Just change dB/V to the value supplied in the specifications and paste this in google search.
dB/V+10*log(300*0.001/1^2)
By comparison, the Sony XB700 have 106dB/mW compared to the K701's 99.8dB/mW. This is probably owing to the differences in impendance more than anything else.
Suggestions should come later.
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