Media Reports
A Touch of the Future
By Barry Fox
NXT (www.nxtsound.com), the British company which took the UK military’s idea of flexing flat panels to generate anti-sound in a fighter plane cockpit and adapted it for consumer audio speakers, has now developed a “haptic” system that lets a touch screen or touch pad confirm commands. The panel or pad can be used on an amplifier or disc player, and either click, or jerk, where pressed; or it can speak confirmation of the command, which will be a welcome feature for the blind or poor-sighted.
Conventional haptic devices work in clumsy fashion, using a deliberately unbalanced motor, like a badly loaded washing machine, to produce overall shock pulses. NXT uses tuned transducers to produce tightly localized physical pulses, for tactile feedback.
Prototypes shown at a private briefing in London proved the system works well. LCD screens with a capacitive film over the surface to make them touch sensitive have two (or four) wideband piezo transducers clamped to corners of the screen. The transducers vibrate the screen and produce wave patterns that interfere, add, and subtract. Changing the frequencies of the waves steers the vibration pulse nodes to point locations. So pressing an icon on the screen triggers a mechanical pulse which the finger feels as a touch click.
The same system is used to produce surface waves under a pen stylus. The writer feels faint vibrations, or “textured feedback,” which produce the pleasing illusion of a rough surface.
NXT has been working on haptic screens since 2000, and has granted Japanese company Nissha Printing (www.nisshq.co.jp) an exclusive three-year license to use the technology on screens and pads smaller than 8″. The first consumer devices are expected in Q1 2010.
Larger screens will use electromagnet Balanced Mode Radiator drivers similar to those used to generate sound from the large screens of Vizio consumer TVs (www.vizio.com) and a new monitor from JVC (www.jvc.com), and new high-end hi-fi speakers from Naim, the Ovator S-600 (www.naim-audio.com).
It has been difficult, admits Chief Executive Peter Thoms, to get component makers to develop the high voltage driver chips needed to control the single layer piezo material. But the commitment from Nissha has convinced the component makers there is a market.
Useless Killers?
Like a stuck record I keep saying that although I have a houseful of computers, I want to listen to music from CDs on a dedicated hi-fi that doesn’t need booting up to download critical software updates.
I would secretly prefer to listen to music on the move from a simple cassette Walkman (www.sony.com), but it’s no longer a realistic option. So I have a couple of iPods and salute Apple for making the iTunes software a pretty easy way to rip CDs to a PC hard disc and transfer to a portable memory player (www.apple.com).
I also have a drawer full of “iPod-killers”—portable players and multimedia phones that Sony, Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, LG, Samsung, Uncle Tom Cobblers, and All have launched in the hope of winning some market share from Apple.
Most of these Apple Attack players are a pain to use, so they stay in the drawer or end up in a charity shop.
Having done a terrific job of creating the analog mobile music market with the Walkman, Sony handed the portable world to Apple on a plate, by crippling Mini Disc and then digital Walkmen with an unpopular compression system (ATRAC), user-hostile software (SonicStage), and clumsy Digital Rights Management copy-protection (MagicGate/OpenMG).
Sony’s new X-Series Walkmen finally play the audio formats that people want (MP3, WMA, AAC, and Linear PCM audio), and also have built-in FM radio and Wi-Fi for getting music and Podcasts off the Internet. But Sony now must persuade people who love their iPods that it is worth punting over £200 on giving Sony another try.
To work up a buzz Sony UK’s publicity people spent a small fortune on hiring a disused Jubilee Line platform under Charing Cross station to launch the players to press and public.
What a pity that no-one at Sony realized that there is no FM or Wi-Fi radio signal in an underground tube tunnel.
Motorola pioneered the cellphone but grew fat and complacent, and was knocked off its perch by lean and hungry Nokia (www.nokia.com). Compared to Moto’s, Nokia phones were gloriously easy to use.
But as phones become music players, Nokia is increasingly worried about Apple and the iPod. At a seminar in Monaco, Nokia was asking opinion formers for help on—to quote a colleague present—“finding ways to make Nokia products sexier than they are, before the iPhone fad destroys every other handset maker on earth.”
The Nokia online music store is nowhere near as easy to use as iTunes, mainly because Nokia has tried to make it different. It’s flakey, too. My repeated attempts at legitimate downloads gave either complete failures, partial failures, or random successes with tracks that previously failed. When I spent time giving Nokia chapter and verse on tracks that were failing, so that Nokia could check the causes, no-one got back to me.
But Nokia did give me the chance to try a couple of the latest music phones, the 5800 and the N97, that Brit TV personality Stephen Fry turned up to launch.
I wonder how Mr. Fry got on with it?
The instruction manual for the N97 is very sketchy, and does not even say what audio, video, and still picture formats the N97 can handle. It gives no advice on connecting to a PC. The USB lead with the 5800 is so short (10cm of cable) it’s well nigh useless.
I tried the common practice of dragging and dropping files from a PC, but on each of two PCs, both devices gave the error message “cannot install this hardware.” Advice given me by a Nokia tekkie did not tally with what the screens showed.
I installed all the software on the disc in the N97 box and something aptly called Twonkymedia kept giving wonky Windows error messages until I deleted it.
The loan phones had to go back to Nokia long before I got them usefully working.
For the record, I have several times made Nokia the offer I’ve made to other companies which are selling hard-to-use stuff. I’ll sit down with someone in the company who has real design clout, and (perhaps for a fee paid to charity) show them how real-world users fall over when trying to use what they have bought. So far there have been no takers.
CONCERTED EFFORT
There are CDs on sale at most concerts now. But they seldom have much relevance to the music being played live. Mostly different musicians are playing different tunes.
So hats off to Richard Pite, who has been staging jazz concerts at the Cadogan Hall in London, re-creating the sound of big bands and swing groups with as little amplification as possible. The most recent concert showcased “chamber jazz” played in the 20s, 30s, and 40s by groups led by John Kirby, Joe Venuti, Raymond Scott, Artie Shaw, and Duke Ellington. During the interval and after the show nicely recorded CDs were on sale in the bar that captured the music heard during the concert, played by the same musicians.
Richard Pite explains how it was done: “We rehearsed and performed the music at nearby Boisdale of Belgravia where I present live jazz six nights a week. I recorded the sessions on the in-house Tascam eight track digital recorder and then got our soundman to mix the best tracks. I knew that I was going to lose quite a bundle on putting this concert on and that a CD of some of the concert’s material would go some way to allay the losses. The musicians kindly forewent their recording fees and we sold 112 CDs so that helped me a great deal—although our losses were still in four figures.
“I was greatly helped by my colleague Wayne McIntyre who is steeped in the sounds of jazz and popular music of 70/80 years ago. He has done many recordings for me and whenever it’s possible and practical I’ll bring him along as a sound consultant as he doesn’t suffer from the ubiquitous problem of rock ‘n’ roll ears.”
POWERFUL ARMOUR
Hats off too to British company Armour for some interesting new ideas on an old audio problem that is getting worse. As TV sets get thinner, so does the sound. Not everyone wants a 5.1 system in the living room. Stereo is perfectly adequate for most programs. But not everyone wants to hook his/her TV to a record playing stereo system.
Armour’s new Q-TV2 sound system (www.armourhome.co.uk) bolts a powerful 2.1 system, just 38mm thick, to the back of a flat TV. The speakers all use Balanced Mode Radiator wide dispersion drivers, made under license from NXT. There are four BMRs inside the flat ported woofer cabinet, and two each in left and right side satellites. The woofer BMRs are positioned to be force-cancelling so there is no overall vibration of the woofer cabinet. So the TV is not shaken or stirred at high volumes.
To cope with the infuriating problem of incorrect lip sync with digital TV and discs, the amplifier has a delay setting, with 10ms steps up to 100ms. Connection by mini jack to the TV’s headphone socket will usually put the Q-TV volume setting under control of the TV’s remote. There are also line jacks and digital optical sockets, with a simple dedicated remote if needed.
The Q-TV2 comes as a well-engineered self-assembly kit with every possible nut and bolt needed to clamp the woofer and satellite speakers to the screw sockets provided on the rear of all flat TVs. This makes a nice contrast to the misery I had recently when trying to erect flat-packed furniture from Argos. When I complained about appalling instructions, I got gibberish replies, and the promise of better instructions—which turned out to be the same instructions again.
On the basis of Armour’s demonstrations given in London, I have already paid hard cash for a Q-TV2 to use in my office.
BLEEDING INDUSTRY?
Last year, 2009, must surely go down in history as the watershed when music officially became a free lunch—and I am talking about something rather more significant than hackers stealing Leona Lewis songs from Simon Cowell’s computer.
First we saw the sale of unprotected MP3 downloads which, once sold, are free for anyone to copy. Then we saw the launch of Nokia Comes with Music (www.comeswithmusic.com) which offers owners of selected Nokia phones the chance to download virtually any CD album to play on the phone or a PC.
Then came Spotify (www.spotify.com), an online service that anyone with a PC can subscribe to from the UK for free. As with the Nokia service there is a far wider choice of music than any bricks and mortar record shop can hope to stock. The music is “streamed” to the PC, rather than stored. So Spotify is behaving like a radio station that plays instant individual requests.
How can the record companies have agreed to give their music away for free?
The Nokia service, in theory, locks the downloaded music into the user’s phone or PC with Digital Rights Management. Spotify, in theory, protects the music because it is only streamed. Funding is by radio-style advertising messages between tracks.
Spotify also offers users the chance to buy unlocked downloads, of higher quality, by clicking on links to websites run by partner companies; or the user can pay a premium of a tenner a month to get a higher quality stream without any ads.
Music from the free service uses the Ogg Vorbis q5 coding system and streams at approximately 160kbps. Premium subscribers get better quality from 320 kbps.
The problem which the record companies either don’t understand or are ostrich ignoring is that there are several easy ways of capturing this music and burning it to Red Book CD for playback on an ordinary CD player. Completely legal, off-the-shelf PC software does the trick.
I asked both the BPI (www.bpi.co.uk) and IFPI (www.ifpi.org) trade bodies for a comment on all this when writing an investigatory feature for Hi-Fi News’ September issue. Both bodies gave answers that avoided the question.
When the article went into print, and reported their failure to comment, I wondered if they would now have something to add.
The answer I got from a trade body spokesman says it all: “Regrettably I don’t get to buy or read many hi-fi mags these days, but I’ll look out for it at W.H. Smiths (the UK’s leading news-vendor chain).
So just in case anyone from the BPI or IFPI is browsing in W.H. Smiths, I’ll now spell out even more clearly what they should be worrying about.
Some programs, such as Total Recorder, are designed specifically to capture and record whatever music is playing through a computer. This can be streaming from a radio station or service like Spotify, or playback of a digitally locked recording from Nokia Comes with Music (or iTunes). The capture happens electronically inside the PC and because it is done from decoded analog audio, the DRM used to lock the music is powerless to prevent permanent recording.
There are also two hugely popular programs, Roxio Creator and Nero, that are widely sold (or given away with new PCs) for editing music and video, ripping CDs, and burning recordings to dirt-cheap blank CDs, DVDs, or memory cards for portables. Both Roxio and Nero can also be used, like Total Recorder, to capture whatever music the PC is playing.
Roxio Creator is by far the easier to use. The Frequent Tasks welcome page offers the simple one click option to “Capture Audio from Sound Card” with the helpful explanation message “Easily record audio including Internet audio!”
The overall quality may not be up to CD standards, but it is more than good enough for people who have MP3 ears, or for old recordings that are inherently of sub-CD quality.
I am sure that most readers, self included, would far rather buy a full quality, professionally produced CD with sleeve note than have the hassle of using a PC to capture and burn. But if the record companies remove all incentive to produce CDs, by giving music away free, then we may eventually be stuck with no choice but to make do with free music.
BLUE COMMENTS
Finally, try the new website set up by the European Blu-ray Disc Association. There is a lot of self-serving puff but reader comments are invited. To create a precedent for non-puff comment I left a few carefully considered words about the confusion over regional coding caused by inadequate consumer advice and information. Check it out and have your say (http://blu-raydisc-reporter.com/2009/07/17/welcome/#comments). M3
Barry Fox reports on the audio industry as columnist for the British publication Hi-Fi News. His commentary appears in every issue of Multi Media Manufacturer.