Web Anonymity Bites Back

One of the class D amp / SMPS module manufacturers I've been watching is the Spanish company, Coldamp. The owner/designer's name is Sergio Sanchez Moreno. Coldamp is one of the few companies that offer both an audio grade switching power supply (SMPS) and class D amplifier modules. The advantage to the SMPS, especially with a multichannel product, is the decreased weight and size. The challenge is to get them to sound as good as a linear supply. Sergio claimed Coldamp's SMPS sounded better than linear supplies and several DIY'ers from the diyAudio forum supported this claim. They also claimed the Coldamp class D amps were comparable to Hypex's highly regarded UCD amps. I don't think anyone was suggesting that they were better. Just different, but in a positive way. Several DIY'ers were satisfied with using a combination of the Hypex UCD amps with Coldamp's SMPS.

Anyhow, we are following the progress that all designers are making with both class D amps and SMPS development. Probably the most respected designer, Hypex's Bruno Putzey, was just written up in IEEE Spectrum magazine. You can read the online version of the article here.

I have also noticed that our blog regularly gets several hits from people doing a Google search for Coldamp. So obviously there is some interest in their products that seem to direct traffic to our blog. Since we have a few posts announcing Coldamp's products (see: Coldamp Plans to Offer 750W Class-D Amp Module), I felt obligated to update our readers with some disappointing news. The moderators of diyAudio have confirmed that Sergio was also signing on with another alias, named Pierre, claiming to be a happy Coldamp customer. It appears Sergio was using this alias on other websites as well. Most of the time, he was posting as just a very satisfied Coldamp user, sharing his experience with others looking for advice. As misleading as this may be, sometimes Pierre's posts were basic design and engineering questions directed to the experienced engineer's on the forum. These experienced engineers are particularly upset with this deception since they may have helped a potential competitor. They are also shocked that many of Pierre's questions were so basic that it demonstrated a fairly elementary level of expertise with the technology. One experienced designer/engineer named JohnW, stated, "Reading back though the "Questions" posted as Pierre; some are at such a basic fundamental level that they should never have been asked by a competent designer already SELLING SMPS!" Another diyAudio forum member, Eva responds, "The main problem is not how a designer gathers the knowledge, it's the fact that it's completely unfair to advertise and sell your very first prototypes as if they were state-of-the-art class D and SMPS, when they are full of hidden pitfalls that you don't know how to solve or don't know about at all because you still have a lot to learn."

Since this discovery, Sergio and his alias, Pierre have been banned from diyAudio's forums. I've also noticed that Coldamp's website is now down. So it appears they might be out of business. I think this is extremely unfortunate. Hopefully, Sergio and Coldamp can come straight and avoid a total collapse. Some of Coldamp's customers have posted in the diyAudio thread that they are happy with their purchases and felt the service and support from Coldamp has been very good. They work and apparently many people say they sound great. The problem is with how they learned to build class D and SMPS products, and are they really going to be safe and reliable over the long term?

Here's the diyAudio thread, in case you want to read more comments and judge for yourselves.

30 Minute Music Hour

My friend Andy Moore has a very cool new show on the Wisconsin Channel (WPT 21.2) called "The 30-Minute Music Hour." I don't know quite the best way to describe the show. It's kind of like Austin City Limits without the studio audience. It's a bit more intimate because Andy talks a little bit with his guests between songs.

For those of you in the Wisconsin viewing area, be sure to check this out. Here's the current schedule:

#101 30-Minute Music Hour – Pat MacDonald

Digital (20.2, aka The Wisconsin Channel),

January 18, 10:30 am and 5:30 pm.

January 19, 6:30 pm.

January 20, 6:30 pm.

Analog (WHA, etc.)

February 9, 10:30 pm (lead-in to Austin City Limits)

#102 30-Minute Music Hour – Robbie Fulks

Digital (20.2, aka The Wisconsin Channel),

January 25, 10:30 am and 5:30 pm.

January 26, 6:30 pm.

January 27, 6:30 pm.

Analog (WHA, etc.)

February 23, 10:30 pm (lead-in to Austin City Limits)

#103 30-Minute Music Hour – Willy Porter

Digital (20.2, aka The Wisconsin Channel),

February 1, 10:30 am and 5:30 pm.

February 2, 6:30 pm.

February 3, 6:30 pm.

Analog (WHA, etc.)

February 27, 10:30 pm (following American Masters: Pete Seeger)

For everyone else, you can watch it streaming from their website. Here's a writeup on Andy's program in Isthmus' 'The Daily Page'.

CES - Day 3

I spent a little more time viewing HTPC solutions during my third and final day. I started at the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center where there are a few really large booths for the big electronics and computer companies. Sony was there showing their Blu-ray technology and acting a bit smug about Warner's recent announcement that they will exclusively support Blu-ray from now on. The Sony guys were careful not to say anything about what this means for them, but it was pretty obvious that they think the format war is coming to an end and they will be declared the winner. They mentioned that the HD-DVD camp was scrambling to figure out what to do next. Like I said in a previous post, since an HTPC owner can purchase a dual format (Blu-ray & HD DVD) drive, it doesn't really matter what format a movie is on. However, I'm a little concerned because it sounds like people have more problems trying to play Blu-ray discs and less with HD DVD with their dual format LG drives. Microsoft doesn't seem too happy about these recent events, but they are also saying this doesn't really effect them that much. Microsoft certainly would have benefited if HD DVD came out as the winner, because they developed and license the interactive layer (HDi) for HD DVD. A Microsoft guy said they will still move forward with HDi and offer it with downloadable content. A lot of people, including Microsoft seem to be saying that the real winner in a few years will be downloadable and streaming content and that optical disc media will be unnecessary. I've got mixed feeling about this because HTPCs are the perfect device to use with downloadable content and our business currently depends in large part on the success of HTPCs, but the bandwidth is pretty limited (at least in the U.S.) and it currently isn't real practical to download content with quality comparable to HD DVD or Blu-ray (1080p video and lossless multichannel 24bit/96KHz audio). If they downrez and lossy compress the video and audio to 720p and 16bit/48KHz quality and people are content with this, just like they've accepted compressed audio formats like MP3 and iTune's AAC, then we've taken another step back in quality. Hopefully, since people seem to be very excited with the latest 1080p display technology, they will demand content that takes full advantage of its resolution. Once they experience high quality video from their new 1080p displays, they might just invest in an audio system with quality to match, like the products were are developing.

Speaking of new display devices, I stopped by the booths of Sharp and Samsung. While standing and gawking at the big Sharp LCD displays, I had a conversation with a technology guru from Disney. He recommeded that I should take a look at Samsung's OLED displays because he is confident that within 5 years it will be the dominant display technology. He thinks it will be cheaper to manufacture, provide higher quality and be the most green technology, which is very important for all products from now on. He might be right, but I was still pretty impressed with the panels Sharp was demonstrating in their booth. The LCD technology has evolved over the past year. Last year the big deal was 1080p. Now everyone does 1080p. Another big thing last year was panel size and that hasn't changed much over the last This year it seems to be 120 Hz or higher refresh rates. The other thing is style. Many of the manufactures are showing off their ultrathin panels and the high quality finish of the frames. Sharp was showing off their 108" (or was it 120") monster. The photo on the right is one of their ultrathin 120 Hz displays (sorry about the quality of the pic, I prefer to turn off the flash, but since it's relatively dark in the exhibit hall, I have to keep the aperture open for up to 1/4 sec. and sometime they come out blurry).

Samsung had a huge booth at CES this year. They seem to be into everything. A guy at their camcorder area said they (Samsung) wanted to reach the same level of success in camcorders as they have with LCD televisions. Speaking of camcorders, Canon was demonstrating their compact HD camcorders they plan to release this Spring. Wow! Being the owner of a 3 CCD DV camcorder, I never would have expected such great colors from a single sensor camcorder when compared to my Sony TRV900 DV camcorder. On top of that, you get great HD resolution, a very convenient, portable size and instead of using tape, you can use SD flash memory. I'd tell you the name and model, but I seem to have lost the brochure. Oh well, back to Samsung and their display screens. Samsung was also showing off their big 120 Hz displays. And of course they had the stylish ultrathin technology as well. They even had a big ultra high resolution (3840 x 2160) screen which they claim is 4 times the resolution of conventional LCD. I don't quite follow their math if they are comparing it to 1080p because it comes out to twice the resolution (maybe since it is 2 dimensions, we are getting 4x the number of pixels). Either way, it is pretty impressive looking. Finally, I made my way over to the OLED displays. Samsung was demonstrating their 31" OLED. After looking at this, I hope the Disney guy is right and we get to buy inexpensive 60" OLED displays in the near future. These things are beautiful. The colors seem to be really great without looking over saturated like some LCDs. And the contrast ratio, 1 million to one, that's as good as your eyes can see. These really are great looking. Oh, and they're thin as well.

I also wanted to check out the Nextgen Home Experience, but the lines were too long and I had places to go and people to meet.

Then I went over to the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center to talk to a few more companies. BridgeCo is a manufacturer of FireWire and USB interfaces for audio and video. The guys manning their booth (or meeting room) weren't very helpful. I explained what I was doing and they responded that they didn't support multichannel surround playback with either technology. They said their solutions are really geared to pro-audio and this isn't going to change in the future. ArcSoft also had a meeting space in the South Hall. They are the developers of another Blu-ray/HD DVD software player that many people on AVS Forum have been raving about. They currently have a trial version of their Japanese version and are planning to release the English version in the very near future. It may have already been released. They gave me their Product Licensing Guide with a DVD full of evaluation versions of all of ArcSofts applications, including TotalMedia Theatre, which is the player everyone is excited about. They also gave me the business card of the VP of Sales and Marketing and told me to contact him to get a full version sent to us.

While walking around the South Hall, there were a couple of TechZones I wanted to check out that sounded interesting. One was the Sustainable Technologies area that was said to "explore the pioneering technologies that benefit the environment, sustain the global economy and improve daily life in developing countries." I wanted to see if they had more ideas of how we could improve in this area in addition to what we already have with highly efficient Class-D technology. Unfortunately, they weren't located where they were shown on the program map. There were a bunch of lounge chairs, which are shown on the map, but nobody was there except a few people grabbing a bite to eat. Nearby there was the Advanced Display Technology TechZone. I didn't find it very interesting because it was mostly displays for mobile devices.

Walking between sections of the Las Vegas Convention Center, I ran into a jazz performance sponsored by MusicGiants. These are the folks that offer high resolution downloads from their online music store. Their booth was suppose to be at the Sands Convention Center, but as it turns out they were really located here. I was planning to stop by and talk to them, so I was glad I didn't search for them at the Sands. I told them about my business and how potential users of my product would probably appreciate their higher resolution audio. The guy I spoke with recommended I contact Elliot Mazer, who is a pretty well known audio producer/engineer who is trying to encourage high-end audio manufacturers to develop technology that will be compatible with their downloads.

Next, I headed over to the Sands Convention Center to visit the booths of MusicIP and SiliconDust. MusicIP has a software application that can generate playlists from your music library by analyzing a song and finding others that are a close match. They just came out with a plug-in for iTunes and are working on one for Windows Media Player. It's pretty cool technology, but not as flexible as what I can already do with J.River's Media Center. SiliconDust are the folks who provide the HDHomeRun. They said they are working on adding functionality to support satellite dish and encrypted cable (cablecard) in future products.

For the remainder of this day, I spent time back at the Venetian to listen to more high performance audio. I'm not particularly impressed by a lot of the expensive stuff on display in many of the suites. Many of them just seem to be ultra expensive monstrosities. This is where I think the "emperor has no clothes" tale is really true. I don't like to bash other products, but I pretty much share the viewpoint of Gene DellaSala who wrote this report for Audioholics. I too was impressed with Dali's on-wall speakers. I didn't think you could get such great sound out of these type of speakers.

Okay, that's about all I have to report on CES 2008. The fourth day was basically a travel day, so nothing to talk about there. All in all it was a pretty good show. I had the opportunity to talk with several potential partners that specialize in industrial design or manufacturing. I got several recommendations for high quality manufacturers in Asia, which is very important at this stage.

CES 2008 - Day 2

On Tuesday I walked up to the Sahara Hotel to buy a monorail pass and travel to the Las Vegas Convention Center. I visited the Microsoft booth and talked to some of the people involved with Media Center and some others with Windows Home Server. I'd really like it if Windows Home Server were part of my TechNet subscription, so I tried to find someone that could forward my request. I also wanted to find out why there isn't better integration between Vista Media Center and Windows Home Server. It sounds like better integration between the two is definitely in the plans. Microsoft's eHome Program Manager told me that adoption on Vista Media Center has been very good and based on EPG (electronic program guides) downloads, the data supports this assertion. I gave him my card and he is going to send me this data if he can.

I also visited the DTS booth. They were demonstrating their Surround Sensation technology that creates a virtual surround from only 2 channels. I listened to the headphone demonstration, which played the same clips from the original 2 channel mix and the enhanced virtual surround version. I think it did a pretty good job, at least it seemed better than the surround headphone technology that Lake Technology licensed to Dolby a few years ago. I still wasn't very impressed with DTS's demonstration because the levels were so much different between the stereo and surround samples. It's pretty hard to determine which is better when the volume level is so different. Of course the Surround Sensation sample was much louder than the stereo sample, so it seemed to be much better.

After talking to DTS's Director of Product Management about licensing, I walked toward the next exhibitor on my list, Dolby Labs. My left show felt very loose, so I look down to see if my laces untied. I noticed the laces were still tied, so I lifted my foot to get a better look. The sole of the shoe was separating from the upper part. It was falling apart with every step. I realized that I couldn't continue walking around with my shoe coming apart, so I headed to the exit to get a cab to drive me back to my hotel so I could get the only other pair of shoes I had with me, my Nike running shoes. I must have looked like thump-drag because I had to drag my foot on the ground so the shoe would hold together. That didn't really help. The shoe came completely apart just before I reached the elevator to go up to my room. The pic on the right is what they looked like just before I threw them in the trash. Anyhow, that wasted a good chunk of my day.

From there I went to the Venetian to check out the "high performance audio". More and more of these vendors are realizing that computers are pretty good at storing and playing music. Many of them had their equipment connected to PCs. Some of them were just using a S/PDIF connection to their high end processors or preamps. Others had USB connections. Most were limited to 2 channel stereo sound. The only ones playing surround were playing off of stand alone players. If you want to see some pretty pictures of some of the equipment at the high performance audio exhibits, check out Steve Guttenberg's blog.

For those of you that are frustrated with audio playback of HD DVD or Blu-ray discs using Cyberlink's PowerDVD, I wish I had some good news. I stopped by Cyberlinks suite at the Hilton to see if I could speak with them to learn what we need to do with our products to support high resolution playback (with no downsampling, etc.) and the whole protected path. Since I didn't schedule an appointment, they wouldn't speak with me. I tried setting up a later appointment, but they weren't interested. I was also interested in speaking with representatives from TC Electronics. They sell the DICE chips, which are suppose to be pretty good IEEE1394 (FireWire) chips. When I went to the TC Electronics booth I learned that it was a different company. There was another booth for a company called Dice Electronics (you never know, maybe they are changing their name to match their flagship product). Both of these companies were selling something related to automobile electronics.

I did spend some time speaking with representative for HDMI, USB and IEEE1394 technologies. The USB folks had a section of the exhibit floor with several companies displaying their solutions. None of them were dealing with USB audio. I did get a chance to meet with the Chapter leader for the USB3 spec. He mentioned that they've received several requests for allowing clocking from the host system over USB3. That's currently a big problem with USB1.1 and USB2 because you have to reclock everything if you use USB. Anyhow, he said they are considering adding this to the USB3 spec. I also met with the people that are promoting IEEE1394 at the HANA Alliance. Obviously, they think we should stick with FireWire and they made a pretty good case. They also seemed to endorse the DICE technology as our best solution.

CES 2008 - Day 1

My flight arrived in Las Vegas at around 2:30 PM. Then it took at least 30 minutes to get my luggage. I also had to wait another 45 minutes for the shuttle bus to show up. By the time I got to my hotel room at the luxurious Circus Circus Hotel and Resort, it was about 5:30 PM. There wasn't enough time left in the day to visit any exhibits, so I just stayed in the hotel. Las Vegas traffic really sucks, especially when they have a big event like CES. So after I got unpacked, I called home to let my wife and kids know I arrived safely. Then I went downstairs to eat dinner and watch "The Ohio State" Buckeyes lose to LSU in the National Championship football game. Oh well, another let down for the Big Ten. How can Ohio State lose 2 years in a row?

CES 2008 Overview

I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas again this year. As usual it was big, crowded and flashy. The main reason I went to the show was to network with people that might be able to help us with our development. Since CES isn't really a developers conference, there was limited opportunities to meet with some of the people or companies that can really help us. Many of these companies only send their sales and business development people, so you usually don't get to speak with the engineers. However, sometimes the business development people can be fairly helpful. Some of the chip manufacturers were there, but many of them don't have exhibition booths and instead only meet with people by appointment in their meeting suites. Unfortunately, some of them don't really want to take the time to talk with small companies like ours. I also enjoy seeing the latest and greatest electronics, so I try to save some time for browsing the big companies booths. There weren't any significant announcements, so it didn't seem to be all that exciting.

I decided to attend CES Monday through Thursday. This actually worked out to only two productive days, because I arrived late Monday afternoon and had to leave early on Thursday. Prior to leaving Madison, on Sunday night I watched Bill Gate's opening Keynote address streaming live over the Internet. This was suppose to be his last keynote since he is stepping down from his full time position with Microsoft to work full time on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I thought he might include some big announcement, but there really wasn't a lot to really get me excited. They showed a pretty funny video clip of Bill contacting a handful of celebrities and asking them for help or advice on what he can do after retirement. BTW, the image quality of his address was much better than this link's archived video. You'd think Microsoft would want to promote the highest quality video to help promote online streaming or even provide a high quality video for download.

I think it was a good thing that I didn't fly in earlier just to see his last keynote live. I was able to save a little money. Besides, it's nearly impossible to get a seat in the hall. I think it must help to have some good connections to get tickets to these sorts of things. Since it was his last keynote it might have been cool to be there...

New FireWire S3200 Spec

Back in September, the 'USB Promoter Group' announced the next 'USB 3.0' specification. Many people were speculating that it might be the death blow for FireWire. Well, the FireWire folks aren't standing still. They just announced their next FireWire version called 'S3200', which builds on the earlier spec of IEEE1394b, also called FireWire 800. S3200 quadruples the speed from 800 Kbps to 3.2 Gbps and can use existing FireWire 800 cables and connectors.

We'll probably first see S3200 used with storage devices like external hard disks and optical drives. Eventually, they hope it will be adopted by consumer electronics manufacturers and used with home entertainment products. The new spec will let consumers connect HDTVs, set-top boxes and computers via coax cable with distances more than 100 meters.

Even though many motherboards are designed with a FireWire port, all include several USB 2.0 connections. With the huge success of USB and the expensive FireWire royalties, unless consumers see a big advantage like better audio and video performance, I think FireWire S3200 will have difficulty becoming as common as USB. Maybe people will understand that FireWire was specifically designed to be used for high speed streaming data and is ideal for a hard drive moving large chunks of data, like video. USB was originally designed for low bandwidth, low latency peripherals, like mice and keyboards. It allocates data bandwidth in inverse proportion to demand, so for example, mass storage gets whatever's left after mice, keyboards and tablets have had their share.

Here's a little more technical information on the topic. The USB 3.0 spec claims transfer speeds up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0, but the real world throughput of FireWire S3200 and its peer-to-peer technology might be better because of the overhead caused by USB's host/client technology. FireWire uses a double-simplex architecture, so for example, with the original FireWire speed of 400 Mbps, the actual aggregate speed is 800 Mbps. USB 1.0/2.0 uses a half-duplex architecture and 10% of its bandwidth is reserved for host commands. There are more delays inserted between TX and RX packets while the host and target devices' transceivers switch directions, wasting several microseconds each time. However, FireWire S3200 might become irrelevant because USB 3.0 is suppose to be 4.8 Gbps using double-simplex fibre, which is faster than S3200 on raw speed and finally gets rid of USB1/2's half-duplex overhead.

Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest

We've decided to participate in the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest to try to win possible seed capital. The contest description also mentions that participating in this contest may also provide valuable assistance that might help taking the company to the next level. We certainly could use some advice when it comes to manufacturing and taking our products to market. The contest consists of three consecutive phases:

1. an idea abstract
2. executive summary
3. final business plans

Once we complete the idea abstract, a panel of judges takes two weeks to pick the companies that move on to the next phase. For the idea abstract we need to provide responses to four basic questions in less than 250 words. Contestants must choose between four different business categories - Advanced Manufacturing, Life Sciences, Information Technology, and Business Services. Our business does include some IT because we will be developing software for our drivers and control panel applications, but if we really have to choose something it should probably be advanced manufacturing. Here's what I've written in response to the sections for the idea abstract:

Product or Service Description:

Amplio Audio is in the Home Theater Personal Computer industry with an exclusive focus on the audio component of the Home Theater experience. Amplio’s product combines the functionality of a soundcard, A/V receiver and amplifier into a single device, providing consumers with an affordable, audiophile quality listening experience.

Customer Definition: Their Needs - Your Solution:

Our target customers are audio/video enthusiasts who use their personal computers (PCs) to play music, watch live TV, movies, and other content as well as to control and manage their media libraries. Amplio’s products provide customers the best possible audio for their media systems through a direct digital interface to their audio data complemented by a world-class amplifier system.

Market Description, Size and Sales Strategy:

The primary market Amplio Audio hopes to attract are relatively young, technically-savvy, Internet connected North American males with some disposable income. Secondary markets will include the same profile except woman and international markets and professional A/V installers and businesses or educational institutions that purchase presentation equipment. Using the market buildup method to analyze our potential market, we determined the size to be approximately $69 million. Customers will be able to purchase our products directly from Amplio Audio’s website. This is the most effective channel based on our customers preferred way to purchase electronics and computer related products.

Competition: In this section identify possible competitors.

Amplio’s products are designed to compete with the high end of their target market while selling for significantly less than current offerings. This market is currently served with a combination of products from several manufacturers, none of which are designed specifically for home theater applications.

We have until January 31, 2008 before the judges look at our idea abstract, so we will probably make modifications before that time. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any suggestions on ways we can make improvements.

The HD Format War - Be Neutral and Pick Both.

I should have written this post back in October, but been a little busy with other things...

The consumer electronics press likes to make a big deal about the HD format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Does anybody really care? Most of my friends don't even seem to know either exists. They seem quite content with their DVDs. I thought their lack of interest was because of the confusion created by the choice of two different systems and apparent changing of alliances from the major movie studios, but most haven't even been paying attention to any of that news.

For those of us that do pay attention, why not just use both formats, especially if you use an HTPC. Back in September I wrote a post about the LG hybrid drive that supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Actually, I first wrote about these way back in May, but I was more excited about LG's hybrid drive that could also burn Blu-ray discs. LG also announced that its "Super Blu" BH200 HD DVD / Blu-ray combo player is now available at retailers nationwide for a not so cheap $999.

Well, LG started selling these drives in Japan back in September. They finally showed up in North America toward the third week of October. NCIXUS, a Canadian vendor, was the earliest reliable source. They were offering them for around $275 and they were selling faster than they could get them in stock. For some strange reason they weren't available from US online vendors like Newegg.com and PCAlchemy until a few weeks later and they were priced a little higher at around $300.

Now there seem to be a lot of very satisfied owners who no longer have to worry about which format wins. I will probably join them in the near future. Originally, I was waiting for the drive that included the Blu-ray burning capability. Since the Blu-ray blank media prices are probably going to be prohibitively expensive, I'll probably wait to see if the price of the player-only drive goes down when the burner becomes available. I owned a double layer DVD burner for a long time before the media prices were reasonable. At least you didn't have to pay a premium for those DVD-DL drives. The current pricing for a single 25 GB BD-R disc is around $10 - $17.