Mini XLR Mixer from AVLifesavers

I was browsing the Internet a couple of days back and I came across this little XLR mixer from AVLifesavers.com. I for one would think that this is a great addition to many an audio person’s toolkit. I for one am using something like this which is the Extron MIX 301 which works very well. What this device does better than that Extron MIX 301 is the fact that it requires no power. It is totally passive. Plus, it uses Bourns potentiometers. If you are in the audio industry, you would know about Bourns and what great products they make. Also, this device uses big pots to control the volume whereas for the Extron MIX 301, I have to use a tweaker or small screwdriver to do so. So far, I do not think I have a need for something like this as the Extron MIX 301 is serving me just fine. But as I said, this would be a great addition to your toolbox.

Manchester United win the Carabao Cup with a 2-0 win over Newcastle

The picture above paints a thousand words. Erik ten Hag, current manager of Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary ex-manager of Manchester United, celebrating with the Carabao Cup after a thrilling final at Wembley in which Manchester United defeated Newcastle United in a 2-0 win. How did the game pan out?

Casemiro opened the scoring in the 33rd minute. Luke Shaw assisted with a free kick that Casemiro headed into the net. It has been said that Casemiro has been the best signing during the Erik ten Hag era and that goal proved it. But that was not the only goal we had. Six minutes later, with the assistance of Wout Weghorst,  Marcus Rashford’s had a shot on goal which seemed to have deflected off Sven Botman. Karius the goalkeeper could not keep it out at all! But to be honest, Newcastle had been the better team until Casemiro scored. Allan Saint-Maximin was causing the Manchester United defence a whole lot of trouble and once or twice even David De Gea had to pull off some fine saves to deny his shots at goal.

The 2-0 result meant that Erik ten Hag won a trophy in his first season in charge. But Erik ten Hag is not satisfied. He wants more. And the players will give him more. The man is a genius. He has turned Manchester United around. Just look at the beaming face of Sir Alex Ferguson above. That shows it all.

RCA cables out of recycled items

Just the other day, while going through my junk box, I found out that I had some RCA cable that I salvaged from the decommissioning of a client’s old system. The cable in question is the ever reliable Kramer BC-1T. I also found some old gold RCA plugs that I decommissioned from the old system. So what I did was to re-purpose them into new RCA cables that I can use for events. The cost? Nothing…except for some time spent soldering these together. Remember…reduce, reuse, recycle. And that is what I did with the components that made up this cable!

Bulk order of gold RCA connectors

One thing I love about online shopping is that you can get quality stuff at a very cheap price…cheaper if you buy it in bulk. That is what I did when I went online to buy some RCA plugs. I bought myself a set of ten RCA plugs for about $6. That comes up to about 60 cents a plug. That includes the price of shipping as well! Gonna make me some cables with these plugs soon for some of my projects.

Nakamichi Soundbox Lite

This lovely little speaker by Nakamichi named the Soundbox Lite was a present from a friend of my wife and I. They gave it to us as a house-warming gift when we moved into our new house. I find it to be very useful because it has a variety of connections that can be made to it, besides its main function of being a radio. It can be connected to Bluetooth and function as an external speaker. It also has a 3.5mm connector behind and I have used it as a monitor speaker when I do mixtapes. And last but certainly not least, it is battery powered and has a built-in microSD card slot. The sound can be LOUD too if cranked up. A lovely gift and one that I really treasure.

China XLR connectors

A few days back, I received an order of XLR connectors that I purchased from Shopee. They are ITT Cannon replicas by the looks of them. They were being sold in a set of two…one male and one female. So I bought three sets for a “princely” sum of  $6, which also included shipping. When they reached here, I tested them out. The female plugs were a little loose where the barrel fits in the shell. A little tape wrapped around the barrel fixed the situation. The advertisement on the Shopee shop that sold the plugs said that they have their own factory making these but I normally take claims like these with a pinch of salt. These connectors are not Neutrik or even Seetronic quality-wise but I dare say that for some installs, they can be utilised if there is no budget. I think I will stick to Seetronic connectors from now on and use Neutrik connectors for cables that get used a lot for events.

RCA to 1/4″ phone jack summing cable with 1k ohm resistors

Remember I made an RCA to 1/4″ phone jack summing cable some time back? Those had 470 ohm resistors inside them. This time, I decided to up the value of the resistors a bit and created a summing cable with 1k ohm resistors. I tried them out and they sounded fine. This summing cable also used recycled components. The 1/4″ phone jack was one I found under the false floor of a client’s place. The RCA cable was one I had found in a client’s place that he was throwing away. So now, I have another summing cable and this will be used for events as a spare.

IBM Tape Library 3584

When I was working in IT, we always used to backup our data to backup tape drives. One of the tape drives I wish I had was this IBM 3584 tape library. For those not too familiar with tape drives, what was it anyway? Essentially, the IBM 3584 TS3500 Tape Library is part of a family of tape library storage solutions designed for the large, unattended storage. That is what I loved about it…a big machine with lots of storage for tapes. We had a single tape drive in the server room where I was and I had to religiously change the tape every single day. I remember we used Veritas Backup Exec as the backup software. If I had this huge IBM 3584, all I would have to do is to load tapes into it and it can automatically store tapes after backing them up with the robotic change function. Oh well. Those were the days!

15% rise in tax for cigarettes and tobacco products

Many of friends who are smokers are bemoaning the fact that cigarettes just went up in price. many of my friends are cursing the Government for this. Apparently, the Singapore Government is doing this to try to discourage the use of tobacco products. I for one am not against it. I gave yup smoking more than 5 years ago and it was the ultimate BEST decision I made. For all those who are cursing the Government for this rise in tax for tobacco products, give up now. After a few weeks of giving up, you, like me, will wonder why you did not stop smoking sooner. So think of this tobacco tax as a silver lining on a dark cloud. Quit smoking today!

Mackie SRM650 stopped working on opening day of a bar

One of my friends invited me down for a bar’s opening day. I said I would drop by and I did. It was a nice, new cosy bar and the décor really caught my eye, making me feel at home. I ordered a San Miguel pint and waited for my friend to arrive as he was a the DJ at that place. Whilst waiting for my friend, I had a cursory look around at the sound-system setup, as that is something I am interested in. The sound-system was then playing some acid jazz and chill out music, which really added to the vibe.

The first thing that caught my eye were these 15″ powered Mackie SRM650s. Now I am no stranger to the Mackie SRM series of powered speakers. Mackie really started a revolution with the very popular Mackie SRM450s and almost every event company had these as their speaker of choice. I also saw a few event companies use the Mackie SRM550s as roadshow speakers and they were really popular as well. Then I came to this bar and noticed these SRM650s. You can see from the picture above that it is pretty high above my head. I will explain more later.

So at about 2030hrs, my friend came in and we were having a chat about the place. I met the owner and I found out that we have several friends in common. Then at 2100hrs, my friend starts his DJ set. All was going great until the speaker above my head just shutdown with no warning. I have no idea what caused it to fail so I am not speculating. All in all, the whole evening had to go on with only one of the SRM650 speakers supplying the audio while the other was as dead as doorknob.

Now what can we learn from this? First of all, one should never use powered speakers in a permanent install. So many things can go wrong like a power trip, amplifier module failing and such. The amplifier module failing is the Achilles Heel because you have to dismantle the whole damn speaker and send it for repair as the amplifier is built-in. So always use passive speakers in a permanent install. Secondly, never buy second-hand speakers. The installer had installed second-hand speakers in the place. I could tell just by looking below the speakers. There were lots of scruffs in the woodwork and it looked very obvious that these were second-hand. The problem with second-hand equipment is that you do not know how much abuse these speakers have been though before you bought them. This was a new bar. New, passive speakers should have been purchased.

In any case, I had a great evening, despite one of the speakers failing. Those SRM650s can really pack a punch!