Like many, I am very charmed by Monoli’s Pixel Mirror pendant, but I’m never going to be able to afford it. So I had GPT write up a website to generate similar pixel art. Granted the pixel mirror looks so good because it’s not making true pixels; they clearly have a gradient and outlines, but this at least gives me a taste of that charm. I’m sure it can be simulated more accurately, but I’m content with this.

It’s my understanding that speaker drivers perform better when they have less sound going through them. You may have noticed this in music when a band joins in on an instrument solo and the whole soundstage just seems to box in on itself. So splitting audio between more drivers should improve sound quality, but making custom cross-over circuit boards is tedius and confusing for amateurs like me.

Luckily people have already been experimenting with virtual cross-overs. I first seriously thought about this years ago when stumbling upon a plugin for Foobar2k with this goal that aligns perfectly with my own: using a computers 5.1 audio to output specific frequencies to individual speakers. I’ve never gotten that plugin to work as it was out of date even when I first found it, but after some digging I did find Equalizer APO which gives you all kind of control over your computer’s audio, regardless of the media player.

So this is the setup that I’m currently enjoying. I have a 5.1 USB DAC (it can go up to 7.1, which I’ll have to take advantage of in the future) with the front channels, rear channels, and subwoofer each going into their own amplifier and connecting to different speaker boxes. Stereo sound files natively output only to the front speakers. So using Equalizer APO I can clone the front channels to the rear channels and mix them both to the subwoofer. Each speaker set signal can also be manipulated individually. I have my small bookshelf speakers set with a high pass to only play frequncies above 1khz, the subwoofer to only play frequencies below 80hz, and my large speakers to play 60hz to 1400khz.

As I don’t use a center channel speaker, but 5.1 audio/movie files will automatically try to output to one: I also have a second setup without any audio mods except for cloning center channel audio streams to the Left and Right channels. Switching between the two setups is just a button press away in the task bar.

The video above doesn’t make it very obvious, you can probably hear a difference in the bass, but in person the upper frequncies and vocal range are night and day different.

There is physically more space between my upper and lower frequencies, and more sound waves filling the space, so it’s difficult to interpret quality, but I find it much more enjoyable to listen to for now. I am hearing some weaknesses, but I think it’s just a matter of experimenting with the cross-over frequencies because it sounds kind of like there’s a hump in the audio where smooth scaling of octaves would be expected.

Regardless, I think there’s a lot of potential here. My next step would be to bypass the physical cross-overs in my speaker sets and access their drivers directly. I’ll need more amplifiers though, as without upgrading to the 7.1 output I won’t be achieving my goal of having less sound across more drivers.

I received a treat over the holidays from an old friend from my hometown who was looking for an artist for the next album by their band, Wiesinger. It’s nice to be remembered. It’s nice to have an art project.

The charging circuit blew on my W-King 220w Bluetooth Speaker and I couldn’t find any dismantling guides. After some false starts, apparently the grill is only glued in a couple spots and pops off relatively easily. Then the screws through the drivers are accessible which will give you access to the main board with amplifier/charge circuits, and the battery pack behind the other driver. I didn’t repair the charge circuit, but I pulled the battery out so it can be charged externally. If I’m feeling lucky I’ll try to power the speaker with a 12 volt battery pack. That’s not tooo far off from the 10.8v pack installed.

Update: I don’t know what the long term repercussions would be, but the speaker does directly run off 12v DC. I’ve tried 2 amp and 5 amp sources.

iacon released a guide to their 50 albums. I’ve been listening for a good 6 months now, and they release a full length album every 2 to 3 weeks on average. It’s hard to keep up with, but dang, each one is worth at least checking out.

YouTube introduced me when Sugarfree was released, and I have to agree with Iacon: it’s a favorite. Definitely my most played. I think the vaporfunk albums get the most plays from me, but I’m really enjoying the lyrics and tone switch in Epoch and Resonance, and you’d be selling yourself short if you don’t at least give the death metal album a full listen.

I don’t know what kind of magic keeps these albums rolling out, but I don’t want to miss any of them.