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In: Audio, Computer
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The Apple Airport Express (AE) is a beautiful device. One of its functions is the ability to act as audio Airplay receiver. Airplay is a streaming protocol, based on a lossless 44.1KHz/16 bit stereo audio stream. It’s part of iTunes since a long time. It uses Bonjour for service advertisement and as such is zero conf. My Airport Express is the 2nd gen model with 802.11n (update: The A1264 model). All models have a combined analog optical output. Many years ago I used it with an Apogee Minidac and the results were very good. One year ago I connected everything again and was disappointed withRead More →

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In: Computer
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I recently bought a Beaglebone Black (BBB). I first had a Raspberry Pi but returned it after I ran into the (famous) USB Isochronous Transfer Mode problems. The Pi has the best support for graphical stuff, but that’s not what I was looking for. The BBB is a little older and it’s supported like most open source stuff. The documentation on hardware and on TI’s website is very good. But outside of that “controlled” environment you’re on your own. This is where the Pi scores much better. An example: booting and the FAT partition. The BBB’s bootcode needs a FAT partition to boot, is what youRead More →

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In: Computer
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Vodafone in Germany provides Cable Internet at high speeds (formerly Kabel Deutschland). Currently at Docsis 3.0 (working towards 3.1) with 100, 200 and 400 Mbps data rates. Unless DSL providers go with FTTH, there is no DSL technology available to match those speeds. See the speedtest arrow going up well over 150 Mbps (on a 200Mbps plan) in a downtown Berlin location is pretty cool. Vodafone have implemented Dual-Stack Lite (aka DS-lite). DS-Lite is a way to provide the CPE with an ipv4 address when on an all ipv6 (access) network. Since ipv4 address are somewhat limited in availability (…) this is a good choiceRead More →

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In: Amateur Radio, Computer
With: 10 Comments

Driver Install. The SiLabs CP210x USB to UART (Serial Port) bridge chip inside the IC-7300 needs a driver. This driver is automatically installed when on Win8.1 or Win10. No need to install the Icom supplied driver. The Audio CODEC inside the IC-7300 does not requires a separate driver install. It is so-called class-compliant. There is nothing Icom specific in the USB part of the IC-7300. Actually, when you analyze the schematics, you’ll see that the build-in interface does not differ from most external interfaces: the decoded analog audio is actually converted to digital again in the USB Audio CODEC. From a practical point of view,Read More →