September Recap

First Weekend (Labor Day Weekend)

- Disassembed video recorder to get info on hard drive at XCSSA meeting
- Re-installed video recorder using HDMI and S-video connections
- Purchased replacement Sonos Connect (replacing flaky ZP80) for tape recording
- Got new suspenders fixed at Joseph's
- Saw Play "Boing, Boing" at the Vexler
- Finished "Invisible" speaker wire in Queen's Room by doing patching, priming, and finish coat of paint, and finally removed ladder from room after 18 months work on this project
- Removed and patched underneath kitchen claw board for cat (now awaiting wire brush treatment)
- ADT removed sensor on to door to Gym and added new sensor for Gym-to-Garage

Second Weekend

- Watched Woody Allen's most serious movie "Interiors"
- Had homebrew with retired friend on west side
- Set up new Sonos Connect and did experiments on how many
  uncompressed line-in streams can now be handled without dropouts (5)
- Mowed down weeds and trimmed small tree on left side of driveway
- Discovered correct way to set Black Level on Pioneer digital video recorder
  (DVR) or best quality copies from Sony DVR
- Noelia fertilized palm trees and pots in front yard
- Downloaded "Amused to Death" in high resolution flac and figured
  out how to play that on my Mac and other systems

Second Week
-Locksmith changed two deadbolts and added a new one:
  Badly tarnished front door Medeco replaced with new silver finish
  Medeco-cylindered lock which turns in correct direction.  Double
  sided deadbolt on gym door replaced with single sided for
  convenience.  New deadbolt added on door between Gym and Garage.
- Researched and purchased new 3Tb backup drive

First 2+ weeks
-Worked on copying old videos from to-be-retired Sony DVR to new
  Magnavox DVR, now about 50%
- In addition to Black Level setting, learned a lot about other editing and
  copying features

Third Weekend
- Grand Symphony Opening Night (Beethoven 9th) date including
  trip to nursery to pick flowers for Oakhurst, dinner at La Madeleine,
  lecture by assistant conductor, Symphony with Mastersingers (including
  a college friend), caught last set (Tower of Power) at Jazz's Alive free
  concert on way back to car.
- Meanwhile, I made first timer recording of KPAC-FM during broadcast
  of San Antonio Symphony playing Rodrigo Conceirto de Aranjuez
 - On Sunday, Noelia planted Oakhurst planter boxes with new flowers.
  I mowed front and edged sidewalk (first time in months) and Noelia raked
  up grass on sidewalk and I swept up afterward.
- Setup LP transcription system with SAE 5000A click remover and started
recording Chick Corea album
- Performed first Time Machine backup of my Mac ever

Third Week
- Tile company removed grout.  I got them to do the best job I could get them to do but will need to do much more grout removal myself before caulking.  This is slated as #1 job for October.
- Removed some grout using Xacto knife.  Was easier than expected.
- Continued working on Chick Corea album, correcting level setting and making versions with and without SAE 5000A
- Monthly housecleaning
- Picked up THD DVM shipped from Canada

Fourth Weekend
- Finished and compared Chick Corea transcriptions
- RCAS Meeting 1-5PM, great recordings played through Klipsch Cornwalls with Berning Amp
2
- Cleaned Living Room
- Discussion and Movie Party 3-10PM Sunday, also saw eclipse
- Cleaned up after party
- Unpacked new THD DVM

Fourth Week
- Cleaned up iTunes metadata for my Beethoven collection so I can now find and play it over Sonos

Throughout
- Learning how to deal with cat Augie inside

September Blast Off

August was a very productive month at the estate, or so it seemed when I posted about all the many things that I had done, barely having enough time to fill in the details for just a few of them.

September hasn't started too badly in that regard.  So here's a wrap-up of the first 8 days:

Monitored Security

I asked ADT to send out a technician to remove the sensor to the door to the Gym (what had been the door to the garage from the house--before half of the garage was converted to the room I am now calling Gym) and replace it with a new sensor on the door to the remaining part of the Garage from the Gym.  I was very happy with the technician.  While he gave the usual arguments against what I wanted, he ultimately did exactly what I wanted, and the price for the new sensor was reasonable.

Locksmith

Locksmith came out and we worked out the details and prices but no work has been done yet.  I'm replacing the entry door deadbolt because the old bronze on the outside looks lousy (it started corroding about a year after installation in 1992) and I have never been able to get the inner thumb turn to work the correct way.  I will continue to have a high security Medeco cylinder, which I think is good enough, is about as good as any high security cylinder, and I like the big flat Medeco keys which are like art deco.  Actually if my locksmith carried Assa/Abloy, I might "upgrade" to one of those, but my locksmith doesn't carry them.  I've had Bilock keys and I do not like them: they seem rough on fingers, pockets, and stuff in pockets.  I had been thinking the locksmith could "fix" the old Medeco deadbolt frame but the locksmith didn't think so.

The Gym door and Gym-to-Garage door will both have identically keyed one-sided deadbolts from Kwikset.  The Gym door currently has a two sided deadbolt which is very inconvenient, and the Gym-to-Garage door only has a locking knob.  The locking knob will be disabled when the deadbolt is added.

I would also disable the locking knob on the front door because I think it is good for only one thing: getting locked out.  By my friend still thinks "two locks better than one" so I'm thinking to not make that change this time.

The lock and security changes are both in part ntended to convert the Gym more into a real room in the house, and not part of the garage that is locked out of sight when my friend comes to tend Augie the cat.  The security change means I could start using the At-Home security feature which I have never used before precisely because it wouldn't allow me to use the Gym as a real room in the house.

Tile Company Contacted That Previous Repair Didn't Last

And I now ask that they remove grout around the tub and let me caulk it.  We'll see if they will do that. They might not, which could be a pickle.  Even if they do, it will take me a lot of work to do the caulking, and I've decided I don't trust anyone else.

18 Month Project Completed

It wasn't supposed to be 18 months, it was supposed to be a weekend project.  But it turned out into an 18 month project: connecting the left loudspeaker in the Queen's Room using flat speaker wire that sticks to the wall.  Well it's been 18 months of mistakes, frustration, delay, thinking, and worrying.  Finally it's all done.  I'm washing my hands of it now.  And the ladder has been removed from the Queen's room.  (My friend would ask: do you still need the ladder?  I would say, "Yes, I still have to do the caulking/priming/texturing/priming/finish coat, but I can take the ladder out until I get to that, if you want."  She would say "No, you can leave the ladder in until you are done, and take your time.")  The project started in April 2014 and was just finished on September 7, Labor Day, 2015.

The name brand wire wasn't cheap (something like $100-200 IIRC) so I found what appeared to be identical for $50.  Maybe it wasn't, but I have read of people having difficulties like mine even with the name brand.  First problem is, it doesn't look that great.  Second problem is, it doesn't stick to the wall.  I found it starting to come off within a day, and almost fully fallen off after a week.  (Hint: I should have just tossed it then, maybe.)  I put it back on with more force, then with strips of caulking, and finally with most of the back side of the ribbon wire smeared and covered with caulk.  The full caulk treatment (that was about the second month into this project) worked, but then edges of the wire curled, which I fixed with more caulk.

The way this would go is I would Finally get around to something, like covering the wire entirely with caulk and sticking it to the wall, a month or so after doing the previous failed or incomplete step.  In the meantime I might pick up new supplies such as caulk, painter's tape, paint.  So it wasn't like I spent 400 days working on this project.  Though I may have been thinking about it 400 days.  And that may be where the real cost of this project was.  I may have only spent 100 actual hours of work on it, but there were certainly at least another 200 hours of thinking, worrying, re-examining, thinking again, and now of course blogging about it (but that's a benefit not a cost).

Anyway, after I finally got the wire to stick to the wall, I knew the next steps, but was slow in doing them.  Especially it seemed it took me 9 months or so to get around to doing the texturing.  I had never done anything like that, and I had to do some research online.  I may not have done it the best way, but it seemed like spray can would be the easiest way for a beginner, so that's what I used.  The texturing is probably the worst part of what I did, it doesn't really blend in that well, though it may mask the wire slightly on the vertical.  It may or may not be helping hold the wire to the wall (which was one of my primary justifications for it: a kind of glue effect).  After doing the texturing I was surprised to find out that I had to do more caulking, and even speckling.  In the last few days of work on this project (ironically labor day weekend) I discovered that spackling could help keep the edge of wire solid and not floppy.  Trying to caulk behind the wire in all sorts of ways often ended up with floppy edges.  But stuffing in a bit of spackling I can keep the edges straight and eliminate visibly annoying gaps.  I didn't do much spackling but it was the final touch that cleaned up 3 very visible and ugly gaps.

I did priming before the texturing, as the can said.  And priming afterwards, as it also said to do, and that was just done over this weekend.  I intended to do the priming on Saturday but then I discovered all the remaining problems that needed either caulking or the newly discovered spackling.  Actually the spackling wasn't done on Saturday it was done on Sunday evening, just before doing the post-texturing priming.  So finally the priming was done on Sunday night and the final finish coat was done 9 to 11 PM on Monday night.  I had been napping until 9 and I said to myself, I bet I can actually finish the project in two hours, and be actually done by 11pm.  It isn't actually that much work.  And I did finish by 11pm!  Including preparation (moving cat chair and scratch post), cleanup, and putting all the cat stuff back when I was done.  And taking a 40 minute break to allow the cat back in (he was reluctant to do his business while I was working in the room, and somehow I got the feeling he needed to).

During the actual work, seconds seem like minutes.

Sonos Fixed with New Connect unit, and limits probed

I fixed my now 6 zone system to permit the incoming and outgoing uncompressed (essential for me!) line connections at up to 5 zones simultaneously, and especially for the newest Tape & Turntable zone which permits me to record FM broadcasts from another zone on my Nakamichi, and monitor those recordings while they are being made in another room.  I couldn't do that kind of dual line connection using the old Sonos ZP80 unit.  I've now determined that on a network with 5 active line connections, it is simply not possible to do this with ZP80's.  But it is possible with the newest model successor to the ZP80: the "Sonos Connect."  Actually I simply figured my old ZP80 was bad (I'd had this trouble before…in the living room notably….and possibly around the very time when I may have been incorrectly believing my beloved Kenwood L-1000t tuner was defective) and I was sick of it.  A new Sonos Connect did indeed fix the problem, and I could record a tuner and monitor the tape in 3 other zones while also another zone was listening to the second tuner zone: 5 line connections in all, running perfectly.  Every attempt to reach 6 continuous uncompressed line connection ran into dropouts in less than 5 minutes.

5 zones runs just fine now, and that's all I really need, actually I could maybe live with 4 with some juggling, but 5 works and fine is mostly ok, but sometimes, very randomly it seems, I may still get dropouts.  I had been thinking this was related to having a running Sonos app on my mac.  Have no running app, and 5 zones just keep on trucking?  Sadly I think I may have had one experience otherwise, but it may have been mistaken.  I can in many cases induce dropouts in line connections by doing specific things on the output channel, like changing music service (lots of network activity).  Changing local music files do not cause dropouts.

Sonos says with more than 4 line connections you should use uncompressed.  I will not, never, ever, use lossy compressed.  I will work something else out.  Maybe not Sonos.  Only using the 100 mb ethernet most of my system does (and not the 10G my wires and switch are capable of) I could handle 60 simultaneous line connections.  Sonos could easily handle more than 4 line connections technically, though I think they might have to have more latency.  The low latency is indeed very cool, though I wish I could increase it in order to have more line connections.  I might immediately raise it a hair to have full stability on all my nodes with simultaneous input and output connections.

For some reason, it was especially cool to monitor the FM tuner through the Nakamichi, or so I thought for several days.  It added a cool ambiance.  But on the living room system, the straight up connection to the Kenwood KT-6040 tuner (#2) was much cleaner.

I am grateful to Sonos for even including the line connections, which was at least 50% of my reason for buying Sonos instead of Logitech Squeezebox.  And it accounts for 75% of my actual usage since FM radio is probably the most listened-to source.  But my conspiratorial mind notes that Sonos doesn't get any corporate kickbacks for including this feature, as they might, say, for music services.  Therefore they haven't given the attention that it deserves, and I often fear the feature disappearing.  Additionally the Sonos objectophile standpoint (which meant also they didn't include 24 bit capabilities) means that they seem to think compressed audio streams are adequate for analog sources, which is what you are officially (according to the documentation) supposed to use above 4 line connections.  Compressed line inputs, which I consider useless, would have steered me to the Logitech Squeezebox.

I can sort of imagine an alternative.  You could have small boxes running full 24 bit capability with line-ins translated to at least 96kHz, with auto latency adjustment to match what is needed to eliminate dropouts.  Look carefully at the products out there.  Do any include line inputs?  I could use units with up to 3 line inputs.


Magnavox DVR brought to meeting, disassembled, reassembled, and set up with S-Video connections.