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Dec 24, 2001
Sorry to all you Radeon junkies who have been expecting the latest feed on 3D graphics cards for either Linux or Win95/98/ME... systems. I am still in the midst of being awed by my $400 dollar speakers called the "Axiom M22Ti".

Below is a sweet project costing about $10. These speakers have recently received a Xmas present in the form a new homemade speaker cables which rival the sound of the Kimber 8TC that I had a chance to listen to at length on a friends system. The cable to one speaker is composed of 9 twisted pairs of "Category 5" ethernet cable bought from Radioshack wrapped in a special configuration of braids on braid. The primary braid is composed of 3 twisted pairs. This is repeated 2 more times for 3 primary braids. These 3 braids are then braided (again) on each other to form a super secondary braid of 3 primary braids. The above configuration is a reduced (1/3) version of the monster cable proposed by Chris VenHaus's DIY CAT 5 speaker cable.

Note that a double run of the RS cable provides only 8 twisted pairs. I cheated and only used 8 pairs (3+3+2), by faking the third twisted pair by treating the last two twisted pairs asa a primary braid. The end result was spectacular...if you want to see what twenty other people thought...go see the reviews

Dec 12, 2001
I have taken a couple of days of holiday and found myself shopping for speakers over the internet. I went to "Replay Electronics" (1120 Queensway) and met a down to earth owner/operator of the store name George who let me test four CDs that I know intimately for about 1/2 hour on the Axiom M22Ti speakers. Guess what? ...I bought them! The dark horse comes through. I got the one on the far right in the picture of the bookshelf family of Axiom Millennia Speakers. Read about my M22Ti listening evaluation and why I ultimately bought them within 1/2 hour of seeing them. Below are images that can be clicked on for more detailed views of the speakers.

After wiring them out of phase and putting them face to face to play some FM hiss overnight, I gave them a detail listen the next day after work. In a room and with electronics that I have lived with for the last decade, they did not fail to impress. The midrange detail and naturalness is similar to what I heard in the store the day before. On Rosanne Cash's "10 Song Demo", her voice sounds younger and less throaty than on the Optimus LX5. At this point, it sounds more analytical but also more sterile than the LX5 but the speakers (I'm told will open up) and hopefully attain the glorious midrange bloom that audiophile's kill for. The last thing to note is that the M22Ti have ample taut and deep bass. None of that one note stuff or bass hump...it takes a little getting used to after the LX5, but there are virtues and a whole bunch of CDs that I am rediscovering in terms musical interpretation. I'm still impressed and giddy from the purchase of these speakers that ended my two year hunt for speakers.

Dec 9, 2001,

  • Think of high quality affordable speaker design and the Canadian name PSB, Engergy, and Totem come to mind. There are higher priced Canadian speakers from Totem which use high quality posts (WBT from Germany), tweeters (Seas of Denmark), and woofers (Dynaudio from Euroupe somwhere). The first three names are unique is that the woofer and tweeter driver designs are done internally. This allows for greater differentiation between competing manufacturers who use the same tweeter. A name not commonly heard is Axiom Acoustics is not receiving notice. Speaker design is more than just the sum of exotic parts but a merging of metal, wood and plastic to achieve overall balance that when successful is similar/indistinguishable from live sound given good enough recordings and electronics. Just as the dimutive LS3/5a has set the world on its ear 25 years ago for monitor sound accuracy, Axiom's M3Ti has done so the same using modern materials in the form of Neodymum Titanium for the tweeter and Aluminum for the woofer. Reviwers such as Douglas Scheider of SoundStage can have his pick of any speaker and has heard a lot. He is amazed at the integration of mid-range purity (rare) and high frequency detail without harshness than designer Ian Colquhoun manage to coax out of his landmark woofer and tweeter designs (5" and 6.5") that are interspersed through his whole lineup. Here are the reviews:
    1. SoundStage's M3TI Loudspeaker review, Dec 2000, Doug Schneider.
    2. GoodSound's M3TI Loudspeaker review, June 2001, Srajan Ebaen.
    3. GoodSound's M3TI SE Loudspeaker Update, Nov 2001, Srajan Ebaen
    4. Soundstage's M22Ti Loudspeaker Review of the M3Ti's cousin, Nov 2001, John Potis.
    It looks like someone has figured out how to integrate metal into the drivers without the "tinny" canned sound. Kudos to you Ian.
  • The fourth generation of the "Linaeum" line source tweeter based speaker called the Pro LX-550 can now be found in the 2002 Radio Shack catalog. It is now using a 5" Kevlar woofer that "should" better match the speed of the amazing tweeter. I have listened to the previous generation LX-5 II and there is a stronger bass output but a level of integration between the woofer and tweeter that is not as good as the orginal LX-5. The result is a more muffled sound (based upon initial early and unbroken-in set of speakers). It could be something to do with the relative phasing of the woofer and the tweeter or the lightbulb used as a power limiting resistor to the tweeter. The box is larger and better finished than the orginal LX-5. The internal bracing has been altered with white dacron (?) batting on one side and a foam pad behind the midbass unit. The "knuckle rap test" reveals a somewhat resonant die-cast aluminum box. The 2002 model called the LX-550 looks to be the same box with the substitution of Kevlar for the original polypropylene woofer. Still it is good to see the Linaeum concept to still exist in a production speaker...Kudos to RadioShack and other Linaeum lovers for supporting something truly ahead of its time. Apparently, the rights to Linaeum have now been bought by Mystical Audio limited. Paul Paddock who invented the concept has file a second generation patent application for this principle. Last, the mono-pole Linaeum tweeter lives on in an RCA speaker called the PRO X880 AV again with a Kevlar woofer...it looks like an Millenium update to the classic Minimus-7 speaker that probably have resurrected themselves as computer speakers.
  • With the success of Diana Krall's Jazz infused CDs, it was bound that some of her critics who supported her in the past turn against here. Some even critque the album's slinky looking Krall. Going mainstream does have its downside I guess. But what is it that seperates her from the rest of top 10 material. I think part of the answer can be found in looking at the differences between Celine Dion and Krall. With Celine, the songs, performance and recording are technically there, like home theatre, and designed to stimulate a reaction. With Krall, the same can be said but in a more subtle and I think ultimately more successful fashion. Call it the Sinatra factor. I think very few people can actively listen to songs successfully via 5 speakers typically found today in home theatre receivers. Sorry, but sitting beside Eric Clapton with a drum kit beside me just does not work....for me at least. I think better and more involving results can be had from a high quality two speaker/stereo classic Folk/stage setup. Most people are I think are evolved to listen straight ahead to a sound source. It is unfortunate that the THX and sorround sound has forced 5 channel quantity on the average consumer who lacks two channel quality. Primarilyt from DVD Video and VHS Video, a case can be made for the many splendors of THX and Dolby-Surround being "better" for visceral impact. A friend of mine that I had not seen in over a year made commented that he found that his interest in two channel stereo sound had diminished to a point that he listened to most music in surround sound most of the time. I was shocked. Getting together for dinner and the traditional "how about listening to some well recorded CDs?" commenced. I found that the system did indeed sound "better". But after correcting the absolute phase, we agreed that surround sound mode cause a muffling of the midrange and a bloating of the bass. It also helped that the receiver had warmed up over the course of an hour. When I asked Glen put on a favourite CD cut of his, I saw a half startled ear perk up symptomatic of rediscovery. For critical musical satisfaction two speaker stereo still rocks.
  • OK...so the RADEON name lives on with a clearer branding of ATI's products with regard to the 3D realm. What you get in the latest generation Video products is that good old fashion 2D quality. The 7XXX series of 3D graphics accelerators addressing the DirectX7 3D programming features in the mainstream market. It allows game developers to write a real decent game. In addition, the ATI "slightly ahead of its time" features that have defined covergence for the graphic card industry as a whole continue to be supported. The mass movement toward incorporating a combined CD/DVD player was enabled in large part to ATI's early adoption and quality implementation of MPEG decode used on DVDs. State of the art decoding of television systems and coverting them into appropriate computer monitor signals remains a unique and proprietary strength of ATI. Integrated support of flat panel displays using built in TMDS/DVI transmitters will drive the usage of flat panel onto the average desktop in much that same way as ATI did with DVD. Also integrated onto the chip are a second display DAC allowing for a second CRT display at little cost to the board manufacturer. This will allow two compact flat panel to display digital camera pictures in one window (via slide projector software) of the birthday party while the main CRT is completing your EXCEL/WORD spreadsheet. All we need is another input mouse port for the second display to allow for independent control. So you see all those extra CPU cycles offered by a GigaHertz running Pentium/Duron can be tapped. In the future, expect to see these dedicated chips appear in dedicated smart viewers that merge dedicated software/hardware/operating system to realized something that could be described as the "slide projector" of yore redone. The upside market potential for mulitple displays in the home will mirror the appearence of small VGA monitors sitting astride your 16 lane checkout counter at your local grocery store. So for info on the 7500 based graphics cards For info on the 8500 cards and reviews: The 8XXX series addressing the enthusiast market willing to be the first on the block with lastest co-operative deployment ever more realism and hardware assisted graphics. The ATI products retain their cool running nature using technology derived the mobile space. The 7500 could run comfortably without a heatsink but the margin for clocking at speeds is go good that it competes favourably with Nvidia's GeForce 3 products at a price that can be termed a swan song (under $200 US). Compare that to the Nvidia product covered with heatsinks on the memories and the chip and a fast running fan.

    Last...take a look at the amazing "Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti 500" beating results for the latest driver revision that pulls out more potential out of the 8500 feature set. Can you say King of the Road ?

    Nov 17, 2001

  • Geez...posting on two successive weekends. Funcow's free internet service was fun for a while until they folded. My 3 month trial with AOL is coming to a end...it works very well in terms of bandwidth but once connected I hook into the free browser (2.2 MB download) from Opera. It is as fast as the others but contains one feature that is key...a button on the menu which allows the following changes in one click:
    1. Show Pictures
    2. No Pictures
    3. Show only pictures which have been cached from previous surf sessions
    Just plain great design for those of us with enviro-mind friendly 28K modems. Image is not everything.
  • I have been on the hunt for my last Loudspeaker for the next 10 years. TVs, I am told, stay with a person on average for about 14 years before they move onto something else. I have had my Rega Camber speakers since about 1988. They were full range units using a Euroupean Seas Tweeter and an 8 inch woofer mounted on a die cast aluminum basket. Low bass and good highs with the right type of music made these are best seller in their era. What happened afterwards was a revolution in both wire and capacitor technology. The Regas have not been plugged in for about two years and in the interim have been replaced by a $179 pair Radio Shack LX-5 speakers. The tweeter is truly amazing Linaeum unit quite unlike anything on the market. I have a friend of mine who has owned Quad Electrostatics, ProAc Tablettes, and Rogers LS3/5a and he prefers a modifed set of these giant slayers. I have to agree. If you can hear through the limited (though surprising bass) and the mid-band coloration of the mid-bass unit, what you hear is just pure midrage purity and a high end that does not quit. Yet it is sweet and can be listened to for hours at a time. The bad news is that the updated LX-5ii has an altered version of the tweeter using a different film material. The good news is that this years version will incorporate a Kevlar mid-bass unit that should better match the speed of the ribbon-film tweeter. You still need good electronics (passive pre-amp and a good 20 watt amplifier) to hear their virtures plus a long break-in period. The foam sourround mib-bass unit has its problems but seems to get better month to month...I haved them for about two years now but I think I need to yank out the woofers and replace it with a nice 5 inch Vifa unit....or so my sharp ear tubed-in friends tell me.
  • As much as I respect good products, I cannot advocate products which are sold using the name, ideas and reputation of the inventor/originator. AudioNote was originally founded by a Japanese audiophile named Hiroyasu Kondo. About two decades ago he started his company based upon ideas, principles, materials and experiments with audio amplifiers than ultimately resulted in an amplfier selling for $39,000 dollars. Magazines such as Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, and HI-FI News and Record Review raved about the sound. He may have been one of the people responsible for the "tube rennaisance" we are seeing today that began in the 80s. His success into the North American was in large part due one of his biggest admirers and users of his equipment name Peter Qvortrup. A vinyl maniac who could not get enough of the sound of Konda-san's creations. He went from admirer to proponent, to UK Distributor, to licensed UK subcontractorAudioNote-UK. Imagine the surprise of Kondo when he woke up one morining to find that his companies name had been taken (stolen?). I leave it to you to form your own opinion with the following links:
    1. A concise history of AudiNote
    2. An outsider'v view
    3. Peter Q's rebuttal
    4. A comeback
    Suppose Toyota set up a North American manufacturing plant (sourcing local NA parts where possible) to manufcature Toyota Camries. Not much different from how Coke makes and sells its products all over the world. Now this branch plant goes bankrupt and then announces a similar tasting product called "Coke" with the same trademark. As Audrey Hepburn once put it "I smell a super rat". Guess what happened...they are now in North America with ownership of the AudioNote tradedmark...go figure. What is an audiphile to do ?

    Nov 12, 2001

  • Part of the "Art" in engineering products or any creative endeavour is making due with what you have. At the audio show last month held in Toronto at the "Home Entertainment Show", it seemed as if the big is better "THX" theme as much in evidence as smaller and "what's old" is new again in the form of transformer coupled Single-Ended Triode tube designs. I brung CDs along so that I could listen to familiar material on unfamiliar stereo setups. The result was that I realized that what I had evolved over the last twenty years was (within its power and lower frequency limit) was not too shabby.

    For average sized rooms and relatively efficient speakers, 1 Watt of output should put out a sizeable level. 20 good watts might be preferable to a 80W more watts with their attendant tradeoffs. Exactly what those tradeoffs are is probably best explained by Nelson Pass of Pass Laboratories and formerly of the lengendary "Threshold Corporation" that made high end amplifiers. One of striking observations made by Pass is that sound travelling through air has a distinctly non-linear Pressure transfer characteristic similar to that of Tubes and MOSFETS. It may be this same characteristic that has kept Tube electronics in all the microphone pre-amp stages preferred by most recording engineers and major recording artists.

    The bigger is better mentality pervades the making of music as more and more money types get involved in the production of what used to be a very personal task. More and more it centres around the "marketing of music". With the 70's retro music scene as a reaction to the "boy bands" and fronted artists, it is no surprise that a simple arrangement of music put together using a simple straigtforward miking technique is now one the best selling CDs. Take a listen to a song Desparado by the Eagles sung by Sheila Beham from the album Innocence and Despair. More information can be found about the person Hans Fenger who put it all together using a couple of mikes and a borrowed tape recorder.

    The role of the hardware is to serve the software. One of the major products to have influence the direction of home audio is a little speaker cobbled up by Britain's version of the Canada's CBC called the LS3/5a. This speaker has been in production for the last 25 years and still stands up and is being made. The unit was engineered to be state of the art in terms of flatness of response in the mid/voice band and up to 95 dB sound levels. Within the engineering limitations of that time (prior to the IBM PC) and the off the shelf tweeter and woofer drive components, it is a miracle of what human engineering can achieve via the senses. So the next time you visit your local audio shop, ask to listen to a simply miked recording of a voice or a small quartet. Albums which come to mind are

    1. Chesky Demonstration Disc
    2. The Cowboy Junkie's Trinity Session
    3. "10 Song Demo" by Rossance Cash,
    4. "Come on Come on" by Mary-Chapin Carpenter
    5. "Kind of Blue" re-issue of Miles Davis containing an alternate take of "flamenco sketches".

    October 17, 2001
    The Home Entertainment Show runs this weekend at the Holiday Inn located at the corner of King Street and Peter Street (next to Spadina Ave) from Friday Oct. 18, 2091 to Oct 20, 2001. It covers home theatre components and high end Audio. Unfortunately, Totem will not be there.

    October 6, 2001
    To buy or make ? All of my "hacker" friends find that making is ultimately more satisfying. When you buy...thats it most of the time. When you "make"...you evolve and tinker with the original design. As someone used to say: "hours and hours of uninterrupted pleasure". I've in the market for a set of speakers that have a wide and deep soundstage couple with good bass attack/slam and with good detail. I heard good things about the Newform speakers but the difficulty in listening to them and the large size of them have delayed going down this route. By chance last week, I was at an electronics store where the designer of Totem speakers was there to give a talk. Vince Bruzzese's creations are definately little gems worth adorning any living room.

  • To leave your mark on a company is at least a four year effort. I have left many but it is the legacy of what you leave in the people afterwards that is the true mark of talent. Thanks to the Jarvis Collegiate High School, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and Carleton Univerity for all the wonderful and giving souls that are now re-incarnated within this company. Give me the strength and courage to aim higher in the track deslgn leadership and management at a world class level but to also be balanced outside of work.
  • I'm not sure what a "entertainment box" means to me beyond the electronic gear playing my CD and vinyl records, but the Nintendo GAMECUBE will probably be my first one...based upon cool mechanical and electrical design...its all a box got to be...and less...being more. My design intuition has rarely been wrong and I suspect that X-box is a bloated brute force attempt of the wrong design balance at a consumer level widget where even 2 cent resistor sometimes makes a difference. I can see the plethora of hard drives return back to the makers after Johnny literally drops his X-box off at his friends house....unless Johnny really is 18 and over...think Spice Girls and their target audience. I see a disconnect.

    September 11, 2001

  • "Atrocious, merciless, senseless, unbelievable and horrorible" are a few of the words that barely capture the reaction to the inhumanity and senseless scene in New York City, this week.

    The conscious act of physically extinguishing even a single human being is to blashemous shame dishounouring god's most precious gift. It prematurley ends the potential cycle of receiving life's instructions and giving them down successive generations for a large number of decent souls trapped in the World Trade Center or for those that initiated these acts.

    Yet no matter how horrific the act or deed, the very reason we study history in school and have ready access bibles are to understand that forgiveness is ultimately the correct road to take. Initially, the road to healing is unclear, varied and long. For some, the pain and sorrow in a losing friend or friendly member is at first spawned by personal greed: The pleaseant company and re-newed companionship of that individual is lost. A period of mourning and just crying are sometimes the only way to initiially cope. This section of road will be as long as necessary. Keeping someone exclusively in your thoughts hampers the individuals's flame from truly being seen by others. This is why I think the Irish celebrate the life of an individual at a wake. For a life ended prematurely by an act of terrorism, an attempt is being made to devalue every individual lost. To honour someone is to remember and re-enact their best qualities for others in your daily activities. This appreciation and evaluation of the "joy" in the cannotation of "life' can best be seen in eulogies. On the back page of the first section of the daily Toronto paper called the "Globe and Mail" are neat column wide and page deep accounts of people who have passed on called Lives Lived".

    Knowing that part their spirit can still live forever, evne in the people that they have not yet touched, is a true possiblity if you let that part of them flourish in you. I have often said that "Every person is a part of everyone they have met". I find that I go away for a week somewhere and I begin to pick and talk like the locals, there, when I come back. We are all indeed the "sum of everyone we have ever met"...some more that others. That part must continue to forge on and remain bright in your make up so that others can will see the precious spirit that was passed on for those who physically cannot. Forgive and live in the spirit of that friend's smile, their quirks that you picked up without knowing, and like your other teachers....try to at least make a "C" grade in the effort...you know they are watching and crossing their fingers for you from above. You will grow in an in-explicable way. On behalf of all my unofficial teachers, friends and family, my sincerest condolescences to those have physically lost or missed someone in the incident in America. I hope you metaphorically find them so that I may someday meet you and get to know them. Give peace a chance and god bless all.

    August 31, 2001

  • Update: ...the championship smiles say it all....Go Bulls Go!!!

    August 28, 2001

  • ATI fields a ball hockey team each spring called the ...wait for it..."Raging Bulls". This year was a rebuiding year, with lots of young new raw talent, marked by unplanned success with a first place finish in the SMBHL C division. The second game of a two game playoff will be played this Thursday at Stephen Leacock Arena (2500 Birchmount...just north of Sheppard) at 8:00 pm. Go Bulls Go!!!
  • I have a trusty old green canoe that has been taking in water over the years due to just "no upkeep" and some rather abusive trips over the course of the last twenty years. One severe breach this year meant that the tried and true "bailing via a rag" technique no longer sufficed. I got out the sandpaper and file and began the process of sealing the most severe breaches for a trip up north off Geogian Bay. My sealant turn out to be none other than a tube of "Shoe Goo". This miracle stuff sticks to anything in a pinch. The results speak for themselves, the boat was completely dry ...the whole trip. D'ont leave home without it.

    August 20, 2001

  • Hello World...Its been near two months since I have touch these pages and have your heard the Radeon 7500/8500 news. I've been out in the sun either on the rivers/lakes with my trusty twenty-something fiberglass canoe or hiking along the ledges of Tobomory Provincial Park. I just wanted to get a bit of hard copy old fashioned book reading in and see if it was possible to take a two month sabbatical from the web. The answer is yes but just like watching the aerial feed (versus cable), you lose something but not as much as Rogers/Bell high speed internet service would lead you to believe. Anyways...just in case you have been living under a rock in the last week:
    1. GeForce 3 Under Attack:ATi's Radeon 8500 Previewed Tom's Hardware Page/Tom's Pabst, August 14, 2001
    2. Radeon 8500 Preview SysOpt.com/Robert Richmond, August 14, 2001
    3. Hands-On ATI RADEON 8500 & 7500 Preview with Benchmarks Sharky's Extreme/Housen Maratouk , August 14, 2001
    As in previous ATI generations...this one runs cool, reliably, and with good quality and not at the expense of the last 10% in 3D performance. The parts are well margin. And yes you get that good old fashion 2D sharpness and clarity for those moments when you pull out an Excel spread sheet, Word processor or graphics program...which turns out to be about 80% of the time if you are honest about it.