Kevin Boone
Kevin Boone
Kevin Boone
Musing on computing, math, electronics, de-Googling and the small web, from an old warhorse of the IT industry.
Latest Posts
Misrepresentations of scale are common in the literature of organizations that seek to deceive. However, it's sometimes difficult, or unhelpful, to draw diagrams to scale. This article tries to explain the difference between benign and...
It's common for hifi amplifiers and speakers to have a power rating expressed in terms of "RMS watts". Although RMS amplitude is an important concept in electronic engineering, it's meaningless here, and should be avoided.
The calculus of variations is a branch of mathematics that deals with finding functions that optimize systems. Although calculus of variations has its origins in the 18th century, it is still not widely taught, either to science or...
Many portable and automotive media players accept USB memory sticks or SD cards containing audio files. Very often, these players have no sorting logic, and display files and directories in the arbitrary order they appear in the...
A number of reviews of the Leak Stereo 130 and CDT can be found online, but they are short on practical details. I've been using mine eight hours a day for several months; this is what I think of them.
Why are sales of vinyl records increasing, when digital streaming services provide access to almost any recording ever made, in superior technical quality?
Copying an audio CD -- perhaps to a portable music player -- is a common enough operation. There are strong opinions on how to do this, and what software to use. But does it really make any difference? Or is one bit the same as any other?
The availability of "better than CD" audio recordings is driving, and being driven by, more expensive and elaborate audio hardware, even in the consumer market. Is this a good thing?
You really can't improve your hi-fi system with a fancy mains cable. But why? And why do people think you can?
Bits are bits, right? If a CD transport just sends digital data to a DAC, is it even possible that different transports sound different?
Do balanced headphones provide an improvement in sound quality over conventional, single-ended designs? Unlikely. In fact, the increased complexity of these designs may actually reduce the accuracy of sound reproduction.
Vintage vinyl records ought, perhaps, to be played on a vintage turntable. Although such appliances are still widely available, and can work well, they fall short of contemporary electrical safety standards.
Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of headphone that are currently available, without all the "audiophile" silliness.
Desktop Linux will take off next year -- or so people have been saying for years. Do desktop containerization technologies like Flatpak make this more, or less, likely?
Using 'date' and 'timedatectl' to build a utility to help with scheduling meetings in different timezones.