A recently ordered package from AlleKabels (literally meaning All Cables) has finally arrived from Holland. It contains a few cables -a 20m HDMI cable and -important!- a 22-pins SATA SAS cable for a nifty Seagate 4TB Constellation hard disk that I bought on ebay for a very nice price. Constellation disks are quite a bit more expensive than "regular" disks (read, double to almost thrice the price) because the former are made much more sturdy for use in servers, since in servers disks are constantly severely in use 24-hours a day, seven days a week...
Problem is that this Constellation disks appears to be of the SAS variety. SAS is a variation on the SATA connection (PATA was Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment and had a 4-pins molex for power and a 40-pins flat-cable for data; SATA is Serial Advanced Technology and has a 15-pins power cable and a 7-pins data cable)
PATA and SATA (as well as SAS) are protocols used to communicate between mainboard/operating system and the hard drive.
SAS (which stands for Serial Attached SCSI) has the possibility to attach more than one hard drive to the same mainboard connection, while SATA is always one-on-one. Normally, the difference is the kind of cable: instead of a one-on-one cable, you have, for example a one (for the mainboard) on four cable (for four SAS hard drives).
But that isn't the problem. Where the shoe wrings in my case, is that SAS hard drives have two sets of connections: the regular 15- plus 7-pins and a 22-pins. Now, the amount of pins and their purpose are the same, but with regular SATA and/or SAS, you have the pins on the hard drive sitting under an L-shaped ledge, with the short end of the "L" sitting left for the data cable and right for thepower cable.
The second type of SAS is just one connector with one long, straight ledge on the drive. Which means there's no way you can fit the regular L-shaped plugs on the drive. That's why I had to order this 22-pins cable...
Second slight inconvenience is that my mainboard doesn't have the SAS protocol. That means of course that, even with the right connector now in my possession, I won't be able to use the Constellation hard drive since the latter can't communicate with the operating system -and vice versa- because the mainboard lacks the needed hard- and software.
Only thing I can do -besides reselling the drive- is to buy a new mainboard. Since I already wanted to buy a new mainboard because of having run out on SATA connectors (got ten connectors on the current AsRock P67 Fatal1ty Pro board and have eight hard drives and two burners).
But the baord I was going to get would normally have been a so-called socket 2011 board. The socket (also called LGA -Land Grid Array) is the space where the CPU (Central Processing Unit) is sitting and is mentioned by way of the amount of copper connections it has on the bottom. For the "Pentium IV" it was first 416 and later 478 copper pins or Socket 478. For the Pentium D and then the Core Duo processors, it was 775 contacts (they did away with the pins because sometimes, when swapping a processor, the CPU got stuck on the back of the cooling block through the cooling paste you have to apply in order to get smooth, overall cooling, and when removing said block you pulled the CPU out of its socket before you could shift the handle that blocks the CPU in its place, sometimes resulting in one or more CPU pins breaking off and you could throw away the CPU).
For the i7 generation it was first the socket 1366 (X58 chipset, running on triple-channel DDR3 RAM) and later the socket 1156 (P55 chipset, running on dual-channel DDR3 RAM). For the LGA1156, new i5 and i3 processors where developed.
Then came the i7 Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge which have a socket 1155 or 2011 and the latest are the socket 1150 boards...
So, back to the socket 2011 board I wanted to buy, the AsRock X79 Extreme 11. This a board would entice that I also buy a new processor, since I own an Intel i7 Sandy Bridge 2600K CPU. The thing is that the three processors in the socket 2011 range are either the same price as my 2600K and perform the same too, or are much more expensive and don't give enough of an advantage over my 2600K to warrant the exessive investment.
Problem was that this socket 2011 board was the only one that had more than ten SATA connectors (14, to be exact). But AsRock came to my rescue when releasing that Extreme 11 mainboard for the socket 1155. Which means I don't have to buy a new processor.
To complete my joy, the AsRock Z77 Extreme 11 has fourteen! SATA connectors, of which four support the aformentioned SAS protocol. It is (was?) also the only board which had the SATA controller under one Intel driver, as to where before the Intel driver supported only part of the SATA connectors and an other part was supported by Marvell.
I must add that I experienced problems with both drivers from Intel and Marvell when all 10 connectors are occupied. After reading a round-up of the Extreme 11 board on Tom's Hardware, I was pleased to learn that the sole Intel driver was more than capable of steering all 14 connectors, which is exactly what I need.
Now, I'll probably have to find some kind of sponsorship -or go down to the pub and sing for a few pop a song- as that AsRock Z77 Extreme 11 motherboard costs over 400 euro...
Wish me luck.
JJ
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Pioneer VSX 422K Surround Receiver
Got this little bugger on ebay from a German retailer, brand new in the box, for a hundred and ten Euro less than what I would have paid in Belgium: €186 (plus €20 for p&p) against €300 (plus €15 for p&p).
I had the 422K in my sights for a while, although I would have liked its bigger brother more, but that one (the VSX 922K) is priced at €550 -almost twice the amount for the VSX 422k.
Once I had the 422K set- and hooked-up, I remembered why I would rather have bought the 922K. First off, the 422K -like the 922K- has an on-screen display with a menu, except that with the 922K this menu is sent through the HDMI cable, but with my receiver it's not. You have to hang the receiver to the TV with a yellow-red-white cable (of which the yellow is the important one, since that's the one providing the picture) and plug the yellow cable into the "monitor" inlet of the receiver.
There's no problem with that -luckily- since my Samsung 46" LED TV has a whole bunch of possible connections, the y-r-w connection being one of them. The inconvenience is that you need the remote of the tv to switch incoming sources to see the display of the receiver -and more importantly, find the needed cable first.
Normally, one doesn't need the receiver's on-screen display, except for the annoying announcement which keeps scrolling across the receiver's display, telling you about some automatic sound set-up called MCACC or Multi-Channel ACoustic Calibration (something like Technic's "Pink-Noise", years ago). This announcement can only gotten rid of after having disabled it through the receiver's menu, for which of course you first must look for that damned y-r-w cable and wring yerself behind the TV and receiver to make the connection.
Normally I never use such nifty gadgets because usually they don't amount to much. But I read some good things about this auto-calibration thing when informing myself on the net about the 422K and decided to have a go.
What you do is, get the microphone which comes with the receiver, plug it into the VSX 422K -mini-jack is conveniently placed at the front- and then sit in the chair you usually use for watching TV and place the microphone as close to your ears as possible -I placed it on top of my head- and start the self-diagnostic sequences.
All the receiver does is first test the room for environmental noises (it even tells you it stops the test when there's too much background noise and even advises to reduce the noise for the receiver to be able to restart testing) then it sends a white noise to all the available channels (six) to determine how many speakers are connected.
After this first test, the receiver's MCACC tests the acoustics of the room, determines where the speakers are situated in regard to where the microphone -and thus you- sits and on that basis it sets the noise levels for the different speakers as well as adapting the settings for the built-in equalizer and it's pre-sets.
I must confess that there's a huge difference in sound quality with the settings after the auto-calibration. I fiddled around with the manual settings for the speakers -the latter sadly overruns the auto-calibration settings- and had a go at some sweet tunes (Iced Earth's three-piece "Gettysburg 1864" suite on the bonus disc for their 2004 album "The Glorious Burden"), then I re-calibrated with the receiver's MCACC and was blown away with the difference in sound (speaking of sound: don't do the calibrating at night, like I did the first time around, because the test noises grow seriously in decibels along the way, making unsuspecting neighbours unhappy).
It's really the difference between day and night. I mean, the receiver sounds pretty good for such a low priced, entry level apparatus, but after the auto-calibration, the VSX 422K sounds like a million bucks.
Okay, so I've been out of the hifi-loop for a while. Bar my Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround system, the last stand-alone receiver I had was the Pioneer VSX 809. A 4.1 receiver bought in 1994 which sounded okay-ish.
Compared to the VSX 422K, that older Pioneer sounds like a mid-sixties handheld AM radio. Sure, there's almost 20 years between them, but the difference in sound quality is mind boggling.
But back to my gripes with the 422K. So, like I said, the on-screen display can only be seen with the right cable. Another letdown is that the VSX 422K doesn't have a J45 network connection. Not really necessary, but mighty handy for upgrading the software for the receiver.
Third inconvenience is that there's no USB connection either. Furthermore, there's only one set of stereo speakers that can be hooked up. My VSX 809 had, besides the surround channels, an extra pair of speaker connectors. Usually both sets are marked as "A" and "B". Such a second set can be handy when wanting to use speakers in a different room other than where the main speakers are situated, like in the kitchen or even a bedroom: it keeps you from having to buy a second amp/receiver. Simply switch from speaker set A to speaker set B and yer done.
Last inconvenience -and the most important to me- is the tiny buttons on the remote. With my deteriorating eyesight, I need a flashlight to shine over the buttons to be able to see what's written underneath the lot. If there's even something written underneath. Most buttons have some little sign for which you need the manual in order to decipher what the meaning of those glyphs is. But, there's no paper manual with the receiver. So, you need the disc that came with the 422K and a computer nearby to be able to read the manual...
To help you out with the result of some button pushing, there's markings on the front of the receiver, underneath some ill-fed LEDs. Problem is that the explanatory text is so small that you need to kneel in front of the receiver and stick yer nose against it -preferably armed with aformentioned flashlight- to again be able to make out what exactly is being communicated here.
To make a long story short: the Pioneer VSX 422K has a great sound for its price, but it seriously lacks in the user-friendly department. But do I care? Not really, no. Which makes this slab of text rather pointless, now doesn't it...
JJ
I had the 422K in my sights for a while, although I would have liked its bigger brother more, but that one (the VSX 922K) is priced at €550 -almost twice the amount for the VSX 422k.
Once I had the 422K set- and hooked-up, I remembered why I would rather have bought the 922K. First off, the 422K -like the 922K- has an on-screen display with a menu, except that with the 922K this menu is sent through the HDMI cable, but with my receiver it's not. You have to hang the receiver to the TV with a yellow-red-white cable (of which the yellow is the important one, since that's the one providing the picture) and plug the yellow cable into the "monitor" inlet of the receiver.
There's no problem with that -luckily- since my Samsung 46" LED TV has a whole bunch of possible connections, the y-r-w connection being one of them. The inconvenience is that you need the remote of the tv to switch incoming sources to see the display of the receiver -and more importantly, find the needed cable first.
Normally, one doesn't need the receiver's on-screen display, except for the annoying announcement which keeps scrolling across the receiver's display, telling you about some automatic sound set-up called MCACC or Multi-Channel ACoustic Calibration (something like Technic's "Pink-Noise", years ago). This announcement can only gotten rid of after having disabled it through the receiver's menu, for which of course you first must look for that damned y-r-w cable and wring yerself behind the TV and receiver to make the connection.
Normally I never use such nifty gadgets because usually they don't amount to much. But I read some good things about this auto-calibration thing when informing myself on the net about the 422K and decided to have a go.
What you do is, get the microphone which comes with the receiver, plug it into the VSX 422K -mini-jack is conveniently placed at the front- and then sit in the chair you usually use for watching TV and place the microphone as close to your ears as possible -I placed it on top of my head- and start the self-diagnostic sequences.
All the receiver does is first test the room for environmental noises (it even tells you it stops the test when there's too much background noise and even advises to reduce the noise for the receiver to be able to restart testing) then it sends a white noise to all the available channels (six) to determine how many speakers are connected.
After this first test, the receiver's MCACC tests the acoustics of the room, determines where the speakers are situated in regard to where the microphone -and thus you- sits and on that basis it sets the noise levels for the different speakers as well as adapting the settings for the built-in equalizer and it's pre-sets.
I must confess that there's a huge difference in sound quality with the settings after the auto-calibration. I fiddled around with the manual settings for the speakers -the latter sadly overruns the auto-calibration settings- and had a go at some sweet tunes (Iced Earth's three-piece "Gettysburg 1864" suite on the bonus disc for their 2004 album "The Glorious Burden"), then I re-calibrated with the receiver's MCACC and was blown away with the difference in sound (speaking of sound: don't do the calibrating at night, like I did the first time around, because the test noises grow seriously in decibels along the way, making unsuspecting neighbours unhappy).
It's really the difference between day and night. I mean, the receiver sounds pretty good for such a low priced, entry level apparatus, but after the auto-calibration, the VSX 422K sounds like a million bucks.
Okay, so I've been out of the hifi-loop for a while. Bar my Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround system, the last stand-alone receiver I had was the Pioneer VSX 809. A 4.1 receiver bought in 1994 which sounded okay-ish.
Compared to the VSX 422K, that older Pioneer sounds like a mid-sixties handheld AM radio. Sure, there's almost 20 years between them, but the difference in sound quality is mind boggling.
But back to my gripes with the 422K. So, like I said, the on-screen display can only be seen with the right cable. Another letdown is that the VSX 422K doesn't have a J45 network connection. Not really necessary, but mighty handy for upgrading the software for the receiver.
Third inconvenience is that there's no USB connection either. Furthermore, there's only one set of stereo speakers that can be hooked up. My VSX 809 had, besides the surround channels, an extra pair of speaker connectors. Usually both sets are marked as "A" and "B". Such a second set can be handy when wanting to use speakers in a different room other than where the main speakers are situated, like in the kitchen or even a bedroom: it keeps you from having to buy a second amp/receiver. Simply switch from speaker set A to speaker set B and yer done.
Last inconvenience -and the most important to me- is the tiny buttons on the remote. With my deteriorating eyesight, I need a flashlight to shine over the buttons to be able to see what's written underneath the lot. If there's even something written underneath. Most buttons have some little sign for which you need the manual in order to decipher what the meaning of those glyphs is. But, there's no paper manual with the receiver. So, you need the disc that came with the 422K and a computer nearby to be able to read the manual...
To help you out with the result of some button pushing, there's markings on the front of the receiver, underneath some ill-fed LEDs. Problem is that the explanatory text is so small that you need to kneel in front of the receiver and stick yer nose against it -preferably armed with aformentioned flashlight- to again be able to make out what exactly is being communicated here.
To make a long story short: the Pioneer VSX 422K has a great sound for its price, but it seriously lacks in the user-friendly department. But do I care? Not really, no. Which makes this slab of text rather pointless, now doesn't it...
JJ
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
New place, old me...
Well, I'm finally starting to settle in my new place. It's quite fun to be needing something and not knowing where you've actually put it.
New appartment is about three times the space I used to live and still I seem to lack room. Okay, so I bought an extra cupboard and put my dinner table with it's six chairs together -something I couldn't do in the "old" place- and I've also bought that four-doors wardrobe. The latter is sitting in the bedroom (no kidding) which is spacious enough to hold the wardrobe and the matching double bed plus an extra small linen cupboard.
It's the living area which seems to get cramped. Maybe because I divided it in two with a self-made two meters by two meters loose CD-storage (or what this "wall" was originally used for): one side holds the dining table and the chairs -plus two cupboards- and the other side has my Samsung 46" TV on a new, small table and three Ikea easy chairs plus two telescopic tripods for the rear speakers of my JBL XTi20 surround system.
For the latter I found a half-decent surround receiver, the Pioneer VSX-422, which got its place underneath the TV set, with my Samsung BluRay player on top of the receiver and the JBL center speaker on the floor underneath the receiver.
Must say that the JBL speakers give a really nice sound but are lacking in the bass department. Mainly because there was no subwoofer included in the set, but also because the Pioneer receiver hasn't got that much bass to play with. Instead of a knob on the receiver, it's a button on the remote which can go "six" up and/or down from the standard "zero" level. Since the surround set is mainly going to be used for watching movies, the lack in lower levels isn't that much of a problem.
For music, I use my computer with a Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround set anyway, hooked-up to a Creative Fatality XFi Titanium soundcard. Plus, should I really want to, I could always sell the Pioneer/JBL combo on ebay and use my second Logitech Z5500 set for the TV. I bought that second set on ebay for "spare parts" should I run into trouble with my original Z5500, since the latter isn't manufactured any longer and was replaced by the Z906 of which the build quality of the electronic components is rather dubious in my opinion.
But I seriously doubt I would sell the JBL speakers. They give an impressively crisp sound, even on that "cheapish" Pioneer and without a subwoofer. I have always been satisfied with the Logitech Z5500's sound -especially the subwoofer is tremendous- until I started using those JBL XTi20 speakers. That is to say, I am still satisfied with the Z5500 set, but those JBL's are so much nicer to the ears. Well, to mine anyway...
I'll be back,
JJ
New appartment is about three times the space I used to live and still I seem to lack room. Okay, so I bought an extra cupboard and put my dinner table with it's six chairs together -something I couldn't do in the "old" place- and I've also bought that four-doors wardrobe. The latter is sitting in the bedroom (no kidding) which is spacious enough to hold the wardrobe and the matching double bed plus an extra small linen cupboard.
It's the living area which seems to get cramped. Maybe because I divided it in two with a self-made two meters by two meters loose CD-storage (or what this "wall" was originally used for): one side holds the dining table and the chairs -plus two cupboards- and the other side has my Samsung 46" TV on a new, small table and three Ikea easy chairs plus two telescopic tripods for the rear speakers of my JBL XTi20 surround system.
For the latter I found a half-decent surround receiver, the Pioneer VSX-422, which got its place underneath the TV set, with my Samsung BluRay player on top of the receiver and the JBL center speaker on the floor underneath the receiver.
Must say that the JBL speakers give a really nice sound but are lacking in the bass department. Mainly because there was no subwoofer included in the set, but also because the Pioneer receiver hasn't got that much bass to play with. Instead of a knob on the receiver, it's a button on the remote which can go "six" up and/or down from the standard "zero" level. Since the surround set is mainly going to be used for watching movies, the lack in lower levels isn't that much of a problem.
For music, I use my computer with a Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround set anyway, hooked-up to a Creative Fatality XFi Titanium soundcard. Plus, should I really want to, I could always sell the Pioneer/JBL combo on ebay and use my second Logitech Z5500 set for the TV. I bought that second set on ebay for "spare parts" should I run into trouble with my original Z5500, since the latter isn't manufactured any longer and was replaced by the Z906 of which the build quality of the electronic components is rather dubious in my opinion.
But I seriously doubt I would sell the JBL speakers. They give an impressively crisp sound, even on that "cheapish" Pioneer and without a subwoofer. I have always been satisfied with the Logitech Z5500's sound -especially the subwoofer is tremendous- until I started using those JBL XTi20 speakers. That is to say, I am still satisfied with the Z5500 set, but those JBL's are so much nicer to the ears. Well, to mine anyway...
I'll be back,
JJ
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