Category: Uncategorised

The Basement Replacement

It all started with me spotting an extraordinary deal for a pair of ELAC Surround Bookshelf Home Speaker (UB51-BK) designed by Andrew Jones.

I purchased a pair from Amazon and saved more than 20% at the time of purchase. Little did I know that this particular purchase is the first step of many on the road to pursue the best sound system for the buck that I can have in our basement and bedroom.

The ELAC speakers were suppose to replace my old JBL Northbridge (N28) speakers, which were my front speakers for my basement home theater system.

At the heart of the home theater system, was the Marantz NR1408 AVR. Unfortunately, this particular AVR did not drive the new ELAC speakers sufficiently. Rated at 50W at 8 Ohms per channel, I found that the sound coming out of the ELAC, rated at 4 Ohms, was somewhat unsatisfying.

Since the AVR has pre-amp out connections, I started to search for a suitable stereo power amplifier that can output enough juice to drive my new ELAC’s. I settled on the NuPrime STA-9 power amplifier, with a 120W per channel at both 8 and 4 Ohms. The NuPrime and the ELAC’s were an excellent match. The sound was crisp, and the imaging was superb. You can hear the instrument separations and placements clearly through a wide soundstage. The vocals were warm and super comfortable to listen to. Today I am really happy with my basement setup. Unfortunately this new experience cost around $1200, $520 for the ELAC’s and $700 for the NuPrime.

The Bedroom Boom

Now, what should I do with my old JBL N28 speakers? Sell them, throw them out, or repurpose them? Selling them was not an option. A quick search on Kijiji and eBay yielded less than compelling value to dredge oneself through a resell transaction that is worth less than $100. Throwing them out seems like a huge waste on a perfectly good pair of speakers.

I decided to put them in my bedroom and replace my aging Bose Wave Radio/CD Player. The Bose sounded good but nothing close to the fidelity that I am now use to in both the basement and the living room setup. The JBL N28 are passive speakers so if I want them in my bedroom, I will need to find another stereo amplifier. However, I don’t want to invest in another NuPrime, which seemed excessive and expensive.

I found a $293.99, 80W per channel amplifier with many praises called Topping TP60. For source, I repurposed my Airport Express that was originally
feeding the Bose and redirected its input into the TP60. This combination gave new life to the N28 speakers.

To benchmark the different setups we were using a Chinese album named,《民歌·蔡琴》. The first song, 被遗忘的时光, is the same song used in the Infernal Affairs (無間道) movie. You can find the album on Apple Music. We had the following versions of this song:

• Apple Music (Streamed)
• CD (XRCD) 44.1KHz 16 Bits
• SACD 192KHz 24 Bits

After much A/B testing, I found the highest SACD fidelity with 192KHz at 24 Bits sounded the best. The differences were not marginal but substantial audible differences could be heard. The Apple Music version sounded almost like mono when compared to the high resolution versions. The female vocal came across more life like and real in the SACD version.

Pivotal Digital

So, what’s the problem? In this new bedroom setup, I simply used a 3.5mm audio jack RCA splitters to connect the Airport Express to the TP60. This first attempt at using the splitter cable uses the internal and inferior DAC.

To remedy the solution, I purchased a cheap external FiiO D3 DAC ($35), and used the mini-Toslink connection from the Airport Express. The song sounded better but was not the same as the basement. As it turns out, the Airport Express was limited to 44.1KHz, so I could not experience the hi-fidelity SACD source. When I streamed the SACD version, it just gets down-sampled. What a waste of perfectly good material. We cannot let good music goto waste, so onwards to a solution.

I needed to replace the Airport Express all together. A podcast that I listened to gave me the idea to explore how I can use my Raspberry Pi as the digital source for music. After much research, I found the combination of Raspberry Pi, HiFiBerry’s DAC+ Pro, and the Volumio software can give me what I wanted.

In summary, the Raspberry Pi with Volumio software acted as my Airport Express replacement, and the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro add on board eliminated the 44.1KHz limitation. This combination sounded really good.

Until I tried DSD materials through the stack.

DSD64 (2.8224MHz) and DSD128 (5.6448 MHz) music will play because Volumio will resample the material to 192KHz at 24 Bits, but sometimes it would stutter.
In my pursuit for native DSD capability, I ended up purchasing another external DAC that is capable of playing DSD natively. Since the Topping TP60 was so good, I thought I give the Topping D30 DAC ($175) a go. The inclusion of the D30 replaced the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro add on board, since the Raspberry Pi can directly connect to the D30 DAC via USB.

The final setup is:

• Raspberry Pi running Volumio to act as my Wireless streamer, rendering music from AirPlay, or from my Plex server acting as a NAS;
• Raspberry Pi emits the music as digital streamed data via the USB to my D30 DAC;
• The D30 DAC can now decode music up to 192KHz at 24 Bits and DSD128 natively, and amplifies the signal to pre-amp levels which is then fed to another toy, the Dilvpoetry Tube-01 amp, that buffers the input signal with 6J1 vacuum tubes;
• The output of the tube amp is then fed to the TP60 that then drives the JBL N28.

Whew! What a journey just to reuse my old pair of JBL N28 speakers. BUT I now have a setup in my bedroom that sounds almost as good as my basement setup. The imaging is not as good, but I am happy with what I have got, a wide stage, warm and realistic vocals, that can play soft jazz to put me to sleep. Harmony!

Update:

The Raspberry Pi has problematic USB drivers which caused crackling sounds with the D30. I had to add the following parameters into the /boot/cmdline.txt file.

• • dwc_otg.speed=1
  • dwc_otg.fiq_split_enable=0

Crackling still happens sometimes, but it is now bearable. Also without the speed parameter, the D30 will only play DSD using DoP at 100% volume. Obviously this was annoying as well.

On the lookout now for an alternate Raspberry Pi that has WiFi and a more robust USB port. Perhaps the ODROID-C2.

I deactivated my Facebook account on March 23. Here is my experience.

I continue to use messenger without any issues on my iPhone, but trying to use messenger on my computer via the browser eventually forces me to validate my identity with my Facebook account, which will implicitly reactivate my account. I had to consciously avoid doing this on many occasions. This means I can only use messenger on my mobile devices. This sucks.

During the deactivation period, I found using Instagram to be quite satisfying. I would say that a combination of Twitter and Instagram is a better fit for my social media needs than Facebook at the moment but it does have one severe drawback. When I find something of interest on the Internet, I cannot share links with Instagram at least not directly. I ended up sharing those thoughts with Twitter instead, but people on Twitter is not the same on Facebook. Also there are links within the Instagram App itself that will re-enable your Facebook account. I also had to consciously avoid those.

The other major difficulties is the use of my Facebook identity on other sites that I used, for example Strava and CBC, etc. disassociating these accounts from my Facebook account was annoying and most people will probably not tolerate it and simply reactivate their account. I did preserve through this process though and try to isolate my Facebook identity to just Facebook. However I have not found a way to separate Instagram entirely.

Facebook continues to send notifications via email even when you have your account deactivated. This includes messenger when you get a new message. Obviously clicking on these will eventually reactivate the account. Again I avoided doing this for about two weeks until this morning I inadvertently clicked on an email which brought me back to my Mobile Facebook Page. This automatically reactivated my account.

In summary, once you are a member of a social network, trying to leave the platform is extremely difficult. The combination of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook is a perfect trap that is difficult to escape from. You have to sever yourself entirely as an interactive Internet user to really do it. You can still consume from the Internet, but as soon as you like to engage you’ll find yourself being lured into the Facebook trap.

So I am back. I guess I am admitting that currently the benefits out weigh the risk.

Today I  took the plunge and deactivated my Facebook account. I can still be reached with Facebook messenger, but if you try to look at my Facebook account, it will show that I am no longer there.

I guess the best way to find me online now is here, or on:

• Twitter (@kanglu).
• LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kangclu/)

I may reactivate my account after a month, but we’ll see.

Our iMac (27-inch, Late 2012) is running out of space. We have a little over 150GB  free space left from 3.11TB. Even though our iMac is over 5 years old, it is still serving the family without much fuss.

Our collections of photos, videos, and recently burning our CD music into non-lossy format such as FLAC or ALAC, really has increased our disk space usage tremendously. We now want to give it more space.

I really like Apple’s Fusion Drive solution. It is a nice solution to achieve SSD speeds and also have lots of storage without the accompanying stiff price tag. This lead to some experimentation on how one can create an external fusion drive.

I purchased a 2 bay USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock that support UASP so that we can take advantage of the full 5Gbps bandwidth of USB 3.0. On one of the bays, I attached a 4TB Hard Drive that I have laying around, and the other bay I placed a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD drive.

I then use the Mac utility Disk Utility program to erase and partition both drives with GUID Partition Map using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. After the format is completed, the command line

diskutil list

will show

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS 4TB                     4.0 TB     disk4s2

/dev/disk5 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk5
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS 250GB                   249.7 GB   disk5s2

I then proceed to create the Logical Volume Group using the command line:

sudo diskutil cs create mediafusion /dev/disk5s2 /dev/disk4s2

I want to make sure that I specify the SSD drive as the first parameter, since it is the faster drive with ~400MB/s read and write throughput. Once the volume group is created, you’ll get the following output:

Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk5s2
Touching partition type on disk5s2
Adding disk5s2 to Logical Volume Group
Unmounting disk4s2
Touching partition type on disk4s2
Adding disk4s2 to Logical Volume Group
Creating Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Switching disk5s2 to Core Storage
Switching disk4s2 to Core Storage
Waiting for Logical Volume Group to appear
Discovered new Logical Volume Group "2CD5F422-95AA-4BA8-8158-F076494977E7"
Core Storage LVG UUID: 2CD5F422-95AA-4BA8-8158-F076494977E7
Finished CoreStorage operation

We finish the setup by creating a logical volume within the logical volume group by using the following command line:

sudo diskutil cs createVolume 2CD5F422-95AA-4BA8-8158-F076494977E7 jhfs+ MediaFusion 100%

I made sure that I use the LVG UUID from the previous output. I also found out that you can list all the fusion drives and their make up by executing:

sudo diskutil cs list

In the end, I now have a 4.25TB MediaFusion drive mounted on one the USB 3.0 ports of my iMac. I plan to move all my iTunes and Photos library on to that drive so that I can free up my main drive on my iMac.

There is another issue. Now that I have a total of 7.25TB on my iMac, my old 4TB Time Machine drive is insufficient. Luckily Costco has a 6TB external drive on sale for $188 CAD. I ended up purchasing two. One for onsite Time Machine, and the other for offsite storage in our safety deposit box.

Home IT upgrade completed!

Total cost for the upgrade is:

Item	Cost	Purchased From
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD	109.99	Canada Computers
Vantec Storage Accessory NexStar TX Dual Bay USB 3.0 HDD Dock Black	34.99	Canada Computers
WD My Book 6TB HDD	188.99	Costco

The total is $333.97 CAD + tax.

I did not include the extra 6TB drive for offsite storage, because that is my personal preference. I also omitted the 4TB HDD that I used because I repurposed my old Time Machine drive for that.

This is a fraction of the cost of a 2TB USB 3.0 SSD Drive, such as the 2TB Samsung T5 Portable External SSD with USB 3.1, which costs $879.99 CAD at the time of this writing. I get more than double the storage for a little more than a third of the cost. Okay, raw performance may not match the Samsung T5 drive, but I’m just using it for storing my iTunes library and other infrequently used media.

Last Friday I had the privilege of participating in my son’s school event called Educamp. The concept is to provide students from grades four to six a taste of modern skills that we are seeing more and more of as a necessity in today’s world. Students were split into groups of twenty or less, and they attended rotating hour long workshops. Each workshop covered one of the following topics:

• Coding
• 3D Printing
• Robotics
• Stop Motion Video

There may have been more topics, so sorry if I missed them here.

The day ran like a mini conference format with a total of four rotating sessions. Each session giving students an introduction to one of the above topics. Educamp also gave opportunities to selected grade seven students to run the sessions. My son Kalen was one of those students. You can read about his account here. Although the day was supervised by the teachers, but the sessions were largely presented by the students. I found the idea of students teaching other students in a day long mini conference such a brilliant concept!

I personally participated in four coding sessions with different groups of students. It was wonderful to see them excited and engaged with the MIT Scratch programming platform. The looks on the kids’ faces when they discovered what they can create with Scratch were priceless. The inquisitive nature of students chomping at the bit was fascinating. The sessions also made me appreciate the hard work that teachers face on a daily basis when coping with a group of excited kids. I really wanted to thank my grade seven helpers and the supervising teachers to ensure the sessions were focused, and made it so much more easier for me to present.

Kudos to all the staff at Redstone Public School for initiating such an event. I want to give a special shoutout to Mr. Grey who introduced the event to me and allowing me to participate and introduce coding to the kids at the event. It was extremely productive, and rewarding. I think the appetite for these types of topics are insatiable for the kids at these ages, and the future can definitely use more of these creative events!

 

On October 24^th, 2017, Chinese Ambassador Sun Gongyi (孙功谊) paid a celebratory visit to the home of Claude Ng Thow Hing (吳松光), wishing him a happy and healthy eightieth birthday.

Ambassador Sun expressed that Mr. Claude Ng Thow Hing’s father Mr. Wu Tao Xing (吳桃興), amongst many Chinese Mauritians helped to forge the Sino-
Mauritian relationship as we see today, and the formal establishment of the Chinese Embassy in Mauritius. These efforts and contributions are deeply appreciated, and the People of China will not forget these “old friends”. The Chinese Mauritians have consistently promoted the value of a healthy and strong friendship between China and Mauritius, expressing their deep connection to the motherland. The development of China will always be in the hearts and minds of the Chinese Mauritians.

Mr. Claude Ng Thow Hing and his family greatly appreciated the Ambassador Sun’s special visit. The Ng Thow Hing family together with other Chinese Mauritians are honoured to continue the heritage and legacy of  Mr. Wu Tao Xing, and will redouble their efforts to strengthen the Sino-Mauritian relationship.

Update: 2023-07-06

I found the official page from the Chinese embassy web site (http://mu.china-embassy.gov.cn/tpxw/201710/t20171025_6320015.htm). Just in case the URL changes in the future, I also provided a screenshot of the page below.

This evening I hesitantly attended my first School Council meeting at Richmond Green Secondary School, where my son is currently attending grade 9. My reluctance is sourced from an unknown level of commitment as a member of the council. However, tonight I was in an exploratory mood.

I was really impressed on the first day of school when almost all levels of the York Regional District School Board from the superintendent, trustee, and the administrative staff of the school were all in attendance to give a united, warm welcome to both new students and parents. The school continues to exceed my expectations with very informative weekly news letters sent via email to registered parents with email addresses.

One of these news letters mentioned a School Council meeting, and I recall a short conversation I had with Carol Chan, our school trustee. She encouraged us to participate and stay involved. One way of establishing better parent, board, and student communication is to be involved with the Student Council.

Suspecting that my son, belonging to a generation of young adults who will face very challenging times ahead, I wanted to explore and see what this open and accepting council can offer as opportunities for me to contribute in any way. Tonight’s meeting was largely filled with parents whose children are in grade 9 or 10 and there was one parent who has a child in grade 12. The principal and two vice-principals were all very friendly and facilitated the meeting. The meeting was largely introductory, and I look forward to our next meeting as more information will be shared. Certainly an hour a month is not too much to ask of a parent to stay involved.

Today was the first full day at Whistler and it was packed full of activities. We woke up early, had a light breakfast and headed towards the RZR Tour.

I’ve never done any off roading before so I looked forward to the bumpy and dusty trails. The tour did not disappoint. I had a blast. The duration was not too short and not too long. I really enjoyed driving the RZR. The trail was thrilling but not dangerously so. Everything was tempered just right. The guide and the organization was super nice as well. During the tour, we caught some beautiful scenery of the Whistler area. I would highly recommend this, but make sure you are okay with driving the RZR though. If you are not fond of driving, then you should probably be a passenger instead.

The tour was extremely dusty, so we had to get back to the hotel for a quick shower and a quick lunch. Afterwards, we proceeded to take the Gondola from the Whistler Village to the top of the mountain. At first I thought the price of $58 CAD per adult was quite expensive, but let me tell you, it is worth every dollar and you should not let this amount deter you from having a wonderful experience at the peaks.

We really took advantage of the beautiful weather we had and took almost all the lifts that were opened to us as well as hiking many of trails up top. Instead of my bland words, I’ll let the pictures do the depicting.

Overall a fulfilling and tiring day. Really enjoyed it!