We all know how horrid those cheap speakers are in the boat stereo
systems. There's no place to really PUT speakers for good stereo and
any place you mount them generally sounds awful. Panels and seating
supports aren't good speaker boxes. Besides that, what YOU want to
listen to is not what anyone ELSE wants to listen to. So, many aboard
have portable MP3 players of some sort that have CORDS on them to drag
around, soon to be destroyed climbing around in boats.

How about a Bluetooth Broadcast Station to a Bluetooth headset that you
can hear anywhere aboard?? Leave the player, plugged into its charger,
in a safe place out of the weather, not hanging from your pocket, and
just wear your headset. Here's what I found:

The Motorola S9 is a fantastic behind-the-head Bluetooth headset. It's
fidelity is great. It's a great cellphone handsfree headset, too.
It's tolerable to wear. It's soft rubber earplugs fit nicely and seal
the earcanal well enough you can even cruise WalMart listening to what
YOU want, completely blanking out the Walmart Network spam spewing from
the suspended TVs from the ceiling. It recharges from miniUSB and will
play all day, as long as you can stand to wear it, on a charge. It
supports both A2DP and handsfree so the phone can use it, but the
designers screwed up because the phone only talks through the left
earset, instead of both like it should, its only fault. Made of soft
plastic and rubber, it passes my stringent NO TOLERANCE FOR MECHANICAL
NOISES TEST. I will not wear a headset that clicks, creaks, or makes
any other noise when you move your head...you know, like the $150 Bose
plastic crap headsets do. The S9 is totally silent unless you tap on
it.
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/pro...alObjectId=177

Receivers need a transmitter.......so......

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2099334,00.asp

What I found was the Sony TMR-BT10 Bluetooth Stereo A2DP transmitter.
They had another unit I may get later that's an AC-powered transmitter
OR receiver, but I wanted it portable so I could use it with portable
MP3 players I've had a long time and, of course, my Nokia N800 internet
tablet. It has a standard right-angled mini phone plug that will plug
into anything not made by Apple, which, of course, requires a $30
"adapter" nonsense.

I unpacked it and it was D-E-A-D, its Lithium-Ion battery pack
discharged. So, I charged it for 30 minutes of is dead-to-full 3 hour
recharge time just to get some juice into it for testing. It's been
running over an hour with no sign of going dead, so far. It's playing
streaming audio from my Linux tablet. The PC Mag review says the range
is too short, but that's not true with the Motorola S9. My house is
70' long and I can ALMOST use it to the other end. Put it in the middle
of the house and it works all over, especially if it's clipped (has
pocket clip on back) to something higher up.

Pairing is with any device as long as its code is 0000, which is all it
supports. I turned off the Motorola Z6m Alltel phone to pair it without
interference it was already paired with. Turned on the S9 then held
down the power button on the Sony for 7 seconds and it paired
immediately. I then turned the phone back on....AND THE PHONE PAIRED TO
IT, TOO! With the Sony paired with the A2DP stereo, the Z6m Sellphone
paired with the handsfree, simultaneously! When you press the phone
button on the S9, it mutes the audio from the Sony, just like it does
with the A2DP stereo music player in the phone, during the phone call,
then the S9 restores the audio from the Sony when the phone call is
done. The phone ringing also interrupts the A2DP just as it should.
The Sony ignores the mute button on the S9, though, so you can't mute
the stereo if someone wants to talk to you....a small deficiency.

The audio is fantastic through the Bluetooth link. Plugged into the
tablet it sounds as good as my Sennheiser DJ headphones plugged into the
tablet...without the wires....or being tied to the tablet while
listening.

I moved it to the headphone jack on the front of my Emachines/Gateway PC
and booted Winamp with some MP3s. Again, it worked great and had great
fidelity and separation. It'll work, I'm sure, with my stereo when I
find my mini to 1/4" stereo phone plug adapter...??..somewhere...??

Sony's webpage:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...roductDisplay?
catalogId=10551&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665262083&storeId=10151

says it's a discontinued item, probably because BT is just too expensive
with all the licensing for it to be affordable. $80 for the transmitter
and $130 for the S9 is just too much for a headset, BT or otherwise. It
came out in 2007 and they've already stopped making it. Best Buy has
new ones for $72, off a little from the $79 retail.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...0108_120708-20
Amazon has the transmitter for $54 and the S9 for $72 from one of their
dealers. The transmitter is a refurb, it looks like.

Caveat Emptor. My S9 utility just went way up....(c;

Larry wrote:
We all know how horrid those cheap speakers are in the boat stereo
systems.

[snipped a bunch of bluetooth stuff]

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?

Cheers
Marty

Marty wrote in
:

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?



Whatever bit rate they're in when I download them from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(many genres here) off usenet. Tonight I'm
stripping alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.jazz for a while.

Most are 128Kbps, but sometimes they go crazy with variable bit rates far
above that. As the bit rate for the CDs was 44.1K to begin with, it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good....no
matter what the hypers say. Sceptics only need see an audiologist to get
their own personal bandwidth tests to confirm it....

FLAC, while really cool, is crazy.

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:41:43 +0000, Larry wrote:

Marty wrote in
m:

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?



Whatever bit rate they're in when I download them from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(many genres here) off usenet. Tonight I'm
stripping alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.jazz for a while.

Most are 128Kbps, but sometimes they go crazy with variable bit rates far
above that. As the bit rate for the CDs was 44.1K to begin with,

44.1k x 2 x16

it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good....no
matter what the hypers say. Sceptics only need see an audiologist to get
their own personal bandwidth tests to confirm it....

FLAC, while really cool, is crazy.

it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good.

No, perhaps your geezer ears aren't that good. The bitrate of an MP3 has
more to do with compression than CD digitization sampling rates. But here
again it's clear you don't know what you're talking about.

"Bill Kearney" wrote in
t:

it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good.

No, perhaps your geezer ears aren't that good. The bitrate of an MP3
has more to do with compression than CD digitization sampling rates.
But here again it's clear you don't know what you're talking about.



Sure wished you lived close, Bill. I'd like to try a little test on
you....

I've done this test with others, maybe not as nasty as you seem, but the
test was positive.

We took their favorite CD and I did a simple rip at 128Kbps to MP3. I
own a huge 1450 watt DJ system that can play both the original CD and my
pitiful excuse for an MP3 off my cheap Gateway laptop's sound chips
through the same control board and JBL's best $900 speakers. I play for
an older crowd, Carolina Beach Music, classic rock, Jimmy Buffett, stuff
like that, for parties, even for pay, occasionally, though I don't
promote it much any more.

The test was simple. I'll play each track of their favorite CD twice,
track for track, in succession. You pick out which is the original and
which is the MP3 of it at 128Kbps off simple, free Winamp without any of
my other bag of tricks like Sound Solutions great broadcast-quality 5-
band compander for Winamp. We use only Winamp's MP3 simple decoder with
the board set to equal levels on the meters. No games with the system.

To date, noone was successful in telling the difference on even the
finest symphonic music from a Red Label RCA expensive CD. The human
ears of all the test subjects just isn't that good. It's
BULL****....plain and simple.

You need a spectrum analyzer and some classy equipment to find the
differences, none of which the human ear can detect.

But, you have it your way.... My electronic students always started the
year recording from the finest reel-to-reel machines big money could buy
at 15 ips....until I showed them the reality of the recording and radio
business they were getting it from...(c; Radio used to use 3 3/4 ips
from big Scully machines on automation before the computers took over.
The music on your FM station is MP3 to save drive space....all of it.

Too funny....(c;

Larry wrote:
Marty wrote in
:

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?



Whatever bit rate they're in when I download them from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(many genres here) off usenet. Tonight I'm
stripping alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.jazz for a while.

Most are 128Kbps, but sometimes they go crazy with variable bit rates far
above that. As the bit rate for the CDs was 44.1K to begin with, it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good....no
matter what the hypers say. Sceptics only need see an audiologist to get
their own personal bandwidth tests to confirm it....

FLAC, while really cool, is crazy.



Gawd almighty Larry, your ears must really suck, you can use whatever
piece of crap speakers you like. CDs are 44.1Ksamples/sec, usually at
16 bits per sample, corresponds to 1.044Mb/s. Your 128Kbs sample, even
at 8 bits per sample corresponds to 8ksamples for each channel, Nyquist
theorem tells us that the highest frequency that will be recorded with
this is a mere 4Khz. If you can't hear the problem with this, either
your hearing is seriously impaired or your reproduction system is
seriously substandard. I occasionally download stuff from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.xxx, but I won't bother with anything less than
256kbs, even they are not great. FLAC, is not only cool, but if one has
a decent sound system and decent ears, the only way to go.

I've yet to hear a blue tooth system worth the trouble, for music anyway.

Cheers
Marty

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:34:19 -0400, Marty wrote:

Larry wrote:
Marty wrote in
:

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?



Whatever bit rate they're in when I download them from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(many genres here) off usenet. Tonight I'm
stripping alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.jazz for a while.

Most are 128Kbps, but sometimes they go crazy with variable bit rates far
above that. As the bit rate for the CDs was 44.1K to begin with, it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good....no
matter what the hypers say. Sceptics only need see an audiologist to get
their own personal bandwidth tests to confirm it....

FLAC, while really cool, is crazy.



Gawd almighty Larry, your ears must really suck, you can use whatever
piece of crap speakers you like. CDs are 44.1Ksamples/sec, usually at
16 bits per sample, corresponds to 1.044Mb/s. Your 128Kbs sample, even
at 8 bits per sample corresponds to 8ksamples for each channel, Nyquist
theorem tells us that the highest frequency that will be recorded with
this is a mere 4Khz.

No cigar :-( Nyquist theorem not applicable in this way to non-linear
processes such as compressed audio signals, particularly lossy
perceptual audio coding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Audio_Coding


If you can't hear the problem with this, either
your hearing is seriously impaired or your reproduction system is
seriously substandard. I occasionally download stuff from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.xxx, but I won't bother with anything less than
256kbs, even they are not great. FLAC, is not only cool, but if one has
a decent sound system and decent ears, the only way to go.

I've yet to hear a blue tooth system worth the trouble, for music anyway.

Cheers
Marty

Goofball_star_dot_etal wrote:
On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:34:19 -0400, Marty wrote:

Larry wrote:
Marty wrote in
:

Larry, at what bit rate do you encode your MP3s?


Whatever bit rate they're in when I download them from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(many genres here) off usenet. Tonight I'm
stripping alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.jazz for a while.

Most are 128Kbps, but sometimes they go crazy with variable bit rates far
above that. As the bit rate for the CDs was 44.1K to begin with, it's all
over kill above 64Kbps, anyways. Human ears aren't near that good....no
matter what the hypers say. Sceptics only need see an audiologist to get
their own personal bandwidth tests to confirm it....

FLAC, while really cool, is crazy.


Gawd almighty Larry, your ears must really suck, you can use whatever
piece of crap speakers you like. CDs are 44.1Ksamples/sec, usually at
16 bits per sample, corresponds to 1.044Mb/s. Your 128Kbs sample, even
at 8 bits per sample corresponds to 8ksamples for each channel, Nyquist
theorem tells us that the highest frequency that will be recorded with
this is a mere 4Khz.

No cigar :-( Nyquist theorem not applicable in this way to non-linear
processes such as compressed audio signals, particularly lossy
perceptual audio coding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_Audio_Coding

Nyquist still applies, lossy perceptual encoding just lets you throw
out a lot of audio information and claim that it's imperceptible. This
may be true for some listeners, perhaps many listeners. Like people that
think that a Pioneer 707 is a professional quality deck. I've got an
Ampex 440C, I take my sound seriously, I wear hearing protection, when I
was younger I wore hearing protection to concerts, now I just don't go.

I don't think even Boobsie would listen to an MP3 at 128K.

Cheers
Marty

"Larry" wrote in message
...
We all know how horrid those cheap speakers are in the boat stereo
systems. There's no place to really PUT speakers for good stereo and
any place you mount them generally sounds awful. Panels and seating
supports aren't good speaker boxes. Besides that, what YOU want to
listen to is not what anyone ELSE wants to listen to. So, many aboard
have portable MP3 players of some sort that have CORDS on them to drag
around, soon to be destroyed climbing around in boats.

How about a Bluetooth Broadcast Station to a Bluetooth headset that you
can hear anywhere aboard?? Leave the player, plugged into its charger,
in a safe place out of the weather, not hanging from your pocket, and
just wear your headset. Here's what I found:

The Motorola S9 is a fantastic behind-the-head Bluetooth headset. It's
fidelity is great. It's a great cellphone handsfree headset, too.
It's tolerable to wear. It's soft rubber earplugs fit nicely and seal
the earcanal well enough you can even cruise WalMart listening to what
YOU want, completely blanking out the Walmart Network spam spewing from
the suspended TVs from the ceiling. It recharges from miniUSB and will
play all day, as long as you can stand to wear it, on a charge. It
supports both A2DP and handsfree so the phone can use it, but the
designers screwed up because the phone only talks through the left
earset, instead of both like it should, its only fault. Made of soft
plastic and rubber, it passes my stringent NO TOLERANCE FOR MECHANICAL
NOISES TEST. I will not wear a headset that clicks, creaks, or makes
any other noise when you move your head...you know, like the $150 Bose
plastic crap headsets do. The S9 is totally silent unless you tap on
it.
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/pro...alObjectId=177

Receivers need a transmitter.......so......

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2099334,00.asp

What I found was the Sony TMR-BT10 Bluetooth Stereo A2DP transmitter.
They had another unit I may get later that's an AC-powered transmitter
OR receiver, but I wanted it portable so I could use it with portable
MP3 players I've had a long time and, of course, my Nokia N800 internet
tablet. It has a standard right-angled mini phone plug that will plug
into anything not made by Apple, which, of course, requires a $30
"adapter" nonsense.

I unpacked it and it was D-E-A-D, its Lithium-Ion battery pack
discharged. So, I charged it for 30 minutes of is dead-to-full 3 hour
recharge time just to get some juice into it for testing. It's been
running over an hour with no sign of going dead, so far. It's playing
streaming audio from my Linux tablet. The PC Mag review says the range
is too short, but that's not true with the Motorola S9. My house is
70' long and I can ALMOST use it to the other end. Put it in the middle
of the house and it works all over, especially if it's clipped (has
pocket clip on back) to something higher up.

Pairing is with any device as long as its code is 0000, which is all it
supports. I turned off the Motorola Z6m Alltel phone to pair it without
interference it was already paired with. Turned on the S9 then held
down the power button on the Sony for 7 seconds and it paired
immediately. I then turned the phone back on....AND THE PHONE PAIRED TO
IT, TOO! With the Sony paired with the A2DP stereo, the Z6m Sellphone
paired with the handsfree, simultaneously! When you press the phone
button on the S9, it mutes the audio from the Sony, just like it does
with the A2DP stereo music player in the phone, during the phone call,
then the S9 restores the audio from the Sony when the phone call is
done. The phone ringing also interrupts the A2DP just as it should.
The Sony ignores the mute button on the S9, though, so you can't mute
the stereo if someone wants to talk to you....a small deficiency.

The audio is fantastic through the Bluetooth link. Plugged into the
tablet it sounds as good as my Sennheiser DJ headphones plugged into the
tablet...without the wires....or being tied to the tablet while
listening.

I moved it to the headphone jack on the front of my Emachines/Gateway PC
and booted Winamp with some MP3s. Again, it worked great and had great
fidelity and separation. It'll work, I'm sure, with my stereo when I
find my mini to 1/4" stereo phone plug adapter...??..somewhere...??

Sony's webpage:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...roductDisplay?
catalogId=10551&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665262083&storeId=10151

says it's a discontinued item, probably because BT is just too expensive
with all the licensing for it to be affordable. $80 for the transmitter
and $130 for the S9 is just too much for a headset, BT or otherwise. It
came out in 2007 and they've already stopped making it. Best Buy has
new ones for $72, off a little from the $79 retail.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...0108_120708-20
Amazon has the transmitter for $54 and the S9 for $72 from one of their
dealers. The transmitter is a refurb, it looks like.

Caveat Emptor. My S9 utility just went way up....(c;


I don't think it would be appropriate when underway... too hard to hear the
VHF or signals. Of course, unless I'm on vacation, I don't listen to music
while underway anyway.. only off-watch.


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com