Blog-of-gain

A tech-oriented blog from a Linux user


Latest blog updates

2023-12-06Alesis Turbo Mesh Kit review: Add instructions for macOS and MidiPipe.
2022-08-31Of life and love: Add some recent thoughts and discoveries.
2022-02-27Learning to ice skate: Add notes about baking new skates.
2022-01-04Rant: loudness war, style over functionality, etc.: New article.
2021-12-31Uupumus - burnout (in Finnish): Lisätty perinteinen loppuvuoden päivitys.

Filtering by tag: audio

Sony SBH70 bluetooth earphones review

...with a bit of modding too, of course

Preview

I wanted to have new earphones I could use when walking or doing sports. One of the requirements was they should be open design. I ended up buying the Sony SBH70 bluetooth earphones, found some shortcomings and tried to fix them with a little bit of modding. Read the full article to see some custom wingtips.

Easy acoustic tweaks for your room

Stopping flutter echo, equalizing with ALSA and gstreamer

Preview

Most mortals have to listen to music in a somewhat small room - a closed space, which will usually result in boomy bass at some frequencies, and terrible flutter echo in the upper end of the audible spectrum.

Read this article to find out quick and cheap tricks to remedy the problems.

Building a silent computer

A somewhat obsolete article I still wanted to share

Preview

If one wants a silent gaming rig, nowadays they may just pretty much put a few extra drachmas in it and achieve the wanted results with little to no effort. But it hasn't always been like that. In this article I tell about my four-year-old computer and what I did to keep it silent. Some points might be of interest even nowadays.

DIY acoustic tub

How to play the trumpet in a quiet environment the right way

Preview

Especially since getting an easily recurring tinnitus a few years ago I've been super careful not to play my trumpet without adequate damping. Wearing earplugs works, but doesn't feel or sound good, and it doesn't help the neighbours one bit. I decided to build myself an acoustic absorber tub. Read the article to see how it fares even in hard-surfaced rooms.

Updates

2018-11-18Add decibel measurements.

Configuring ALSA for pro hardware setups

Advanced .asoundrc / asound.conf examples

Nowadays most Linux distributions probably use PulseAudio for audio. In my opinion, not that long ago it was completely unusable. I still do not use it on my main rig, and find it mostly an unnecessary piece of software that potentially creates latency or configuration problems. In most cases, you usually don't really need it. In this article I'll show some tricks on how to write a killer ALSA setup. Recommended for audiophiles, movie lovers, recording artists and other crazy folks.

DIY acoustic panels

Preview

Acoustic panels can be quite expensive. If you are on a low budget or need not only to just dampen your small room's reverb but also attenuate some noise, building heavy acoustic panels might do the trick. In this article I'll show what I built a couple of years ago.

KVM audio with ALSA loopback

Getting audio to work with KVM might be a bit tricky, especially when KVM expects to have exclusive access to your audio hardware. This is a problem if one would like to keep on using the host system audio while a guest is running. In this article we solve the problem using ALSA loopback devices.

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