ContentedLife

You may have read my generally glowing review of the M-Audio Xponent. I’ve been meaning to update you all with some important news on that front. After I wrote the review, my Xponent developed a fault. I’d had it less than a month, and it had had only fairly light use, maybe 8-10 hours total.

One of the audio channels started cutting out (on both Main and Booth out). Started as just a bit of distortion, then it was really quiet and badly distorted, then it cut out completely. The headphone channel wasn’t affected.

I surmised that this was a bad electrical connection. To test this theory, I did what any self-respecting techie would do: gave it a whack (well, a gentle tap on the side, and then lifting the right-hand side of the unit by about an inch and letting it drop). That did the trick: the sound cut back in, diagnosis confirmed.

Obviously I was mortified that the unit should have such a trivial manufacturing fault (it wasn’t the only one either… I’d already started to uncover some much more subtle and minor problems, like one of the pots being centred at controller value 66 rather than 64). So it was sent back to DV. A month later, repairs were still not done and there was no ETA, so after some argument and quoting of the Sale of Goods Act, DV graciously agreed to a refund.

All of that prompted a reassessment of what I was aiming for with DJing, and whether computer-based mixing would really work for me even if I got a fully working Xponent. Was I happy to be staring at a monitor to mix? No, I do that all day for my day job. Could I imagine taking a laptop and console out to a club every time I play out? No, I’d just worry about it getting nicked, broken, and the hassle of setting it up. Was I content with the quality? Sort of, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t ever going to be as good as a pro quality mixer. If I’m serious about DJing, I might as well do it on the equipment that is already there in every club the length and breadth of the land.

So I decided to invest in Pioneer CDJ1000s and a new mixer after all. That has definitely turned out to be the right choice for me. I’m having a lot more fun now than I was doing it on the computer, and getting professional-quality results that I don’t think I’d have got from the Xponent. All at much higher cost, of course, so it comes down to considering it as an investment rather than an expense. I’m glad I tried out the computer mixing option first, and did it with a console that (manufacturing defects aside), can seriously claim to be the best or one of the best out there. That left me in no doubt that I needed to pursue a different approach, rather than just a different console.

Updated: 2007/07/27 - New section on LEDs. Update on mixxx SVN.

In case any of you who have read my review of the M-Audio Xponent are thinking of getting one and wondering “but will it work under Linux?”, the short answer is a resounding Yes!… except for the LEDs, so far. More on that later.

I use Debian unstable with a hand-rolled kernel. YMMV, of course, but the chances are that if you’re using any modern distro you’ll be fine. In fact you may not even have to manually insert the kernel modules if you have a working udev setup, you might just be able to plug’n'play.

Full details below the cut, as they say…

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Update: After you’ve read this article, before you rush out and buy one of these, you should read this update (don’t worry, I’ll link to it at the bottom of the page too.

It’s rare for me to suffer from “gear lust” but the M-Audio Xponent set my pulse racing when I discovered it on the web. I’ve now had it for a few days so here’s my review. I won’t be reviewing the Torq software: I haven’t used it, as I only have Linux at the moment.
There’s a separate article about my experience getting the Xponent working with Linux and mixxx.

Review follows:

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A good mobile phone deserves a good case — ideally one that it never has to be removed from, so that it’s always protected from dirt and droppage. So I invested in a Body Glove “Scuba Cellsuit” for my K750i (got it on eBay). Here follows a review with some pictures.

For me the important things about a case are, in order:

1. Doesn’t impede usage of the phone while in the case.
2. Provides some protection if dropped.
3. Doesn’t make the phone twice as big.
4. Provides extra grip, making droppage less likely.

You’ll notice the absence of any requirement for it to look good. In fact, I’m quite happy for a case to look rubbish if it fulfills all the above criteria. Not least because it makes it look less worth stealing.

The Body Glove however manages to succeed at all the above and looks alright too. Not as good as the phone looks without it, obviously, but that’s fine by me. (more…)

I just had a very strange experience. I hooked up my new Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone via USB to my PC (running Linux 2.6.11 Debian unstable). And it just worked. I didn’t have to faff around with the USB driver as I’d had to for my Treo 600 a year ago. It just thought for a while, dumped several KB of its thoughts into syslog (I probably selected a debugging option when I built the kernel), and *ping* the memory stick in the phone appeared as /dev/sda. I just had to mount /dev/sda1 (vfat), and there it was.

Almost disappointing.

The phone is very nice, btw. Screen is good, mp3 playback is very good (even with the supplied earbuds — even through the speaker is not bad), camera is alright (for a phone). Organiser is rubbish: you can’t set up events without a time, or recurring events like birthdays, and the bold font used to identify dates with appointments in calendar view is barely different from the normal font. Sometimes I think I should just go back to a paper diary…