THE CONNECTED LIFE

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How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Apr 06, 2016  |  8 comments
Last summer NPR posted a story entitled ”How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?” that let users “blindly” compare six different tracks recorded at identical volume levels at three different qualities: MP3 at 128 Kbps, MP3 at 320 Kbps, and uncompressed WAV. The goal was to see if listeners could discern the quality difference and then correctly pick which version was WAV.

After thousands of results it turns out that people can tell the difference. But just barely.

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HRA for the Masses
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Apr 01, 2014  |  19 comments
Ask virtually any music listener if they own any high-resolution audio files, and they’ll likely give you a blank stare, wait a beat, and then maybe come back with a question like, “You mean like CDs I put on my computer or something?”

For the record, high-resolution refers to music recorded at better than CD’s 44.1-kHz/16-bit quality, usually 96-kHz/24-bit, typically written as “96/24.” (See my high-rez audio audio primer here).

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I Watched the New Mission Impossible at Home for $500
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Sep 02, 2015  |  10 comments
OK, full disclosure: I didn’t really spend $500 of my own, personal, John money; I had a reviewer’s account. But I did watch Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Terminator: Genisys and Southpaw in my home theater over a month ago using the coolest piece of technology you’ve probably never even heard of. The company behind it is PRIMA Cinema and their movie player allows an elite group of owners the ability to watch first-run Hollywood films in the privacy of their homes, usually on the same day they are released to the cinemas. Not only that, but PRIMA delivers the best picture quality of anything you’ve ever seen outside the Arclight or El Capitan.

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iControl Your Life
CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO, THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Jul 13, 2011  |  0 comments

Some people immediately get that the iPad can become the controller for an automation system, allowing them to control not only their audio/video gear but also their lights, HVAC, security, and irrigation systems.

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If This, Then That: Automation and Security
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Jul 16, 2014  |  0 comments
When you think about a home security system, you probably think about protection and sirens that go off and keypads that go BEEP-BEEP when someone opens a door. And while that is a huge part of a security system’s mission statement, a security system is also a huge source of information that an automation system can mine to execute events around the home!

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Installations: A Higher Power
CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO, THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Nov 05, 2007  |  0 comments

Cathedrals are almost preternaturally quiet havens where even the softest whispers, shuffling in the pews, or footsteps across marble floors can seem blasphemously loud.

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Installations: Let Us Entertain You
CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO, THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Oct 04, 2007  |  0 comments

While it might take a village to raise a child, it takes an army and lots of time to build an estate! Custom Theater and Audio (CTA) in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, where I work as lead system designer, was recently involved in all aspects of the A/V design and installation for Phil and Janet Pate's new home in North Myrtle Beach.

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Invest in Your Network
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Jun 09, 2014  |  1 comments
The landscape of our entertainment systems and how we enjoy them has continued to evolve with changing technology. And the importance of different components has changed right along with it. Remember when a cassette player/recorder was the most important music playback device? And then it was a CD player. And then a CD changer. And then an iPod. Now you probably never use any of those devices any longer, rather relying on streaming music from a drive on your home’s network, some cloud-based service like Pandora or Spotify, or beaming it via Bluetooth or AirPlay.
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It's All Right to Be Wrong
AV RECEIVER SETUP, HDTV SETUP, THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Sep 16, 2010  |  0 comments

We definitely don't need to be bogged down with more rules. Practically everywhere we go, someone or something is telling us what to do or what not to do. Walk. Don't walk. This lane 15 items or less. Pants required to eat here. Enough!

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Listening for Life
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  May 07, 2014  |  0 comments
Good listening is safe listening. Here are three sets of headphones that add to your (and your kids) enjoyment of music without blowing out your eardrums.
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Living the Automagic Lifestyle
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Dec 17, 2014  |  0 comments
Automation describes using control systems to operate equipment or other applications with little or no human interaction. At its simplest, home automation could be a garage door opener or a mercury-filled thermostat kicking on your HVAC system; and at its most complex, there’s virtually nothing an automation system can’t do.

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Living with Robots (and Gawking Neighbors)
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Aug 24, 2016  |  1 comments
When you’re constantly surrounded by technology and automation, you tend to take things for granted, just accepting all the cool stuff happening around you as normal. It isn’t until someone who doesn’t live with this stuff on a daily basis comes over and points out all the stuff that happens in our house as different and special that we pay attention to it and realize how awesome it is.
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Long Live the (AVR) King!
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Jan 20, 2015  |  10 comments
A customer called my installation company recently looking to upgrade his system. We did the original in stall at his vacation home back in 2001, and he wanted to replace the aging DLP with a new flat panel, upgrade to a Netflix-streaming Blu-ray player, and get a new universal remote. When I looked through his file, I saw his AV receiver was approaching 13 years old, so I recommended he replace that as well to take advantage of a generation’s worth of technology improvements.
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Meet MowBot: Husqvarna's Automower Robotic Lawnmower
THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Aug 10, 2016  |  3 comments
I’ll be honest, when I first heard about Husqvarna’s Automower robotic lawnmower, my first thought was, “Well, that’s stupid.” I mean, why would someone need a Roomba for their lawn? Dumb.

Then I thought about it a little longer and started to weight the cost of the Automower versus my personal time and cost of cutting the grass or what I have been paying someone else to do it, and how nice it would be to come home and always have a perfectly groomed lawn, and Automower started to make a lot more sense. Then when I started to think about all the grief I get from my lawn guy – broken sprinkler heads, not coming for weeks at a time, yearly price increases – I started getting really excited about the prospect of letting a robot cut my grass.

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Microsoft Achieves Complete Home Domination
CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO, THE CONNECTED LIFE
John Sciacca  |  Sep 11, 2008  |  0 comments

You may consider Jim Carrey to be many things - comedic genius, overpaid goofball - but technological futurist probably isn't one of them. However, his prediction in the 1996 movie The Cable Guy has proved to be surprisingly accurate: "The future is now!

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