Audioengine N22 Desktop Audio Amplifier

As explained in my review of the Audioengine P4][p4] passive speakers, Audioengine has recently expanded their products to include unpowered speakers. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that they also now sell the N22 Amplifier to power your passive spearkers.

The $199 N22 looks like something from a Kubric movie, monolithic with a single dial in the middle. It looks great next to your Mac, on a shelf, or beside your TV.

The N22 measures in 7”(H) x 2.75”(W) x 5.5”(D) and weighs about 3 1/2 pounds. The back of the N22 includes several connections including gold plated connections for two speakers, and inputs for RCA and mini-jack connectors. There is also a powered USB port that can be used to turn your N22 wireless amplifier (with the optional W1 Wireless transmitter) or charge your iDevice. There is also a variable line out that accommodates a subwoofer or external amplifier.

Both audio inputs are active at the same time so you can run two sources simultaneously. I did this with a Garage Band audio filie and my WX-11 wind controller (a sort of midi saxophone) and it worked great.

The N22 delivers 22 watts per channel and cools through passive convection. The unit runs remarkably cool. There is a discreet headphone amplifier that works well with your headphones of choice.

With all of our digital media migrating to just a few devices, we no longer need the complexity of amplifiers that we had when there was a phonograph, CD player, tape deck and (gasp) 8-track plugged in. The N22 offers a legitimate light-weight option to the traditional receiver/amplifier without the compromises you’d expect.

Audioengine provides the same 30 day trial policy for the N22 that it has for its speakers. So long as you don’t damage it and keep the original shipping materials, you can return it within the first 30 days for a full refund.

Audioengine P4 Passive Speakers

Audioengine, the company that melds a former Apple designer with a speaker guru has, for several years, released some very powerful bookshelf sized powered speakers for all of your iDevices. Recently, however, the company started selling a new line of passive speakers, the Audioengine P4.

Until now, if you wanted to hook up Audioengine speakers to your existing receiver, you were out of luck. All of Audioengine’s speapers before the P4 included their own powered amplifier, which was great for plugging into iDevices but no fun if you wanted to plug them into your existing amplifiers or surround-sound receivers. The P4 solves this problem removing the amplifier.

The speakers have the standard 2 wire connections and include threaded inserts for attaching to stands, walls, and ceiling bracket systems. Despite, their small size, they are beefy and well-built. The speakers are 9 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep and ship in cloth sacks that would get the approval of Steve Jobs.

But how do they sound?

The AP4s sound great. I’ve always been happy with the sound output from the relatively small bookshelf sized Audioengine speakers. You can crank them up and get a minimum of distortion. The company cut its teeth in the speaker business engineering high performance studio monitors, those speakers musicians use when recording. I’ve spent my fair share of time with studio monitors in my musician days. The best ones have to be rugged and able to play loud enough to give you the mix back despite all the other noise. This pedigree comes out in the Audioengine speakers.

The speakers include several features common with Audioengine’s other speakers including hand-built cabinets, 5-way gold-plated binding posts, silk dome tweeters and kevlar woofers, and they are magnetically shielded.

All of the Audioengine products share the same tuning so they work great together. I’m using my existing P4s to replace my two primary speakers on my stereo but considering buying two additional P4s to replace my surround speakers so everything is tuned together.

Whenever I can find the time, I enjoy butchering Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson songs on my Midi keyboard. While this is just a dull memory of my past degree of music nerdiness, sound is important to me and the Audioengine products suit very nicely indeed.

Pricing starts at $249. Audioengine contiues to offer its 30 day audition. If you purchase the speakers from Audioengine’s online store and are not satisfied, you can return them in the original packaging in like-new, undamaged condition within 30 days of purchase and get a full refund of your purchase price.

Password Security Wake Up Call

I’ve been beating the password security drum for some time now. Today’s news had an interesting bit on Gawker Media (owners of Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and several other popular sites) and how they got hacked. Most telling was Forbes’ article explaining how Gawker chief mucky-muck, Nick Denton, knew his account was hacked and didn’t immediately change his password. To add insult to injury, he used the same password for Google Docs and Twitter letting the hacker into most of his electronic life.

The moral of this story is simple. Don’t use the same password in multiple places. Ever. The easiest way avoid this pitfall is with 1Password, which you can get with the Mac Power Users discount here.

Another disturbing part of this story is Forbes’ passage that, if true, reflects a complete lack of concern for Gawker’s users. Forbes writes

In the chat, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, after hearing that it is just Gawker users who have been compromised, remarks “oh, well. unimportant”. Gawker’s Richard Lawson wants to know if the breach is limited to “just the peasants?”

The bottom line is you can’t rely on anyone to protect your password security but yourself and if you are using the same password at multiple locations, you are going to get burned. Finally, for good measure, twice a year set new passwords on all the really important accounts for good measure. (I do this when the clocks change.)

Home Screens – Ben Brooks

I’m not sure exactly when it happened but Ben Brooks (twitter) and his blog have wormed their way into my RSS feed and I’m quite pleased about it. Ben is prolific at the Brooks Review where he writes about his interests, often including insightful opinion pieces about technology in general and Apple products in particular. If you haven’t already, go check it out. Ben was nice enough to share his home screen and write about his favorite applications. So Ben, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Dialvetica and Birdhouse. Dialvetica is a great dialing app that orders your contacts for you based on who you call the most and has a persistent keyboard that searches as you type. I do a terrible job picking who is in my favorites list on the iPhone, Dialvetica though does an absolutely awesome job at it. The searching is great too because the first time you call a contact from the app it records your preferred number for contacting that person. That way I just hit the name and it calls that person, no second screen to select which number to use.
Birdhouse is another great app, but a really odd duck. It allows you to pre-compose tweets that you can send to Twitter later. Considering Twitter was originally thought up to share what is currently going on, Birdhouse is kind of an odd app. I don’t know why I like it so much, but I do like it, even if I don’t tweet from it very often.

What is your favorite app?

By virtue of being the most used app it would be Twitter, but as for the app I just love everything about, that would have to be Reeder. Either app is fantastic. I use Twitter constantly and other than the icon, I really don’t have any complaints about the way it works at all. 

Reeder though takes apps to the next level, it is a beautifully designed app in and out. From the app all the way to the different menus that it uses I really love it. Reeder truly makes RSS reading on the iPhone a joy for me and is the best app for killing time while I am waiting places.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

That would be Ego, it is a stat checking app. There is no reason I need to check stats as often as I do, other than the fact that Ego makes it ridiculously easy to do. If I needed more room on my iPhone it could be easily removed without changing my workflow at all. In fact I may actually gain a few minutes each day.

It is like a nervous habit for me to check Ego, which considering all the other nervous ticks one could have, I’ll take it.

What is the app you are still missing?

A blogging app for WordPress that is robust enough to allow me to actually blog on the go. Basically I need MarsEdit for iOS. Actually that is exactly what I need. The lack of custom fields really stops me dead in my tracks. I mostly just use the web interface, which is really just a bear to use on the iPhone.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone constantly, it is basically another appendage that I only stop using when I sleep. I really had to train myself to not use it while driving so that I can live a bit longer. Though I will confess that I do check it when I stop at a red light. I have become pretty good at not using it while driving though – baby steps.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The camera is the best iPhone 4 feature if you ask me (and you did). Past iPhones had pretty crappy cameras and so I was left having to carry around a Canon G9, now though with the iPhone 4 the camera has gotten to a point where the difference between the G9 and the iPhone is so close that I stopped carrying the G9. I really love the iPhone camera, I only wish it loaded a bit faster and took a rapid series of pictures (though I realize there are apps that do this). 

If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add or change?

I would add the ability to use the iPhone as a WiFi hotspot for sharing the 3G connection. That would be killer and if seamlessly integrated with your Mac, to the point where you Mac could activate it on your iPhone when it needs Internet access – well that would just make computing all that much better. The last bit I would love to have is faster Internet access on the iPhone, technologies like 4G are so close – most apps on the iPhone would be substantially more enjoyable if you could get faster Internet connections for them.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I decided to talk about the iPhone here and not the iPad because I think the iPhone has changed my life is a far more substantial way than the iPad has. That may change with time, and the iPad certainly is a killer device, but it is not the iPhone. My iPhone is always with me.

Thanks Ben!

iStopMotion 2 – Improves on an Original

iStopMotion, that easy-to-use stop motion application that everyone loves, got an update. The Boinx team worked overtime on this one. IStopMotion has everything you need to make your own stop motion movies. You boot up the application and use your built in iSight or tethered camera to shoot your masterpiece, one frame at a time.

You can make your own clay-mation movie or retell “To Kill a Mockingbird” using Legos. Your imagination is your only limitation. There is a tilt shift generator that lets you take a scene and make it look miniature. Here is an example from Boinx. This application is much more powerful than initially meets the eye. Want to do green screen? There is a chroma key.

The finalized product can be easily exported to iMovie to add transitions, effects, and publication.

iStopMotion has other applications as well. You can make stop motion photography. My family is making a time lapsed video of us decorating our Christmas tree this weekend. You can also use it to make flip books, which can be lots of fun at a party. (Just load up on printer ink first.)
There are three flavors, Home $49, with the basic features, Express ($99) for more serious movie makers and Pro ($499) that includes high end features like Final Cut integration, HD, and maximum output at 10,000 x 10,000.

I could prattle on about how much fun it is putting this application in the hands of my children and watching what they do with it but that is just the half of it. In truth, I love letting out my own inner Spielberg and iStopMotion makes this dead simple.