Introduction

I am reviewing the Braven BRV-X outdoor Bluetooth speaker which is effectively the “out-and-about” equivalent of the Braven 710 Bluetooth speaker. This unit is designed for rugged outdoor operation and even has a sound-optimisation mode for use when outdoors and you want to cover a large area. As well, it has the ability to charge other devices, mostly smartphones, Mi-Fi routers and the like, from its own battery as what most of the Braven speakers could do.

Price

The unit itself:

RRP including tax AUD $299.99

Form Factor

Single-piece speaker

Connections

Speakers

The unit itself

Rear view with screw cap that covers connections and NFC touch-to-pair area

The Braven BRV-X Bluetooth speaker is designed from the outset to be rugged and suitable for use outside. It is housed in a rubber enclosure with a metal perforated grille and some rubber pads act as the speaker’s control surface. The screw cap, which reminds you of a jar’s cap protects the sockets on the back of the speaker from water and other contaminants. These lead to another Bluetooth speaker that excels when it comes to build quality. As well, they supply a carry strap which you thread on to the speaker to make it easy to carry. Unlike the Braven 710, this unit is charged using a supplied “wall-wart” power transformer rather than being connected to a computer or USB charger.

Connections – USB power out for phones, AUX IN for wired audio connections, battery level indication, INDOOR-OUTDOOR tone switch

The unit is easy to set up and integrate with your phone, tablet or computer. Here, you can pair your Android or Windows NFC-capable device to the speaker using NFC-based “touch-to-pair” setup. On the other hand, you would have to pair Apple devices and other devices that don’t implement NFC by holding down the PLAY button until you hear a distinct tone before scanning for it using your device and the speaker will show up as “BRAVEN BRV-X” on the device list.

Like other Braven speakers such as the previously-reviewed Braven 710, you can pair the BRV-X with another Braven speaker to establish a wirelessly-linked stereo speaker pair for better stereo channel separation. As well, it can work as an external battery pack for most smartphones, “Mi-Fi”devices and the like, whether to offer “boost-charging” or extended run-time. This has the same power capabilities like the Braven 710 previously reviewed.

Sound quality

The Braven BRV-X speaker does sound clear but doesn’t come across with tight bass even for today’s bass-heavy popular music. It can be set for indoor or outdoor operation through a simple two-position switch. When set for indoor operation, it can come across as being a bit rich for bass while the outdoor position gives a brighter sound, apparently to cover a larger area.

Rubberised control buttons for your smartphone, tablet or laptop

I can adjust the speaker to just about the maximum level before it sounds awful but this would cover a small room or be good enough for listening while you are close to that speaker. Most likely, I would say it comes across as sounding like a lot of mid-sized portable radios commonly available during the 1970s or like a lot of the Internet radios previously reviewed on this site.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

As I have said with the Braven 710, this could be released as a variant with an integrated radio tuner to serve as an FM or, perhaps, DAB+ digital radio.

Braven could implement an easy-to-attach carry-strap setup to improve on the useability of this unit with its carry strap. This could be achieved in a similar manner to the way the seatbelts work in your car where they clip in to place but are released when you push a button on the buckle.

Conclusion

I would recommend the Braven BRV-X Bluetooth speaker as a unit that would appeal to those of us who engage in a lot of outdoor activity and want to see it as a Bluetooth answer to the typical small portable radio that ends up being used outdoors.

Articles

Apple to unveil iPhones with 4.7in and 5.5in screens on September 9 | The Australian

Apple sets Sept. 9 for new iPhone debut, report says | CNet

My Comments

Apple now has intentions to supply a smartphone as large as most desirable Android smartphones

Personally, I have noticed Apple iPhone users become enamoured over the larger screens offered by the recent crop of Android-based high-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S and Note series. For example, a friend of mine liked the fact that my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had a large screen and thought that this could be a mobile phone solution for her older mother-in-law if this was available in the iPhone range because of the iOS platform being the preferred operating environment for that family.

Apple is feeling worried that the competition are offering better devices than them and the rumour mill that floods the American tech press started to flow with talk about an upcoming iPhone to be launched this year. This has been augmented with Apple having the iOS 8 nearly ready to release at effectively “8.0.0”, which tends to lead to talk of a major revamp for at least one iOS-based product range, usually the iPhone rather than issuing one or more variants or product refreshes. As well, the press were running reports about the manufacturing plants being required to start manufacturing runs of at least 70 million units long, if not 80 million units.

At the moment, the report reckons that September 9 will be the time Apple premieres this product range with typically 2 weeks later being the time that the faithful can line up outside the Apple Stores and mobile phone resellers to get their claws on these devices. Questions I often think of are whether Apple will provide a large lineup of these devices to suit different user needs and requirements.

What I like of this news is that the large-screened phones are becoming available in all of the smartphone operating platforms rather than some of these platforms. It may also be a chance for Apple to answer the wishes of their faithful who have been pining at the larger-screen phones offered by the competition and allow these people to stay loyal to the Apple ecosystem while satisfying the large-screen desires. Could I also see this as a chance for Apple to investigate the idea of touch-screen computing for the Macintosh platform and make computers and displays that have the touchscreen interface.

Article

45 Jazz Numbers for Smooth Listening | Mashable

My Comments

Can you play Spotify on that good hi-fi? Check! Any gaping holes in your jazz music collection? Check!

Mashable have worked out a 45-track Spotify playlist that celebrates what would be Louis Armstrong’s birthday, but can be a way to familiarize yourself with the jazz genre and determine how you should build out your jazz music collection. Some of you may find that this may play well for a bit of casual jazz listening like during a dinner party or to get yourselves in the mood before visiting that local “jazz dive”.

This playlist encompasses key jazz performers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Walker, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald with recordings made over the years that the genre had evolved. At least it is worth a listen.

Your Technology Serves Your Lifestyle Here!

Articles

Apple Remembers That The Apple TV Still Exists | Gizmodo

My Comments

What is the Apple TV device?

This is a very small set-top box offered by Apple that connects to your TV and stereo system. But it is typically used for its AirPlay video playback abilities, especially when people are renting or buying video content through the iTunes platform and want to view it on their favourite large-screen TV set. Here, people use the iTunes software on their Macintosh or Windows computer to procure the video content with the payment card and/or iTunes voucher and simply “throw” the content to the TV using this device, perhaps using its remote control to pick content or control its playback from the couch.

What was going on with the Apple TV?

Apple had been focusing their operating-environment software development efforts on the iOS mobile-device and the Macintosh regular-computing environments while forgetting about the Apple TV’s operating environment and user interface. This is although a trickle of apps, typically “on-ramp” interfaces for various IPTV and video-on-demand services, was being developed for the Apple TV platform.

The improvements about to take place

Luckily Apple had “woken up and smelt the coffee” when they saw competitors, including TV manufacturers, work on and build up smart-TV operating environments that appeal to the 10-foot “lean-back” operating experience. Now they are working on a software redesign for the Apple TV firmware to bring the user experience up-to-scratch and in line with the latest iterations of the iOS mobile platform.

There is the increased focus on having apps being delivered to the Apple TV platform in a similar way to what has happened with the iOS platform. But I hope this isn’t carte blanche for substandard “junkware” to fill the iTunes App Store. More likely, it would become an increasing number of “10-foot” on-ramps for various online services and that any existing apps targeted for this device are refurbished for the new firmware. There is also the idea of implementing the same kind of colour improvements to the user experience as what has been experienced on iOS devices.

Like all Apple devices, the improved Apple TV will be designed to work tightly with the rest of the Apple ecosystem at the expense of other common industry standards. But I would at least like to see Apple work on the Apple TV and their ecosystem to provision “core-quality” video games that can compete with the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii platforms instead of that computer name being sidelined when it comes to gaming and interactive activities. For example, they could work on multi-screen games that allow iOS devices to serve as “second-screens” or just simply use the iOS devices as game-control surfaces.

Who knows what this could mean for Apple to make their whole ecosystem become more “firm” and “across the board” like what Google and others have been working on with their ecosystems.

HP and Casio are each premiering a smartwatch that, like Swatch’s and Tissot’s idea, are different from the pack. One of these is a something that would be kept as a dress watch to wear when you are going out while the other one can identify those tunes playing on the radio or background-music setup while you are out and about.

Articles

HP’s luxury dress smartwatch

Take a look at HP’s luxury smartwatch | Engadget

HP, Gilt and designer Michael Bastion teaming up for a smartwatch | Android Authority

From the horse’s mouth

Gilt

Press Release

Casio’s G-Watch that identifies music

Casio’s Next G-Watch Uses SoundHound To Discover New Music | Engadget

Casio’s Latest Bluetooth Watch Puts Song Recognition On Your Wrist | Gizmodo

My Comments

The first of the watches is a luxury fashionable dress watch that is engineered by HP but designed by Gilt along with the fashion designer, Michael Bastian. This men’s watch has a round 44mm stainless-steel case and swappable leather bands, taking with it the “stylish yet cool” interior designs associated with some of the recent luxury cars out there.

For functionality, this is meant to interlink with iOS and Android devices using a platform-specific device, this courting the luxury market’s penchant for preferring the Apple iPhones as their smartphone options. At the moment, this watch offers notification functionality for email, text and calls along with being a control surface for music playback and some other apps.

Personally I would see the HP watch’s emphasis on style rather than geekiness more about either the watch to wear when you are going to the Melbourne Club or wanting to take out someone whom you are really trying to impress.

The second of these watches is Casio’s latest G-Shock smartwatch. This has notification functionality through its LCD display which exists behind the traditional clock face and also acts as a control surface for your phone, especially with your music using a knob on the edge of the bezel. It would work alongside a Casio-supplied platform-specific app for your smartphone and maintains the rugged look of other G-Shock watches.

But it also works along with SoundHound and an internal microphone to identify the music that is playing. Once identified, the song details appear on the watch’s LCD display.

The Casio watch would be on a par with other Android Wear smartwatches but has a long battery life thus avoiding the need for you to charge it every night. It would look the part more as a utility watch for everyday activities.

At the moment, these watches along with the previously covered Swatch watches come across more as baseline “control and display surfaces” that link to your smartphone using Bluetooth 4.0 LE a.k.a. Bluetooth Smart. But they would require the use of different apps to provide the software connection. Personally, what Google, Apple and Microsoft should work on is a baseline wearable specification which allows different wearable devices offering baseline functionality to link to the phone without the need to run many extra apps. As well, the watches should at least support using the phone as a “reference clock” for setting the time and adjusting for different time zones and daylight-savings time.

What is happening is that there are smartwatches that place less emphasis on the “geek nature” and could expose this genre of product to most of us.

Articles (German Language / Deutsche Sprache)

Swatch bringt seine eigene Smartwatch | PCTipp.ch

Swatch arbeitet an Fitnessuhr | Netzwoche.ch

My Comments

The Swiss aren’t far behind on the smart-watch bandwagon but are taking it a different path so as to preserve their craft and identity.

Swatch is developing a fitness-focused smartwatch that is totally different from the rest of the crowd. Here, this is more a watch that tells the time but is equipped with fitness sensors to measure how healthy you are. They are drawing on EM Microtechnology who is part of the Swatch Group and this company also have worked on GPS technology for a variety of fitness-driven applications.

But Swatch and Tissot, both part of the Swatch Group, are focusing on simpler fitness-focused smartwatch designs rather than the current equivalent of the 80s-era digital multifunction watch. They are approaching watch design on a “horses for courses” basis where different watches suit different people and different occasions. I see this as being highly important because, for example, a woman may want a watch that looks the part on her slender wrist or a man may want to have a dress watch for going out to impress along with a fitness watch for long walks and a utility smartwatch for day-to-day use.

Apple have been “picking Swatch’s brains” about their watch-construction methods but Swatch deny the idea of forming a partnership with them, especially concerning the iWatch idea that has been floating around. As well Swatch are trying to achieve the “best smartwatch” goal rather than being the first.

What I see of this is that the Swatch group are being the first of the Swiss watch legends to link their special craft with today’s smart-wearable technology development.

On Tuesday 29 July, I had attended a Western Digital reseller presentation where WD were premiering their latest additions to the Red Series hard-disk range for NAS units. These are the WD Red Pro series that are pitched at heavy-duty applications centred around the many-bay units that can be mounted in a 19″ standard equipment rack as well as variants of the WD Red range that have 5 Terabyte and 6 Terabyte capacities.

The increasing relevance of the network-attached storage unit

D-Link DNS-320L 2-bay NAS

A device that is appearing in more home and small-business networks is the network-attached-storage unit. This is a dedicated unit that shares data held on at least one hard disk across a network.

But increasingly these devices are being able to do more than this due to the vendors marketing their NAS units as a “platform” with a plethora of apps developed or ported by the vendor for these devices. This is augmented by an increasing number of manufacturers who are integrating the kind of processors used in regular-computing or enterprise-grade server applications in these devices, some of which you could describe as being like a compact desktop PC.

They are increasingly relevant in the small-business scene where they can serve as a backup location or central storage for that business’ computers. An increasing number of these units can implement “virtualization” where they can work as one or more different computer systems. As well, platform-based NAS units offer applications like video-surveillance recording, digital signage, and enterprise-grade “advanced-storage” setups like iSCSI or SAN. For that matter, some of the high-end desktop NAS units can be purposed as branch-level “on-ramps” for a full-blown enterprise-wide computing setup.

ASUSTor AS-204TE 4-bay NAS – “Data central” for a small business

A few creative-skills professionals appeared at this presentation to demonstrate how the NAS fits in to their trade. In most of these cases, these users store only the data they need to work with at a given moment on their iMac’s main hard disk and keep the rest of the data on a NAS. As well, the units even serve as central content libraries for raw material or finished projects. This appeals very strongly to multi-person projects like film and video work where version-control is important.

But, in the home, they are appealing as systems to hold your audio, video or image content and make it available to network-capable AV devices. As well, most NAS vendors are pitching these systems as a “personal cloud” that is an alternative to services like Dropbox or OneDrive. As I have mentioned before, vendors are offering DVR abilities so that customers can connect the NAS to a USB digital-TV tuner module or broadcast-LAN unit to make it become the equivalent of a TiVo.

Making the NAS appeal to “Average Joe”

QNAP TS-251 2-bay NAS

One of WD’s representatives found that there is a problem with selling a NAS in a “big-box” store like Harvey Norman or JB Hi-Fi. Here it is about identifying the value that these devices have for the average “Joe in the suburbs” who is content with using a USB external hard disk as a backup or offload tool for their home computer. Typically the home network is implemented by these users just to facilitate Internet access and, perhaps, share a printer.

What needs to happen to make the NAS appeal to “Joe in the suburbs” is that a NAS makes more sense as an always-available content library or data store, especially if you have or intend to buy another computer, a mobile device like an iPad or network-capable AV equipment including most recent games consoles or smart TVs. A good question to address is the number of digital pictures you take or hours of digital video footage you make and the number of CDs you rip or digital music files you buy from iTunes and similar services and how you can make them available around the home.

As well, one or more legitimate “download-to-own” video-content services that can allow you to store your movies that you downloaded to a NAS can legitimize the value prospect of these devices to “Average Joe”.

WD internal hard-disk lineup and the RED Series

What has happened over the last few years is that WD have re-factored their regular-duty computer hard disk lineup in to distinct ranges denoted by colour as shown below:

This kind of product lineup avoids the practice where most user-installable desktop hard disks are sold to users as a “jack of all trades” basis without awareness of disks that are optimized for particular data-storage needs. For example, a person who is running that “ultimate gaming rig” to impress others at the LAN party would be after something that is about performance whereas a NAS or server user is after something that is about consistent reliable operation for something that is always available.

What are the WD Red Series hard disks and what makes them special

One of the many business-class “pizza box” NAS units that works with the WD Red Pro hard disk

WD were the first company to develop and launch a hard disk that is optimized for the operating conditions that a network-attached storage device will throw at it. Previously, a NAS used regular desktop hard disks as its storage and these disks were seen more as a “jack of all trades, master of none” when it came to network storage requirements.

The key features for this range include:

• Compatibility with the different operating conditions that different vendors’ NAS units will throw at the system. This includes dealing with different power-supply conditions, the hardware interfaces used in the NAS units or how they present to the software that is used in these devices.
• Always-on reliability. The typical network-attached storage system is expected to be on all the time, ready to serve data when needed and is often seen as being “Data Central” for the home or business network. Here, these hard disks are expected to be spinning. It includes the provision of NASAware firmware on the hard disks to deal with situations like power loss or power disruption that can affect system reliability.
• RAID-friendly design. WD have factored in vibration-control measures in order to cope with the typical multi-bay RAID-capable NAS. This is because with many hard disks in close physical proximity to each other, there is increased vibration when the NAS is moving data to multiple disks at the same time such as “mirroring” data across multiple disks. The RED series implement software or hardware measures to counteract the effects of continued vibration that occurs in these setups.
  As well this design also is supported with hard-disk firmware that can assure proper error recovery in the many-disk RAID arrays used in these devices thus avoiding the risk of underperforming RAID setups.
• Power flexibility and efficiency. The WD RED series of NAS hard drives are optimized for varying power conditions that can be thrown at them, such as when a multi-bay NAS is being started or for different NAS units that have different power-supply characteristics. This also includes being designed for power efficiency in an always-on environment, even though most recent desktop NAS units implement on-demand “spin-up / spin-down” measures to save energy.

WD MyCloud EX Series NAS units able to benefit from the 6Tb WD Red

The newly-released 5Tb and 6Tb capacities appeal to all NAS designs in a lot of ways. For example, you could set up a 6Tb single-disk NAS or use two of the 6Tb hard disks in a dual-disk NAS configured for RAID 1 to have a fail-safe 6Tb data volume that can also handle higher data throughputs. You could even run up to 24Tb in a four-bay NAS or 30Tb in a five-bay NAS, including implementing various RAID data-replication setups for fail-safe or high-throughput operation.

Even the way the hard drives are designed have an efficiency and density advantage over the competition. For example, the 6Tb drives maintain 5 platters with 1.2Tb per platter rather than 6 platters with 1Tb per platter. This means that there isn’t much mechanical effort needed on the spindle motor to spin up the disk. As well, the drive housing can fit in to most NAS drive bays without being unnecessarily stout. They also maintain a 64Mb local hardware cache for improved operation efficiency.

The new WD Red Pro lineup

This lineup of NAS hard disks is optimized for the rack-mount large-business-class NAS system and is built towards higher performance and reliability in these many-bay systems. These would be able to handle a greater workload, which would be representative of a larger high-traffic business. Some people have put forward questions about using one of these hard disks in a small desktop NAS but it wasn’t found to be worth it for the kind of use that this class of NAS would typically be put to. But on the other hand, I would see them as being of use with the smaller units that serve branch-based “on-ramp” applications for enterprise data infrastructures.

Using the WD Red or the WD Purple disks for video-surveillance applications

QNAP TS-EC880U-RP business-class “pizza box” NAS that works with the WD Red Pro hard disk

Some questions were raised about implementing WD Purple hard disks in a regular NAS that was running one of the video-surveillance apps offered by the vendor as part of their application platform. The WD presenters recommended that the WD Purple disks go in dedicated DVR equipment that is optimized for the task rather than NAS units running these platform apps. Instead, they recommended the use of WD Red disks in these “NAS+software” setups, more likely because the NAS may be tasked to do other network-storage activities like being “Data Central”.

Can my NAS handle 6-Terabyte disks

A situation that one can easily run into with any computing equipment is that the equipment’s operating system or firmware can impose an arbitrary limit on the size of storage media. Here, if you supply storage media that is greater than this maximum allowed in this software, the software could throw up errors or simply fail because it can’t address all of the storage media’s useable capacity. This problem shows up when storage-media manufacturers release higher-capacity media after the software was “set in stone”.

For example, the older versions of MS-DOS and some other desktop operating systems couldn’t handle large capacity hard disks as a single logical volume. So computer users had to partition larger-capacity hard disks in to multiple logical volumes in order to make use of this space. As well, I had used an older digital camera that worked with SmartMemory cards and couldn’t use newer higher capacities of these cards. Here, I had to look around for cards of a particular capacity to keep as “spare film” for the camera.

Most of the NAS platforms can support this capacity out of the box or may require you to wait on an interim update for the new capacities to be supported. WD have provided a compatibility list which allows you to find what of the WD Red range can be supported by your NAS box. This includes issues like maximum capacities that these systems have. It is also worth checking on the vendor’s Web site for newer or impending software updates.

Conclusion

If you are thinking of buying an enclosure-only NAS or “upsizing” your existing NAS, you can head towards the newer 5Tb or 6Tb disks that WD offers for increased capacity. As well, your heavy-duty many-bay business-grade NAS can be treated to the WD Red Pro disks that are appropriate to its usage nature and performance level.