VW Polo 2014 DAB reception problems

 I have a 2014 VW Polo with a factory fitted AM/FM/DAB radio.

A few months back the DAB radio became less sensitive.

There doesn't seem to be anything I can find on the Internet about this so for anyone who has a similar problem, this is what I found out.

Firstly, there are two types of aerials on VW Polo cars of about that age. One has a flatter looking base, mine is the (earlier I think) more prominent base.

The base of my type is packed with electronics (something I suspected but only found out when I had the old one to take apart).

 

I bought a replacement (new from VW - it wasn't cheap!) and had it fitted.

This fixed the problem and restored the DAB reception.

If getting at the aerial base inside the car hadn't been so hard (a significant proportion of the overall cost was getting someone suitably skilled to take the car apart and fit the new aerial) I might have investigated the problem more.

The base seems to have two parts (possibly allowing for a DAB and non DAB version of the car) and two incoming co-ax leads, one with a black end and the other with a white connector on the end.

Each has a small connector in.

I did (and still do) wonder if the problem was either a seating problem in one connector (assuming one does the DAB, the other AM/FM) or (less likely) an earthing issue for the whole base. It has a nut with a pearcing collet as part of the fixings and that seems to need to go through the paint.

For a long time (and seperately) I had some electrical noise on weak AM signal reception which on first impressions, this new base also seems to have improved.

All in all and thus far, this seems to be fixed.

As a "garage fix", buying the new base and having it fitted was defititely the best bet. As a DIY job, some further investigation is probably merited before getting the replacement base.

For reference, the base seems to be part number 6R0 031 501 A, the nut 1J0 035 437 & the actual antenna 6R0 035 849 A. 

A tale of two soundcards: Tascam US-32 & Yamaha AG-03

 The rise of podcasting has been followed by manufacturers producing computer sound hardware specifically aimed at podcasters.

Tascam have produced the "MiNiSTUDIO PERSONAL US-32" (and US-42) and Yamaha the "AG03" (and AG06).

https://tascam.com/us/product/us-32/top

https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/music_production/interfaces/ag_series/ag03.html

Both models have "larger" versions but I'll consider the US-32 & AG03.

Tascam US-32

The Tascam US-32 was the first of these devices I became aware of.

It looks very simple and CAN be simple to use but it is less revealing of function at first glance.

Both devices require driver/manager software and have simple and advanced ways of operation.

Essentially, the Tascam US-32 is primarily focussed on the use case of someone stereaming (perhaps a game play) and adding their talking (and some spot effects) to the output.

The computer sound outout (to the device headphones) is a mix of application sound from the computer plus effecst added into the Tascam US-32 driver triggered by the "PON" buttons.

That, plus a local mic, is returned as the sound card output and can then be (say) streamed or recorded.

There are a number of different modes that one might want to use in diffferent cases.

These require the windows settings application and are called Mode Presets.

BROADCAST is the default, 

Talking is suitable for (say) Skype calls in that the computer audio isn't returned to the PC.

Quite what "Talking with PON/BGM" is intended to achieve is less obvious to me in that ony the local user hears the PON sounds

There is also a "Podcast Multi-Channel" mode that would be potentially useful when recording a podcast for later post production.

All in all, the Tascam US-32 is quite capable but not that clear (from the control surface) about what is going on.

The metering is quite usable.

Yamaha AG-03

The Yamaha AG-03 was the first of these two devices I actually bought.

It addresses the different operating modes by a switch which has one setting where the audio from the PC is mixed into the input (for streaming PC audio) and another where it isn't (for two way conversations).

As the hardware control is more obvious, the software doesn't allow routing mode selection.

Generally the Yamaha AG-03 is easy to use in most applications. My one complaint is that the monitor mute applies to both headphones and the speaker outputs.

The "metering" is very basic and I would say inadequate for many applications. Hopefully your applicationhas audio level meters.

My single extra feature request would be to have a headphone only audio stream from the PC (using ASIO) which would allow a cue feed while looping the man PC sound to a stream.

 

 

TuneBlade - The Windows way in to AirPlay

I like AirPlay.

I have a couple of Apple Airport Express units connected to HiFi units and use AirPlay to take audio from iOS devices to them.

AirPlay is also supported on Mac computers but not on Windows computers.

This is where TuneBlade comes in. It intercepts the audio to your PC sound output and sends it to an AirPlay device.

The free trial was enough to very quickly convince me it was worth paying £7.99 for.

Basically it "just works".

The (necessary) disadvantage is that it installs "Bonjour" on your computer (if you don't already have it from an Apple piece of software) but that doesn't seem to have been a practical problem.

All in all, highly recommended.

http://www.tuneblade.com

The "Maplin" LAN Disk and Windows 10

My first steps into Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives were the Maplin LAN disk.

I've moved on to "greater" devices since but the old LAN Disks were still in the cupboard.

One had a fairly decent (by previous standards) 500GB disk and I thought I would fire it up to see if it still worked (with Windows 10).

The short answer is that you need to give it a static IP address (by reservation in my case) and create a share (I called it "share" ) via the Web interface but once you have done that it is possible to map a network drive using 192.168.x.xxx/share (as appropriate) in the "This PC" part of file explorer.

Result !

The ( Roland ) Edirol UA-25 and Windows 10

There are times when I discover something in the process of getting a piece of technology to work and feel the need to spread the news, this is one such occasion.

The Edirol UA-25 us a good quality sound card with (for me) the key feature of an analogue limiter built in.

You can thus feed a signal into it close to digital peak level without the risk of clipping.

However there isn't a Windows 10 driver.

A thorough Googling leads you to some excellent instructions for overcoming this at:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Getting-your-devices-to-work-with-Windows-10-m3267234.aspx#3267234


I can confirm that this worked fine on my 32 bit Windows 10 installation.

I found that just updating the unknown device with the driver (once modified) and accepting all the unsigned driver warnings was enough to overcome the problem.

I didn't need to do the switch for unsigned drivers command.

Use your Edirol UA-25 on Windows 10 and enjoy !

A new life for a Dell Latitude 10 ST2 with Windows 10

I write about things that have caused me problems but I take my hat off to people who toil with challenging computer problems and when they solve them, document the solution for the assistance of others.

One such writer, to whom I shall be eternally grateful is the author of this article on upgrading a dell Latitude 10 ST2 tablet to Windows 10.

http://blog.asiantuntijakaveri.fi/2015/02/windows-10-install-from-usb-to-dell.html?m=1

The Dell position is that this isn't supported.

Actually, if you can overcome a few hurdles that Dell place in the way the tablet will run an early version of Windows 10 extremely well.

Also, and to my relief, the Windows 10 install seems to have an acceptable licence by virtue of the previous Windows 8 or 8.1 install.

Fantastic !

The Barix Exstreamer 100

The Barix Exstreamer is a hardware audio stream player.

https://www.barix.com/audio-products/exstreamer-family/barix/Product/show/exstreamer-100-105-110-120/

I bought a Barix Exstreamer second hand "as sold".

The unit has a neat feature that it speaks the IP address from the audio output (thus avoiding any challenges of finding the IP address out). Having found the IP address and got to a point where I could look at it (a spare broadband router was handy to get a 192.168.192.xx network), I pointed a browser at it hoping for a setup page. My guess is the unit had been set with a static IP address suiting the network it had been used on.

Sadly all I saw was a password screen:



It didn't seem to have any obvious default passwords and was probably protected for its former application.

Fortunately the Exstreamer 100 has a way of regaining control when you are presented with a problem like that, you can reflash the unit with stock firmware using serial.

One of my older computers has a "proper" serial port so I got hold of a crossed 9 pin serial cable (null modem) and the required firmware.

I used streaming_client_kit_vb230_20120921 and a Google should find you a set of similar software.

It is all available (after registration) from the Barix website but I found that the registration email turned up in my spam filter so sourced the firmware elsewhere.

What you need is in the folder called update_rescue so look there.

Assuming you have com port 1 as your serial port click on the serial1.bat file and is should start.

 You then connect the serial cable to the Exstreamer 100 and power the unit up.



Something similar to the above should be seen. Eventually (all being well) the replacement firmware should be on the Exstreamer.

It reboots, and once it picks up an address by DHCP, you should see the status page.



They have a "test"streaming service so my unit started to produce music.

Unit fixed !

There is a very handy Yahoo Group for the Barix Exstreamer which has old posts you might find helpful and a file collection which includes the required software.

2022 Update:

The Barix Yahoo Group (and Yahoo Groups in general) has gone.

Barix have an area on their website to get firmware etc.