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On Monday Apple opened it's (sold out) Worldwide Developers Conference with the usual much-anticipated keynote presentation. One of the announcements was that a new version of the iPhone would be available by June 19 2009 (in Canada) along with an update to the iPhone's operating system.
As early as April rumours were flying that Apple would include an FM radio transmitter and/or receiver in an updated iPhone. An FM transmitter would allow a user to easily connect their iPhone to their car stereo. It would "broadcast" the music from the iPhone to the car's FM radio. An FM receiver in an iPhone would mean the user could listen to any FM broadcast.
I doubted that either would show up. There are a number of third party FM transmitters you can hook up to your iPod and they all have a tendency to work rather poorly. Steve Jobs likes elegant solutions and this isn't one. An FM receiver? How 20th Century.
On Monday we found out there would be no FM receiver or transmitter on the new iPhone.
Well no. It's two pieces of technology which most people have barely heard of joining forces to … well, in hopes that you will not only hear of them but go out and buy them.
Last week Microsoft announced that its new version of Zune will include an HD Radio. That headline caught my eye because I've been rather pessimistic about HD Radio. Could this be a lifeline?
Regular readers of Tech Q will know by now what HD Radio is but for the rest of you, it's a digital radio broadcast system which has gotten off to a very slow start ("Wither HD Radio?") and which is available only in the United States.
Zune, in case you haven't heard, is Microsoft's answer to the iPod. The new version – Zune HD – isn't due to ship until the autumn. But this hasn't stopped columnists from talking about how Zune HD might do as a product.
Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek and Globetrotter, brings his excellent series on digital radio to a close today (for previous installments go to Tech Q? and scroll on down). What will Peter address next? Actually, we don't know. If you have some burning Tech Questions why not suggest them as possible future topics? Now let's turn to today's issue: Everything you ever wanted to know about DAB but...
We've pretty much come to the end of our introductory survey of digital radio technologies here at Tech Q. But last week we just got started on the oldest of digital radio technologies, DAB. Digital Audio Broadcasting (Eureka-147) not only has a good foothold in some countries but in others a newer version called DAB+ is being rolled out either for the first time or as part of a relaunch.
DAB Success?
I was visiting friends in London, England a couple of weeks ago. In their kitchen on the counter I saw a small DAB radio, the first one this Canuck had seen since a technology demo in a CBC van about 15 years ago.
We've been reviewing some of the digital radio broadcasting systems recently here on Tech Q. We started with a review of analogue radio AM/FM, then covered HD Radio and Satellite Radio. Today we'll talk about the granddaddy of digital radio systems: DAB.
DAB stands for Digital Audio Broadcasting and is also known as Eureka 147 (as in European Union project number 147). The standard was under development in the 1980's (!) and launched in several countries during the 1990's.
We've been talking about "digital radio" in all it's forms lately on Tech Q. Last week I explained a bit about what satellite radio was, some of it's advantages and disadvantages, what audio formats the two incompatible (XM and SIRIUS) systems use, and a bit about the recent difficulties the business has faced.
Today we'll take one more look at satellite radio in North America to talk about possible future directions and my own impression of the sound quality.
HD, DAB, SAT, a forest of abbreviations that all lead to one clearing -- Digital Radio. Leaving aside the woodsy analogy, (since it goes no further than that, really) here is Radio 2's Resident Geek Peter Cook with the weekly Tech Q? column, clarifying any number of issues about SAT. Over to you, Peter:
On Tech Q we're in the midst of a series about "digital radio" in its various forms: HD Radio, satellite radio, and DAB. Of all the forms of digital radio, the one format you have heard the most about is almost certainly satellite radio. In fact some of you may subscribe to satellite radio.
Just to be clear I'm only going to talk about the direct to consumer satellite radio systems and only those available in North America.
XM Satellite Radio launched in the US in 2001, SIRIUS Satellite Radio in 2002. Canadian divisions of both companies launched at the end of 2005 following CRTC approval. There's some background information about how satellite radio came to Canada at wikipedia.
Last week we heard all about what HD Radio is, in this week's Tech Q? column we learn where it is. Without further ado, over to Radio 2's Resident Geek, Mr. Peter Cook:
"HD Radio launched in the US in 2003 and six years later we haven't heard much about it. We could be excused in Canada since the format is not available here. But what about in the United States?
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue published a great article on HD Radio last week. He's got 100,000 Twitter followers and asked them who was using HD Radio. Sixteen people replied. Three of them worked in the radio industry. Of the latter, all were concerned for the future of the platform.
What's happened? Perhaps it's still early days. Or perhaps the product simply isn't compelling enough to sway sufficient listeners.
Many of us understand the benefits of HD TV, or High Definition Television. We may know, for example, that in High-Def the rainy cobblestones on Coronation Street actually glisten. But HD Radio? That's a whole other kettle of media. Today in the weekly Tech Q? column Peter Cook explains:
Last week we looked at analogue radio broadcasts (AM and FM). This week we begin a short series on digital radio and we'll begin with "HD Radio". Should you read this post and be inclined to rush out and buy an HD Radio receiver, hold your horses. HD Radio broadcasts are only widely available in the United States.
HD Radio launched in the United States in 2003 as a free, over the air terrestrial broadcast service. This was about eight years after DAB – a completely different digital audio broadcasting system – launched in Canada, the UK and several European countries (we'll talk about DAB in a future column).
Before you do anything else, go to "continue reading" and have a look at the 1937 explanation of how modern technology like The Radio and The Microphone work. It's a charming glimpse of days of old. Then come back and start at the top for the full benefit of today's Tech Q? column, which Peter Cook devotes to both days of old and new...radio:
I've been wanting to do some posts at Tech Q about the various new "Digital Radio" formats. But as I started to write, I realized that it would be helpful to know a bit about analogue radio. This way we can distinguish what's new and improved with digital. And perhaps we'll appreciate some of the great things about analogue.
Let's start with some musicians on stage. The sound waves produced by the instruments travel through the air to the microphones. The microphones convert the varying sound waves into a varying electrical current. This electrical current is analogous to – or an analogue of – the original signal. We can amplify that signal and send it to a transmitter which broadcasts the signal through the air as radio waves.
There can be something seductive about recommender services. (You know, the if you like THIS, maybe you'll like THIS thing). Today's Tech Q? column, presented by Radio 2's Res. Geek, a.k.a. Peter Cook, is about how you can use the Radio 2 website as a kind of recommender for CBC concerts. It's through a feature you may not have noticed, with the unglamorous nickname "The Discovery Tool." But it is actually a very handy way to discover concerts, as Peter explains:
In the left hand navigation menu of the Radio 2 site there is an item called "Programs" which (no surprise) gives you a list of the programs which air on CBC Radio 2. Not every program page is the same but all of them have a section somewhere in the right hand column with information about concerts.
When we were building this feature we referred to it internally as the "Discovery Tool". The idea was to give people another means of "discovering" the concerts CBC Radio 2 is recording, broadcasting and making available for "on demand" streaming.
Geeks R Us! Well no, actually Geeks R Peter Cook (and you, if just the sight of the weekly Tech Q? column makes your heart pound a little faster.)
But as Peter is always telling me, "it's just a question of degrees." So however geeky or not -- if you like to listen to music wherever whenever, this week Peter has gone a whole level deeper into audio content through portable devices -- in other words, Podcasts by Phone. Over to Peter:
Last month the good folks at CBC Podcasting received an email from Krisse Juorunen asking about CBC podcasts and OPML files. Key members of the CBC podcasting work just around the corner from me. They'd heard me mutter something about OPML in the past so they sent Krisse's query on to me.
Krisse writes for a very popular technology site called All About Symbian.
Some of us are musing about Why Leonard Cohen Is Our Man. Others have been musing about less poetic but very relevant pursuits -- Radio 2's Resident Geek, Peter Cook, for example.
In today's Tech Q? column he has an update on some of the mobile devices that allow you to enjoy Radio 2's internet offerings in transit -- lo, progress is being made! Over to you, Peter:
Last month I pointed out a couple of ways you could listen to CBC Radio 2 on an iPhone. I've been keen to find other mobile devices that let you enjoy Radio 2 Online -- on the go -- and have a bit of an update.
"What are you doing?" is the question that launched a thousand tweets. In other words, the fast-spreading social networking craze known as Twitter.
Part of the fun of answering that question (what are you doing?) is it has to be short and s(t)weet -- under 140 characters. But there's more to it than that and today Radio 2's Resident Geek, Peter Cook, explores Twitter -- and the big big world of small small blogging.
It's nearly ubiquitous. You can use any computer with a web browser, you can use any of a rapidly growing number of specialized Twitter clients, and you can use almost any basic cell phone with messaging capability.
Depending on the number and quality of followers you have you might get near-instant feedback to a question. If you're lucky it can give you access to people who are often difficult to reach (ok, that might have worked before the inauguration).
Unanticipated Uses
But there's more it than that. Twitter has become a platform for enabling all kinds of unanticipated uses.
Radio 2's Resident Geek, a.k.a. Peter Cook, hits an audio nerve with today's Tech Q?. It's about the audio in your own music collection -- something many of us struggle with, from literal storage issues, to discrepancies of sound. I Feel Bad About My Stuff touched on the former issue recently, which tends to lead naturally into the latter. And Peter has some good advice about just that -- how to go digital, but with good sound:
These days many of us store our music collections on our computers. We "rip" the audio from our CDs using iTunes or Windows Media Player or some other piece of software. The advantages are obvious. We can easily sort and find any piece of music in our entire collection in seconds. We can transfer some or all of our music library to a portable device. We can make our own "Playlists". We can hit "Shuffle" mode and rediscover old favourites and delight in the wonderful juxtapositions which arise. We can put the library on a network and play our music back in any room in the house. And on and on.
I know a lot of people who, when iTunes came out, rushed around "digitizing" their entire CD collection as lossy MP3's. A few years later they had hooked up their computer storage to a better playback system and realized they were missing out on sound quality. They faced re-ripping their entire CD collection and rebuilding their lovingly crafted playlists and other metadata.
My advice when it comes to your music library is to just go "lossless". You can always step down in sound quality if you need, but you can never get back what you've thrown away. "Out of the box" all consumer software that I'm aware of uses "lossy" file compression to store the audio on your computer. In fact, most people assume that lossy formats (like MP3) are the only option they have. That's not true.
iTunes, Windows Media Player and most other software can be configured to store files with sound quality exactly equivalent to that of your CDs. Read on to find out how.
First, the big update. As some of you have already noted -- as of August the CBC Radio iPhone App can be used to listen to Radio 2 on the iPhone -- just go to itunes, or click here to launch. And if you like, join the discussion at Inside The CBC.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading of old blog posts:
When is a phone not a phone? When it's a camera, you might be thinking. Or 'hmmm, when it's an MP3 player?" But these days there's another answer: When it's a radio. Here's Radio 2's Resident Geek, Peter Cook, to explain:
When Apple's iPhone launched in the US I thought it was a pretty cool device. But when I read about the second generation of the phone - the one with the 3G high-speed internet connection - I thought "that's a portable radio!"
Well, in theory it was. You still needed to have an application on the phone which could play the stream. When the iPhone launched in Canada way back in July 2008 the pickings were slim. Today there are several ways to listen to CBC Radio 2's online offerings on an iPhone. I'll just mention two applications in this post, both of them pointed out to us by Radio 2 listeners.
Why all this chatter about the iPhone? There are other phones out there and there will be more. Here's a pretty good indication of why it matters. The founder of Pandora (an online music service available in the US, not in Canada) recently commented "We’ve been on Sprint and AT&T for 50 different handsets for two years, and in two days we have more people on the iPhone than we had in two years on all the phones combined."
And in the past few weeks CBC's Audience Relations reports have an increasing number of queries and comments about the iPhone. Everything from "I want to listen to CBC Radio on my iPhone. How can I do it?" to "Did you know you can listen to CBC Radio on an iPhone? Here's how!"
Some of us have been busy mulling over Canadian love songs that open our hearts, and that link will take you to the conversation about that sweet subject. But Peter Cook, in today's Tech Q? column, turns his thoughts to what might seem the antithesis of love: statistics.
But these stats are not dry and dusty, no, they're actually quite revealing about something many of us are as addicted to as love itself -- using the internet. So here is Peter, to share the latest Internet Love:
"CBC has a research department and this year they have begun begun publishing 'mini reports'. The information is presented in an easily digestible and fun format and sent out to all employees via email. The goal is to keep everyone in the corporation abreast of what's happening in the world of radio listening, television viewing, internet use, etc. It's particularly important at a time like this - when the traditional broadcast environment is changing so dramatically and rapidly - that everyone in the corporation be kept up to date. The data is collected from a number of sources, including the CBC's own surveys.
The latest report was particularly interesting for me because the topic was Internet Usage Trends.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that internet usage is on the rise. 71% of Canadians use the Internet daily.
The number of Canadians with a high-speed Internet connection at home had already reached 69% by 2007. It's certainly higher by now. (I found a Stats Can report which puts that number at 88%. I wonder if the term "high-speed" was defined differently in the two studies.) Meanwhile the number of Canadians using dial-up connections had already dropped to 9% in 2007.
There are few things as satisfying as looking at a map. Maps seem to magically capture the uncharted potential of our futures. And, more prosaically, maps are useful.
Today's Tech Q? column is devoted to a new map that is definitely useful to Radio 2 listeners who have occasion to travel and want to tune in where're you are. The new map is courtesy of the enterprising Radio 2 Geek, Peter Cook, who makes his weekly Radio 2 Blog appearance to explain:
Enough of this new-fangled internet thing for a moment. Let's talk about good old-fashioned FM broadcast. More specifically, let's talk about how you can find frequencies on the FM dial broadcasting CBC Radio 2.
If you are a regular Radio 2 listener you know the frequency in your home town. But what if you are traveling across the country and want to tune in away from your home base? Or what if you've heard that Radio 2 has changed their format and you want to check it out? What frequency do you tune in to on your FM dial?
Read on for the full story, or just click on the image of the image of the map above and start exploring.
Do you ever get those awful pop ups saying something like: "Your computer isn't operating at its maximum capacity, click here to make it run faster?" I hate those. It's like a telemarketing call, only the tele-marketer is sitting on your computer screen, thumbing their nose. On the other hand, I'd love to make my browser run faster, leap tall websites in a single bound etc.
Good news. This week Peter Cook gives us all a tip on how to do that. Although actually it's a byproduct of his solution for another tech problem. But I'll let him explain that. Over to you, Mr. Radio 2 Resident Geek:
One Sunday afternoon last fall I got a somewhat frantic email from a colleague. "You guys are on this, right!?"
She was on her home computer looking at the Radio 2 web site and there, at the top of the page, was a banner ad for a . . . um . . . performance enhancing product . . . for men . . . complete with images of scantily clad males. Oh my!
We looked all over the site and couldn't find any evidence of what she was talking about. What a relief! "That's strange", I thought. But on to more pressing things.
As time went by I noticed there were references to these ads in our weekly internal Website Report, a collation of all feedback to Audience Relations via cbc.ca. Reactions, as you might imagine, ranged from mild irritation to apoplectic.
What the heck? Obviously CBC wasn't serving up those ads. But why were some people seeing them on our site? Perhaps those users had a virus? But my colleague is also a friend and I happen to know she uses a Mac. I've been using Macs since 1986 and I'd never even seen, let alone caught a virus. Something else was going on.
Finally over the winter holiday break I had time to look into the issue of the bogus ads further. It turns out that people aren't just seeing these ads at the CBC site but at many other sites as well. And it's not a virus. That explains how my Mac-using friend was affected. (At least it's not always a virus. It may be in some cases. But it's hard to tell since while the web is full of useful information it's also got it's share of misinformation.)
The solution, as it turns out, doesn't just get rid of the ads but will likely speed up your web browsing.
Today's Tech Q? column needs to be prefaced with a note about Peter Cook. Not only is he our extremely helpful and patient Resident Geek, he's also one of the key people behind that incredible online live-concert-recordings resource, Concerts On Demand. And if you use the site, you will very much appreciate what he's done here -- little tips that make accessing the music you want to hear much smoother -- and are useful in many other contexts as well. (I'm telling ya,' tabbed browsing changed my life.) But over to Peter now to fill you in on the fine points:
Last week I ran into a friend of mine in the hallway, one of our finest recording engineers. We exchanged pleasantries and then he said "You know what I hate about that site . . . (pause). . . Concerts on Demand?"
Gulp. "Tell me."
"When I'm scrolling down through that long list of concerts and I find one and think, 'that looks interesting'. So I click on it to check it out. Then I hit the "Back" button to continue browsing and I've got to start back at the top scrolling through that long list again!"
Aha. OK. I've heard this complaint before and I realized it was time to share this web browsing tip here at Tech Q. You can use tip this with Google, Concerts on Demand . . . any page which has a bunch of links that you might be interested in exploring. We'll use the the CoD page to illustrate.
But our Resident Geek, Peter Cook, is a thoughtful consumer. In today's Tech Q? column he virtually goes to one of the biggest computer/electronics trade shows so you don't have to -- and tells us music and radio lovers what might be worth buying... or not. Over to you, Peter:
"Each January the Consumer Electronics Show takes place in Las Vegas. This is a massive trade show where new products are announced and hyped. I've never had the "pleasure" of attending one of these things but I gather one will find: a lot of junk; some vaporware (it was supposed to be hardware or software, but it never actually shipped!); some genuinely useful devices; and every once in a while a real breakthrough technology (the VCR, CD, DVD, HDTV all were introduced at CES).
The 2009 version of the show took place last week. I read a bit of coverage and was most interested in the announcements of potential interest to Radio 2 listeners (we'll steer clear of the 3-D televisions).
Internet Radio for the car
The first item that caught my eye was the news that venerable car-audio manufacturer Blaupunkt (warning: noisy web page) had partnered with miRoamer (warning: poorly-designed web page) to bring internet radio to your car. Ooh la la! That would certainly be a breakthrough.
This morning in a state of some excitement I said to a friend, "Did you hear that Apple is getting rid of DRM on iTunes?" His rather deflating response: "DRM? I don't even know what that is."
Reader, I was shocked. But of course it is true that while many listen to music, not everyone wants to follow the ever-evolving issues surrounding how we listen. However, for those who would like to get a handle on what acronyms like DRM and related signify, today's Tech Q? column is for you. And thanks as always to Radio 2's Resident Geek, Peter Cook, for his insights:
"A couple of months ago Naxos announced that their Classics Online store would begin selling music as DRM-free 320 kbps MP3 files.
Then yesterday Apple announced that they were moving their entire catalogue to DRM-free 256 kbps AAC. Prior to yesterday most of their titles were 128 kbps and contained DRM.
What do these acronyms mean? What do these changes mean? And say . . . is Apple behind, or what?
Last summer I suggested to Li that we should have a weekly column that covered some of the technical issues around CBC Radio 2's new offerings. We are working very hard to reposition ourselves in a dramatically changing "broadcast" environment. I thought a column like this might help our audience to move along with us.
Li agreed (thanks Li!) and when we took the idea to our boss Bill he said "yes, do it" (or words to that effect) practically before we could pitch it to him.
And here we are. The point of these posts is not to be geeky for the sake of being geeky but to make it easier for all of us to discover and enjoy Canadian musicians and composers of all genres when, where and how we want.
Since the column began this fall we've covered a lot of topics and I thought it would be a good year-end idea to do a quick review.
When Peter Cook sent me a note asking "are you a Squeezebox owner?" for a second I thought he wanted to borrow an accordion to serenade colleagues. Fortunately no, it wasn't that. But today's Tech Q? column is all about how this device may change your life, or at least your ability to listen to the vast world of internet radio, including, of course, Radio 2's music channels. Over to you, Peter:
We have two pieces of good news.
First of all, last Friday the good geeks at Slim Devices (who build the Squeezebox products) fixed a bug number 7814. What that means to you and me is that when we listen to CBC Radio 2's Music Channels on our Squeezeboxes we won't hear the skipping and stuttering we've sometimes heard up until now.
To be clear, this was only an issue for our Music Channels and only when they were played using a Squeezebox.
Many thanks to Andy and Sean at Slim Devices for jumping on this bug and for the patience of Tony, Simon and others out there in "vacuum land" who were waiting for the bug fix.
If you are wondering what a Squeezebox is, Slim Devices calls their products "network music players" and that's a pretty apt description. I mentioned them last month when I posted about Internet Radios.
Do you have a sense of mild superiority, when it comes to your choice of computer, and of that superiority being under-recognized and not catered to? If you answered yes to that question, you are probably a Mac user.
It's a hard row to hoe or road to toe, sometimes. There you are on this brilliant computer, and some silly Windows thing screws it all up. Or so it seems. As Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek says in this week's edition of Tech Q?, t'aint necessarily so. Over to you, Peter:
Occasionally we get notes from irate mildly annoyed Mac users. These notes are usually along the lines of "I can't play Windows Media on my Mac. Please help." OK, usually there are more exclamation points and they don't always say "please", but you get the idea.
I'm here to tell Mac users, you can play Windows Media files on your Mac. I know 'cause I'm a Mac user and I do it all the time. I confess that the user experience does not match that which our Windows brethren get but with a bit of patience you'll be listening to Concerts on Demand and the Listen Live streams just like everyone else.
The first time someone told me about Podcasts I think my response was something swift and sophisticated, like "huh? Say what?" Ah, how quickly new technology changes our lives, and in the case of Podcasts, I'd say definitely for the better.
But then Radio 2's Resident Geek, Peter Cook, started talking about "Enhanced Podcasts," and again, first reaction was pretty much as above. I mean, how enhanced can they be, have they figured out a way to send you a packed lunch along with that podcast? Not exactly (sadly, since who has time to pack a lunch), but there are any number of niceties that come along with Enhanced Podcasts, as Peter explains. But first -- a suggestion. Make sure to click on Continue Reading, because it gets really fun once he gets into the pictures, towards the second half of the post. Take it away, Peter:
"A standard audio podcast is usually an mp3 file. You click play and listen. Great.
But do you know about "enhanced" podcasts? Most people don't (hi Li!) so I'm going to talk about them today. All of the podcasts CBC Radio 2 produces are available in standard and enhanced versions.
So what's an enhanced podcast?
The main difference is that enhanced podcasts have "chapters". With chapters:
you can jump to specific points in the podcast
each chapter has an image associated with it
each chapter includes a link to a web site.
All of this makes for a richer, more interactive experience.
For example, in the Canada Live podcast you can navigate to the exact song you want to hear, see photos of the artists and follow links to the full concert at Concerts on Demand or to the artist's web site. Sometimes host Nora Young will speak about a specific instrument (for instance Luke Doucet's beautiful guitar), and in the enhanced podcast you can see a photo of it.
We used chapters in the Brahms podcasts and Beethoven podcasts to clarify where Pinchas Zukerman or Bramwell Tovey spoke about or illustrated on the violin or piano a specific movement in the symphony, to show photos of the maestros in conversation with Bill Richardson, and to provide links to the actual concerts with the symphonies at .
Before you do anything else, just scroll down and look at those radios. Mmm...nothing like the look of a radio -- old or new -- to satisfy those among us who love the things.
OK, I'm assuming you scrolled back up and are reading this again. And you've probably already guessed, today's Tech Q post is about radios new, so new that we're not even sure what to call them yet!
Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek explains:
"This week I'd like to give a brief overview of an emerging product category, one for which we haven't even settled on a name yet. Internet Radio? Wi-Fi Radio? Audio Streamer? Network Radio? Wireless Network Music Player?
I'm going to call it an Internet Radio for now since this is the aspect of the device we're most interested in here.
With an Internet Radio you can listen to any of the thousands of internet radio stations from all over the world for free. You do not need a computer to operate an Internet Radio, just access to a broadband internet connection.
Most of these boxes can also play back the music you have stored on your computer and most of them come with alarms you can set to wake you up . . . or to tune you in to your favourite programme.
Today I'll simply list some of the products I'm aware of and give you some links to follow so you can do some research. All of these devices connect to your wireless hub and have either built in speakers or an audio output to connect to your stereo.
Roku carry the SoundBridge and SoundBridge Radio. The latter includes an AM/FM radio. You can compare the two products here although I note that the SoundBridge is out of stock until Jan 2009. Here are reviews from the technology-oriented cnet and the audiophile journal Stereophile. My (admittedly fly-by) impression is that Roku is spending more energy developing network-based video devices lately.
Tivoli makes some really great sounding little radios and they have just introduced their Networks Radio. Tivoli point to a number of reviews from their site. A bit pricey and 1.0.
Last week Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek, laid out some of the basics of connecting your computer to your "stereo" (can we still call it that?), so that you can listen to online music (fer instance Radio 2's Concerts On Demand, and Music Channels). Today, he moves onto the next level of this hookup -- the one would, if it were a person, say "look ma, no wires!"
Over to you, Peter.
"With the wonderful software available for organizing our music collections and with all the great audio available via the internet, computers have moved to the centre of our listening lives. So it makes sense to make the most of the sound quality available by connecting our computers to our listening systems. Last week I described a fairly low tech solution in which you run a wire from your computer to your stereo.
This week we're going to do it all without wires.
Most computers sold in the last few years come with a Wi-Fi wireless network card. With the right software and a bit more hardware you can send audio wirelessly from your computer to a receiver connected to your sound system . . . which might be in another room.
One example of such a system is Apple's AirTunes technology.
Software? On a computer running Windows or Mac operating systems you can use iTunes. Unix users might want to check out Raop-play.
Follow the links to see what each of those boxes can do. We'll just focus on their audio capabilities for the moment. Set up your AirportExpress (for example) close to your audio system and plug it in using either an analogue or digital cable.
Let's say you want to listen to one of CBC Radio2's new internet radio Music Channels using iTunes. Once you have AirTunes configured you'll notice a new speaker button in the bottom right-hand corner of iTunes.
Here's a conundrum. What if most of the music you wanted to listen to was in your computer, or accessible through your computer, but the sound sucked? (To put it in the vernacular.) Today in the weekly Tech Q's? Column, Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek, gives some guidance as to how you might solve that problem. Over to you, Peter:
"Recently I was reminded by a reader (thanks Tony!) that I hadn't talked about one of the simplest ways to make the most of your online listening. While many people are perfectly happy listening to the sound from their computer, some listeners want to enjoy their online music on a great sounding audio system.
There are a number of ways to connect your computer to your audio system but today I'm going to start with a low-tech solution: we'll run a wire from your computer to your stereo. Please note that as you go out beyond about 10-15 meters the level of the signal will drop significantly so this solution won't work for all of you. We'll offer some other solutions in future editions of "Tech Q?"
Your computer
The audio output on your computer is almost certainly a 1/8th-inch connection. Check your computer’s manual if you aren’t sure but the connection will look like one of the following examples. You can click on the image to see a larger version.
Every Wednesday Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek, (and I mean that in the most positive way) explores technical issues relating to Radio 2's various offerings. (Was trying to avoid the word "platforms" but I guess "offerings" isn't much better.)
Anyway, whatever you call it there's no denying radio has come a long way since the days of wireless telegraphy. Some of the ways it has come are not even here yet! (If that makes sense.) But they are coming soon, and today Peter does a little forecasting, with a look at the future of internet radio, summed up by the one word: EVERYWHERE. Over to you, Peter.
"OK, it's not here yet for most of us. But it is coming. And the future is now for those who own an iPhone or other GSM-capable device. Last week I talked about CBC Radio 2's internet radio stations (aka, Music Channels) again and that prompted some feedback about access.
Coincidentally I'd been communicating with a couple of colleagues here at work about where things are headed. I pointed to an article in a trade magazine (Streaming Media) called The Future of Internet Radio. It's long and there's lots of insider talk that wouldn't be of much interest to most R2 listeners so let me highlight a couple of key quotes.
“Certainly anyone who understands how people listen to radio understands how important mobility is,” Kennedy says, pointing to stats that say roughly 80% of all listening takes place away from the laptop or desktop.
Analysts have speculated that the last terrestrial radio transmitter will be turned off by 2020 at the latest in the U.S. and by 2015 in the U.K.
“Looking out to 10 years, I see radio towers being converted into WiMAX towers, turning our world into a highly connected digital environment where we can access our favorite radio station through any device, anywhere in the world".
...through iTunes. That's the rest of today's topic, but those long subject headings start looking funny on the page. But it is indeed the subject for this week's Tech Q's? column. (For previous editions, just click on that link and scroll down.)
For people who don't use iTunes and don't want to, no problem, as Peter Cook, our resident Tech Doc will explain. But if you are one of the many who like listening to music this way, today's column explains how you can customize your experience of listening to those four CBC music channels in your own iHome.
Over to you, Peter:
"In Sept 2008 CBC Radio 2 introduced four new internet radio services which we've been calling "Music Channels". With these services you can listen 24/7 to one of four genre-specific stations: Classical, Jazz, Canadian Songwriters and Canadian Composers.
You can read more about this service and you can use the CBC Radio 2 Channel Player to listen to the streams on the Music Channels page. One advantage of using our player is that you see lots of information about what music is currently playing. And we have many more features planned for this player in the future.
But a lot of people have iTunes at the centre of their music world so today we're going to look at how to listen to the Music Channels using iTunes. And I'll show you an easy way to return to our channels without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
Start up iTunes. You may not have noticed it before but near the top on the left is an icon labelled "Radio". Click on the Radio icon and you'll see a long list of genres. There's a ton of stuff out there!
To find the CBC offerings you'll need to look inside the appropriate genres. Click on the small triangle beside Classical. The list expands to show all the stations sorted alphabetically. A short way down the list you'll find CBC Canadian Composers and then CBC Classical.
You can find the other CBC Channels by looking inside other genres. CBC Jazz is inside (no surprise here) the Jazz genre. CBC Canadian Songwriter is inside the Pop genre. There's a pdf file here with pretty pictures to illustrate what I've just described.
You probably know that you can create playlists to organize the music you have in your iTunes library. What most people don't know is that you can put internet Radio stations in your playlist as well.
Many years ago I worked in a bookstore. Sometimes customers would come in looking for a book. Fair enough. But all they could remember was that it had a character in it who loved cows and, oh, that the cover was green. Amazingly, more often than not a light would go on, and lo and behold, we clerks would trot over to retrieve the book with the green cover that involved a boy who adored cows.
Sometimes trying to figure out what the piece of music you heard on the radio was can feel like that search for the green cow book. Except, and it's a big except, there are playlists on the Radio 2 site for every show that have all of the info. you need to find the piece of music you heard and loved. You don't even have to remember what colour the music was. Just time of day, or show, or...well, I'll turn it over to the Tech Doctor, Peter Cook, to explain:
"Are we all getting used to navigating the Radio 2 site? Maybe I should do a little tour of the site in one of these Tech Q posts. For now I'll try to get into the habit of referring to the "left hand nav" (that's "nav" as in "navigation") area. It's your launch pad for all the top level features at Radio 2.
Today we're going to look down just past the half way point on the left hand nav at Playlists. When you click on the Playlists link the first thing you see is a list of Programs for the current date.
Just click on the program name of interest - or the plus sign beside the program name - and the playlist expands to show you all the information that's hiding underneath. Click on the program name again - or the minus sign - and the info folds back up.
Another Wednesday, another edition of Tech Q's, wherein all of your questions of a technical nature regarding Radio 2 are answered by the esteemed Peter Cook, a.k.a. the Good (Tech) Doctor. If you click on the last link, you can scroll down through every "episode" thus far.
Today's subject heading might surprise you -- visuals, not audio. But the photos of performers taken at CBC-recorded concerts are frequently a nice addition to the experience of listening to concerts at Concerts On Demand, once you figure out how to navigate them. Peter explains:
"We all stayed up late last night watching the big show (streaming video online, of course) so let's keep it simple today. This is a hint about navigating the Photo Gallery which appears in each concert at Concerts on Demand.
Seems pretty straight-forward. Let's see if we can surprise anyone with a trick they didn't know.
Click on one of the small photos in the Photo Gallery. A larger version of the image pops up. Hands up, who closes the photo and then clicks on the next one to pop it up? I see a few hands out there. (OK, the truth is we've seen some feedback via the Contact Us page which tells us that some of you are opening and closing photos like this.)
Here's the first tip. With the first photo popped up, move your mouse to the upper right-hand corner of the photo. You should see the text "NEXT". Click on that and sure enough you're sent off to the "next" photo in the gallery. Now that you are on the second photo, move your mouse to the upper left corner. You should see the text "PREV". Click on that and you will go to the "previous" photo.
Not impressed? How about a keyboard shortcut? The more I can do without reaching for the mouse, the happier my wrist is.
The peripatetic Peter Cook, a.k.a. the R2 Tech Doctor has been doing extremely techie things at an extremely techie gathering somewhere on the west coast. Naturally that has not stopped him from posting this week's Tech Q's column -- probably he knows how to do this from outer space, if he so wishes.
But the column regards an earthly concern some of us have -- with the hundreds of concerts online at Concerts On Demand, how to best filter and find the ones you want to listen to?
(Note: To see all of the Tech Qs? columns, here's our own little filter -- just click on Tech Qs?)
And now, over to you, Doctor Peter.
"Last week we looked at the filtering tools in the Concert Finder at Concerts on Demand. This week we'll look at a couple more tricks for finding the perfect concert to suit your mood.
You can sort information in the Concert Finder by any of the columns: ARTIST, EVENT, GENRE, LOCATION and DATE. The Date field indicates the date the concert was posted. By default the Concert Finder will show you the most recently posted concerts at the top of the list.
If you want to see the oldest concerts at Concerts on Demand click on the word "DATE" at the top of the column of dates. It will toggle the sort state to put the oldest concerts at the top of the list.
The other sort columns become more useful when you combine them with the filters we learned about last week. Let's say you wanted to find all the jazz concerts from Edmonton. Select "Jazz" from the genres filter and then click on "LOCATION" at the top of the column with place names. Now the Concert Finder displays only jazz concerts sorted by location. If you look down the list a bit and you'll see that all of the jazz concerts from Edmonton are grouped together.
Today Doctor Peter diagnoses the best way to find concerts at Concerts On Demand. And in a related note -- fans of Lang Lang will want to find this concert pronto. It was recorded during his week long residency in T.O. (see Lang Lang Adopts Toronto ) by CBC Radio 2, and is now available as a "CoD" -- just click on Lang Lang In Recital.
Described in the Globe as "extravagantly gifted and even more extravagantly uninhibited," you'll hear Lang Lang performing music by Schubert, Bartok, Debussy and Chopin.
And now, over to the good Doctor:
" If you go to Concerts on Demand you'll see the 'Concert Finder' at the top of the list of concerts. It offers you a couple of tools to help you to find what you are looking for - or perhaps discover new treasures.
The first is the 'Genres' filter. You can use this to filter the results to show only concerts from a particular genre. Click on 'All Genres' (the default) and a drop down menu appears showing various genres we use to categorize our concerts.
Some genres are hierarchical. For instance, 'Classical' will find every concert with 'classical' music whether it be vocal, chamber, recital, orchestral, etc. If you are in the mood for orchestral music, choosing 'Classical Orchestral' will show you only this subset of classical concerts.
The second tool is the 'Filter by Keyword' feature. What exactly is being filtered? Basically you are searching for text which appears in one of two fields: the 'Artist' field and the 'Event' field.
Ah, Doctor Peter is in. This week, he offers some reassurance to those suffering from Podcast phobia. But first -- a note on other matters on the technical front.
re: The Playlists -- yes, we are aware that they are down, and yes, it is very frustrating for all concerned. Apparently it is a fairly major technical issue right now that cannot be resolved in the short order that would be ideal -- but you can be assured that people are most definitely on the case, and once it is working again there will be an update here on the Radio 2 Blog. Thanks for being patient (or trying to be patient, which works out to the same thing, really).
Now, over to the good doctor.
"First of all I'd just like to reassure those who might be wondering . . . you do not need an iPod to listen to a podcast. A computer and an internet connection will do just fine.
Why would you want a podcast? 'Free Canadian music,' would be one answer. That comes via the Canada Live podcast. Each week it features some excellent concerts you may want to listen to at your leisure. This week features three Polaris Prize nominees, for example.
So far R2 has one other podcast (which ran this spring and is still available). It's a personal fav: "Beethoven: Nine in 9" in which Bramwell Tovey and Bill Richardson talk about and illustrate the music of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies. Funny, moving (and educational).
So that's the why, here's the how.
There are many ways to subscribe to and listen to podcasts. The geeks (bless 'em) will have their favourite means but for the purposes of this post we'll keep it nice and simple: we'll use iTunes.
You may have noticed an item on the left-hand navigation of the Radio 2 Website that says "Concert Calendar". What, you haven't been looking at the menu night and day? Well, look left -- there it is. And Concert Calendar is a new arrival you will want to know about if you want to know which concerts will be broadcast and when, on Canada Live (8 p.m.), The Signal (10 p.m.) and Sunday Afternoon In Concert (Sunday 1:00 p.m., 1:30 NT).
Not only that, you can also see which concerts CBC Radio 2 will be recording in the near future in your neighbourhood, and thus become a part of the Radio Audience -- a key role involving clapping, possibly laughing at appropriate moments, and of course, listening.
But now I'd like to hand things off to Dr. Peter, as part of his weekly Tech Q's column, posted Tuesdays, for more info on the calendar and how to use it:
"Here's your direct link to the Concert Calendar. Broadcast Dates have a grey background. Recording Dates have a pinkish background.
This is a calendar so of course you can view concerts by Day, by Week or by Month.
That's it in a nutshell. But for those interested in more details, please read on.
Dr. Peter is in the house again, with our new weekly feature, Tech Q's?, posted Tuesdays. We ask our tech questions relating to Radio 2, Peter answers. After answering any number of questions in last week's post, this week he starts with some reflections on the Tech Q's? column itself. Over to you, Peter:
"Writing a series of 'technical' posts for an audience as broad as Radio 2's is tricky business. Some people will roll their eyes at the simplicity of the things we'll cover. Others will shake their heads at what might as well be written in a rare dialect of some foreign-language.
'Where's the strike zone?' Or more like, 'what league are we playing in?!' (I know Li likes baseball metaphors.) What I hope we can do with the 'Tech Q's?' series is help people to make the most of what CBC Radio 2 offers online.
This is not about being geeky for the sake of being geeky. It's about being able to discover and listen to music in ways that simply didn't exist before. 'Better living through technology!' I say it somewhat tongue-in-cheek but I believe it.
Is this stuff as easy as turning on the radio? No (unless you have your internet radio receiver set up already). Might it provide something which traditional radio cannot? Of course. Is it worth the effort? I certainly think so.
And thank you. (Aside -- Peter, you do know that baseball is life, right?)
I'd also like to thank Peter for the link to the following video he sent me first thing this morning -- it made me laugh out loud, no small feat before caffeine. This is for anyone who has ever felt the frustration of learning new technology. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing, The Book:
We all have varying amounts of computer techi-ness, or, as my colleague Peter Cook (a.k.a. The BBF, The Blog's Best Friend) puts it, geekyness.
He has a lot. I have, well, less. Maybe you have even less still. In which case you'll be happy to see this new weekly feature called Tech Q's? where your technical questions (and mine) will be answered.
Today, not a question though, just an answer! Peter kindly walks us through how to listen to R2's new internet radio channels, which include classical, Canadian composers, Canadian songwriters, and jazz.
Over to Dr. Peter:
"Audio on the internet used to be a minor miracle . . . but a really lousy sounding one. Especially for music! Often it still does sound bad. But not when it's coming from CBC Radio 2.
Today we launched our new new Internet Radio Channels and we're pretty proud of the sound quality.
We know that listening to music from the internet is new for some people. And we know that some of you are frustrated by the limitations of the sound coming from your computer speakers.
So we've created some "How to" files to help you make your way.
There are lots of illustrations and step by step instructions.
Click on the links above and your computer will either open the files directly or ask you where you'd like to save them. You can even print them up for future reference if you like. (These are "pdf" files. They can be opened with software you probably already have on your computer.)
For future reference, these files are right at the top of our Help page. There is a Help link in the left-hand navigation menu of the CBC Radio 2 site.
One more note -- the Player requires Flash 8 or better (which is most likely already installed on your computer) and a high speed internet connection..."
Thanks, Peter.
Please check back next Tuesday when Peter will go over another tech issue on Tech Q? here on the Radio 2 Blog -- and, please feel free to send your questions in via comments.
On Monday Apple opened it's (sold out) Worldwide Developers Conference with the usual much-anticipated keynote presentation. One of the announcements was that a new version of the iPhone would be available by June 19 2009 (in Canada) along with an update to the iPhone's operating system.
Is this the new math?
Peter Cook, Radio 2's Resident Geek and Globetrotter, brings his excellent series on digital radio to a close today (for previous installments go to 
We've been talking about "digital radio" in all it's forms lately on Tech Q. Last week I explained a bit about what satellite radio was, some of it's advantages and disadvantages, what audio formats the two incompatible (XM and SIRIUS) systems use, and a bit about the recent difficulties the business has faced.
Last week we heard all about 
"What are you doing?" is the question that launched a thousand tweets. In other words, the fast-spreading social networking craze known as 
Dr. Peter is in the house again, with our new weekly feature, Tech Q's?, posted Tuesdays. We ask our tech questions relating to Radio 2, Peter answers. After answering any number of questions in 
We all have varying amounts of computer techi-ness, or, as my colleague Peter Cook (a.k.a. The BBF, The Blog's Best Friend) puts it, geekyness.
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