Overdue perhaps!

Wow, I can't believe how time has flown since my last post, so I guess I'd better blog an update before this year is over!

At Sonneteer, we recently have been on an update spree in the past several months, starting from the Mk.V CD player, followed by the Orton and a couple more on work in progress too! Even the website has been updated (well I guess it's kinda easy to stay in and work with such rubbish weather!)

News is both the Mk.V Bronte and the Byron CD players were received with great enthusiasm, and the baby Bronte CD player has also picked up an award in Japan too... so all very happy.



Most of the updates were done under the skin: a completely new chassis, power supply, CD mechanism and remote... but crucially we kept the same DAC as before which gave our players their legendary sound quality! Several tweaks made to the chassis have also provided significant improvement to the overall sound quality of the CD players too, which can't be bad! Looks wise only a very small visual update on the front panel buttons, now in stainless steel instead of black plastic... just a little sparkle of "bling" so we can tell the Mk.V from the Mk.IV, Mk.III...

Looking back...

As we are about to re-launch the CD players, I got a bit of a deja vous feeling and found myself reminiscing the initial Sonneteer journey while I was talking to a chap about the business.

Haider was making an amplifier for his university project... I was working on a satellite receiver project for my placement company. Although we were both really into music I remember I was far more into Hi Fi then him, and my friends were into it too and so were my colleagues and so on... you get the picture.

Anyway, I remember back then Haider often came to my place with his black box project of an amplifier with a bag of bits and try things out. It usually happens after him blowing it up at his place so let's just say he was changing and updating components quite often! Back then, we used any bits available so long as the values were fulfilled and he started to notice those changes of component often changed the way the amplifier sounded! So quite often he comes over to my place and say, "tell me I'm not losing it, but if I do this the thing sounds different!!!". Quite often I agreed and it wasn't long until the sound we got out of that ugly black box with a hand written "h" on it was out performing my own system.

After the degree was over, Haider decided to take a holiday in the USA to cool his heels and left his pride and joy of an amp in his room. I really don't know what got over me but one day I decided to go to his place, rang the door bell and told his mum I needed to "borrow" something from Haider's room... and I ran off with the little amplifier.

I took it to my place and gave it a good listening to and found it wiped the floor with my system... I then took it to a friend's house who had a far superior Hi Fi system than mine, and that little amp did the same to his system... he looked at me and said nothing, but that look was enough for me.

Last thing I remember was I rushed back to Haiders room and put the amp back exactly where it was as if it never left... a few days later Haider came back and I went there and said: "Let's start a business making amplifiers..."

Got me a new phone...

After being burnt with 3 touch screen phones running Windows Mobile 3 and 6, with all of them being retired as paperweight, an assault weapon or as an emergency phone within months... I was sure that I would not go down the touch screen route again... not even the iPhone tempted me enough to ditch the old buttoned phone!

Until one day I walked in the Carephone Wearhouse wondering if there are something worth me looking at, and this kid showed me a HTC Desired Z for about 5 minutes and I found myself Googling it that night. I got it the very next day and have never looked back! (perhaps that is why the CD project has been delayed recently!)

Honestly thou, it does show when a product ticks so many boxes as the Desire Z, even a sceptic like me can be turned... and I've just heard my colleague as well as my girlfriend is eyeing the same phone...

Here's to more blogging on the go!!!

Small update

News is that I have two latest Sonneteer CD players (Mr Byron and a Miss Bronte!) on my bench ready to go thru the last bit of testing... it has been a long time coming and what kept the passion going? I guess I kept thinking: all good things comes to those who wait.. (they better good after all this time!)... More updates next week of Mr. Byron and Miss. Bronte!

Now how do I get this on my HTC Desire Z?? (by the way what a bloody good phone!)

Solid!

Finally... thought of the day... SSD's finally their prices are coming down!!! So we can finally make the near silent, near vibration free Morpheus Server to be, erm.. silent.

Customers who wish to explore the potential of SSD should get in touch!

Sorry no update... mustabeenbusy!

Yep... didn't realise it is already April! Last time I was just coming back from CES Las Vegas, landed in London Gatwick, went home to cool my heels and then off to the ISE show in Holland (Check out our website news page or Facebook page!).

Not long after I found myself in Magliz... Bulgaria! Just for a short break... and it was amazing to be in somewhere so different from what I am used to... great food too... so when I got back I bought a bike! Went to a wedding (thankfully not mine) and with Mike as the DJ we had nothing to worry about... :D (I know he might be reading this lol)

Anyway, back to the buiz of designing stuff....so what happened so far? Well quite simply put, working on a few projects right now... The next generations of our CD players will soon be ready... here is a pic to show the beast I am dealing with...

Yes CD player, for some reason unknown to me, there seems to be a surge in demand of the 'ol silver disc spinner and hence a lot of priority is put on to getting this prototype to production, which I hope it will be in about 8 weeks time, so I can disappear for the summer break! lol...

What else? Amplifiers too are getting a bit of a push too... I thank my friends in forums who kept singing their praises, thank you, thank you! If you are into audio, have a browse in http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/

Bamboo?

So what the hell was I on about??? Well, just before CES2011 I realised that it has been like 3 years since designing the Morpheus music centre and perhaps it would be cool to have a different way to present the Morpheus at the forth coming shows. Something for the life-style concious customers that we seem to be getting more and more each day...

From the original concept, the Morpheus can be placed or mounted in three ways:

Then I remembered that I have had an old design of a stand that I wanted to make for 2008 but due to other pending projects it was temporarily shelved (like 3 years lol). For 2011 I thought, perhaps good time to bring it back! (Well, there was little else we could show physically since the other début was the internal BlueTooth streaming module!)

Because of the show schedules, time was the essence and for some reason it seems to bring up the simpliest and, to me at least, the most elegant solution... and this was the actual concept mock up: (Yes, I took a paper tube and cut it!)

Being so well balanced I could actually take a Morpheus unit and plonked it on the tube and the whole thing would remain stable without toppling over and I haven't even made a base for the stand yet!

Inspiration?

Maybe it is because I watched too many Kung-Fu movies in my youth or the fact that in my earlier years I lived next to a bamboo forest in Hong Kong. A fountain my father created long ago perhaps? Fact is I always liked showing the thickness of the materials used as I have with the Morpheus and tube housing of the Morpheus Server too... to me it is always important to show the products are made off!

Anyway, the final prototype was created and worked a treat too, I will add more pictures later on as we are packing the stand for the ISE show... but here's one of them:

Also, for the production version, I will be introducing a few tweaks to make the stand more versatile and user friendly, and hopefully show them in different colours too, so stay tuned :)

Oh! I forgot about the base and some rather good ideas for spikes... but that would be too geeky wouldn't it?

I've got one word for you....

Bamboo!

Yeah that's right... so stay tuned.

just a thought...

Tonight is just one of those nights where I have decided to switch my brain off early.

Surfed a few sites and TV channels and found nothing remotely interesting to me... and for some reason I am fed up with all the technology that surrounds me but doing nothing for me on an evening like this one...

So I decided to call it a night as I felt like listening to a bit or radio and read a bit by my bed side, like I used to all those years ago...

One word came to my mind: FAIL!

I wanted to listen to the radio and found the Wi-Fi enabled iPod being left at work and prolly flat too... so next, I enabled Virtual Radio on my SE W995 Symbian mobile on it's docked speakers, and oh yes, within a couple of searches I got fed up it's incredibly rubbish sound and tired of looking for a decent preset channel.... so that wasn't working for me.

Now if I open my lap top I know I would end up pressing more buttons than listening, going from channel to channel and eventually I end up reading nothing and getting all mighty mad at my noisy HP Entertainment Laptop!...sigh... If only I had a simple radio next to me with no glaring back light, clicking hard drives, whirring fans and flashing led's all over the place... Oh wait... I got an idea... let me dig out my 1950's Philips valve radio...

Sorted!

I now have warm sounds and since it can only pick up a hand full of channels, I quickly settled on one... and the room is faintly lit by the FM dial back-lit by a genuine filament bulb!

Nostalgia? Definitely!

Happy? Yup!

Did it keep me awake? I'll tell you in the morn..........................

Man and Machine part II

Once all the zillions of holes have been done, counter bored and tapped... we turn our attention to the other side... the top side... the side where everyone will get to see!

As the Morpheus Server is available in different colours, we have decided to do away with printing as that can only be done after anodising it... which adds cost and time to complete. So why don't we put all the important logos etc. into the metal, and anything boring like serial numbers underneath with a sticky label... job done!

Next job, we had 2 choices... engraving by man, or engraving by machine. After asking talking to our experienced engraver John on which way to go, he explained that he would prefer doing it by hand. To him the hand engraving adds a final personal touch to each product and we agree!

Here's John in action:

Man and Machine...

After the main box section is cut and machined down to size, we have to start adding all the holes, slots for all the internal bits to mount on... This is one bit we have to rely on our computer aided machines to make sure all the right holes are in the right place...

There you go, my first video in my blog!

OK, so it isn't an amazing video I know, but I hope people now realise that even with computers and machines, these things still take considerable of time to complete, one by one. I remember having to explain to some people there isn't a machine out there that you pour in materials from one end and out comes the finished products from the other end! :)

Introducing the Morpheus Server!

Yes think it's time to do a piece on the Morpheus Server!

A while back I have done a bit here and there on the Morpheus Server but a lot of that was based on the pre-production unit and it always amazes me after the prototype stage how much more work is required to get the unit in production with all the cosmetics ready!

Anyway, as you may or may not know, the Morpheus Server is designed to be beautiful and quiet from scratch. It is not just a re-badged PC that rattles you to insanity, but a rather desirable piece of electronics. Stylish and functional, attractive but discreet.

The Morpheus Server casing starts off with a solid piece of aluminium tube with 6mm thick walls, cut and CNC machined to exact size required with all the apertures required to allow the unusual assemble process. Unusual because as case is actually a tube, all the assembly needs to be done inside with access only from the sides of the tube (it's a bit like knitting a sweater inside a bucket... not that I do any knitting!).

Some pics of the server case in progress:

Another one while on the CNC:

I'm back!

Not that I have really been away... well actually I have... Beirut of all places and no I wasn't kidnapped! (Well, sort of, by my other half lol...)

Well October usually is the usually time when we realise that we'd really have to pull our fingers out to get ready for the CES 2011 in Las Vegas... and like every year, I tell myself: "I'm going to get everything ready ahead of schedule... I'm not working till almost midnight on the 24th December..."

See if I get it right this year... so stay tuned!

Ghosts in the machine...

Been going through my photo archives the other day just to have a clear out since my camera phone memory is almost full, so was my other camera and my 2 other memory sticks. While going through the pictures, I stumbled on these pictures proving that indeed the Morpheus does have a sense of humour... (have a look at the display, I promise you these are not staged!)

Morpheus is feeling pretty!

Morpheus feeling a bit broke!

What Morpheus thinks of our internet provider!

Priceless.... ^_^

Necessity is the mother of the Morpheus Server...

Right, 2 months no real (or fake) updates... hmmm sorry about that! New years have always been hectic beginning with CES in January, then followed by yet more shows in Japan, Canada, Munich and I think somewhere in there was the Dutch show too (hmm can't remember, must have been a wicked show then!)... So for the last few months the office shouted "Man down!" Erm... sorry, sales, production, shipping was priortrised over the blog thingy....

Anyway, over the months the Morpheus Server went from concept, show sample to full production and this week, we are shipping the last one out of the first production batch... not bad going for a brand new product! I can think of several reasons for that though... Firstly I think it is a smashing looking product in the flesh, really easy to use and finally I think the market is ready for such a product... Opps... I meant the product is finally ready for the market!

The Morpheus Server was born not from an idea, but rather from necessity. We needed a music server to partner our Morpheus Music centre but we could not find something good enough, reliable enough, or easy enough to use. I mean, is that possible for we are not even early adopters! So after months of searching for a suitable product and failing miserably, one day I joked with Haider: "After spending so much time searching and evaluating, we could have built the perfect one by now!" Well, that was back in September. In October we had a prototype running in the office!

Montreal was unreal....

Haider just got back from the Montreal Hi Fi show and sounds like it was a huge show with lots of interest... The colour schemes seems to have gone down well and the Morpheus Server worked flawlessly over the week too... So there you are, the real first production launch of the final unit... you can catch more on our facebook page: Yup! The fabulous Sonneteer Facebook Link! and while you are there why not become a fan too so you can keep up with what's going on at Sonneteer too (erm, thats what I do!)

Next... hmmm... I know it looked like I have been rather lazy on this blog but not really, I have been documenting the progress of the new Morpheus Server and hopefully over Easter weekend I will have some time to put it all together and if I can work it out, embed some videos too!

(ok if that sounds like a bore-fest... you can always watch the F1 GP this weekend and pray for rain again since the FIA have really, trully, finally and ultimately screwed F1 this time... I feel a rant coming on haha... don't worry I won't subject you to that just yet!)

MIA

hmmm.... sorry been missing in action for like a month... heavy schdeule to put the server into production... i promise loads will soon come on this new baby from Sonneteer... I even shot a video or two... ;o)

back soon!

The nitty-gritty.

I thought I'd mention a few more design considerations of the server!

The less holes there are, the less chance for noise to escape! As mentioned before the buttons are made from cast acryllic but I forgot to mention they are transparent so that we can use them as status indicators, so the production version will no loger have the holes next to the buttons for indicators... less holes less noise to escape from! The production version will also have a velvet curtain over the CD slot as the last hint of noise was heard through the CD slot in the prototype, so we have now addressed that problem too... every little helps!

Notice the side panels are recessed in the server. Apart from showing off the thickness hence sturdiness of the case, these side panels are made from 2mm thick aluminium and shaped to fit the hole. As the case is made from an extruded tube, the holes on these tubes will never be all exactly the same. Hence the side panel will always need to be slightly smaller than the tune's hole, hence the side panels were designed to "expand" when you tighten the side screws in order to seal the tube sufficiently.

Why recess them? Well it was an insurance policy during the design phase. The idea was to allow extra damping material to be added on both side of the side plate should we need to take the noise down another level! Fortunately the pre-production unit proved that was no longer necessary as the noise supression was already so effective, so now it simply leaves scope for the customer to specify a different custom side finish... Penaudio ply veneer anyone? :o)

Now you don't hear it!

Finally we have launched the Morpheus Server (and ripper) at the CES show in Las Vegas a little over a week ago... and before then, I couldn't really say too much the product! Now that's all over we can have a closer look at the product and some of the design aspect of the unit.

Oh yeah, the first unit made was in a Bordeaux Red... well I like it and thankfully eveyone else did too! Since the unit is all aluminium we can anodise it in any colour we like, so we made a black one too for old time's sake!



The Morpheus server's design specification was really simple:
Simple to use, quiet as hell, small, and green (enviromentally that is).

I have had computers working as servers and NAS drives at home and honestly, never again! The computer was ugly and noisy, and the NAS drive was just plain noisy, especially when you want to listen to your music and relax! So the Morpheus Server needs to first tackle the noise aspect very seriously, infact nearly all the effort was focused on the noise issue!

Now you hear it! has been our slogan for the longest time but not this time for this bad boy! This unit has to be ultra quiet itself and also vibration free so it would not casue noise to its surroundings. So the first thing was to get rid of the need of fans in the unit. All the main components, power supply unit etc. must also be fanless versions so they can operate indefinitely without needing a fan to cool it... sounds simple until you realise that they are like hen's teeth to find! Only the latest generations of components are thinking along that way to save power and be silent!

Vibration elimination was a bit more complicated! We have 2 fast hard disk drives inside which whirls, crackles, clicks and vibrates like hell, so the way they are mounted has to be carefully looked into. Having been into cars and our office situated not far from a Lexus dealer, I have looked into ways cars have used to reduce vibration, centrifugal or torque issues when mounting their engines! After some experimentation, the hard drives inside the Morpheus are now mounted on 8 rubber damper mountings, selected by sampling several shores and numbers used before deciding on the best combination. The drives themselves are coupled in a way that their individual vibrations cancels each other, inspired by silent shafts used in car engines, and the final result was rather spectacular!

Of course all these efforts can easily be lost again if the box is made like a tin can... but not the Morpheus Server! If you look closely you will see the case is made from a seamless aluminium tube and the walls are 6mm thick. Aluminium is a low resonance material and seamless means minimum noise can escape for the box and it won't fall apart in years to come! Aluminium conducts heat very well which helps the cooling of all internal parts and thermal stability is assured. The fully assembled unit weighs a hefty 5kg and all that weight rests on 4 soft, natural rubber feet, making the unit even more silent and vibration free! Infact when Haider first took one home, he wasn't sure if the unit was on or not cos it was so quiet!

Here are a few shots of the unit:






The eagle eye'd reader will observe that there are only 2 buttons on the unit (specially made from cast-acryllic for the Morpheus). One to switch the unit on and off, the other is to eject the disc in an emergency! I say emergency because the CD is automatically ejected once it has been recorded! We couldn't have possible made this unit easier to use... 2 wires to connect, one button to push and then stick a CD into its slot and go make urself a drink! After a few minutes the CD is ejected signifying that the CD has been recorded and stored into the immense 3TB hard disk. You can then access all your music from your Morpheus Music center or any other UPnP streaming devices!

Are we Green? Oh yes! We never over look the enviromental impact of our products and the Morpheus is probably one of the greenest servers around!

More design details later... :o)

2nd day at CES

Sorry peeps been too busy to get any pics sorted... the show so far has been quite good for us... with many visitors and press coming to see our range of products and the Morpheus System is going from strength to strength.

Now with the Morpheus Server, it all seems to make so much more sense to the visitors and it makes it so much easier for us to explain the Morpheus home audio system to new faces! It is also quite exciting to customers tempted to order the Morpheus server in different colours too! Okay to begin with we have taken order for a Black one from a conservative customer, but soon we have taken orders for a Electric Blue one, a Titanium coloured one and soon we will be taking order for a Bordeaux one too- one of my favourite colour! (you can catch what it looks like on the Sonneteer news blog page).

This year, it seems more people are appreciating the convenience of storing their CD collections electronically especially if it its a simple no-brainer operation to do it... just stick a CD in and wait till it comes back out and it's done... and with the Morpheus they can listen to their favourite tunes just as easily....

With so much interest we need to paddle quickly on this one and we hope to start shipping them out in March! So with the Morpheus Server almost put to bed I can now start working on something new which has been in the think tank for the last year or so... :o)