Qsonix

I have a friend at work that is a true audiophile, his home audio system is of the same value as a nice car. For years at the heart of that system was a Qsonix media server. Its basically a Windows XP based computer with 1.5tb of storage and a high end sound card that has a 24bit DAC.The internals are all bleeding edge for when it was built around 2007 and it came with a price tag to match of over $7500.00. The big selling point for it wasn't the fancy hardware, it was the software. It came with a 15" touchscreen that allows you to control all your music with a couple touches. Not really earth shattering until you think about 2007, the first iPhone came out midway through the year and the biggest iPods were around 8gb.

What does this have to do with iPhones and iPods?

It was the Apple interface that eventually put Qsonix out of business. Why spend $7500.00 when you can buy an iPad and interface it though a DAC or even use it to control a home built media server for a fraction of the price.

A few weeks ago my friend asked me if I was interested in the Qsonix, it had developed a problem where it would not reliably boot if it lost power. He didn't want to sell it like that, he knew I enjoyed tinkering with things so he offered to give it to me. After researching it I found that there is no real fix for the reboot problem.The units are still being built and still exist, they are used in very high end digital juke boxes. The software even still looks the same. Unfortunately to protect the software they were never shipped with disks to reinstall like a normal computer. If something went wrong you shipped the unit or hard-drive back to Qsonix. The company that owns the rights to them now does not provide support for the older Qsonix units.

The unit still works fine, once you have it booted. So I decided to put it in the garage, because that is where I generally listen to music. It actually has 4 zone capabilities and can be controlled through a web interface, so I ran a 100' Ethernet cable from my router to the Qsonix.

 
 While I was in the attic running the Ethernet cable I decided to mount some extra speakers I had bought at a garage sale a few years ago for $10.00. I bought the Ethernet cable $14.99, 100' speaker cable $6.00 and two speaker brackets $9.50 from Monoprice. I really don't know how they sell some of the things they do for the price. The speaker brackets are steel, support up to 33lb, can be tilted to most any angle and have a safety cable. I woudn't even try to make wooden shelves to set them on when I can get brackets for that price.

 I mounted the AIWA speakers in the corners over the edge of the garage doors.

Along with the Klipsch KG 4.2' I have less than $200.00 in the system and it sounds great. The Qsonix is awesome because I can create playlists on it that will play non-repeating for days. I have about 800 uncompressed albums loaded on it now.

ATS Allignment

Three weeks ago I took Tania's ATS in to a shop near work for an alignment. The place is very reputable and they have done at least three alignments for me in the past.

That afternoon they called me for what I was expecting to be a notification of the car being ready. Instead it was to let me know they had damaged it. Apparently the alignment tech left the alignment fixture still attached to the passenger side front wheel as he drove it off the rack. It hit the fender just behind the wheel and then pulled the fixture off the wheel, scratching it.

 
The Manager was very apologetic, had already contacted his body shop and had someone over to look at it. I was concerned not knowing who his "body shop" was, so I set my expectations of only OEM parts and let him know how particular I was. We mad arrangements for me to bring it back in just over a week and how they would pay for a rental.

I picked it up yesterday and looked it over closely. Even with the knowledge that it had happened I could not find any indication of it being repaired, I was very impressed with the quality of the work. When speaking to the Manager I thanked him for replacing the wheel, I found out they had it "repaired" and had used a wheel repair shop I have used twice in the past. It looked perfect, actually better than it had before because they removed the road rash from it as well.