A
Frankly you have come to
the wrong man: there is
sticky green stuff on Guru’s
Christmas decorations and quite
possibly a family of mice living in
that bag of old stuffed toys. Some
tips, though: dust is an easy fix.
Seal it up, bag it up, and use those
as-seen-on-TV vacuum bags if
you really want a good level of
protection. Don’t skimp, though;
lesser bags won’t stay sealed over
long periods, making them pointless.
If your loft is anything like Guru’s,
it’ll suffer hourly temperature
changes more extreme than Guru
Jr’s mood when he’s asked to stop
watching YouTube. There really isn’t
much GaGu can do about that, bar
adding a little extra insulation to
keep things more stable.
What you can do, though, is
keep an eye on those conditions
with a smart hygrometer. GaGu has
personally enjoyed the battery
powered SensorPush, which
watches temperature and humidity
with an unerring eye, though at £83
it’s perhaps a little expensive.GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX
A
Depending on your
interpretation of ‘hi-res
audio’, you may already
have the goods somewhere in your
trousers: most modern Android
phones are perfectly capable of
playing back the majority of high
resolution music formats, and some
- notably LG’s V20, V30, and V40
- include integrated DACs that
do a fine job of processing that
audio through their integrated
headphone ports. If you have one
of those to hand, an app – Onkyo
HF Player or USB Audio Player Pro
are paid-for options, while VLC
offers good free support for
FLAC files – is all you really need.
Apple’s selection is a little more
awkward. It offers its own collection
of hi-res music, the Apple Digital
Masters series; this was previously
known as ‘Mastered for iTunes’
before Apple took iTunes round the
back of its Cupertino shed for the
last time. There’s Apple Lossless
(aka ALAC) which avoids the AAC
compression of the former, though
the good news is that iOS supports
FLAC these days. Whichever you
use, know that you’ll only be able to
get 24-bit/96kHz audio through to
Apple’s bundled headphones.
Whichever platform you’re using,
there are streaming platforms
(notably Tidal, but there’s also
Amazon Music HD) that offer
higher quality, and a DAC will help
extend the potential resolution of
your music while also extending the
number of expensive things you’ll
need to stuff in your pocket. The
Audiolab M-Dac Nano (£149) is a
good, pocketable size.
GaGu would suggest, though,
that you just go the whole hog,
and take a dedicated hi-res player
with you. Packing something like
Astell&Kern’s compact SP1000m
(£1,899) or its cheaper cousin the
Activo CT10 (£289) means your
phone won’t be out of action if you
decide to pipe some line-level hi-res
audio through your hi-fi setup.What’s the easiest way to get
hi-res audio in my pocket?
JANE REMUS, MANCHESTER
I’m storing a lot
in my loft. How
can I keep it safe?
O OLIVER, VIA EMAIL
Technical wizard Guru, he of the barely
functioning network and ever-broken
printer, man of 1,000 terrible ideas, has
invested in a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 (£75 in
total) ostensibly to tinker with and improve
his Linux knowledge. Let us be real: GaGu
will tinker to the point that he has a
RetroPie setup even better than that of his
Pi 3, then tinker just beyond that point and
irreversibly break the lot.
Sticking with computers, Guru was lucky
and cool enough to be sent a prototype of
the previously Kickstarted and now
IndieGoGoing Woo-dy (from $129/£102),
a compact mechanical keyboard with a
puerile name that’s too obvious even for
GaGu to abuse. The moniker
stems from its real wood
underbelly – in
GaGu’s case it
was cherry,
but walnut is
also available
- and it’s a
really neat
and incredibly
sturdy little
thing, with
(in Guru’s
model) some
excellent-
feeling Gateron Brown switches below a set
of utterly classy keycaps. Pity it only has
half the keys of a normal keyboard.
Guru’s house renovations continue
apace, as much as a job that has so far
taken him six months can be called ‘apace’- and he’ll soon be in the market for some
new smart home gear to hook everything
up. Given that his new bedroom will be in
what was once the Basement of Discarded
Technology, a full floor away from the other
goings-on of Guru Towers, the list includes
a smart doorbell, the appropriate video-
addled smart assistant to go with it, a new
bedroom TV, and something to keep the
kids in line while they’re out of earshot. Give
GaGu your tips – perhaps you can pull your
finger out and do his job for a change eh?
Cuh, you lot. Don’t know you’re born.
DECEMBER 2019 T3 31Gadget guru
ABOVE
If your pocket’s
big enough then
go for it – but be
a bit wary about
sitting down