Friday, July 15, 2016

Recent Car Concept Design

Recent Concepts for a yet to be built race car

Some of the recent Concept Design work we have done.  We do the line work and Decals in CorelDraw then bring that into Photoshop to do the actual painting.  In this case we needed Goldleaf and Metalflake paint options and working in Photoshop is the way to go for this type of work. It also allows easier color variations and other things.

But just because I'm using a computer doesn't mean there is a button somewhere that allows me to move the camera and get another view.  This work is effectively all airbrushed, and I have actually drawn it all, based on the photographic reference I've been given to combine the different parts.

So it isn't a computer making this.

We can be contacted at Art & Technology.





Friday, July 1, 2016

A NAD CD Player VS FiiO X1... or X5

A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I could look at a NAD CD player the guy had someone else look at and could not fix. 3 hours had already been spent on it, getting a new NAD drive for it, and it still wasn't right.

Simple answer was no, as it just isn't worth the time to fix something like that. He said it was a good one, meaning Hi-Fi. I still said no. 

I almost never play a CD I own. I play the mp3 I've ripped from it using AudioGrabber and the Lame codec. 320kps sounds exactly the same. Playback from a computer using Winamp  and a hires USB 24bit 44.1/48/96kHz Audio Interface. Most would use iTunes to do the same and not care about the details.

Now if you actually wanted a "Hi-Fi" player, and not a computer/laptop I suggest you still do the CD rip or download files, then use a quality thing like this FiiO x1 for like $139 + SD card. They have more expensive models too. It does MP3, but also the FLAC and 24bit/192kHz thing if you image you can hear a difference and and want "real Hi-Fi". Plugs into amps and speakers for that Hi-Fi thing, and not just headphones.
Anyway, $139 is no time at all in repairing something unknown.



But the type of thing I mostly use is a small MP3 player that runs on a single AAA battery ....