I left this on the what hifi site yesterday:

haider June 18, 2009 18:39

Of course works exceptionally well with the Sonneteer Morpheus music centre.

I Have a linkstation at home and most of our distributors worldwide are now swearing by them as a perfect companion as they are so plug and play compared to many other. A Buffalo linkstation, Sonneteer Morpheus and a network router can have you streaming music through a decent pair of loudpeakers in literally minutes. I installed one in the Harrods AV experience a week or so back. It took longer for them to get me a cup of coffee!

Of course if you have a couple of other units(Morpheus that is) in other rooms they all have access to the same music. I think they call it local control with central distribution. :-)

Sonneteer Morpheus

Hey I'm Back. Yes, It has been a while and I'll come to that some other time for anyone who is interested.

Today I'm interested in a little bit of 'biggin myself up', as I've heard it refered to on one or two TV stations.

My company, that's Sonneteer. of which I am one of the owner founders, launched the Sonneteer Morpheus music Centre this January past and very recently installed it in Harrods.

Those of you who have followed Sonneteer over the years will know that we come out of a tradition of High End hi-fi and in the late 90's started to play with cutting edge technology and bringing in it into the hi-fi mainstream.

Canny observers will have noted that Sonneteer products and ideas have been copied through the years by none other than the most famous of electronics firms and the list is long. We have always been small and perhaps not as able to capitalise on our ideas as much as we should have but we certainly have lead the way in style, ergonomics and the adoption of technologies.

Ok I'm rambling on a bit here, but please allow me to take you back a Little to the beginning and then give you some of the philosophy of what we do.

Sonneteer was conceived out of a final year project at University by myself which was taken by my then friend and now business partner and colleague, Remo and turned into a viable product for market. This was to become known as the Sonneteer Campion, integrated hi-fi, stereo amplifier. In hi-fi circles it has become a legend and sells well even today some fifteen years on.

[ Oh before I go on why the name Sonneteer and why Campion:

Well Sonneteer is a writer of Sonnets or a Poet of sorts. I have or at least had a hobby of writing(bad) poetry and wanted the brand to have something to do with that. So we agreed to have the brand name associated with this theme. A thesaurus came to our aid for the name and we then decided to name all teh products after writers and Poets and Thomas Campion was the first. No particular reason other than, out of the list we had drawn up, we liked the name best.]

Well that was the first product, which was very much in the 'British' tradition of esoteric, high end, hi-fi with great sound quality (we have a legend of reviews and customers to back that up) oh and very much hand built and sturdy. It looked(and still does) pretty good too.

Anyway, I have to go to a play in town(longest day and all that). Apparently some upstart Arab immigrant has written a play. Some fella called Shake Zubair or something. Sounds like a made up name to me! Anyway. Laters. The story will continue.

dont like a Virgin Broadband

Ok so its all about cable speedtoday and we will find out if HMG will cough up to fund the new hig speed networks that we need to get us ahead of the game online Of course it is essential for the country's well being economically that we get on with it and dont just talk about who is going to pay for it or who is willing to get it going. Like roads, these things need to happen to make everything else happen! So it's really simple, HMG need to basically force teh issue and make it the industry do it or lose ther right to function.

Now Virgin Media could be an example of how companies should not be allowed to opperate if we really are to get a truely fully functional network. Cost is the big issue and ok they are a business. BUT and a big but madam! My area is covered by Virgin Media and the cable runs a few meters from my front door, but they will not connect me because it casts them too much to dig up the drive and do it!!!! My understanding is NTL would have done it. I didnt live here yet then! damn!
Everyone around me has Virgin media except me as they seem to either have connected in teh NTL days or their lawn is by the pipe. Ricjard, dear Richard you are running a monop[oly of teh worst kind.

This should not be allowed esle we will have people who will not eve have teh services and hence second class. So i guess Farms and businesses on small estates out of the way...you know where it will go........HMG dont let them do this please....else we will be run 100% by capital and 0% by social concerns. Money may shout teh ludest but it should not be the only thing heard.

Odda hear.

What? HIFI? yup...thats wot i dooes!

I Just posted this as a response on the whathifi site. It's about the chance taht Pandora may die in the USA. It's an internet radio streeming falicity, in case you din know!

Here goes:
haider August 20, 2008 11:09
Yes this has been looming for a while. We have some problems possibly looming in the UK too. The only thing I dont get about the American system is that it's not a level playing field technologically. We have to remember that USA is very much a vested interest country (we are slowly becoming one too). If the man with the biggest, fatest purse says I want this to happen then it happens! It's a bit like the media only they twist the arm of the law makers.
Make no bones about it, this will fail in the long run and they are simply stupid to try to play this game. Napster went Corporate but many others took its place. So one way or another the water will flow. It simply can not be stopped. If not the consumer, the artists themselves who have the savvy will simply see it as an opportunity. The more people who hear their music the more will come to their shows and possibly download their tracks etc. The model will simply change. Greedy people will end up with nothing at all. Mind you it will pass the established music industry by, but why should we care? Give you an idea; when I spent some of my early working time in the music industry they used to call me 'affectionately'the straight. Why? Cuz I was the only on there who wasnt wasted on drugs! Pop will eat itself when it gets the munchies!

I may come back say something usefull later.

H.

Hidden Blogs

So do I think anyone is reading this? Not really. I guess blogs are a good way to allow people to vent without really getting noticed. It's a bit like our notion of democracy, let people vote, make them feel like they are making a difference but not really giving them any power what so ever! It's like totalitarianism but without the suffering. The better of the two evils, definitely.

I remember when Gordon was about to become PM there was word of second preference voting for general elections. Now that's certainly better than what we have now and more people would feel engaged. The problem we have, of course, is the demographic of politics may change a bit and it would be more of a reflection of the nation's leaning. I call this a problem, not for me, but for the 'ESTABLISHMENT'. I never quite knew what that really meant, but it seems if you join them, you are no longer part of anything else!? Is that right? How does one go from pacifist to war monger in a matter of a few weeks? Ans: get elected! Are there truly some who are more equal than others? Is one truly innocent until proven guilty? Or does that depend on your enemy combatant status? Or a thought criminal for that matter? I wrote earlier that the guy drilling outside my office was annoying me so much that I had the urge to kill him, but of course, I didn't really mean I would or even could.

When it comes to killing, or steeling, the ends never justify the means. Never ever. Honour lies with those who withstand all calls to move them from such a position.

So which is worse? a 10 year old watching someone cutting or shooting someone or watching two adults making love naked? I'd say one of these isn't bad at all.

Opinions are like.... well everyone has one, so it goes. I blog therefore I hope to have many. Else I may have little to say. There is someone drilling just outside my office and I say I want to kill them, there is someone next to me who wont stop mummbling and I say I want to kill them too, but I never actually really do! We are influenced by our surroundings and those that protest loudly they are not are often the most influenced of all. We think therefore we are, but what moulds our thinking? The Daily Mail, the PS3 game, the ITV news? Our friends around us, our parents, the schools we attend?

Batman the Dark knight, is perhaps the best new film i have seen this year, but would I let a 12 year old child see it? Well not me and my friends when we were 12. Was it a different age then? Not really. Ok, a lot of stuff they are exposed to is worse, but I don't think that can justify it at all.
Children's behaviour is a reflection of their surroundings. Telling them what is right or wrong is not anywhere near enough for the simple reason is they are smarter than us adults they just have less information. So if Grand theft Auto makes one kid turn into a violent moron then who is at fault? The game or the people that let them play it at an age where they are still being moulded? Some boys don't stop squeeking till they are 16+ so they are still at a very vulnerable time.
I'll get radical: Let kids be exposed to sex but not violence early. Sex is natural, violence is arguably NOT!

Writing the above, I kinda felt a little right wing in my thinking, but then I put it to my so called right wing friends and they hated the idea and are more minded to put a gun in a child's hand and say, well hay its not that that made them kill, it was just the tool they used.

All I say is I am generally liberal and...Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Me must be too stupid.


I'll talk economics next time. Gotta a wedding to go to.

H.

The day before you came

It's the middle of August and Autumn is settling in quite nicely here in UK. But then that's quite dull to talk about. It does however set the scene for the story of economic growth in certain parts of the uk economy; spray on tans! The future is bright indeed!

Ok predictions: the USD will hit £1.75 soon ish. We will rejoice as our exports to the states will improve, we think! Until we realise that their middle classes have been relegated to soup kitchens and hand outs. Sigh! Europe, Europe, please come save us.

OK talk later when I can make more sense!

Match stick eyes

So how do guys who work in the city and binge drink on the weekend manage to actually do sensible work on the monday? Cant be done surely? Hey Worcester, you served us well but we aint getting any work done here today! I need bed.

Worcester to accept euros?

OK! I may as well start by saying that everything I say is to be taken as lightly or as seriously as your own imagination steers you. I can write angry when I am perfectly calm and certainly can appear calm when I am angry.

My brain's a bit mush as we(a group of friends) just came back from 3 days in Worcester as one of us(not me) is getting hitched in a couple of weeks. The Bars of Worcester certainly offered us the delights we were seeking and the ladies of the town were not too disturbed by our attempts of social intercourse. Apologies to the Barges that parked up by ours as we may have woken one or two up as we were dropped back at about 2am! Oh and to the fisherman that was slightly upset when we took our speed upto a notch above 5mph for a moment just to see what this baby could do ;-)

The Euro! well I dont really have a mind small enough to be swayed by all this loss of sovereignty babble to not be smitten by the idea of not having to faff with all these exchanges when buy and selling across the continent etc. My business would certainly suffer less with it.

So my view would be to get in there right now. Why? because we are at approx 80p to one Euro and our interest rates are not a million miles apart. This perfect for the long term prospects of the UK.
1. Our exports to them would be pegged at this level for a while and hence cheaper and more attractive. Yes the long term would mean we stabilise as we would be buying parts from them and hence it would eventually mean less.
2. The interest rates thing means we wont suffer and economic 'jump' as we are almost there anyway!
3. It is about time we were steering Europe economically rather than on the outside pissing into their wind! The one good thing about our economy has been the target of keeping an inflation band. This means we will always focus on growth rather than just keeping inflation as low as possible. We could get the Eurozone to adopt the same policy and we would then all prosper more sensibly and more readily. No one want the manic instability of the US economy where they put up and take down rates every time the wind blows up their skirts.

Now about the young ladies of Worcester! ;-)