AMBE+2 Vocoder Promises High Voice Quality at Low (2.0 to 9.6 Kbps) Data Rates

Opus 1.2 open source audio codec was release a few months ago with the ability to deliver low power low high-quality audio bitrate for speech with bitrates as low as  12 Kbps. Digital Voice Systems (DVSI) claims to have gone even lower thanks to their AMBE+2 vocoder (Advanced MultiBand Excitation) providing high-quality speech at data rates from 2.0 to 9.6 kilobytes per second. AMBE+2 vocoder is said to outperform the company’s previous generation AMBE+ Vocoder as well as the G.729 and G.726 vocoders, while operating at only 4.0 Kbps. The vocoder is suitable for mobile radio, secure voice, satellite communication, computer telephony, digital voice and storage applications The solution can be integrated into product either using software licensing, or through Vocoder chips, and the company lists the following key benefits: Maintains speech intelligibility and speaker recognition at rates as low as 2.0 kbps Resistant to background noise and channel bit errors […]

MeLE PCG35 Apo Mini PC Review – Part 2: Windows 10 Home

Laptops and mini PCs powered by the new generation of Intel Gemini Lake processors are coming soon, but companies are still launching Apollo Lake based products with various features. MeLE PCG35 Apo mini PC is one of them, and what makes it interesting compared to most of the competition is support for 80mm M.2 SSDs and 2.5″ SATA drives, on top of featuring a Celeron J3455 processor, one of the most powerful of the family. I took photos of the mini PC, accessories, and internal design in the first part of the review, so I’ll report about my experience with Windows 10 Home, explain how to manage the different drives, and test stability under load. MeLE PCG35 Apo Setup, Drives Configuration, Display Settings Last time, I’ve showed how to install an M.2 SSD and 2.5″ SATA hard drive inside MeLE PCG35 Apo, so I just have to connect a few […]

CHUWI LapBook 14.1 Laptop Manufacturing Changes – Hardware at Launch vs Several Months Later

Products may evolve over time due to parts becoming phased out (EOL), so company often issues PCN (product change notices) to the company for example to replace eMMC flash that’s not manufactured anymore by a new one. They won’t change any advertised features, so the product specifications should remain the same. Reviewers normally get product from one of the first batch of production, and if you purchase the product a few months later, after carefully reading reviews, you may end up with a device slightly different. But in some cases, the company makes major changes, while still delivering the same advertised hardware specifications. That’s apparently the case for CHUWI LapBook 14.1 laptop. The photo below shows how it looked internally for the sample I reviewed. If you zoom on the photo, you’ll find an M.2 slot on the bottom of the right PCB, potentially allowing you to add an SSD […]

XYZPrinting da Vinci Color Low Cost Full Color 3D Printer Combines Filament with Inkjet Technology

3D printing has become even more affordable this year. If you are on a budget, Anet A8 3D printer going for under $150 is often recommended on the web, but if you have a bigger budget, you’d get printer with a metal extrusion frame, larger build volume, and overall better quality, and Creality CR-10 3D printer is often recommended by reviewers for people with a $300-$400 budget. All those printers print with a single color, which depends on the color of the filament used. The cheapest way to get a colored sample is to paint it yourself after printing. There are printers with dual extruder allowing to use two filament rolls with different colors, but when Karl reviewed Tevo Tarantula 3D printer with dual extruder, he found it was hard to print, was unconvinced with the results, and found it to be an unnecessary upgrade, preferring painting instead. At the […]

ACEPC AK1 Celeron J3455 Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Teardown, and First Impressions

Karl here. Today we are going to look at the ACEPC AK1 mini PC. Here are some of the specs pulled from ACEPC’s website. The feature that is most notable to me is the included 2.5” hard drive compartment. Hardware CPU:Intel Celeron J3455 GPU:Intel HD Graphics 500 RAM:4GB DDR3L ROM:32GB eMMC WiFi:Ac3165 Dual Band,2.4G/5G LAN: Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000M Bluetooth: BT V4.0 Interfaces USB port:2xUSB 3.0;2xUSB 2.0;1xType C;support USB disk and USB HDD Card reader: TF Card (up to 128GB) HDMI Port: HDMI 1.4 Microphone audio: 3.5mm Microphone jack x1 Unboxing & Teardown     Some close-up photos to get a better look at the chips, and overall hardware design. First Boot – Storage / Task Manager Storage after first boot: Storage after update: Thermal Testing with Prime 95 Cooling seems adequate. Below is a picture of Prime 95 after 5 minutes. I am glad to see it staying at about […]

Industrial Shields Industrial Panel PCs are Based on Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, or HummingBoard

Boot&Work Corp., S.L. is a company based in Catalonia that sells industrial automation electronic devices under “Industrial Shields” brand. What makes their product noticeable is that they all appear to be based on maker boards such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi. The company offers various Arduino based PLC modules with or without Ethernet that can be controlled with 10.1″ industrial grade panel PCs based on ARM Linux development boards. Currently three sub-families are available: HummTOUCH powered by Solidrun HummingBoard-i2 NXP i.MX 6Dual Lite board BANANATOUCH with either Banana Pi M64 (Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex A53) or Banana Pi M3 (Allwinner A83T octa core Cortex A7) TOUCHBERRY with Raspberry Pi model B or Raspberry Pi 3 model B Beside the different processors, the 10.1″ Panel PCs share some of the same specifications: Display – 10.1″ resistive multitouch LVDS, 315 nits, 170° viewing angle, 1280×720 resolution Video Input – MIPI CSI […]

$290 DERE A3 Air Intel Celeron J3455 Apollo Lake Notebook Comes with 64GB SSD, 512GB HDD

We’ve already seen several laptops and notebooks powered by Intel Apollo Lake processors such as CHUWI LapBook 14.1, Voyo VBook A1, or Acer Spin 1. However, most of the time those models only come with 32 or 64GB eMMC flash for the operating system, which – for my needs at least – is clearly not enough, as I need extra space for data. Some allow for M.2 or mSATA card expansions but that’s usually expensive, and I’d prefer the combination of an eMMC flash (or ideally a similarly sized SSD) for optional performance, together with the capacity and cheaper price of an hard drive. DERA A3 Air notebook appears to provide just that as it includes a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. The device also comes with a 14.1″ display, and is powered by an Intel Celeron J3455 quad core Apollo Lake processor. DERA A3 Air notebook specifications: SoC […]

Intel Compute Card and Dock Hands On, Windows 10 and Ubuntu Benchmarks

We’ve recently seen Intel introduced Dock DK132EPJ for their Compute Cards, and released some pricing info. Ian Morrison (Linuxium) got sent a full kit by Intel with the dock and Compute Card CD1M3128MK powered by a dual core / quad Core m3-7Y30 processor with 4GB RAM, 128GB PCIe SSD, and Intel Wireless-AC 8265 module. You can get the full details in Ian’s post, but I’ll provide a summary of the key points here. While the compute card and dock are thinner than most product, the computer card is quite wider than TV sticks, and the dock larger than an Intel NUC. It also comes with a fan, and cooling works well with maximum CPU temperature under being 70°C. The Compute Cards do not come with any operating system, but you get to the BIOS easily, and install Windows or Linux distributions. Ian’s started with Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation, and ran […]

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