FIFINE A22 Gaming Speaker Review

FIFINE A22 Gaming Speakers

I get to test and review a lot of cool items here at John’s Tech Blog.  I was especially grateful to have the opportunity to review the FIFINE A22 Gaming Speakers. ($72.99).

They can also be purchased at Amazon for the same amount.

This is the descriptive blurb from the FIFINE website:

“FIFINE AMPLIGAME A22 2.1 CHANNEL BLUETOOTH SPEAKERS, WITH 4.5″ WOOFER, EQ/VOLUME/MUTE/RGB CONTROL, AUX/OPTICAL INPUT FOR GAMING ON PC/CONSOLE OR ENTERTAINMENT”

I am not much of a gamer, however, these will improve your audio experience considerably on a laptop, mini-PC, or game console.  I have a mini-PC (with Ubuntu Linux) on my guest room TV.  The more accurate description of the bedroom though is “whoever starts snoring first, the other person goes to that room”. So it gets quite a bit of use.
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Well not really.  But a whole lot of radio stations out there call themselves High Definition Radio (HDR) and is really called In Band On Channel (IBOC).  If you look at the top of my pages you’ll see this image.  Where the red line is, is the center of the signal or the station frequency.  On the side of the signal are two rectangles which can can carry digital information.  This doubles the bandwidth required to 400kHz.   This works in the US because of our FM channel spacing but won’t work in other countries.

At any rate, there is data transmitted on the rectangles and lots of times entirely different radio stations.    This is why your car radio shows album art or tells you the name of the song and what is playing next.  Some larger metropolitan areas will also transmit weather or traffic maps.

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A couple of years ago I bought an old set of Bose 501 speakers.  Audiophiles poo-poo Bose speakers but the truth is way back in the 70’s they made some decent speakers and the 501’s were one of them.

However 40 years of sitting around tends to dry rot the foam surrounds on the speakers.

Dry rotted Foam Surrounds on Bose 501

Yep, that’s what both of the speakers looked like.  And they sounded worse than they looked as well.  Actually they would sound okay at super low volume but as soon as you turned them up …….they sounded awful.

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Not much in the way of content or discussion here.  Just my Pioneers.  I love the look of the 1970’s era receivers, especially the Pioneer SX series.

My favorite.

Pioneer SX-980

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Without a doubt the old Silver faced Pioneer Receivers from the 70’s and 80’s was some of the most epic stereo gear ever designed.   Sadly with the advent of cell phones and tablets everybody listens to their music on cheap earbuds while streaming low res music from some far away server.

Well not everybody does that.  But most.  And that means all those old boat anchor sized amps are in the back of the closet, the garage, in the attic and turn up at the estate sale from time to time.

Stupid old guys like me who are trying to relive their childhood will pay top dollar for an old amp that realistically time forgot.   So these days it becomes the challenge of the old audiophile (audiophool) to find one cheap and bring it back to it’s once epic status.

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Started messing around with “vintage” audio again.  Drug a couple stereos out of the attic and picked up a new stereo or two (or three).   I’ve been heavily involved in vintage audio since around 2001 or so on and off and one thing that any old stereo guy will tell you is that DeOxIt spray is a miracle solution for audio.  Spray it on and rust falls off, light bulbs glow brighter and the gravitational force of the moon gets stronger if you accidentally spray some on the moon.

Bullshit.

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So I have this SWEET Pioneer SX-780 that I bought off of eBay a while back and I like everything about it but the lights are kind of yellowish and I keep seeing pics of Pioneers with Bright White or even Blue tints.   What gives?

So first of all this is an easy modification.  The old Pioneer incandescent lamps are 8V lamps and over time they get a little smokey looking and tinted.   All you really have to do is replace them with an LED lamp.  The lamp fixture in the amp is the same one in a lot of modern automobiles today.  So what you need is a T10 5 watt lamp such as this one.

So this is where it gets dicey.  People will tell you on the internet that this is a 12 volt lamp and the Pioneer wants 8 volts therefore it will be dim.  NOT TRUE.  Almost any modern T10 LED has a voltage regulator inside of it which means it will work GREAT at any voltage between say 5 and 15 volts.

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