Paul finds a Bluetooth speaker for a seagoing friend, before revealing the tools of his trade to an aspiring tech journalist.
Paul finds a Bluetooth speaker for a seagoing friend, and reveals the tools of his trade to an aspiring tech journalist
Chatting with my friend Mike recently, the subject turned to portable Bluetooth speakers. There are plenty on the market, far too many to have tested them all, but I’ve played with a fair few.
My usual advice to anyone asking for a recommendation is to take a look at the Denon Envaya Mini. It’s been around for a few years now, but I still reckon it’s hard to beat. Build quality is amazing – so heavy and solid you could use it as a weapon! Sound quality is great too, although do bear in mind that my hearing has been partially wrecked by attending far too many super-loud gigs over the years. But I often play my Envaya Mini quite loud – probably further damaging my hearing – without any noticeable distortion from the speaker.
“But is it waterproof?” asked Mike. He messes around on boats as a hobby, and needs a speaker that won’t suffer a fatal drowning if it takes a short swim. Unfortunately, the Denon is only IPX4-rated, which means it’s splash-proof. It would be fine to use poolside, or even next to your kitchen sink, but it’s unlikely to survive a full submersion in the sea. Also, given its weight and density, I’m pretty sure it would sink like a stone.
Luckily, I’d recently been looking at a portable speaker that I suspected would be perfect for Mike, so I lent it to him to have a play. The speaker in question being the Stryde 360 from US brand Braven (a firm based in California that’s recently been trying to break into the UK market).
The Stryde 360 is about the same size as a can of beer, and has been designed to fit into the cup holders in your car or the water bottle holder on your bike. At 460g, it’s only slightly lighter than the Denon, but it feels less weighty. It’s more plasticky too – but not in a horrible way. It’s sturdy, without the creaks and groans you’d normally associate with plastic-cased speakers.
Most importantly for Mike, though, it’s waterproof. It’s rated at IP67, which means it can be submerged in 1m of water for up to half an hour without sustaining any damage.
It uses two drivers projecting sound through grilles on each side of the “tin can” design, and there’s also a passive radiator at each end of the cylinder for decent bass. It sounds pretty good to my imperfect ears, but I don’t think it’s quite as good as the Denon, especially when turned up loud.
It also doesn’t have the aptX Low Latency codec you’ll find in the Denon, so the Stryde 360 isn’t much use in multimedia setups. But it isn’t designed for such things – this is more a speaker for active uses, especially near water. The Denon is the speaker you’d buy for your dad; the Braven
“The Denon’s build quality is amazing – so heavy and solid you could use it as a weapon!”
what you’d get for your kids. They cost pretty much the same, though.
Mike gave the Braven Stryde 360 a thorough workout on his boat, and confirmed that it continued to function after being accidentally-onpurpose dropped into the sea! Like me, he also noticed that the sound became distorted at high volumes, but only with bass-heavy tracks. With normal rock and pop he found it perfectly loud enough on his boat, even with both engines running.
He also appreciated the fact that you can use the speaker’s battery to top up your phone – but, of course, this will decrease the speaker’s playing time. Braven reckons the speaker should be good for up to 12 hours, but my unit lasted for only around eight – and that wasn’t even with the volume cranked up high.
One thing Mike mentioned – and I have to agree – is that the control buttons for volume, Bluetooth pairing, media control and on/off aren’t clearly marked. They’re made from rubber, with the relevant symbol lightly etched into the surface. But in certain lighting, the symbols disappear. It’s a shame Braven didn’t provide some colour contrast.
Like many Bluetooth speakers, you can also use it to make and receive phone calls. I’ve never found this a particularly satisfying process with any speaker, though. If you want to make a mobile call on speakerphone, the best way to do it is on your handset. However, the Stryde 360’s built-in microphone does work well for voice control when connected to your phone (“OK Google, play some music”), for example, or when paired with an Amazon Echo Dot (“Alexa, what’s the weather forecast?”).
I like the Braven Stryde 360, and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it – especially if you need a portable speaker that’s waterproof. This is the first Braven speaker I’ve tested, but from its website it appears to have an extensive range. If the others are as good as the Stryde 360 then I think we’ll be hearing more – quite literally – from Braven.
Tools of the trade
This month, I received a message on Twitter from an aspiring tech writer. She’s actually still at school, but her dad is a PC Pro subscriber so she clearly comes from good stock. She’s been tasked by her teacher to understand more about a job that interests her, and she asked me about the process I go through each month to put this column together – specifically the software I use.
It’s an interesting question because I don’t actually have a fixed list of software I use – at least not for the initial stages of each month’s column. I use a variety, depending on where I am and the device I’m using to bash out the words.
For example, right now I’m sitting in my office at my Windows desktop, typing into Microsoft Word; the document is saved into a Dropbox folder. Word really isn’t my favourite software, and is probably overkill for a task such as this, but it just happens to be here.
Part of me thinks I shouldn’t use Word at all. At least once a year I end up writing a couple of thousand words, then open another document to copy something, only to inadvertently close the wrong window and in the process lose hours of work. In this instance Word will often also clean up the backups it’s been diligently making while you’ve been typing, so I’m left to start over.
It’s annoying, and should really be enough to make me stop using Word. But you know what? Those “write the whole thing all over again” columns often end up being much better than the original. Also, when using Word, I tend to make extensive use of the built-in thesaurus, if I find myself using the same word repeatedly, recurrently, frequently, constantly, continually, repetitively, over and over again… Such a facility is usually absent from more lightweight writing tools.
When I’m writing at home, I’ll probably use my trusty MacBook Pro. If I’ve already started the column using Word in the office, I’ll pick up the synced copy from Dropbox and carry on using the Mac version of Word. Unlike the Mac version of Outlook, which is awful, the macOS version of Word is actually quite usable. It’s easy to switch between the two.
But if I actually begin writing the column on the Mac then I’m likely to pick up a different tool. I particularly like iA Writer ( ia.net/writer), because it presents a clear interface without multiple distractions. There’s even a “focus mode” that lets you hone in on just the line of text you’re writing, fading out the text above and below. That’s a bit too hardcore for me, but the normal mode works well and allows me to focus on the words. Or rather it should, but it’s 2017 and notifications from emails, social media, and other stuff mean that none of us is ever completely free of distractions!
One great thing with iA Writer is that it’s available for Macs, iPads and Android
tablets. So I can start writing my column at my desk, but then make tweaks later while lazing on the sofa. You might think it sounds like madness to write using the touchscreen on an iPad, but iA Writer just about makes this a usable option. There’s even an enhanced keyboard offering such luxuries as cursor keys! I’m still using a fairly old version of the software, now known as iA Writer Classic, but it works well for me so I’m reluctant to upgrade.
I know that many of my colleagues use Scrivener ( literatureandlatte.
com). Again, it’s available for both Mac and iPad, and there’s a Windows version too. It’s based on an older revision, though, and isn’t as fully featured as the macOS version.
I can see that Scrivener might suit certain styles of writing, but it doesn’t work for me. The software encourages you to first set out the structure of your document, then break it down into smaller chunks, and then start to fill in the blanks. You bring all of your research documents and links into the project too. Whenever I try working with a tool such as this, I find the resulting text is always disjointed. The natural flow just isn’t there.
This is also one of the reasons I haven’t upgraded my copy of iA Writer. The newer versions offer content blocks, embedding pictures, tables and nested content. The software seems to be heading in the same direction as Scrivener, away from the simplicity that originally attracted me to it.
Another option that I’ll sometimes use, especially if I’m working away from home and the office, is Google Docs. The great thing is that it’s completely device-agnostic. There are app versions available for the major platforms, but the quick and easy way to use it is simply via a web browser. There’s plenty to like about working in this way, but there’s one major feature missing – a permanently visible word count. That’s a big issue when you’re writing for magazines or newspapers. Your commissioning editor will always give you a target word count, because they know how much space they have to fill. It isn’t like writing online content, where you can write as much or as little as the subject needs.
There are add-ons for Google Docs that show an on-screen word count, but they tend to be obtrusive. They’re not like Word, for example, where the word count sits neatly in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
Whichever tool I’ve used to write the bulk of the column, I always finish it off by importing the text into Word, because I have a standard layout that I like to use. I also always submit the final copy as an RTF file. Although other software can write rich text files, Word seems to make a much better job of it.
There are two final tasks I need to do before the copy is ready to submit. The first is to add a few images and captions. I normally submit four, although often only two or three will be used. Sometimes they’ll be screen grabs of applications or websites; other times high-resolution product images provided by a manufacturer. On occasion, I may even take a photo myself to accompany a write-up.
My go-to tool for picture tidying and manipulation is Adobe Photoshop, which I have as part of a Creative Cloud subscription. I know it isn’t cheap, but I’ve yet to find anything that can touch Photoshop when it comes to working with images. It’s in a class of its own.
The final job is to proofread the article. To do this, I’ll normally copy and paste the text into Notepad and read it there. The different font and line breaks mean that some errors become more visible. Although, luckily, once I’ve finished my bit of the process, the column is edited and proofed by several others, so hopefully by the time it hits the page any errors in the copy will be few and far between.
That’s one of the big differences between traditional and online publications. Online content is often bashed out into a content management system by the author, with no-one else checking the work. Hence the poor quality of much of it!
Once I’ve finished the column, I upload it to a Dropbox folder that’s shared across the whole team. Tim (our esteemed editor) grabs the file from there and edits it in Word, saving it to Google Drive – which the magazine uses to synchronise all the files for that particular issue.
The photos I’ve uploaded are moved to Google Drive as well, where they’re converted to CMYK format (as used for print rather than screen display) in Photoshop. Then the designer imports the words and photos into Adobe InDesign, laying out both copy and pics and making the pages look far nicer than I ever could.
The next step is to convert everything to PDF. Initially, lowresolution copies for final-proof reading – I’m sent a copy at this stage, and will feed back any corrections – and then finally high-resolution copies for printing. Tim uses an InDesign tool called Batch Converter to avoid having to export each file individually.
Finally, the printer has a web app – made by Fujifilm – into which Tim loads the final PDF. A few days later, as if by magic, the magazine starts to arrive with subscribers, and then a week later it appears in the shops.
Hopefully, that gives our young reader enough detail for her school project. One important final note, though – you asked me about the software I use, but in a way the tools aren’t important. What you really need for a job such as this is an understanding of, and an enthusiasm for, the subject you’re writing about. That’s the secret behind all of the “Real World Computing” columns in PC Pro.
“The great thing about Google Docs is that it’s device-agnostic – and the easiest way to use it is via web browser”