Review: Blaupunkt Lucca 3.5 Satellite Navigation System
Posted on February 4, 2008
Filed Under New Technology, Take A Walk On The Live Side |
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Audiotechnews spent the majority of last weekend up north, where the weather was grim, the tech specs that we sent ahead had obviously been ignored completely and the competence of all staff at one of the venues quite clearly left at the door.
Seriously - when your equipment spec looks something like this:
36 CHANNEL DESK WITH 6 AUX SEND. 36-8-2 (MIDAS/SOUNDCRAFT/YAMAHA)
SUITABLE MULTICORE FOR SYSTEM
1 X DIGITAL REVERB UNIT
3 X SPX 900/90
2 X STEREO COMPRESSOR/LIMITER
8 X NOISE GATES
1 X MINI DISC PLAYER/DAT/CASSETTE PLAYER
1 X CD PLAYER
1 X INTERCOM SYSTEM BETWEEN FOH-MONITOR DESKS
2 X 30 BAND GRAPHIC EQUALIZERS
And what you get looks more like this:
24 CHANNEL DESK WITH 4 AUX SEND, but only 3 work.
(Fisher Price/Tonka desk)
UNSUITABLE MULTICORE FOR SYSTEM - 16 inputs on stage
1 X DIGITAL REVERB UNIT
0 Compressors
0 NOISE GATES
1 X Useless employee
Leave the graphic up to fate.
It doesn’t make for a fulfilling weekend of gigs. We would have been well within our rights to cancel altogether, but quite frankly, the show must always go on.
So the highlight of the weekend for me was that we were able to arrive at the venues stress free and early due to the Satellite Navigation skills of the Blaupunkt Lucca 3.5 Edition.
The Lucca comes complete with a music player, and photo viewer (which we didn’t actually use on the trip, but have tried out since. Audiotechnews can report that sound quality is better than a mobile phone, as is the image quality).
On The Road
Programming the Lucca is fairly easy, although there is no obvious way to program in postcodes. Instead, it’s necessary to type the name of your destination, and then the name of the street you want to go to, which is all a bit time consuming. Just as well I’d already programmed the information into the device before we left, using the eraser on the end of a pencil, or the rocky movement from the van would have made sure that the delicate touchscreen misunderstood my every intention!
Having said all that, this all in one unit has a brilliant database of maps (worldwide!!), is quick and smooth in its scrolling, has clear graphic display, with zoomable view, plenty of volume - more than you’d ever need, and sits in its own holder, which you can vacuum suck onto your windscreen or dashboard.
The directions were impeccable, and it even offers alternative routes, which really helped us out when the weather turned from awful to severe!
This unit is definitely up there with the best of them, and ATN only has the one criticism, about the lack of an obvious postcode feature.
More like this please, Blaupunkt!
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The Lucca 3.5 does allow entry by postcode but it doesn’t require a space between first and second parts of the code. Although a space facility is provided on the keypad it won’t allow full postcode entry if it is used. Simply type the full postcode in one uninterrupted line in the top box of the address entry screen.