[Superman]

while we wait for fresh good quality vinyl pressings of re-mastered hits...
...Am I showing my age????

Pressings ???? 33⅓ or 78s or you talkin' cylinders

[fizzissist]

LPs.

Best Buy here in the U.S. is stocking records again, and the selection is getting progressively bigger. Re-releases, and new stuff. Many artists are asking for 5,000 or more records with their CDs when they go into mastering.

Btw, I'm really not a Barb. Streisand fan, but her new album is a great listen. If Dave Mason will finish his current project, it's killer. (don't know if either will be out on vinyl)

[kylemp]

24 and building a cnc plasma

[Dave Rothermel]

I am 66! Retired from General Motors Delco tool room.
CNC is for fun now.
Dave

[Rhino3Master]

29.5

[lgalla]

Hay Valve guys,Martin,Geof,fizzissist etc....Here is an explaination of digital audio

A guy's gotta carry a cow across a river. He's not strong enough, of course, so the only way he can do it is to cut the cow into pieces, carry them across a few at a time, and re-assemble the beast on the other side. When he's finished, he's got a cow on the other side of the river, but it's not exactly the same cow."

The picture is a valve computer.Wonder if it can run Windows XP?

[Geof]

Hay Valve guys,Martin,Geof,fizzissist etc....Here is an explaination of digital audio

A guy's gotta carry a cow across a river. He's not strong enough, of course, so the only way he can do it is to cut the cow into pieces, carry them across a few at a time, and re-assemble the beast on the other side. When he's finished, he's got a cow on the other side of the river, but it's not exactly the same cow."

The picture is a valve computer.Wonder if it can run Windows XP?

The Physics instructor I had in college would probably respond that the shape of a cow is not made up of a summation of sine waves so it cannot be truly regenerated. However musical notes are predominantly composed of sine waves so they can be regenerated more accurately than the cow.

I'm a cynic, I think the supposed superiority of analog and tubes over digital and silicon is predominantly due to the placebo effect.

[Larry83301]

The Physics instructor I had in college would probably respond that the shape of a cow is not made up of a summation of sine waves so it cannot be truly regenerated. However musical notes are predominantly composed of sine waves so they can be regenerated more accurately than the cow.

I'm a cynic, I think the supposed superiority of analog and tubes over digital and silicon is predominantly due to the placebo effect.

While I agree that the NEW technology can reproduce each and every sign wave perfectly, I believe that what is referred to as the “pure” sound from a tube amp includes the harmonicas that are produced when two or more sign waves interact with each other. Just my 2 cents.

[Geof]

.... harmonicas that are produced when two or more sign waves interact with each other. Just my 2 cents.

If two true sine waves interact or combine the result is also a sine wave, but not all musical instruments produce true sine waves and when these interact with sine waves the product is not a sine wave so it is true that analog to digital and back to analog does not truly regenerate the original wave form(s). Much better than a cow shape maybe but I still stick with my placebo claim. After all people 'hear' low frequency notes from tiny speakers that are physically incapable of producing the notes because the brain conveniently synthesizes them.

[fizzissist]

..Gotta jump in briefly and dispel some myths..
Tube amps don't contain harmonicas.

If you listen to a system capable of reproducing critical information, and do a direct A-B test of a tube chain vs a digital chain, the tubes will generally win. It's not a simple sine wave thing.

The biggest problem with digital has been the sampling rate at the high frequencies, and dealing with the real high harmonics that are beyond human hearing. Digital has some serious issues with them, but they're being worked out.

Till then, I'm happy with the ultimate in digital reproduction...analog. Sorry, I've been spoiled, I've heard.
In all fairness, digital has come light years in quality. I remember doing critical listening tests back in the late '70s where we had a record and a CD of the same release, matched levels, and everything idealized (to the best of our ability). The CD was almost unlistenable after you'd heard the record. Even if you didn't know the source, you'd find the CD irritating after awhile. Kinda like listening to JBL 4130's. Great speaker, just irritating.

The shortcoming of the record is dynamic range and surface noise, the shortcoming of the CD is ultimately reproduction quality, that's one of many reasons that records are making a comeback.

Sadly, we're going into another technology phase shift...MP3s....Gawd, MP3 quality sucks!!!....but the kids just don't know better. Long as the subwoofer makes your ears bleed, it's great. <groan>

[dedhubbs]

This has been an interesting discussion. My last audio amplifier was a Williamson with KT66's. I believe the problem with audio is not the amplifier but the loudspeaker. How many are linear from 20 - 20,000 Hz? I used to have a couple of Electrovoice Patricians and they sounded great even if not absolutely linear. I find it hard to believe that a little box six inches to the side can reproduce 20 Hz frequencies honestly. dedhubbs, Canada

[handlewanker]

One of the biggest problems with audio reproduction is nobody washes their ears out before doing "serious listening", so depending on the amount of ear wax present you'll get a different sound everytime

Same as having the "ideal sound setup" with all the bells and whistles etc, but not getting the room properly sound neutralised to suit the output of the speakers......the list of variables goes on and on....no two people will agree on what is the perfect reproduction or what is the perfect bit of sound equipment, no matter what the price.

Also on the scale of acceptability, anyone who faults a CD in favour of Vinyl has found something not present on the original recording, and so judges everything by the missing crackles and pops always present on ANY vinyl recording after the first coupla' plays, but never present even after a million plays on a CD.

I know it's Audophilia Complex that drives people to seek out that which is unobtainable, and so the search for the Holy Grail continues.

I like mP3's also, but not when they've been sampled at 40kb's to get maximum volume on a small storage capacity, but then again the source may be some old Rock and Roll tracks from the fifties, and I'm dammed if I'm going to pay ten times the price to get remastered obscure tracks because they appeal to a small market.
Ian.

[fizzissist]

One of the biggest problems with audio reproduction is nobody washes their ears out before doing "serious listening", so depending on the amount of ear wax present you'll get a different sound everytime

Same as having the "ideal sound setup" with all the bells and whistles etc, but not getting the room properly sound neutralised to suit the output of the speakers......the list of variables goes on and on....no two people will agree on what is the perfect reproduction or what is the perfect bit of sound equipment, no matter what the price.

Also on the scale of acceptability, anyone who faults a CD in favour of Vinyl has found something not present on the original recording, and so judges everything by the missing crackles and pops always present on ANY vinyl recording after the first coupla' plays, but never present even after a million plays on a CD.

I know it's Audophilia Complex that drives people to seek out that which is unobtainable, and so the search for the Holy Grail continues.

I like mP3's also, but not when they've been sampled at 40kb's to get maximum volume on a small storage capacity, but then again the source may be some old Rock and Roll tracks from the fifties, and I'm dammed if I'm going to pay ten times the price to get remastered obscure tracks because they appeal to a small market.
Ian.

So, now we know that you know absolutely nothing about audio. Big hat, no cattle.

At least you're old. That's something you can brag about in this thread.

[Boots]

Years ago I used to do sound for Local Bands and the biggest thing to overcome is "Head Room". Crank the vol. to high and feedback would result. So we used to use a "Pink Noise" Generator to stablize the room and flatten the response. This would allow me to get a pretty good start until people showed up and the sound would change. But no matter where I went or no matter how good my set-up was there would always be someone that was a "Sound Man" Wanna-be and try to tell me how to do it better but they were intoxicated and I wasn't cause I was working and not allowed to drink on the job for obvious reasons. But that's the way it is. No two people hear it the same way....ever.

[fizzissist]

Years ago I used to do sound for Local Bands and the biggest thing to overcome is "Head Room". Crank the vol. to high and feedback would result. So we used to use a "Pink Noise" Generator to stablize the room and flatten the response. This would allow me to get a pretty good start until people showed up and the sound would change. But no matter where I went or no matter how good my set-up was there would always be someone that was a "Sound Man" Wanna-be and try to tell me how to do it better but they were intoxicated and I wasn't cause I was working and not allowed to drink on the job for obvious reasons. But that's the way it is. No two people hear it the same way....ever.

I used a system called SonaPulse (sp?) a few times, and it got the room flat, but.....I quickly realized that a) the sound changed so radically when the fans came in (and it was dependent on summer or winter clothes) as to make it next to useless, and worse b) rooms don't necessarily sound good flat.

Feedback is what you get when it's loud enough in the monitors to make everyone happy (everyone but the guitar player..), and loud enough in the house to give the stage the rich-room feel they like. I had the luxury of parametric eq, so could pretty much dial back the feedback frequencies. I envy the new guys with earbuds for monitoring.

What I used to get was "It's TOO loud!!" All you can do is run everything 2db under feedback and hope to make the guy writing the check happy.

LOL....now I'M the "sound-man wanna be" tellin' 'em how to fix it. But I only do it when it's REALLY bad. Or if it's beyond the 3rd or 4th song and they haven't got the room sorta dialed in.

...Easiest show I ever did was the Mills Bros. in Vegas when they were still all alive. 1 mic, and they all blended themselves. Gawd, those guys were good.

[handlewanker]

The Mills Bros........good golly gosh Fizzwizz, you are that old? Did'n realise you were that long in the tooth.
Bet I'm older.

I like the "big hat no cattle" bit, never realise that people without hats were cattle owners...LOL.

Sound is what sound does, it makes the ear drums vibrate, and the path to vibrating them is sown with a whole load of magic sounding paraphenalia, most of which never gets to please the audiophile no matter what the cost, otherwise the market for "good 'ol crap" wouldn't flourish.

A guy I once worked with, (a typical valvie), was saving up to buy a pair of speaker cables, about an inch in diameter, made from some twisted copper and other stuff, and that was just the cables, the speakers were something else, never got played much due to being pulled apart frequently for tweaking the wadding.

When it comes to sound reproduction, that's a whole new religion.

I sometimes wonder if The Man upstairs really made ears to hear with or stop your hat from falling over your eyes.

One things for sure, they never truly perform as good as the sound equipment that vibrates them.

There' a time in your life when you're hearing at peak performance, about 20'ish for males, but shortly after that the bits in your inner ear just need a bit of oiling, and due to the innacessibility of the "bits", they just unnoticibly deteriorate by degrees.

So all those audiophiles with perfect hearing at mid life crisis level, you're just being very hopefull.

I often wonder if the surface speed of a vinyl disc at the rim and centre can have any effect on the way advocates for that medium "Ooh and Aah" so much, when compared to digital reproduction which has more constants going for it.

Do you then as a true audiophile only listen to the middle tracks because the disc surface speed is moving too fast at the outside or too slow at the middle, so changing the nature of the reproduction across the whole disc?

I can imagine a vinyl buff stating that "vinyl starts off good and just gets better", you wish.

Doesn't happen with CD's, but then CD's aren't old enough to be of vintage status, so they lack credibility in some quarters.
Ian.

[JLSD]

Old enough to think C.I. is right for machine structures, wise enough to know I can't do it at home on any decent size of machine!
On a serious note, machines, and their components, are so much cheaper now than my memory has it.(Better too!) I remember the first NC machine I ever came across, a MOOG Hydrapoint, early 70's, cost about 12 years of my salary!
My last salary before retirement would have bought a current HAAS + tooling and change! And NO, I didn't get to be a high flyer in between!
Also old enough to remember thinking eastern imports were ALL "cheap imitations!" Where did that get us?
John.

[98th]

60 is my age now!!!!!!!111

[tobyaxis]

Old enough to see the Machinist Trade as a Dying Art Form.

[Larry83301]

Old enough to see the Machinist Trade as a Dying Art Form.

I agree, and disagree with you. The machinists trade as we knew it is dying. It has been for the last twenty years. Fewer and fewer jobs in this country and fewer apprentices being trained to carry on. But on the other hand, more jobs are opening up for those with computer skills AND the knowledge of machining. Mixing these two skills can get you a long way in this changing environment, where many of the things we made one at a time are being mass produced hundreds at a time, and “cheaper”, not necessarily better. For our trade to progress, we need to learn to work with change, not try to stop it. Learn to control the machines that are doing what was our job, so that our jobs don’t just slip away.
I have trained a short-order cook to run a CNC lathe, but it’s hard to teach him why it works the way it does. It takes a certain kind of person to want to learn why machines do what they do, and how to make them do it. Cutting material is a SKILL, not easily learned but when you start learning the WHY’s of it, it starts becoming easier. What you learn cutting one thing will help you when you cut something else. After a while this knowledge base makes it easy to figure out how to cut almost anything. This knowledge can be transferred to telling CNCs how to do the job that needs to be done, and an operator can run the many parts that are required, and you can go on to the next problem.
Just remember that years ago there were Artisans and Blacksmiths, machinists have only been around for a few hundred years, evolving as we went. So let’s keep evolving and not just pass into oblivion like those that make buggy whips. There may be a few left, but do they really make a contribution to our society?
Just my $0.02, for what its worth.