Gee, and didn't we just see an article last month about how much MORE efficient it is to electrolyze really HOT water (we call that steam, over here in the sciences)? Where, o where could we get some steam...?
Apples and oranges, chief. The amount of energy released from a fusion reaction is orders of magnitude higher than that generated from burning H2 or using it in a fuel cell. The amount of energy required to separate the H from the O is a (forgive me) drop in the bucket compared to what's being generated. Now, of course, you need deuterium and tritium for the fusion, so the effective efficiency of electrolysis goes down a bit (5000:1 or so), unless you electrolyze heavy water:-)
I'll do the math for you: Electrolysis of 1 mole of (tap) water releases 1 mole of H2 gas, and requires 237.1 kJ. (this is without considering process efficiency - I'll do that later). That's two grams of hydrogen. You need to electrolyze about 2500 moles of water to get 1g of deuterium. That's 5.92x10^8 J - call it 6e8 J. The energy released from complete conversion of 1g of deuterium to energy is about 9e13 J. That means that complete conversion of 1g of deuterium releases 150,000 times more energy than required to separate it from water.
Of course, you can't expect to take a single gram of deuterium and convert all of it... but even if 1% of the deuterium is converted, and the electrolysis is only 25% efficient, and we can only recover 10% of the energy... we still get 37.5 times more energy out that we needed to electrolyze all that water in the first place. And if we can reuse the deuterium that DIDN'T get converted the first time...
Considering that the article predicts putting in 2e13 J to get out 9e13 J, the 6e8 - 6e11 J you're worried about from the electrolysis is chump change.
Might I suggest that imploring others to refrain from comment until they are sufficiently well-versed in the subject might be best accomplished if you were to lead by example?
Who pissed in your Wheaties? All I said was that Vuescan runs natively under Linux. Which it does. *I* never said that *all* of the applications required to perform professional photo manipulation were available for Linux.
It's a LaTeX front-end, and more. It's a perfectly serviceable word-processor that uses LaTeX for rendering, and I first began using because of the equation editor.
Item #1: If you stay out of the left lane, you don't have to drive as fast to avoid getting run over. That's my point about it being a safety issue. Yes, I have driven in Atlanta many times. You're either going 75+ or you're doing 10. I know. Getting in others' way, deliberately, is just plain stupid.
Item #2: In many places, speed limits ARE about fiscal. The national 55 limit was about fuel economy as much as anything, and the last stats *I* saw indicated that traffic deaths had NOT risen as a result of going to 65/70 - in fact, on some roads, they've gone DOWN because the disparity between fast drivers and slow drivers was reduced.
Item #3: Your point about speeders is a defensible, legitimate concern. I disagree, but I can at least see some argument. However, left lane camping is indefensible and dangerous REGARDLESS of the speed limits.
I'd much rather be on a road filled with well-educated, courteous drivers, all of whom are exceeding the speed limit by between 10 and 20 MPH, than be on a road filled with people driving carelessly, talking on cell-0-phones, passing on the right, camping in the left lane, etc. I guarantee that there would be fewer accidents on the first road.
Item #5: If "Speed Kills" were true, the countryside would be littered with the bodies of dead fighter pilots and airline passengers. Driving dangerously kills, and left lane camping is more dangerous than doing 75 in a 70.
You don't wanna speed? Fine. Don't. But trying to regulate others' driving is more dangerous by far.
"And for hanging out in the passing lane on the freeway while people are passing you on the right.
Not if the person is driving at or below the speed limit. This one has always been a personal pet-peeve of mine. People assume that the left lane is the fast lane, but not if the vehicle is driving faster then the speed limit.
The operative word here is limit . Those signs with black numbers on white backgrounds don't say speed allow. A limit is a restriction, so therefore a speed limit of 65 MP/h means... in ALL circumstances... that one can't go faster than 65."
No, the left lane is the PASSING lane. There are also signs ALL OVER THE PLACE, at least everywhere I drive, which state very clearly SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP LEFT. It doesn't say, "traffic slower than the speed limit keep left", it just says slower. If I'm driving 65 in the left lane and a guy comes up behind me doing 80, I'm supposed to move over and let him past. It's not my job to regulate his speed - two wrongs don't make a right. It's my job to make sure that I'M driving safely by not obstructing traffic, which left-lane camping DOES.
See, passing on the right is at least as dangerous as driving a few MPH over the limit. More, perhaps, because the speed limit is often arbitrary, based on fiscal desires rather than safety concerns. IOW, fuck legal. I'm talking about safe.
The proper way to do this - regardless of your exact speed - is to move into the left lane ONLY when actually passing someone, and then get back in the middle or right lane so that YOU aren't being a safety hazard. Again - it's NOT your job to regulate other drivers' behavior/speed by playing rolling roadblock. Anyone who behaves otherwise is by definition an asshole.
Your personal pet peeve sucks. It's too bad that states don't make proper driving skills a prerequisite for a driver license.
Hey, who's the dick with the mod points?
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Embedded Gentoo?
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That was funny, not flamebait! I've got three fscking Gentoo boxen, I'm not trying to piss anybody off.
You need to get a sense of humor, dumbass.
How long to compile Gentoo on a Compaq? Easy...
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Embedded Gentoo?
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"how long would X take to compile on an iPAQ? "
RTFA. They said they've been working on it for a year... Next, they compile KDE.
Ob. disclaimer: this post typed on a Gentoo machine.
You DID see the part where he said a FLAC*5.1* CD, didn't you? An uncompressed 5.1 CD would need (650 MB/2)*5.1=1.65GB, assuming that the encoders didn't bother encoding the sub channel at full rate. How much would FLAC compress that?
Learn to spell, put your own name on your posts, and then you can try to tell me why a $3800 PC isn't expensive. You'll fail, of course, because $3800 is a lot of money even for people who aren't on welfare. Yes, even if it's a Mac.
Let's bring a bit more factuality to the situation: The parent poster states that heat pumps are cool technology, and that radiant electrical (resistive strip) heating is inefficient.
Guess what? Parent is correct.
Radiant (resistive strip) heating is LESS efficient than a heat pump under many circumstances. "What? No, stupid - radiant strips are 100% efficient! All the power is converted directly to heat!" Yes, it is - but I'm not stupid. Heat pumps are more efficient. Typically, with an outdoor temp of 45F an an indoor temp of 72F, the heat pump moves THREE TIMES as much heat into your fine home as it requires electricity to perform the pumping. IOW, 100W of energy into the heat pump results in 300W of heat into the house. That's three times more efficient than strip heating.
This is not as pronounced at greater temp differentials, and in fact many heat pumps employ supplementary strip heating for really large temp extremes. However, the parent poster's point is well-made and accurate - radiant strip heating IS, in general, less efficient than a heat pump.
I live in Florida - north Florida. It's November 21, and my A/C is on. Every watt I save from running fluourescent or LED lighting is effectively 1.3 to 1.5 watts less electricity used and charged on my power bill. A similar argument can be made for a house using a good heat pump - the extra wattage radiated as heat by an incandescent bulb would provide even more heat if it were used to drive a heat pump instead.
I would disagree with that. Not that I'm a Cobain fan, but there's no reason that you should have to be a master of the Stratocaster in order to have a good-sounding amplifier. 0.001% is way too low a number. Maybe half or more of the people who own electrics are so hopeless that the amp doesn't matter, but not 9,999 out of 10,000.
Having worked as an amp tech at a guitar shop for 6+ years, I can tell you that I saw a lot of poor and mediocre players with nice amps... but I almost NEVER saw a good player with a crap amp or a crap guitar.
It's like saying that poor drivers shouldn't have good tires.
OTOH, I had a customer with a small-box Marshall 50W head that was ASTONISHING. You put it on about 3, and it was as if you were... I don't know, man, it was just beautiful. Tone, responsivity, everything. and then you pumped it up to about 7... Smoothest and creamiest, most perfect overdrive I've ever heard to this day. It was that 0.001% amplifier that cried out for a 0.001% player. When I played it for the guy who owned it (after I put new tubes in and biased it), I played it as God intended - and he was flabbergasted! He'd never actually let the amp do the dirty work, he was using some crappy ADA tube preamp! That Marshall was like Anna Kournikova in a nunnery - a complete waste of natural perfection.
Obviously I've got a bit of bias (HA! Bias! Get it? HA!) on the subject, but having two degrees in EE , 6+ years of guitar shop experience, and about a dozen albums recorded as musician or producer/engineer or both gives me what I consider to be a pretty good background in the science and art of guitar amplifier sound. However, it's all subjective. A good sound is the sound you like.
Clearly you don't listen to rock and roll, metal, jazz, or pretty much any other sort of music which includes electric guitars. Not that you have to, or anything. But if you did, you'd be listening to a LOT of vacuum tube-based amplifiers. Including some brand-new, current production tube amps with brand-new, current production tubes.
But hey, why let facts get in the way of a/. discussion?
A good point, sir. I *have* spent the last few years doing video and scientific data collection. It's hard not to think about matching impedances, but of course you're right, it's unnecessary for AF. I even worked this exact problem a couple of months ago for a line input stage. Duh.
Of course they use NP caps to decouple the DC at inputs - it's either that, or transformers. And obviously 22,000 uF is an exaggeration anyway - you only need 220 uF to get below 1 Hz LF -3 dB point in a 2k circuit (Mackies are 1.3k). My point is that capacitors of that size just about HAVE to be electrolytics, and NP electrolytics are likely to induce more distortion than a good transformer (Jensen JT-16-A, e.g.). I realize that "'lytics are bad!" is a popular subjectivist position, but I think Cyril Bateman's series of articles on capacitor distortion in Electronics World add a bit of objective fuel to that fire.
The alternatives include using a transformer, which is expensive but simplifies several factors including noise impedance; using large value metallized film or film-and-foil caps for decoupling, which is at least as expensive as a transformer and takes up more space, but probably provides lower distortion; or terminating resistively prior to the DC decoupling caps and using a higher-impedance gain stage, which allows the use of smaller, cheaper, lower distortion film-and-foil caps but makes noise impedance matching more difficult.
Or, of course, you can simply use big lytics and deal with the relatively higher, but still overall pretty low, distortion and spend the money you saved on a) better faders and op-amps or b) a second Mercedes for all the corporate VPs.
For me, the fun lies in splitting the zeros. Let someone else design the DOD and Peavey crap. If I can reasonably avoid using NP lytics, 4558's, etc. then I will.
Yes. As an audio pro, tech,BSEE, MSEE, geek, live mix, studio cat, TV A1, and musician, I am fully aware of this.
When I said that the 57 and 58 present connect the voice coil directly to the tranny primary, I was referring to the transformer internal to the microphone - looking back, I see that it wasn't clear. Sorry. It's a matter of philosophy whether that means that a 57 or 58 is balanced throughout, but my point was that it isn't UNBALANCED anywhere in its signal path before or after the transformer.
None of my 57's or 58's have any capacitors or resistors internally connected anywhere that I can find 'em, although it's always possible that someone else has removed them. I tended to buy my mikes used from the store I teched for.
Mentioning phantom across the VC reminds me of a true story: I once had a customer, who was thoroughly ignorant about matters PA, ask us to sell him a "speaker". After much pointing, we finally realized that he wanted a microphone. We sold him an EV N/D 357 or something similar (don't get me started), and he didn't want a cable. He intended to do it himself.
Well, of course, after that Sunday (you knew he was a clergyman, right?) he was back in the store, complaining, threatening, and raining down brimfire and hellstone upon us for selling him such a substandard, dangerous "speaker" - and him a man of the cloth! How could we? We should be ashamed! He dropped it on the counter, and sure enough it was charred, smoky, and melted. Miswired XLR? Phantom across the VC? Well, not exactly.
He'd taken it back to the church, gotten out the electrical tape, and wired an extension cord (yes, 120V power cord) straight to the XLR connector. No PA, just expected plugging into the wall to magically make him louder. I shit you not.
1. Well, it's obvious that no one in their right mind would DO it, but it wasn't all that clear from your comment:-) . I would suspect that dynamics like a Shure 57 or 58 actually present the voice coil directly to the tranny primary - in fact, I'm pretty sure of it. But for condensors, ribbons, etc. you're absolutely correct.
2. Every TV truck I've ever worked in either had balanced inserts or a Mackie. Most of the control rooms I've worked in had unbalanced inserts, occasionally even those godawful 1/4" TRS like a Mackie. And, sometimes, they had Mackies. Sigh. I did work in one truck a few times in which the engineer who built it / ran it actually installed unbal/bal transformers so that all the patch points from his unbalanced mixer were represented as balanced at the patchbay. But hey, that's TV, right? You gotta expect long runs with TV. Balancing is essential.
3. Whether you can get away with running a recording studio unbalanced will clearly depend on your environment. I've heard horror stories from a NYC sound engineer (Eddie Kramer's fave engineer for a while) that there were rooms in tall buildings which, because of the profusion of radio transmitters, actually had hundreds of volts differential between the top of a rack and the bottom of a rack - induced by the RF. OTOH, in a rural studio, running unbalanced could quite conceivably result in simpler, better sounding inputs and outputs with no fears of EMI.
In general, I'd rather have transformer I/O as well. However, when I design *MY* mixer (optimized for TV remote trucks), I'll probably have to settle for your basic op-amp balanced inserts, but using an EDAC or terminal strips - I just can't see spending $4800 for transformers JUST for the inserts on a 48-ch board. Nor can I see selling many mixers with that kind of parts cost, except for the REALLY big trucks. Probably I'll design an optional transformer-input mic section, just in case somebody wants to spend a LOT of money.
It might get done this decade, too! Hope I'll still be able to SELL an analog board then.
1) Microphones are balanced for several reasons. Noise/EMI immunity, phantom power - these are sufficient right there. No pro studio in the world runs any significant fraction of its mike closet in unbalanced mode.
2) internal circuitry in GOOD audio equipment is often balanced from end to end, for reasons of noise / EMI immunity, etc. It's more expensive, but in a PRO studio that's often worth it. The Soundcraft 3200 console, e.g., uses a balanced mix bus for exactly these reasons.
3) Transformers on the input also serve as galvanic isolation (DC offset protection), impedance matching, and of course conversion from balanced to unbalanced. Have you considered the size of the capacitors required to get a 1 Hz LF response in a 150 ohm microphone input stage? They'll have to be electrolytics, and frankly I'd rather have a nice Jensen transformer than a pair of 22,000 uF 'lytics in my signal path. You don't see those in a Mackie, but then a Mackie is hardly pro level, is it?
That said, it's distinctly possible to build a good active line-level input and output stage, balanced, without large electrolytics at all. Even a top shelf op-amp like the AD797 is cheaper than a good transformer - hell, *6* AD797's are cheaper than a good transformer! Horses for courses.
For the benefit of any idiot who thinks parent poster is serious, allow me to point out that your current CD and DVD players use Infra-Red laser diodes, which are also invisible and dangerous. That's why your CD player will often have a warning on the outside.
Dr. Pantyhose is a known Troll. Please don't try to engage him in discussion, that's what he wants. Well, that and karma.
I see nothing about who developed the UV laser, all I see is that Pioneer is using them to write (and read) optical storage. The innovation is that they had to use a carbon mask to reduce scattering.
Of course, I can't read Japanese, so perhaps the original article is more informative and/or accurate.
Other companies already have UV diode lasers in production, like Nichia since 2002. However, I see nothing here indicating that Pioneer has developed the UV laser that they're using for this new disc format.
Anyone who reads Japanese care to track back and get more details?
Gone OOOOON and OOOOON? Yes. Yes, I have. Here's why: Just because a law was enacted does not make it constitutional. And apparently, you believe that discussion==repetition.
Just because a law was passed does not make it good. You can say, over and over, it was passed and signed, therefore it's constitutional. BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Wishing won't make it so. Neither will repetition. Example: The Communications Decency Act. Passed by Congress, signed by a President, found unconstitutional by the SCOTUS, struck down.
And there haven't been ANY Supreme Court rulings on PATRIOT ACT. You keep saying there have been, but there haven't. Show me one documented case, and I'll retract that statement.
FACT: PATRIOT ACT hasn't passed a single SCOTUS test. Not one. Zero.
FACT: The passage of a law by Congress does NOT necessitate Constitutionality of that law. Nor does signing of that law by a President.
FACT: Repeating erroneous statements ad infinitum does NOT make those statements more correct.
You say, repeatedly, that it was passed by Congress. That is true. Having established that, there isn't any need to repeat it.
You say, repeatedly, that President Bush signed it into law. That is also true. Repetition is unnecessary.
You say, repeatedly, that PATRIOT act has survived numerous Supreme Court challenges. That is untrue. Repetition will not make it true. If you have evidence - not rhetoric, evidence - to the contrary, I'm all ears.
You state that PATRIOT act is good, safe, constitutional law. That is not a fact, that is an opinion. Even if the SCOTUS rules on the Constitutionality of PATRIOT act as a whole, they will refer to it as an "opinion". However, their opinion will count for more than yours or mine.
Stated simply, sir, your comments have all been filled with irrelevant facts, with incorrect statements, and with biased, jingoistic rhetoric. Your arguments are illogical, your opinions are unsupported. Worst of all, you haven't the courage or the honor to admit you are wrong when you are PROVEN wrong.
Accordingly, I shall henceforth ignore you. Good day, sir.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, and didn't we just see an article last month about how much MORE efficient it is to electrolyze really HOT water (we call that steam, over here in the sciences)? Where, o where could we get some steam...?
:-)
Apples and oranges, chief. The amount of energy released from a fusion reaction is orders of magnitude higher than that generated from burning H2 or using it in a fuel cell. The amount of energy required to separate the H from the O is a (forgive me) drop in the bucket compared to what's being generated. Now, of course, you need deuterium and tritium for the fusion, so the effective efficiency of electrolysis goes down a bit (5000:1 or so), unless you electrolyze heavy water
I'll do the math for you: Electrolysis of 1 mole of (tap) water releases 1 mole of H2 gas, and requires 237.1 kJ. (this is without considering process efficiency - I'll do that later). That's two grams of hydrogen. You need to electrolyze about 2500 moles of water to get 1g of deuterium. That's 5.92x10^8 J - call it 6e8 J. The energy released from complete conversion of 1g of deuterium to energy is about 9e13 J. That means that complete conversion of 1g of deuterium releases 150,000 times more energy than required to separate it from water.
Of course, you can't expect to take a single gram of deuterium and convert all of it... but even if 1% of the deuterium is converted, and the electrolysis is only 25% efficient, and we can only recover 10% of the energy... we still get 37.5 times more energy out that we needed to electrolyze all that water in the first place. And if we can reuse the deuterium that DIDN'T get converted the first time...
Considering that the article predicts putting in 2e13 J to get out 9e13 J, the 6e8 - 6e11 J you're worried about from the electrolysis is chump change.
Might I suggest that imploring others to refrain from comment until they are sufficiently well-versed in the subject might be best accomplished if you were to lead by example?
E=mc^2
Fusion.
Conversion of matter to energy.
This isn't about burning H2, or about electrolysis.
Am I going too fast for you here?
Who pissed in your Wheaties? All I said was that Vuescan runs natively under Linux. Which it does. *I* never said that *all* of the applications required to perform professional photo manipulation were available for Linux.
You must have a lot of suppressed hostility.
Vuescan runs natively under Linux just fine kthxbye
LyX.
It's a LaTeX front-end, and more. It's a perfectly serviceable word-processor that uses LaTeX for rendering, and I first began using because of the equation editor.
Item #1: If you stay out of the left lane, you don't have to drive as fast to avoid getting run over. That's my point about it being a safety issue. Yes, I have driven in Atlanta many times. You're either going 75+ or you're doing 10. I know. Getting in others' way, deliberately, is just plain stupid.
Item #2: In many places, speed limits ARE about fiscal. The national 55 limit was about fuel economy as much as anything, and the last stats *I* saw indicated that traffic deaths had NOT risen as a result of going to 65/70 - in fact, on some roads, they've gone DOWN because the disparity between fast drivers and slow drivers was reduced.
Item #3: Your point about speeders is a defensible, legitimate concern. I disagree, but I can at least see some argument. However, left lane camping is indefensible and dangerous REGARDLESS of the speed limits.
I'd much rather be on a road filled with well-educated, courteous drivers, all of whom are exceeding the speed limit by between 10 and 20 MPH, than be on a road filled with people driving carelessly, talking on cell-0-phones, passing on the right, camping in the left lane, etc. I guarantee that there would be fewer accidents on the first road.
Item #5: If "Speed Kills" were true, the countryside would be littered with the bodies of dead fighter pilots and airline passengers. Driving dangerously kills, and left lane camping is more dangerous than doing 75 in a 70.
You don't wanna speed? Fine. Don't. But trying to regulate others' driving is more dangerous by far.
"And for hanging out in the passing lane on the freeway while people are passing you on the right.
... in ALL circumstances ... that one can't go faster than 65."
Not if the person is driving at or below the speed limit. This one has always been a personal pet-peeve of mine. People assume that the left lane is the fast lane, but not if the vehicle is driving faster then the speed limit.
The operative word here is limit . Those signs with black numbers on white backgrounds don't say speed allow. A limit is a restriction, so therefore a speed limit of 65 MP/h means
No, the left lane is the PASSING lane. There are also signs ALL OVER THE PLACE, at least everywhere I drive, which state very clearly SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP LEFT. It doesn't say, "traffic slower than the speed limit keep left", it just says slower. If I'm driving 65 in the left lane and a guy comes up behind me doing 80, I'm supposed to move over and let him past. It's not my job to regulate his speed - two wrongs don't make a right. It's my job to make sure that I'M driving safely by not obstructing traffic, which left-lane camping DOES.
See, passing on the right is at least as dangerous as driving a few MPH over the limit. More, perhaps, because the speed limit is often arbitrary, based on fiscal desires rather than safety concerns. IOW, fuck legal. I'm talking about safe.
The proper way to do this - regardless of your exact speed - is to move into the left lane ONLY when actually passing someone, and then get back in the middle or right lane so that YOU aren't being a safety hazard. Again - it's NOT your job to regulate other drivers' behavior/speed by playing rolling roadblock. Anyone who behaves otherwise is by definition an asshole.
Your personal pet peeve sucks. It's too bad that states don't make proper driving skills a prerequisite for a driver license.
That was funny, not flamebait! I've got three fscking Gentoo boxen, I'm not trying to piss anybody off.
You need to get a sense of humor, dumbass.
"how long would X take to compile on an iPAQ? "
RTFA. They said they've been working on it for a year... Next, they compile KDE.
Ob. disclaimer: this post typed on a Gentoo machine.
You DID see the part where he said a FLAC*5.1* CD, didn't you? An uncompressed 5.1 CD would need (650 MB/2)*5.1=1.65GB, assuming that the encoders didn't bother encoding the sub channel at full rate. How much would FLAC compress that?
Learn to spell, put your own name on your posts, and then you can try to tell me why a $3800 PC isn't expensive. You'll fail, of course, because $3800 is a lot of money even for people who aren't on welfare. Yes, even if it's a Mac.
I take it that you aren't an Enlightenment fan, then?
How do you put ANYTHING on it? No floppy, no CD, no boot from USB - I don't see how you can even reinstall windows.
"Remind me, can I take a phone with a US priceplan into every state yet..and use it?"
Yes. I do.
What has this to do with connecting a laptop to the cellular network? Oh, right - nothing. That's because you're a useless, hating troll.
Get thee back under thy rock, or I shall be AGAIN forced to say "Billy Goat!"
Let's bring a bit more factuality to the situation: The parent poster states that heat pumps are cool technology, and that radiant electrical (resistive strip) heating is inefficient.
Guess what? Parent is correct.
Radiant (resistive strip) heating is LESS efficient than a heat pump under many circumstances. "What? No, stupid - radiant strips are 100% efficient! All the power is converted directly to heat!" Yes, it is - but I'm not stupid. Heat pumps are more efficient. Typically, with an outdoor temp of 45F an an indoor temp of 72F, the heat pump moves THREE TIMES as much heat into your fine home as it requires electricity to perform the pumping. IOW, 100W of energy into the heat pump results in 300W of heat into the house. That's three times more efficient than strip heating.
This is not as pronounced at greater temp differentials, and in fact many heat pumps employ supplementary strip heating for really large temp extremes. However, the parent poster's point is well-made and accurate - radiant strip heating IS, in general, less efficient than a heat pump.
I live in Florida - north Florida. It's November 21, and my A/C is on. Every watt I save from running fluourescent or LED lighting is effectively 1.3 to 1.5 watts less electricity used and charged on my power bill. A similar argument can be made for a house using a good heat pump - the extra wattage radiated as heat by an incandescent bulb would provide even more heat if it were used to drive a heat pump instead.
I would disagree with that. Not that I'm a Cobain fan, but there's no reason that you should have to be a master of the Stratocaster in order to have a good-sounding amplifier. 0.001% is way too low a number. Maybe half or more of the people who own electrics are so hopeless that the amp doesn't matter, but not 9,999 out of 10,000.
Having worked as an amp tech at a guitar shop for 6+ years, I can tell you that I saw a lot of poor and mediocre players with nice amps... but I almost NEVER saw a good player with a crap amp or a crap guitar.
It's like saying that poor drivers shouldn't have good tires.
OTOH, I had a customer with a small-box Marshall 50W head that was ASTONISHING. You put it on about 3, and it was as if you were... I don't know, man, it was just beautiful. Tone, responsivity, everything. and then you pumped it up to about 7... Smoothest and creamiest, most perfect overdrive I've ever heard to this day. It was that 0.001% amplifier that cried out for a 0.001% player. When I played it for the guy who owned it (after I put new tubes in and biased it), I played it as God intended - and he was flabbergasted! He'd never actually let the amp do the dirty work, he was using some crappy ADA tube preamp! That Marshall was like Anna Kournikova in a nunnery - a complete waste of natural perfection.
Obviously I've got a bit of bias (HA! Bias! Get it? HA!) on the subject, but having two degrees in EE , 6+ years of guitar shop experience, and about a dozen albums recorded as musician or producer/engineer or both gives me what I consider to be a pretty good background in the science and art of guitar amplifier sound. However, it's all subjective. A good sound is the sound you like.
Clearly you don't listen to rock and roll, metal, jazz, or pretty much any other sort of music which includes electric guitars. Not that you have to, or anything. But if you did, you'd be listening to a LOT of vacuum tube-based amplifiers. Including some brand-new, current production tube amps with brand-new, current production tubes.
/. discussion?
But hey, why let facts get in the way of a
A good point, sir. I *have* spent the last few years doing video and scientific data collection. It's hard not to think about matching impedances, but of course you're right, it's unnecessary for AF. I even worked this exact problem a couple of months ago for a line input stage. Duh.
Of course they use NP caps to decouple the DC at inputs - it's either that, or transformers. And obviously 22,000 uF is an exaggeration anyway - you only need 220 uF to get below 1 Hz LF -3 dB point in a 2k circuit (Mackies are 1.3k). My point is that capacitors of that size just about HAVE to be electrolytics, and NP electrolytics are likely to induce more distortion than a good transformer (Jensen JT-16-A, e.g.). I realize that "'lytics are bad!" is a popular subjectivist position, but I think Cyril Bateman's series of articles on capacitor distortion in Electronics World add a bit of objective fuel to that fire.
The alternatives include using a transformer, which is expensive but simplifies several factors including noise impedance; using large value metallized film or film-and-foil caps for decoupling, which is at least as expensive as a transformer and takes up more space, but probably provides lower distortion; or terminating resistively prior to the DC decoupling caps and using a higher-impedance gain stage, which allows the use of smaller, cheaper, lower distortion film-and-foil caps but makes noise impedance matching more difficult.
Or, of course, you can simply use big lytics and deal with the relatively higher, but still overall pretty low, distortion and spend the money you saved on a) better faders and op-amps or b) a second Mercedes for all the corporate VPs.
For me, the fun lies in splitting the zeros. Let someone else design the DOD and Peavey crap. If I can reasonably avoid using NP lytics, 4558's, etc. then I will.
Yes. As an audio pro, tech,BSEE, MSEE, geek, live mix, studio cat, TV A1, and musician, I am fully aware of this.
When I said that the 57 and 58 present connect the voice coil directly to the tranny primary, I was referring to the transformer internal to the microphone - looking back, I see that it wasn't clear. Sorry. It's a matter of philosophy whether that means that a 57 or 58 is balanced throughout, but my point was that it isn't UNBALANCED anywhere in its signal path before or after the transformer.
None of my 57's or 58's have any capacitors or resistors internally connected anywhere that I can find 'em, although it's always possible that someone else has removed them. I tended to buy my mikes used from the store I teched for.
Mentioning phantom across the VC reminds me of a true story: I once had a customer, who was thoroughly ignorant about matters PA, ask us to sell him a "speaker". After much pointing, we finally realized that he wanted a microphone. We sold him an EV N/D 357 or something similar (don't get me started), and he didn't want a cable. He intended to do it himself.
Well, of course, after that Sunday (you knew he was a clergyman, right?) he was back in the store, complaining, threatening, and raining down brimfire and hellstone upon us for selling him such a substandard, dangerous "speaker" - and him a man of the cloth! How could we? We should be ashamed! He dropped it on the counter, and sure enough it was charred, smoky, and melted. Miswired XLR? Phantom across the VC? Well, not exactly.
He'd taken it back to the church, gotten out the electrical tape, and wired an extension cord (yes, 120V power cord) straight to the XLR connector. No PA, just expected plugging into the wall to magically make him louder. I shit you not.
1. Well, it's obvious that no one in their right mind would DO it, but it wasn't all that clear from your comment :-) . I would suspect that dynamics like a Shure 57 or 58 actually present the voice coil directly to the tranny primary - in fact, I'm pretty sure of it. But for condensors, ribbons, etc. you're absolutely correct.
2. Every TV truck I've ever worked in either had balanced inserts or a Mackie. Most of the control rooms I've worked in had unbalanced inserts, occasionally even those godawful 1/4" TRS like a Mackie. And, sometimes, they had Mackies. Sigh. I did work in one truck a few times in which the engineer who built it / ran it actually installed unbal/bal transformers so that all the patch points from his unbalanced mixer were represented as balanced at the patchbay. But hey, that's TV, right? You gotta expect long runs with TV. Balancing is essential.
3. Whether you can get away with running a recording studio unbalanced will clearly depend on your environment. I've heard horror stories from a NYC sound engineer (Eddie Kramer's fave engineer for a while) that there were rooms in tall buildings which, because of the profusion of radio transmitters, actually had hundreds of volts differential between the top of a rack and the bottom of a rack - induced by the RF. OTOH, in a rural studio, running unbalanced could quite conceivably result in simpler, better sounding inputs and outputs with no fears of EMI.
In general, I'd rather have transformer I/O as well. However, when I design *MY* mixer (optimized for TV remote trucks), I'll probably have to settle for your basic op-amp balanced inserts, but using an EDAC or terminal strips - I just can't see spending $4800 for transformers JUST for the inserts on a 48-ch board. Nor can I see selling many mixers with that kind of parts cost, except for the REALLY big trucks. Probably I'll design an optional transformer-input mic section, just in case somebody wants to spend a LOT of money.
It might get done this decade, too! Hope I'll still be able to SELL an analog board then.
1) Microphones are balanced for several reasons. Noise/EMI immunity, phantom power - these are sufficient right there. No pro studio in the world runs any significant fraction of its mike closet in unbalanced mode.
2) internal circuitry in GOOD audio equipment is often balanced from end to end, for reasons of noise / EMI immunity, etc. It's more expensive, but in a PRO studio that's often worth it. The Soundcraft 3200 console, e.g., uses a balanced mix bus for exactly these reasons.
3) Transformers on the input also serve as galvanic isolation (DC offset protection), impedance matching, and of course conversion from balanced to unbalanced. Have you considered the size of the capacitors required to get a 1 Hz LF response in a 150 ohm microphone input stage? They'll have to be electrolytics, and frankly I'd rather have a nice Jensen transformer than a pair of 22,000 uF 'lytics in my signal path. You don't see those in a Mackie, but then a Mackie is hardly pro level, is it?
That said, it's distinctly possible to build a good active line-level input and output stage, balanced, without large electrolytics at all. Even a top shelf op-amp like the AD797 is cheaper than a good transformer - hell, *6* AD797's are cheaper than a good transformer! Horses for courses.
[blushes] Thanks.
For the benefit of any idiot who thinks parent poster is serious, allow me to point out that your current CD and DVD players use Infra-Red laser diodes, which are also invisible and dangerous. That's why your CD player will often have a warning on the outside.
Dr. Pantyhose is a known Troll. Please don't try to engage him in discussion, that's what he wants. Well, that and karma.
I see nothing about who developed the UV laser, all I see is that Pioneer is using them to write (and read) optical storage. The innovation is that they had to use a carbon mask to reduce scattering.
Of course, I can't read Japanese, so perhaps the original article is more informative and/or accurate.
Other companies already have UV diode lasers in production, like Nichia since 2002. However, I see nothing here indicating that Pioneer has developed the UV laser that they're using for this new disc format.
Anyone who reads Japanese care to track back and get more details?
Gone OOOOON and OOOOON? Yes. Yes, I have. Here's why: Just because a law was enacted does not make it constitutional. And apparently, you believe that discussion==repetition.
Just because a law was passed does not make it good. You can say, over and over, it was passed and signed, therefore it's constitutional. BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Wishing won't make it so. Neither will repetition. Example: The Communications Decency Act. Passed by Congress, signed by a President, found unconstitutional by the SCOTUS, struck down.
And there haven't been ANY Supreme Court rulings on PATRIOT ACT. You keep saying there have been, but there haven't. Show me one documented case, and I'll retract that statement.
FACT: PATRIOT ACT hasn't passed a single SCOTUS test. Not one. Zero.
FACT: The passage of a law by Congress does NOT necessitate Constitutionality of that law. Nor does signing of that law by a President.
FACT: Repeating erroneous statements ad infinitum does NOT make those statements more correct.
You say, repeatedly, that it was passed by Congress. That is true. Having established that, there isn't any need to repeat it.
You say, repeatedly, that President Bush signed it into law. That is also true. Repetition is unnecessary.
You say, repeatedly, that PATRIOT act has survived numerous Supreme Court challenges. That is untrue. Repetition will not make it true. If you have evidence - not rhetoric, evidence - to the contrary, I'm all ears.
You state that PATRIOT act is good, safe, constitutional law. That is not a fact, that is an opinion. Even if the SCOTUS rules on the Constitutionality of PATRIOT act as a whole, they will refer to it as an "opinion". However, their opinion will count for more than yours or mine.
Stated simply, sir, your comments have all been filled with irrelevant facts, with incorrect statements, and with biased, jingoistic rhetoric. Your arguments are illogical, your opinions are unsupported. Worst of all, you haven't the courage or the honor to admit you are wrong when you are PROVEN wrong.
Accordingly, I shall henceforth ignore you. Good day, sir.