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cheeseweasel

@cheeseweasel

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Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 638 total)
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  • in reply to: Is the forum dead, why the big cull?

    in reply to: UK : Vinyl overtakes digital music sales in Britain

    I hope we don’t see a resurgence in vinyl DJs. Generally, it sounds shit in a club (give me a wav or a CD any day – I always sigh when I’m working a dance music event and the ‘vinyl DJ’ comes on and I have to put up with woolly, low-fi sound for 2 hours, usually while some floppy hipster spins worn-out, dirty records on blunt needles). To any ‘vinyl purists’ out there, I’d love to know how a track, produced on a computer (digital), bounced out as a wav (digital) and then mastered (digitally) before being sent to a pressing plant to be imprinted (often quite clumsily, in the case of dance records) as a groove on a piece of plastic and read by a small metal needle disrupting a magnetic field can possibly be more ‘pure’ than the original mastered wav, emailed straight to Beatport and downloaded to a laptop? Any sonic difference is, by definition, distortion. This distortion might add a certain character to certain types of music (with old-school hip-hop records, ingrained spliff ash and sweat only seem to add to the grittiness), but modern electronic music IMO deserves a format capable of reproducing its nuances – production has come a long way since I was a teenager buying records on Oldham Street in Manchester fifteen years ago.

    I do look back romantically on evenings spent hanging out in damp basements with my mates smoking weed and taking it in turns to spin hip-hop records; I liked looking at the cool artwork on the sleeves, and knowing that I’d still be able to do the same in thirty years time, as long as I hadn’t sold it. I liked the satisfaction of grabbing the spinning record and attempting to physically wrangle it into time with the tune playing on the other deck; Traktor doesn’t feel the same. Physical mediums do have their benefits. But coming from a purely sonic viewpoint, vinyl is an inferior format – the basic technology is 130 years old ffs!

    I agree with GL’s point about hi-fi equipment – you can’t play a record on a phone, or on tinny laptop speakers. I guess maybe this is partly why I meet all these people who think vinyl sounds so much better than digital formats – even the £50 worth of old-school hifi equipment from Ebay needed to interface with a turntable will likely sound better than the latest £300 whizz-bang speaker from Apple (I was in one of their stores a few weeks ago in America and had to ask the assistant whether the white orb in front of me was for playing music, ordering my shopping or doing the hoovering). I think there’s also a certain degree of ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ syndrome when it comes to audio, and vinyl in particular. In the same way that everyone thinks they are a better-than-average driver, I’d say that most people (or at least DJs, sound engineers and self-proclaimed ‘audiophiles’) think they have above-average hearing, and are reluctant to admit when they can’t hear a difference, or to say that vinyl (which as everyone knows is pure, analogue, and warm), actually sounds pretty fluffy compared to a high-bitrate, uncompressed digital format for fear of being labelled a cloth-eared philistine by their fellow audio-enthusiasts.

    in reply to: Sorry Admin….

    Likewise, I don’t mean to undermine the huge amount of (free) work the admin do to make this site possible, but I find this new layout to be completely unusable. As soon as it changed, I stopped visiting. Why is everything so big, and why so much blank space? On the Forum page I can only see half of one post without scrolling down, due to the huge masthead, titles and empty space which dominate the top of the page. I mean this as helpful feedback rather than a critical rant; I really think this layout is gonna be off-putting to potential new members.

    in reply to: [username] What has been the best part of your day?

    Humping them around, bolting them together, then being told that actually they all need to be moved a foot further forward at the end of the day. We were doing the big screen and perimeter sponsor screens for a large sporting event in an arena. So approximately two artic trucks full of panels. Ballache!

    in reply to: [username] What has been the best part of your day?

    Pint in the hotel bar after 15 hours of arsing around with video wall panels.

    in reply to: Look what the cat dragged in

    Ah fair enough, I just read GL’s comment about Hebden and assumed it was because you live there. Yeh I’m alright, been in Bristol for the last few years, but only really there half the time due to touring and doing random jobs abroad.

    in reply to: Look what the cat dragged in

    I had a similar urge to check in on PV today, after being away for probably a year. How’s it going Psy? Didn’t realise you were a Hebdener. I grew up there, but haven’t lived there since I was 18 (and I did play in a brass band throughout my childhood!). Chances are I actually do know you if you’re from Hebden.

    in reply to: Happy 19th Birthday!

    Happy birthday! And nice one Dr B for keeping the place running. First time I’ve checked in here for quite a while now, and it’s nice to see the place is still going – must be 10 years since I first signed up.

    Interested to know who’s still around from back when I used to post regularly 5-10 years ago.

    in reply to: UK : This years (Summer 2015) GCSE maths exam

    Because you don’t know that there are 10 sweets – there might be 11 for all we know. The question doesn’t give us that information. You can’t change the question to fit the answer; it’s just bad science to start with the idea that the hypothesis is true. Someone else might come along and say that they think n^2 – n – 72 = 0, and someone else thinks that n^2 – n – 20 = 0. They can’t all be right, but if each of them used your method they would each claim confidently that the answer is 9 and 5 respectively.

    in reply to: UK : This years (Summer 2015) GCSE maths exam

    @requiem 702623 wrote:

    Trial and error, tbh the 1st try, would give n as 10 no? n^2=100-10-90=0.

    What a set of fucking dumbarses, and these are supposed to be our brightest.

    My answer wasnt what was wanted but working it out was very simple, As sounds similar to you no way did I use anywhere near that method to get what was needed but thankfully n was so obvious and obviously had to relate to the sweets getting the answer was simple, no pen or paper needed and if my son comes home compaining about a problem on his HIGHER level exam I will laugh him out of the house.

    ?? But the question isn’t asking you to find n.

    in reply to: [username] is a party god

    @MrChiLambda 702526 wrote:

    Apparently I’m a God!!! Unless a summat is a hellraiser from the dead, then I’m a God back from the Dead.

    This is the craziest time warp that has come my way yet. How did you know my username?

    The last few years my ass has been getting kicked hard again and again. I thought parties were rough.

    You may be a party god, but we’ve all known you’re a cop since 2012…

    https://www.partyvibe.com/forums/chat/49895-i-suspect-username-police-46.html

    in reply to: The Freedom Speaker – JsgSound

    I find your claim that the speaker is flat +/-1dB down to 20Hz a bit unbelievable, as the classic problem with dipole designs (such as the electrostatic type made by Quad etc) is that the out-of-phase sound radiating from the rear of the driver diffracts around the baffle and cancels out the sound from the front. This is the main reason why speakers are housed in enclosures. As your speaker looks to be about 2′ wide I’d expect this to very significantly impact on the overall bass response (after all, the wavelength of 20Hz is around 17m). I’d be interested to know how you mitigate against this effect.

    in reply to: E-bike fault

    Yeah, bombing up the hill at 20mph overtaking other cyclists puffing and panting their way up was pretty fun, until the thing conked out and I was left having to pedal something that weighs twice as much as a normal bike.

    I’m tempted to get one for myself, but they do seem quite expensive for what they do (compared with, say a 2nd hand motorbike), and I’d be worried about it getting nicked if I left it in public.

    in reply to: E-bike fault

    @DaftFader 702408 wrote:

    Ignoring the rest of your post “After a couple of miles of (supposedly) full charge it cuts out when I turn the throttle up. Power is cut and is only restored after disconnecting/reconnecting the battery”

    This could be a capacitor (or post capacitor circuitry) issue, due to having to disconnect the power supply to drain the capacitor before it starts functioning again. Although having read everything else you’ve said, it does just sound like a knackered battery (or less likely a charger issue).

    After speaking to a couple of local e-bike shops, I’m still inclined to think the BMS needs replacing. The BMS is a piece of circuitry that balances the 16 groups of cells to ensure that they charge and discharge at the same rate, as well as doing other clever stuff to protect the cells (I learnt this yesterday). The measured voltage across each group of cells is roughly the same, suggesting that none of the cells have failed. I don’t want to get into replacing cells if possible as they are all hot-glued into the enclosure and will be a PITA to remove, and also I don’t have the welding tool needed to connect them together with aluminium ribbon. I’ve also been warned that they’re prone to explode violently if you mess around with them, e.g. heating them up too much with a soldering iron. So I think I’m just going to order the new BMS (hopefully ~£20) and hope for the best.

    Currently trying to source another one from China.

    in reply to: Ich will mein Deutsch verbessern 😉

    @General Lighting 702377 wrote:

    unfortunately modern “hacktivist” groups can be just about anybody with any motive, claiming to be part of a better known group. There have been more widely publicised divisions within the North European hacker communities and causing an infinite amount of Angst (which would crash any network, including those of humans).

    Since 1989 there was also a bogus “French chapter” which was set up by FR feds (which explains some things I noticed occuring amongst French speaking alternative communities in late 1990s) and the traffic to this website around Teknival time in the mid 2000s.

    The original German lot started when I was still in junior school and had only just begun to use a computer; from what I can understand of the German ethics statement it is the original one from back then. It is because of chaps like the original CCC I did not end up arrested after hacking the Internet in 1992 (the Germans said to Metpol and the University I was studying at I had not committed any crime in their country; as the library computer server firewall at the German science Uni had deliberately been left open!)

    Ethical hacking still happens today. It does not include stealing individuals identity details and/or financial resources, nor attacking systems for infrastructure in utilities and healthcare etc and some things we did in 1980s/1990s are no longer necessary when a teenager can get a smartphone and run it with their pocket money.

    I still often have to use the old techniques simply to keep things working on some proprietary systems because their own support staff lack the knowledge to diagnose some issues (often through no fault of their own, English businesses and education does not train young technicians and engineers well) – and it is actually quicker to hack a router with a forgotten DSL access password than to call British Telecom to reset it..

    It just looks a bit more goosey than I’d imagine.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 638 total)