Amp swap disappointment
 

"Tat Chan" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:

The 'parallels' between DAB/VHF and CD/LP are too obvious to ignore, in
my book.....


;-)


Will you tell him how FM transmitters are fed, or shall I?



Heh heh! How the Binned People do chatter.....!!

:-)

Would someone please pass on to whichever Binned Person wrote the above
silly little smartarse remark (like I don't bloody know*) that I don't give
a FF what goes into producing/transmitting the music/audio I'm listening to,
be it analogue or digital, ss or valve, fillet of a fenny snake, eye of newt
and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and
blind-worm's sting or lizard's leg & howlet's wing - I go with what I've
got, I'm an End User and, as such, I think the shortcomings of DAB, in
respect to VHF, mirror perfectly the shortcomings of CD in respect to
LP.....


*the one that, er, has *me* binned...??

:-)

(Ya hafta fekkin' larf, don'tcha...??? ;-)

Amp swap disappointment
 

Nick Gorham wrote:

Tat Chan wrote:

Nick Gorham wrote:


No, No, NT 3.5, that seemed to be the nearest they got to a OS that
didn't crash and burn. Then they got rid of Kutler, and decided to push



Kutler??? No experience with NT 3.5 (wasn't it 3.51?)


Yes, it was, sorry speeling, I should have said Cutler, as in Dave Cutler

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DaveCutler

Ah, yes, I do know who Dave Cutler is.


Anyway, NT has its roots in VMS, so you can say the OS has a good
"heritage" ...

See above, if you think VMS is good "heritage" :-)

Well, some time ago, one of my engineer friends was waxing lyrical about
Cutler and VMS ... mind you , he was a big DEC (esp the Alpha chip) fan!

I don't remember exactly what he said but I was made aware that VMS was
good and in some cases has "stuff" that is still not available in other
OSes.


OS9? You don't mean Bell Lab's Plan9, do you?


No the RTOS OS9

http://www.rtsi.com/


Ah. My only experience with a RTOS is vxWorks.

Amp swap disappointment
 

Don Pearce wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:21:26 +1100, Tat Chan
wrote:


In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:

Will you tell him how FM transmitters are fed, or shall I?

Surely not MP3? ;)

(there are some radio stations that use MP3 instead of CD)

No - NICAM ! How do you like that?



No experience with NICAM, as we don't use it where I am. From the specs,
isn't NICAM superior to the Beeb's FM stereo transmission (14-bit vs
13-bit, not sure about the sample rates)?

Amp swap disappointment
 

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Tat Chan wrote:

And how all the best sounding LPs for about 20 years have been
mastered?



Not trolling, but were they mastered using digital and SS technology?


Yes. The important bit is the digital mastering to get rid of the 'curse'
of analogue tape.

I'm going to be a bit loose with my terms here, as I don't have too much
idea about recording.

What is the 'curse' of analogue tape? I thought that the "master" tape
was the best hi-fi source, as it doesn't get better than the master
tape. Have recording studios have moved on to digital media (digital
recording on tape, or straight to hard drive)?

Really well engineered valve amps throughout the chain
wouldn't have really been an issue, but of course by then they'd well
since disappeared, since consols required more and more channels they'd
have imposed rather too many restrictions.

:)


There was a brief period when direct cut discs offered the sort of quality
I was after - assuming it was the type of music where this was practical.
But with the advent of digital recording, they all but disappeared.

Sorry, what does digital recording have to do with cutting a LP?
Did direct cut discs not have to undergo the necessary
processing/equalisation to enable a transfer from the master tape to vinyl?


And then along came the CD. ;-)

Straight off the master tape, eh?

Amp swap disappointment
 

Tat Chan wrote:

Well, some time ago, one of my engineer friends was waxing lyrical about
Cutler and VMS ... mind you , he was a big DEC (esp the Alpha chip) fan!

I don't remember exactly what he said but I was made aware that VMS was
good and in some cases has "stuff" that is still not available in other
OSes.


Yes, the alpha was great in many ways, too little too late for dec
though. Great floating point processor, much faster than just about
anything else at the time.

VMS
has a lot of good things going for it, but IMHO it was made for sys
admins and actual use as a working system, wheras unix was made for
developers, so thats why I much prefer unix, I can be a hell of a lot
more productive on nix than VMS


OS9? You don't mean Bell Lab's Plan9, do you?



No the RTOS OS9

http://www.rtsi.com/


Ah. My only experience with a RTOS is vxWorks.

Ok, yes, if I remember thats Vertex with a unix like second layer above
the hard RTOS, but I could be wrong. QNX is quite cute as a RTOS as well.

--
Nick

"Life has surface noise" - John Peel 1939-2004

Amp swap disappointment
 

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 02:00:05 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:

"Tat Chan" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:

The 'parallels' between DAB/VHF and CD/LP are too obvious to ignore, in
my book.....

Will you tell him how FM transmitters are fed, or shall I?

Would someone please pass on to whichever Binned Person wrote the above
silly little smartarse remark (like I don't bloody know*) that I don't give
a FF what goes into producing/transmitting the music/audio I'm listening to,
be it analogue or digital, ss or valve, fillet of a fenny snake, eye of newt
and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and
blind-worm's sting or lizard's leg & howlet's wing - I go with what I've
got, I'm an End User and, as such, I think the shortcomings of DAB, in
respect to VHF, mirror perfectly the shortcomings of CD in respect to
LP.....

That's because you're an idiot and aren't thinking at all - but we
knew that!

DAB and FM are *both* digital, it's just that FM gets to your system
via a semi-analogue route. Basically, the DAC is further up the
chain...........

All that's 'wrong' with DAB is that some stations use too much
'Optimod' compression and cut back too much on the bitrate - but many
FM stations mangle the sound in similar ways. At its best, DAB is
significantly superior to FM, but of course all *you* have *ever*
wanted to do, is scrabble about for any bit of extreme evidence you
can find to shore up your ignorant prejuduces.

Your final comment is of course just the usual idiocy of the Luddites.
Especially since bad DAB is even worse than vinyl, and in very obvious
ways that have nothing to do with digital/analogue.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Amp swap disappointment
 

On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 19:23:49 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 17:57:15 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:


The 'parallels' between DAB/VHF and CD/LP are too obvious to ignore, in
my book.....

;-)

Will you tell him how FM transmitters are fed, or shall I?

:-)

You do it. :-) I can then point out that the signal quality up here
improved a lot when they made the changes you have in mind... :-)

My understanding is that DAB has - in principle - the capability to work
very well indeed. The snag being that bean-counters have decided that
quantity counts for more than quality....


I was an early adopter of DAB, having been many times to Kingswood
Warren during the development phase, and heard how good it was. I
bought my Arcam, thinking at last - radio I can really listen to. I
know that in the cynical centre of my being, I was thinking that they
would choose quantity over quality, but I suppose that naively I
believed the hype they were selling it with.

More fool me - it isn't worth buying (apart from Radio 3). Get
freeview or satellite instead for digital radio - it works.

d

Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

Amp swap disappointment
 

Don Pearce wrote:

(About DAB radio)

More fool me - it isn't worth buying (apart from Radio 3). Get
freeview or satellite instead for digital radio - it works.

It is worth getting, just for Radio 3.
A £50 Argos special through a decent amp and speakers is excellent.

--
Eiron.

Amp swap disappointment
 

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:44:33 +0000, Eiron wrote:

Don Pearce wrote:

(About DAB radio)

More fool me - it isn't worth buying (apart from Radio 3). Get
freeview or satellite instead for digital radio - it works.

It is worth getting, just for Radio 3.
A £50 Argos special through a decent amp and speakers is excellent.

But a £50 Freeview box gets you that - at an even better bit rate,
plus a heap more radio at decent bit rate, plus a load of TV channels
which are, of course utter dreck.

d

Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

Amp swap disappointment
 

In article , Eiron wrote:
Don Pearce wrote:
(About DAB radio)

More fool me - it isn't worth buying (apart from Radio 3). Get
freeview or satellite instead for digital radio - it works.

It is worth getting, just for Radio 3.
A £50 Argos special through a decent amp and speakers is excellent.

You could add "through a decent DAC" as well - I run my DAB tuner's
digital output [1] though a Quad 99 CD-P.

[1] It's permanently set to Radio 3 - I've set up my programmable remote
with only a single "radio" button.

--
John Phillips