The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Apache

I know my nephew prefers the sound from vintage tube amps over the newer models. Although I think I remember him saying that there are some companies now manufacturing tube amps.
Apache

Can he tell the difference in a blind test?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Or even a group at work?

Or even in my own company, where I have minions from all over the globe? :-)

Hitch

[Apache]

Yes he can.
Apache

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can he tell the difference in a blind test?

Tube amps for musicians have much more distortion. There were a few very good HiFi, BBC & Studio valve amps. But none of the Fenders, Marshalls or other "performance" boxes are hifi. Most tube radios weren't anything like HiFi, though more pleasant than cheap rubbish solid state with too small speakers.

You can get high end solid state amps with DSP to give any "sound". Or run a program on a laptop (but that has latency issues).

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Renate

You missed your chance.
You could have said, "Huh? I hand solder 0201's with my Weller soldering gun."

I do have one of those (may be older:1950's era).
But my goto is a Weller WTPC station with various temperate tips and shapes.
(I don't do SMD)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Maybe theDucks repairs vintage tube radios or current musician's tube amps.

No, but I did learn some of my electronics on (then) Last years B&W TV's, 5 tube radios.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Apache

I know my nephew prefers the sound from vintage tube amps over the newer models. Although I think I remember him saying that there are some companies now manufacturing tube amps.
Apache

I think the only EL34 tubes and other commonly used in Tube Amps, come from Russia.
Tube can take abuse that ruin semiconductors. I remember running a emergency kludged (for a show) rig with the plates glowing cherry red .

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can he tell the difference in a blind test?

That is not even a good test. We did comparisons on what our ET gang bought at 'the Exchange', with only the Reliever/Amp (no tuner models) swapped. (When you are stuck at sea for weeks, this was our entertainment )
All controls set 'flat': Using a Tape input (7.5 ips) and the sound varied all over the place. (muddled to overly bright)
Even more interesting, was changing the Speaker connected to that model did.
What was Paired with what DID affect the results.
I learned to mostly ignore reviews UNLESS we were using the same exact combination of equipment.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by theducks

No, but I did learn some of my electronics on (then) Last years B&W TV's, 5 tube radios.

When I was in high school, I read an article about "All American Five" 5 tube radios. The tube filaments were in series and were connected (directly!) to the AC power.

A friend had an electric bass guitar and when we were looking into the amplifier one day I noticed that the circuit was an AA5 with the RF section removed. The circuit board looked to be an AA5 board without the RF parts populated. There were resistors (much larger than 1/2 watt) soldered across the points where the RF tube filaments would have connected.

[Martinoptic]

Originally Posted by theducks

Even more interesting, was changing the Speaker connected to that model did.
What was Paired with what DID affect the results.
I learned to mostly ignore reviews UNLESS we were using the same exact combination of equipment.

Exactly. A poor set of speakers will ruin the sound of even the best amps.

[Martinoptic]

You have minions? Are they really like in the movies?

Computers do seem to prefer yyyymmdd.

I wonder what AI prefers

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

Exactly. A poor set of speakers will ruin the sound of even the best amps.

But these were not poor (Those never sound good).

A best I could come up with, was the 'damping factor' of the amp played a big part.
(Big speakers (and these were all 10"+ models), generate voltage at the release of a large excursion and the amp did not deal with that well. FWIW most of these amps were early Transistor output in the 50W range.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Or even in my own company, where I have minions from all over the globe? :-)

Do they all work in their own silo, or do they need to communicate with each other?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Do they all work in their own silo, or do they need to communicate with each other?

They each have their own silo.

Now, seriously, of course they need to communicate, but that's the point. I have folks here from the US, from CAN, from EU, from India, Mexico, Spain, Croatia...and everybody has their own dating system. We manage, however. Somehow.

Ooops, forgot France.

Hitch

[Badcatalex]

I bought my ThinkPad T470s a new third-party secondary battery a month or two ago, and the battery that came in... was very much NOT the right one.
It was one of those classic style laptop battery packs, where it was in a plastic case that kinda just clicks into the machine.
This laptop takes battery packs that go in internally, sorta like older MacBooks.

I bought a new one yesterday, and I hope... hope it is going to be the right one. Apparently Lenovo's official US parts store named Lenovo Encompass sells these third-party batteries too, but with a Lenovo sticker placed on top of the battery's outside (or so Reddit claims). Why am I buying this, you may ask? Because Lenovo Commercial Vantage (computer management tool) says the secondary battery has only 58.5% of its original capacity... and I can tell.
My laptop doesn't quiiiiiiite meet the intended battery life.