3rd Jun 2020, 4:18 pm | #1601 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Or for an explanation and assembly at Breuget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cijH0p0o83k At this point you are in for at least £60k per watch and upwards. And given the choice between some Crystal Cables products or a Breuget or Hublot watch, I know which way I'd go. |
3rd Jun 2020, 8:00 pm | #1602 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
No, I was referring to David's comment about today's wonder stuff being tomorrow's demon. Electronics would be lost without plastics, of course, but we are now aware of the downsides.
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21st Jun 2020, 5:48 pm | #1603 |
Octode
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
And our next contestant is the Stylus Cleaner Lifter from this site: -
https://www.solid-sounds.co.uk/store While some of us have confessed to using a Vinyl Passion Dust Buster I won't be rushing out to spend £9.99 on what looks like an off-cut from a broom handle, even with free UK shipping! I can do them for around 50p but you'll have to make do with the wood I choose!
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21st Jun 2020, 6:22 pm | #1604 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
https://www.jacobandco.com/timepiece...onomia-clarity Far, far above £60k Amazing intricacy and flashiness and expense, but easily outdone by a quartz oscillator in terms of accuracy. Trying to engineer purely mechanical watches to compete with what electronics can do is inevitably futile, but if they are seen as works of art then that's a different matter. Big enough to make you look like an escapee from Thunderbirds! Sixty grands' ( I nearly said grands' worth!) of crystal cables aren't going to appreciate in price, are they? This is a world where people pay huge prices for things which do tasks less well and far more expensively than quite mundane items. Showmanship? Conspicuous consumption? Art? All of the above? I've no objection to people making wildly 'artistic' speaker cables with incredible prices, but I reserve the right to laugh and poke fun at some of the claims. With things like this, the last thing you should do is try to justify them. So how do I package an oscillatory mode hydrogen MASER in a wrist-mounted timepiece? Let's go right to the best. I got to meet Norman Ramsey back in 2005, close to his 90th birthday at an ISEF event, a very nice chap. It would produce an electronic wrist watch with an adjective the mechanical ones dare not use; definitive! David
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21st Jun 2020, 8:30 pm | #1605 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
For a laugh I just got a one handed 24 hour watch (wanted one for a while, until Hong Kong made it affordable I didn't bother) More than accurate enough for me!
https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_Aurora_AA42.html Edit: To get on topic the tick is so quiet, up to the ear in a quiet room level, it won't interfere with my listening. Last edited by Guest; 21st Jun 2020 at 8:33 pm. Reason: Made post on topic. |
21st Jun 2020, 8:49 pm | #1606 |
Nonode
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
I do some light watchmaking, and 24hr watches are good fun. More than accurate enough for any day-to-day requirements. A sharp hand means better than 5 minute resolution. The Russian/Soviet "Raketa" works made some jolly 24hr movements with rotating bezels for different Russian timezones.
Thankfully, they're very cheap and also reliable, so playing with good looking watches is possible without laying out more than £50 for a good one. RLT watches made a nice 24hr watch in Yorkshire. Some might still be knocking around. |
22nd Jun 2020, 12:04 am | #1607 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Didn't seem possible, going off a topic that's as wide as several barn doors, but seemingly it is. Chronofoolery.
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22nd Jun 2020, 12:54 am | #1608 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
There's only one phoolery, Bill. Simple human pride. We just see it manifesting in many directions. I'm afraid I started this latest offshoot. I was trying to make the point that there is a stratum of consumerism far far above the financial reach of we mere mortals where million dollar watches exist (I didn't mention cars). These people don't even go in for ordinary cats, some have been seen with leopards on leads. Stupidly expensive speaker cables and amplifiers are a drop in the ocean for them.
It's just showing off. I dissolve into gigglefits when pseudoscience gets wheeled out to justify their choices. Choices in luxury goods never really had any justification that wasn't embarrassing, if attempted, and in hifi it's no different. I reckoned woolies bell wire was OK. David
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22nd Jun 2020, 9:14 am | #1609 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Ah but Woolies is long defunct ;-)
Seriously though, bell wire is single strand, 0.5mm diameter. Which is a loop resistance of 0.17 ohms per meter. A 5 meter run would therefore be 0.87 ohms and at a peak current of 10A say from a decent amp would dissipate a peak power of 87W. Which is a trifle high. I of course take your point. The good old QED 79 strand (£22 for a 5 meter pair) has a loop resistance of 0.016 ohms per meter. So the 5 meter run would have a loop resistance of 0.08 ohms and for 10A would disspate 8W. Which is still surprisingly high. Of course in the context of an 8 ohm loudspeaker producing 800W at that current the cable dissipation is only 1%. To reduce it even further you just need to use more copper (or to get 6% less resistance, eek, silver). The QED silver signature, which actually uses copper, (£450 for a 5 meter pair) has 5.5 square mm and a loop resistance of 0.006 ohms per meter. So our 5 meter benchmark would be 0.03 ohms and dissipate 3W at 10A. From bell wire to slightly insane we've gone from 0.87 ohms to 0.03 ohms. How significant the reduction is beyond cheap and cheerful QED 79 strand in most practical circumstances is certainly debatable. Craig |
22nd Jun 2020, 4:56 pm | #1610 |
Hexode
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
My favourite has to be the unit I saw in a Laskys years ago with a sign extolling it's virtues that proudly proclaimed it had a "Three-Band Graphic Equaliser". Never forgotten that.
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22nd Jun 2020, 4:59 pm | #1611 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Funnily enough, you can get grey figure-of-eight with a sharp edge extruded into the insulation as a polarity indicator. Apart from the fact that it isn't black, it looks just like QED 79 strand stuff. It was used in fair quantities by installers of PMR VHF transceivers in cars and vans. Useful lengths of it still crop up at Lothians radio society's junk sales and go for pennies.
I've never counted the strands. I did once write a piece that speaker cables had to have a prime number of strands (1 was a popular number around that time) or else factorisation distortion could occur and muddy the sound. David
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22nd Jun 2020, 5:08 pm | #1612 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
1 is not generally considered to be a prime number by mathematicians. |
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22nd Jun 2020, 6:03 pm | #1613 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
It has no other factors than 1 and itself, so it passes for one as far as factorisation distortion counts
David
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22nd Jun 2020, 10:55 pm | #1614 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
An odd property of 79 is if you reverse the digits you get 97, which is also a prime. Called, apparently, and emirp (prime backwards). Seriously.
The largest one so far found is 10^10006 + 941992101×10^4999 + 1 I'll bet that sounds awesome. Think of all those strands... |
22nd Jun 2020, 11:01 pm | #1615 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
I'm not sure if this has been posted before. If it has then apologies. Otherwise I think we have a winner.
https://www.auralthrillsaudio.com/t2.htm "Other cables are just wire in comparison." I started to trace the circuit out, but then I lost the will to live. I'm pretty sure it would have been better with a valve rectifier though. Cheers, GJ
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23rd Jun 2020, 12:09 am | #1616 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Oh dear god. You couldn't make it up, could you?
And as for 10^10006 + 941992101×10^4999 + 1 strands, it's going to look reassuringly fat even with the finest strands. David
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23rd Jun 2020, 12:41 am | #1617 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
Greg.
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Picture, sound?, DOOR. |
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23rd Jun 2020, 7:45 am | #1618 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
My bodges look better than that.
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23rd Jun 2020, 8:01 am | #1619 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Couldn't resist...
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23rd Jun 2020, 10:56 am | #1620 | |
Heptode
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
Am I the only one here would would prefer their cables to be unbiased? What if their bias is against some of the music I like and they refuse to play it? |
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