I hate those all-too-common "oops moments" - you order a wrong part, but only realise when you unwrap it. When you use a drill that's one size too big, and you know, deep down, that adding a washer there but nowhere else makes it look worse. When you get the sander out to "take that edge off there" and end up re-finishing the entire piece.
And, the worst (imo) you're setting off cutting something with a saw, and it slips out, and you make a notch a good few mill deep in that edge that will always be right at the front, where everyone can point and laugh.
Chris
And, the worst (imo) you're setting off cutting something with a saw, and it slips out, and you make a notch a good few mill deep in that edge that will always be right at the front, where everyone can point and laugh.
Chris
I need spare time, spare cash and a degree of enthusiasm to achieve anything in this hobby.
Getting all three of the above together, only seems to happen about twice a year.
When i do get all three of the above it usually takes me by surprise. I then have to waste two days tidying my shed, in order to find all the bits that i've been patiently accumulating over the last six months.
Then i sit down at the computer to remind myself what all the above bits were actually for, and end up wasting another evening reading through stupid DIY forums.
By which time i've lost some enthusiasm and i'm back to square one.
Getting all three of the above together, only seems to happen about twice a year.
When i do get all three of the above it usually takes me by surprise. I then have to waste two days tidying my shed, in order to find all the bits that i've been patiently accumulating over the last six months.
Then i sit down at the computer to remind myself what all the above bits were actually for, and end up wasting another evening reading through stupid DIY forums.
By which time i've lost some enthusiasm and i'm back to square one.
Finishing speaker enclosures! Or I expect it will be, I have the joy of doing it still to come
I've resigned myself to that fact...I'm still working on a project I started in 05
Maybe if they sounded bad, I'd get them done...but I just start listening and think "Nah, I can wait..."
Collateral damage when drilling/hammering/moving/anything else.
And according to Murphy's law the scratch must happen to be at the transparent plastic window.
And guess what, I scratched my aluminium knob on the first day I got it - against the stapler when taking it out of the plastic bag. Proof that iron is harder than aluminium indeed.
And according to Murphy's law the scratch must happen to be at the transparent plastic window.
And guess what, I scratched my aluminium knob on the first day I got it - against the stapler when taking it out of the plastic bag. Proof that iron is harder than aluminium indeed.
Foofighters! Can't find the screwdriver, can't find ANY screwdriver, and after a frustrated trip to the hardware store, coming back to find every last screwdrivers is right where it ought to be.
Boxes! Oh, I really do hate to build boxes, like speaker enclosures, amp enclosures, etc. . . My most often used amp (an extreeeemly hacked TDA7294 that's definitely not the datasheet example), is still "naked" after 2 years. The power supply board is in a plastic sack, the chip is haphazardly bolted to an undersized CPU heatsink, and it sits atop the speaker. This is an especially ugly looking arrangement. Need boxes. Oh for pete's sakes, shouldn't there be a friendly neighborhood "box store" or something?
Parts availability! Now this is a vexing problem. I wanted some very specific signal grade caps, but the one and only vendor would just send random crap even if I gave the model number. Finally, I got ahold of the manufacturer, more than a year of effort later, and they need me to have a corporate account with DHL. Oh boy. And, of course transistors for really interesting projects are often discontinued before you can purchase them; HOWEVER, all of the other supplies for that project are, of course, already in the mail despite having become pointless. SO, this adds to the parts that I have, but doesn't decrease the parts that I need.
New and Improved! A sign that means you can never again have what you want. Its worse than stepping on poo barefoot, because "New and Improved" doesn't ever wash off. One often quickly-working solution is to call the wife or mother of the CEO or company president and report the offense to her.
Truing wheels! Oh yes, you can reinvent the wheel and you can seriously improve the performance of your bicycle; however, the process is like tuning a guitar with far too many strings. There's a slightly crooked wheel, waiting to be finished, sitting right next to the ugly looking amplifier that lacks a box.
ROHS! All of the historic and readily applicable data now belongs to components that have been discontinued, changed or "New and Improved" (ruined), due to ROHS, meanwhile mercury rains down into my carpets from the new and underwhelming compact florescent light bulbs. . . which is so very ironic. Gosh, if I ever catch up to one of those people responsible for ROHS, well, I just might hit them. Somehow that still seems insufficient.
Daft Digital DMM!! Yeah, the voltage went up, and up, and up, and then I thought the power supply was completely wrong, but it was yet another confused DMM. Next, I'm working with 480v, the DMM reports absolutely nothing. . . but this is not what my fingers reported, and I said a bad word because it was so uncomfortable. The DMM's are also extremely unreliable for tracing circuits to find problems. So, I bought an analog meter at the grocery store for $7. For what ranges it can measure, the cheap analog meter is far more reliable than the expensive digital meter. lol! After verifying proper operation with the analog, then I can switch to the digital to get an exact figure. However, the digital doesn't replace the analog, despite that the digital meter was advertised to do so.
AAC!!! This and MP4 and HD radio (when set on HD) tend to give me headaches (listening fatigue). Some relief is possible with single-fet preamp, vacuum tube filter, or digital upsampling. The MP3's are much easier to deal with because you just need an amp that exaggerates a bit (amplifies more than just the voltage); however, with MP4's/AAC's being newer, I seem to see a trend of ever decreasing fidelity. Its going to be hard to keep up with this trend, because the requirements for MP4 are in addition to the already-difficult requirements for MP3, if one expects to replay at the same quality as a CD. Apparently, this expectation no longer exists?
Boxes! Oh, I really do hate to build boxes, like speaker enclosures, amp enclosures, etc. . . My most often used amp (an extreeeemly hacked TDA7294 that's definitely not the datasheet example), is still "naked" after 2 years. The power supply board is in a plastic sack, the chip is haphazardly bolted to an undersized CPU heatsink, and it sits atop the speaker. This is an especially ugly looking arrangement.
Need boxes. Oh for pete's sakes, shouldn't there be a friendly neighborhood "box store" or something?Parts availability! Now this is a vexing problem. I wanted some very specific signal grade caps, but the one and only vendor would just send random crap even if I gave the model number. Finally, I got ahold of the manufacturer, more than a year of effort later, and they need me to have a corporate account with DHL. Oh boy. And, of course transistors for really interesting projects are often discontinued before you can purchase them; HOWEVER, all of the other supplies for that project are, of course, already in the mail despite having become pointless. SO, this adds to the parts that I have, but doesn't decrease the parts that I need.
New and Improved! A sign that means you can never again have what you want. Its worse than stepping on poo barefoot, because "New and Improved" doesn't ever wash off. One often quickly-working solution is to call the wife or mother of the CEO or company president and report the offense to her.
Truing wheels! Oh yes, you can reinvent the wheel and you can seriously improve the performance of your bicycle; however, the process is like tuning a guitar with far too many strings. There's a slightly crooked wheel, waiting to be finished, sitting right next to the ugly looking amplifier that lacks a box.
ROHS! All of the historic and readily applicable data now belongs to components that have been discontinued, changed or "New and Improved" (ruined), due to ROHS, meanwhile mercury rains down into my carpets from the new and underwhelming compact florescent light bulbs. . . which is so very ironic. Gosh, if I ever catch up to one of those people responsible for ROHS, well, I just might hit them. Somehow that still seems insufficient.
Daft Digital DMM!! Yeah, the voltage went up, and up, and up, and then I thought the power supply was completely wrong, but it was yet another confused DMM. Next, I'm working with 480v, the DMM reports absolutely nothing. . . but this is not what my fingers reported, and I said a bad word because it was so uncomfortable. The DMM's are also extremely unreliable for tracing circuits to find problems. So, I bought an analog meter at the grocery store for $7. For what ranges it can measure, the cheap analog meter is far more reliable than the expensive digital meter. lol! After verifying proper operation with the analog, then I can switch to the digital to get an exact figure. However, the digital doesn't replace the analog, despite that the digital meter was advertised to do so.
AAC!!! This and MP4 and HD radio (when set on HD) tend to give me headaches (listening fatigue). Some relief is possible with single-fet preamp, vacuum tube filter, or digital upsampling. The MP3's are much easier to deal with because you just need an amp that exaggerates a bit (amplifies more than just the voltage); however, with MP4's/AAC's being newer, I seem to see a trend of ever decreasing fidelity. Its going to be hard to keep up with this trend, because the requirements for MP4 are in addition to the already-difficult requirements for MP3, if one expects to replay at the same quality as a CD. Apparently, this expectation no longer exists?
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danielwritesbac: When it comes to boxes, the Chinese has developed a sort of pre-made holes that you glue on your boxes. Costs a fortune of course but VERY handy. If a hole didn't end up right, just remove it it and put it somewhere else.
Dunno how it's done, but it's, they say, some advanced electronic circuit ...<smile>
Dunno how it's done, but it's, they say, some advanced electronic circuit ...<smile>
Build a copy of this fabulous monobloc (I know it is fabulous because I've built it myself !) to enjoy for stereo
NEVER BUILD A MONOBLOC AGAIN
Yves.
when you acidently break something like a piece of plastic
I hate drilling holes in steel chassis enclosures; I quadruple measure and use a spring loaded punch yet my holes are sometimes off...
I uber-hate not having something that can cut a square/rectangular hole in a steel chassis. Greenlee dies would be great if I could afford them. IEC mains sockets and rocker switches are especially annoying.
I hate how the vishay/dale metal film resistors almost never come in common values. Another pet peeves is the scarcity of non inductive wirewounds.
I hate my inability to airwire circuits, I almost always PCB circuits with hideous results. When I say hideous, I mean PCBs that are wired to the sockets with 18 AWG wire; nearly 1/4 of the weight of my amps are wire.
I hate how steel chassis enclosures cost an arm and a leg despite costing no more than $5 in sheetmetal and paint.
It annoys me how little resources and support there is for DIY-ing transformers. Especially when it comes to buying good M6 laminations, I have yet to find a company that caters to DIYers in sub-tonne quantities.
I super duper uber hate it when you put some serious dedication into an amp, only to hear it loud hum upon power-up...
I uber-hate not having something that can cut a square/rectangular hole in a steel chassis. Greenlee dies would be great if I could afford them. IEC mains sockets and rocker switches are especially annoying.
I hate how the vishay/dale metal film resistors almost never come in common values. Another pet peeves is the scarcity of non inductive wirewounds.
I hate my inability to airwire circuits, I almost always PCB circuits with hideous results. When I say hideous, I mean PCBs that are wired to the sockets with 18 AWG wire; nearly 1/4 of the weight of my amps are wire.
I hate how steel chassis enclosures cost an arm and a leg despite costing no more than $5 in sheetmetal and paint.
It annoys me how little resources and support there is for DIY-ing transformers. Especially when it comes to buying good M6 laminations, I have yet to find a company that caters to DIYers in sub-tonne quantities.
I super duper uber hate it when you put some serious dedication into an amp, only to hear it loud hum upon power-up...
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The main thing is, I'm pretty bad at improvising; I tend to "kludge" more-so than "modify". The plans and processes are uber meticulously laid out; this leaves almost no room for error. Anything that doesn't assist the build/process will more than often render my plans useless...
Think of it this way, I'll have all the holes for the various components(switches, sockets, transformers, etc) planned out even before purchasing the parts. Heck, I've even planned, cut out the required lengths of wire and had them stripped before the build started.
Think of it this way, I'll have all the holes for the various components(switches, sockets, transformers, etc) planned out even before purchasing the parts. Heck, I've even planned, cut out the required lengths of wire and had them stripped before the build started.
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The trouble comes when Jim, the bandwidth starved server admin, hears that AAC at 96kbits/sec is "about as good" as MP3 at 128kbits/sec. "Brilliant!", cries Jim, "since I've been running my web radio stream at 96kbits/sec, that means I can cut that to 64 and keep the same quality! This will save me hundreds of dollars of bandwidth!"
Unfortunately, things don't scale nice and linearly, and those "about as good as" assumptions start to add up - the end result is some streams that sound pretty bloody awful, and give AAC a bad name it doesn't really deserve.
That said, I've never yet met somebody (in person) who could consistently differentiate 160kbits+ AAC from the original source in a blinded test.
Drilling holes are the worst part of it for me. I found that I was breaking so many carbide bits that I went out and bought a mill...but one thing leads to another...the mill begat a belt drive, and now the mill is pregnant with CNC offspring. The Dremel tool now feels like the red-headed step-child.
cleaning up your workspace and everytime you do that tipping over the tin can in wich you dispose all those tiny solder-particles from the desoldering pump.
- all over the desk
- in the computer
- _in_ your clothes, on the floor
- everywhere where there's electricity
RAAH.
and also suddenly exploding parts all around you after simply swapping an opamp.
and amplifiers with all active components in perfect order, no shorts, no "opens" but it just won't work (eating fuses). yes, i've replaced all the insulation for the transistors... even bought all active components new and swapped. drives me insane. typical for amplifiers 35+ years of age.
- all over the desk
- in the computer
- _in_ your clothes, on the floor
- everywhere where there's electricity
RAAH.
and also suddenly exploding parts all around you after simply swapping an opamp.
and amplifiers with all active components in perfect order, no shorts, no "opens" but it just won't work (eating fuses). yes, i've replaced all the insulation for the transistors... even bought all active components new and swapped. drives me insane. typical for amplifiers 35+ years of age.
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Oh, try me. Gosh, you could just watch for cringing in pain and know there was an AAC, MP4 or about any form of HD radio in digital mode.
Oddly enough, it may not be the encoding to AAC / MP4 that's the problem. I say this because one can export AAC to WAV, with high quality dithering to 16 bit, 48k sample rate and the painfully weird harmonics are gone.
These harmonics can also be removed with a vacuum tube.
In a really similar way, if I plug the tuner into an SMPS that doesn't get warm, there's a STAAAANKY harmonics in the audio. However, the linear or the much less efficient SMPS that does get warm--those have the tuner playing nice and clear. The linear that came with the radio has a certain old fashioned "slightly" round, but its obviously well done rather than overdone. The 2 of "gets warm" SMPS get identical results to my clean handbuilt linear regulated supply.
Its puzzling that the cold-running version of SMPS interferes with not only the enjoyment, but also decreases the range of the tuner.
Oh, freakin NOOO!! Tumping the can!!! lol!! Oh, its terrible!
I put a huge magnet on bottom of my can and this didn't work as expected, because the pieces will still quite readily come out. The weight on bottom helped somewhat though.
Tumping the can! Worst event was getting up in the night because of smelling the de-soldering iron still running, reaching for the cord, stepping in the can, stumbling, falling and hearing that certain little crispy crackle sound of my rear end making solid contact with de-soldering iron that I just fell on. This was so surprising.
How very curious. This is getting OT, but I'm curious as to what your HD radio source is - I take it it's some sort of embedded device? Perhaps it just has a really terribly implemented AAC codec. By rights, "export[ing] AAC to WAV" involves exactly the same process as playing it back - that is to say, decoding AAC to a PCM stream. Whether that stream goes straight to a DAC or wrapped up in a WAV shouldn't matter.