What part of DIY do you HATE?

[db!]

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...

[mobyd]

Originally Posted by db!

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.

Have you considered fishing as a hobby :-)
M

[db!]

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.

[tinitus]

I hate the buying part

Drilling holes, thats almost the best part of it
Maybe because its nothing to do with money
Almost meditative

What I hate most, that would be mistakes
Or not being able to do it as good as I want to

[TheSeekerr]

Originally Posted by danielwritesbac

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?

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.

[jackinnj]

Originally Posted by tinitus

I hate the buying part

Drilling holes, thats almost the best part of it
Maybe because its nothing to do with money
Almost meditative

What I hate most, that would be mistakes
Or not being able to do it as good as I want to

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.

[powerflux]

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.

[danielwritesbac]

Originally Posted by TheSeekerr

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.

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.

[danielwritesbac]

Originally Posted by powerflux

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.. . .

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.

[TheSeekerr]

Originally Posted by danielwritesbac

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.

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.