Yes, that's a true eyeroller.
My inorganic chem professor would tell anecdotes about doing work with fluorosulfuric acid during his doctorate. Heeby jeebies.
There's always plenty of nasty things hanging around a cleanroom, but HF is always the one the one that concerns me the most because it's sneakier. The older techs and I would trade jobs on any chemical that had potential reproductive consequences, as they were done having kids, and, being the young'un, I had better motor skills and eyesight for those jobs which benefited from such. Fond memories working with the techs at LLNL--good people.
My friend Chris had done his dissertation on infrared photomixing, and then gotten a post-doc in Utrecht. As it was ending, he got contacted by TRW, who were working on a 1MW chemical laser and having great difficulties. The laser was dubbed MIRACL (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL), and of course the word was it would be a miracle if it worked. The power supply was full of triggered spark gaps that had an extremely stringent spec on minimum rise time at the trigger electrode.
His predecessors had thought in terms of kilovolts and amperes, and not in terms of propagation delays and impedance matching. The supply was a construction out of bus bars etc. Chris soon grasped that they needed very precise arrangements of coax etc. to have the thing work, and he saved the project.
Eventually they moved things to a remote location and had their own 23kV three-phase substation. At that point they were shooting hypersonic jets of hydrogen (eventually deuterium for the precise wavelength desired) and fluorine down the lasing chamber. Fluorine has a distinct tendency to resist confinement, and there were the occasional accidents with the gas escaping and killing some farmer's cows that had the misfortune of being downwind.
One tech was caught in an accident, and knew not to inhale. He rushed to a shower, shedding his clothes on the way. He survived. After a time he went back to retrieve his eyeglasses. The lenses had dissolved in the hydrofluoric acid that forms almost instantaneously in the presence of even slightly moist air and F2.
Chris is at JPL now. He went on after the TRW days to become one of the pioneers of adaptive optics for astronomy. Very bright and capable guy. He never did have a lot of respect for the military-industrial complex, and when I met his TRW boss at an SPIE conference once, when Chris wandered off I chatted a bit with the boss. He had no hesitation in telling me, despite my being clad in the appropriate academic attire for 1979 of flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots, and sporting a ponytail, that regarding Chris "We can't live with him and we can't live without him".
They told me to wear below the knees wear for my LIGO visit for the cameras, I thought for a moment to tell them to f**k off but why bother.
Lumped yes.
Using a strip line setup keeps the capacitance distributed as well, so it props as it should.
Sometimes the rca is used for video, then it's more of a prob. Audio, no.
John
This thread became EE colloquium 🙂
IMO, i am against public speak about dangerous chemichal processes explanations.
IMO, i am against public speak about dangerous chemichal processes explanations.
...when I was at school we did all sorts of stuff - nitrogen tri-iodide was a favourite, teachers had desks on a dais, so we'd paint it on the floor under their chair... Scrape... bang! - pissed off teacher! There were frequent evacuations of the science block when interesting stuff was let out of fume cupboards. Someone even tried to blow up the wooden tennis shelter.... Not very successfully, but a decent crater in the field. Those were the days??
Depends, I wonder what it would be like to mix dmso with cocaine in a shaker, and rub it all over my body.
Now I see that you are tube/valve guy! Your valve circuit theory and neutral sound does not go together.Valve lovers are tweakers by definition. Different valves, NOS, brand new, pre ww2, assembled by tibetian monks etc. They have pleasant but not neutral sound quality. You have no moral right to comment my listening experience with connectors and at the same time support obsolete technology, and pretend to have scientific approach.
Selected Telefunken valves cost 150 Euros and it is probably realistic price for you.I suggest you to clean valve pins with 15 percent HcL. It really makes difference in my neglected valve phono stage, but I think that it is against your circuit theory.
All disciplines require both actually, practice does not always equal theory.
That is to say, sensible objectivists and sensible subjectivists are all/both to be taken note of, ie sensible objectivist/sensible subjectivist combination are here........take especial note of what they have to say, more especially the older fellows.
The solid theory explanations/measurements that abound around here are invaluable, as are subjective findings.
Dan.
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Hi kamis,
DF96 is completely right. What you hear isn't the tube really, it's how the tube and circuit interact. If the circuit wasn't designed for a certain tube, that tube would perform less well than the proper tube (unless the circuit wasn't designed properly- then it's hit and miss). I've had more trouble with "tube rollers" damaging equipment than in the 60's and 70's. Back then, equipment was most often designed by a real engineer.
One thing you are stuck on I think is that you are trying to use your sound reproduction system as a musical instrument, or effects unit. If you both listen and measure, the better sounding system (for most) usually also measures the best too.
I'm a solid state guy and tube guy. I have both types of equipment and work restoring them. Really good SS equipment sounds close to very good tube gear. So you can't really dismiss someone because they don't use tubes.
Lastly, your comment that your choices for what sounds good are yours alone means that you can't comment on what the vast majority of folks own that they think is good. That by your own claims. At least the more technical people have more tools at their disposal to arrive at truly great sound quality. Given that you can't experience what today's measurements can show also means that you really can't comment on what these people are seeing. No, you aren't a piece of test gear. People aren't because they don't have any way to be calibrated in any lasting way. We can hear problems with a system, but we haven't the ability to find the issue and solve it in anything resembling a controlled fashion. There is no way we can rate equipment between stuff that's good. That has been proved many times over in controlled experiments where only one variable changed. Ad hoc tests popular with audio groups are mostly invalid because they fail to control all variables except the one being tested.
-Chris
DF96 is completely right. What you hear isn't the tube really, it's how the tube and circuit interact. If the circuit wasn't designed for a certain tube, that tube would perform less well than the proper tube (unless the circuit wasn't designed properly- then it's hit and miss). I've had more trouble with "tube rollers" damaging equipment than in the 60's and 70's. Back then, equipment was most often designed by a real engineer.
One thing you are stuck on I think is that you are trying to use your sound reproduction system as a musical instrument, or effects unit. If you both listen and measure, the better sounding system (for most) usually also measures the best too.
I'm a solid state guy and tube guy. I have both types of equipment and work restoring them. Really good SS equipment sounds close to very good tube gear. So you can't really dismiss someone because they don't use tubes.
Lastly, your comment that your choices for what sounds good are yours alone means that you can't comment on what the vast majority of folks own that they think is good. That by your own claims. At least the more technical people have more tools at their disposal to arrive at truly great sound quality. Given that you can't experience what today's measurements can show also means that you really can't comment on what these people are seeing. No, you aren't a piece of test gear. People aren't because they don't have any way to be calibrated in any lasting way. We can hear problems with a system, but we haven't the ability to find the issue and solve it in anything resembling a controlled fashion. There is no way we can rate equipment between stuff that's good. That has been proved many times over in controlled experiments where only one variable changed. Ad hoc tests popular with audio groups are mostly invalid because they fail to control all variables except the one being tested.
-Chris
My goodness, this may set a new record for the number of false assumptions packed into just one post!
Valves are not accurate sound reproducers, I hope that distinguished EE members of this forum will agree. I have an ultimate hubrid J-fet /valve preamp which is very good but not so neutral as my all-fet solid state phono. Different valves sound differently, they are sensitive to vibration, ageing etc.
DF 96 told me that the difference I heard with my expensive RCA connectors is against circuit theory, and was results of placebo effect. My point is that supporters of inaccurate amplifying devices, measuring guys here will agree,
have no right to underestimate other people sonic experience. If he is rigid theorists , he must use solid state devices.
DF 96 told me that the difference I heard with my expensive RCA connectors is against circuit theory, and was results of placebo effect. My point is that supporters of inaccurate amplifying devices, measuring guys here will agree,
have no right to underestimate other people sonic experience. If he is rigid theorists , he must use solid state devices.
Valves have worse measuring results than SS, it is a well known fact. With my connectors, measuring guys said, there are not any difference. I reported sonic improvements , which, according to some members , are not supported by lower IM distortion etc.
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