I thought of you Friday, it was our annual Christmas party at my retro electronics friend's house. I wish I had my camera, a stack of beautifully restored Beta players, 8-tracks, Trinitrons, and lots of software for all. His latest projects are 3 or 4 reel to reel's
I’m going to be honest with you, I’m pro-pornography and pro-sex worker and even I think the hot woman thread has no redeeming value. I even consider it counter-productive.
I’m not quite sure I agree that the quality threads here have been going downhill with respect to online in general, nor do I agree that “everything has been done before.” I see three things:
1) user laziness A lot of millennials prefer to go to sites like Reddit which have subfora for nearly every interest imaginable. There is good info to be found on these sites but the SNR of these sites is abysmal. DIYaudio is much better in this regard
2) the economy massive, growing wealth inequality is depressing the amount of time and discretionary income available for non-wealthy people to indulge in luxury goods & hobbies. In the US, the cost of college has been escalating to ridiculous amounts which has retarded the proliferation of a sort of technical background that sustained the hobby fifty years ago. Affordable housing is placing a premium on square footage (waning interest in large systems). These factors are leaving most would-be audiophiles stillborn, at least as we understand them.
3) techno-cultural stagnation Points 1 & 2 above. How we bottle and uncork music has really just been a refinement of the two-channel paradigm established over fifty years ago. Portable playback devices that can wirelessly integrate with other peripheral devices is where the market has been heading for over a decade. Inherited notions of fidelity (and the historic male-centric marketing associated with it) are taking a backseat to the convenience of [lossy] streaming. Because of this, more people -including more women- listen to prerecorded music more often than at any other time in audio history.
Why are they not representing themselves here?
That might go a ways toward answering your question. IME the most sustained crossover (and it still is sparse) is the food industry.
To get the thread back on topic, (Ahem...
), I strongly suspect thread quality is just as it ever was. It's just like chart music, after a few years we only remember the good stuff, all the dross and derivative nonsense that was 90% of what was there gets forgotten about.
Selective memory is a very handy thing, I now have The Birdie Song going through my head. Rats!
), I strongly suspect thread quality is just as it ever was. It's just like chart music, after a few years we only remember the good stuff, all the dross and derivative nonsense that was 90% of what was there gets forgotten about. Selective memory is a very handy thing, I now have The Birdie Song going through my head. Rats!
That's funny. However my wife insists that we play music through our 845 SE amp rather than the chip-amp. I used to have the system default to the chip-amp, for economic and ecological reasons (it consumes 300w), but accurate or not, she prefers it.
Or perhaps she just likes the warmth...
The fact that we wait for the first one says it all. Speaking of sex worker the Walmart in Oakland was an eye opener to say the least.
Most people like to help others. I can't offer critiques of new circuits or give design tips. I have built a few projects from 'established' schematics, and I know how to solder and connect components. I don't mind, at all, when I see a new post from a 'beginner' asking for help. I can answer some questions about 'basics'; that should free up more expert forum members for the more difficult (and more interesting, to them) questions.
Most young (and middle -aged!) Canadians can hardly hang a picture on the wall without hiring a professional. If somebody wants to put together an electronic project, I'm happy to offer encouragement. If somebody wants to build a first amp and asks some basic questions, I won't call them 'lazy' because they haven't read existing threads with thousands of posts.
Most young (and middle -aged!) Canadians can hardly hang a picture on the wall without hiring a professional. If somebody wants to put together an electronic project, I'm happy to offer encouragement. If somebody wants to build a first amp and asks some basic questions, I won't call them 'lazy' because they haven't read existing threads with thousands of posts.
That's because we are still - years later - waiting for the fancy new forum software that will be more flexible and address some of those desires. Updating the behavior of the members may be more difficult.
At least we finally got a room acoustics section.
I like to write to the best of my ability, and to me that is all what matters. How others respond is what determines my degree of interest in an idea or subject for further constructive discussion or analysis. I do try to avoid dogma, though. There are plenty here who think they can think, but cannot write beyond an argumentative perspective about what they believe is right, but without admitting the possibility of maybe being wrong.
My only real abiding criticism of diyaudio is a constant emphasis upon men and their wallets - complete with an unspoken assumption that having a substantial disposable income, is a given. This is something that puts a lot of women right off audio as yet another, seemingly unassailable cultural form of toxic masculinity.
Just take a good long look at the expression 'WAF' - a bit fugly, don't you think?
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My only real abiding criticism of diyaudio is a constant emphasis upon men and their wallets - complete with an unspoken assumption that having a substantial disposable income, is a given. This is something that puts a lot of women right off audio as yet another, seemingly unassailable cultural form of toxic masculinity.
Just take a good long look at the expression 'WAF' - a bit fugly, don't you think?
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There is less of that here than many other places, plenty of DIY on the cheap here. The men/women technical hobby dichotomy will not yield to a simple analysis. Check out some female dominated craft forums centered around jewelry, custom handbags, lunch totes, etc. you will see much of the same negative behavior as here.
Well first mention online of 'toxic masculinity' I saw was 2 weeks ago, so unless I live under a rock, that's a fairly new online addition to first world problems?
As for WAF in any healthy relationship husband and wife have agreed rules of engagement and for things that go into shared spaces generally there is (or should be) a discussion of what the plans are and negotiate a happy medium. I'm lucky in that wife generally accepts my projects with minimal caveats but 'WAF' is as good a precis for the domestic harmony that is needed to enjoy music.
This much more succinctly cuts to the heart of what I was trying to articulate. The economic conditions that need to be in place to facilitate a thriving forum membership have been in decline for a decade now and I don’t think this forum is alone in this.
Pathetic really, especially when you harbor the suspicion that I do, which is that a lot of men are offshoring their own aesthetic quibbles onto their wives so they don’t have to defend them from other members. I would never directly accuse anyone of this though.
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Thank you for all of your comments upon what I said. Very fair, and especially so when the whole world is in turmoil at the moment. Actually, diyaudio is a lot better than most. I particularly like the cross section of wildly different people here - enough to make me feel relatively at ease, even though it has taken a long time.
What I will say is that toxic masculinity is not a first world problem, it is a global problem, and explains why most of my friends are women. As an expression 'toxic masculinity' has been around since the end of the last century as part of feminist discussion, and has only hit the mainstream since the Harvey Weinstein debacle. I am the first to admit there are no easy answers to any of this, but the question of how to attract women into audio certainly needs to be asked.
And yes, diyaudio can be cheap - I'm real cheap - but not all of us can afford or possess a workshop full of power tools, or even a garage or a garden with a shed. I am so darn lucky to have a hayloft in a barn.
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What I will say is that toxic masculinity is not a first world problem, it is a global problem, and explains why most of my friends are women. As an expression 'toxic masculinity' has been around since the end of the last century as part of feminist discussion, and has only hit the mainstream since the Harvey Weinstein debacle. I am the first to admit there are no easy answers to any of this, but the question of how to attract women into audio certainly needs to be asked.
And yes, diyaudio can be cheap - I'm real cheap - but not all of us can afford or possess a workshop full of power tools, or even a garage or a garden with a shed. I am so darn lucky to have a hayloft in a barn.
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It seems there is not a clear definition of 'toxic masculinity' out there and academics are still arguing over it. So I'll accept that some men are arseh*les and many aren't and leave it at that.
As for getting women into audio, why bother? Seriously my wife likes music, enough to have invested in B&O electronics before I met her much to the distain of her brother I should add. Music is what bonds us and the only reason I DIY things. She is very comfortable with the term 'WAF' as well as being referred to as SWMBO*. I don't think our relationship is abnormal.
There is of course one woman who posts on here who, as well as being an EE builds boats and welds her own bike frames. And does DIY audio. But one in 400k
*apparently in use since 1886.
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