The top thread is probably a good example of "quality going down". From post 1 it is obvious it deals with a beaten to death Lin topology amplifier, which is also (in my opinion) rather poorly designed (MJE340 for VAS, one can certainly do better than that, plus some obvious errors in the schematic). After fixing the errors (which I'm sure it was done along the 1000 pages of the thread), it can certainly work, but why would an "old hand" jump in for? Set aside the thread seems to be originally driven by some commercial goal, this is indeed a beginners project, that could be covered by a Wiki page rather than 1000 pages of endless discussions and PCB bragging, spanning 8 years. A waste of disk space, if you ask me.
Bottom line: there is a weak or no connection between the quality and the length/popularity of a thread.
Yes , that was one of Lin amp threads that I "shyed away from". I remember your threads , B. Cordell's , and of course ... the Leach amp. Why beat Lin to death with folded and hawkford cascodes. driving EF3's ? When I did (created?) the "Badger amp" , I just tried to give the best version of the Lin , which is the most highly documented topology.
Slewmaster .... yikes , an amp a week ! Strange super-pair enhanced cascodes , any classic CFA or VFA to play out the "battle". Only # 6 - plus the badger ...2.5M total views , the poorly designed mismatched super-pair with the bloated lead comp. at feedback has 3.5m. Apex is a nice guy , but I thing fidelity takes a back seat to commercial in his designs.
Layout , clipping behavior , bode responses .... if it moves the damn speaker , let er "rip".
I don't think he derates phase margin or other sourcing variables to MAKE sure there are no oscillators. Some of his designs could be much better , some just belt out massive power (#4 - 2M views). Class H for audiophiles. I will "smoke" that amp with my modulated class G (EF3) ...
using a Leach front end "grafted" to to my bc-xxx super-pair hawksford cascode - just even order clipping components - rounded clips with the SP cancelling saturation.
PS - no denigration of APEX , I browsed his designs , too. Just chose a different path.
OS
No way for me to do that. It would be fun to know.Pano, can you show the list of most read threads for a particular individual? That could be interesting.
It might be more useful to show biggest hit threads for each section- I think there was only one Tubes/Valves thread on that list, and it was the photo gallery.
I agree that tags would help, but one of the bigger problems, in my opinion, is that we have several potentially useful threads with completely useless titles- I myself am very guilty of this. Some of us are excellent at getting off topic- and sometimes this leads to very useful discussion on issues unrelated to the thread title. In these cases, some form of tagging system could help.
I personally think that a big help for new people would be for some improvements to the Wiki. This is not to say the existing wiki is bad -far from it- but many newbies don't even realize it is there, and a bit more expansion of it would be helpful (to make it clear, I'm not trying to offend anyone who's put a lot of work into it). But that requires time and energy from people more qualified than myself in order to write and create these articles, so this may or may not be realistic.
There are certain guides that would be of great help to those starting out- perhaps a guide to layout and point-to-point wiring (and grounding schemes!) for the tubes section, for example.
I've always thought that the /r/homelab subreddit has a pretty nice beginner/wiki section that makes it easy for newcomers to see what's all going on. The "flairs" they use for categorizing threads is quite handy as well- something like that could be useful to categorize a help thread vs. a design thread, vs. yet another "mystery tube" thread.
I agree that tags would help, but one of the bigger problems, in my opinion, is that we have several potentially useful threads with completely useless titles- I myself am very guilty of this. Some of us are excellent at getting off topic- and sometimes this leads to very useful discussion on issues unrelated to the thread title. In these cases, some form of tagging system could help.
I personally think that a big help for new people would be for some improvements to the Wiki. This is not to say the existing wiki is bad -far from it- but many newbies don't even realize it is there, and a bit more expansion of it would be helpful (to make it clear, I'm not trying to offend anyone who's put a lot of work into it). But that requires time and energy from people more qualified than myself in order to write and create these articles, so this may or may not be realistic.
There are certain guides that would be of great help to those starting out- perhaps a guide to layout and point-to-point wiring (and grounding schemes!) for the tubes section, for example.
I've always thought that the /r/homelab subreddit has a pretty nice beginner/wiki section that makes it easy for newcomers to see what's all going on. The "flairs" they use for categorizing threads is quite handy as well- something like that could be useful to categorize a help thread vs. a design thread, vs. yet another "mystery tube" thread.
retirement of an almost entire generation of EEs with an audio hobby
If everything has been discussed and your generation is gently disappearing (as mine in few years) the posterity will be undecryptable, young people will think that the EEs with an audio hobby were strange, crazy and contradictory.
Without education the knowledge is toxic, perhaps that as in real life, it should be interesting to condition the possiblity to write something in the valuable topics with our proven technical skill levels ?
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Maybe some of the "better" threads could be distilled into wiki pages?
Would have to be done by the people most involved in the thread, and perhaps reviewed before publishing.
Would have to be done by the people most involved in the thread, and perhaps reviewed before publishing.
Looking down that list of threads what strikes me is that I have not even read most of them, let alone participated in them. Not sure if that is because they are really old, and predate me arriving here, or just not topics which interest me.Pano said:If you would like to know what people are looking at on diyAudio, here is alist of top hits by views. Note: No Lounge threads are included and the numbers are from Dec 18 2018
Hmmmnnn, I seemed to have recently gotten myself rather caught right up in the middle of that one. Never mind.
I had a look at the statistics that were put forward, and I notice that there was only one popular thread from the entire music listening section. At any time of the day or week it always seems to have the lowest number of visitors, and its a bit dull. Yet there is more music available out there than ever before. I think the difficulties lie in the change in demographics. The young now have neither music or books as a physical collections, they live in smaller houses with smaller rooms and thinner walls, with very little space for larger musical playback devices. if you can get people talking about music, then having something worthwhile to playback music with, goes hand in hand. Only the music has to come first instead of last. I agree, this is a cultural matter.
Perhaps if I put this way...
On this forum exists a range of participants from men with credit cards to men with stashes of recycled components, men with no knowledge of electronics to retired electrical engineers and men with vast record collections to men with no real interest in music beyond it being a medium for their hobby; which in all cases is DIY audio.
The forum title is, I believe, deliberately vague. so as not to put anyone interested in doing for themselves some thing related to audio reproduction.
In my own case for example I need an evening time hobby that I can share with my Old Man, who has always been into hobby electronics.
I have always been a bit of a hifi buff and love listening to music so the basic interest was there in my case.
However whilst I admire the EEs and dedicated self taught amateurs that design and build their own circuits I don't think I will have enough time to go that deep in understanding until I am retired.
On the other hand if I want a Nelson Pass amplifier I have it within my means to buy one, what I personally am interested in is the sort of thing one cant buy off off the shelf any more or at some vast speculation induced cost.
So for now, I'm interested in repairing amplifiers ( just finished recapping a Marantz 2238b with the Old Man and all is well except we have discovered that one channel has a problem with power on the positive bit of the input signal), am I in the right place? 😕🙂
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Coming late to this particular party, but I find the trust of this thread disturbing. A bunch of guys arrogant enough to decide what is good and what not. And as far as I can see, based on totally arbitrary criteria.
I think it is hard to think of any thread here that goes completely against the spirit of this forum as much as this one.
Jan
I think it is hard to think of any thread here that goes completely against the spirit of this forum as much as this one.
Jan
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You can easily do that yourself. And that's all I did. Go to each section's front page and click on the column title to sort by that column. Just like any spreadsheet.e.It might be more useful to show biggest hit threads for each section- I think there was only one Tubes/Valves thread on that list, and it was the photo gallery.
I'll take a look. I know that there is some internal resistance to using reddit formats here. I'm part of that resistance as I hate threaded views - we can do better. But if they have some good ways of guiding you to content, why not?I've always thought that the /r/homelab subreddit has a pretty nice beginner/wiki section that makes it easy for newcomers to see what's all going on. The "flairs" they use for categorizing threads is quite handy as well- something like that could be useful to categorize a help thread vs. a design thread, vs. yet another "mystery tube" thread.
I disagree - the Wiki sucks! 😛 Part of that is the bad software. So bad that Jason had to shut it down. Jason promises a better wiki once we make the leap to new software, although it will probably take some time.I personally think that a big help for new people would be for some improvements to the Wiki. This is not to say the existing wiki is bad -far from it- but many newbies don't even realize it is there,
Part of the problem with the Wiki is contributors. I was supposed to take care of the Class-D wiki and you can see how well that tuned out.

By Fanatics for Fanatics can be a scary place with so many "experts" offering conflicting advice which often ends up in arguments.
But isn't that what many experts do? Argue?
Actually, some of the best information can come out of observing a disagreement between knowledgeable people. Usually both sides are right within their own context.
-Chris
Actually, some of the best information can come out of observing a disagreement between knowledgeable people. Usually both sides are right within their own context.
-Chris
The problem is that a newbie cannot distinguish an argument between experts from
1. an idiot vs. anyone else
2. a popular myth vs. the truth
3. a popular myth vs. another popular myth
4. one way of saying something vs. a different way of saying exactly the same thing
5. a conditional truth used in the wrong context (where it is untrue) vs. the truth
6. a matter of taste and preference vs. someone else's taste and preference
Sometimes it has been suggested that we can solve this problem, by labelling some people as 'gurus'. The problem then is identifying them - there would be little agreement, so it would just move the problem not solve it. Even acknowledged experts sometimes talk nonsense, so the only real solution is for the newbie to acquire sufficient knowledge to make his own judgements and gradually discover who is most likely to offer reliable advice.
1. an idiot vs. anyone else
2. a popular myth vs. the truth
3. a popular myth vs. another popular myth
4. one way of saying something vs. a different way of saying exactly the same thing
5. a conditional truth used in the wrong context (where it is untrue) vs. the truth
6. a matter of taste and preference vs. someone else's taste and preference
Sometimes it has been suggested that we can solve this problem, by labelling some people as 'gurus'. The problem then is identifying them - there would be little agreement, so it would just move the problem not solve it. Even acknowledged experts sometimes talk nonsense, so the only real solution is for the newbie to acquire sufficient knowledge to make his own judgements and gradually discover who is most likely to offer reliable advice.
I don't understand all this. DIYA is a pretty sane place, well moderated. There's plenty of really good discussion, some real tech expertise shared, and a lot of fun to be had. It can get a bit heated, but that's just good wrangling mostly, and to re-stress, it *is* well moderated, and there's nothing scary at all!
For some balance - go try so called social media - twatter, for example, if you want to see real craziness...
Long live DIYA and similar sites, just exactly as they are!
For some balance - go try so called social media - twatter, for example, if you want to see real craziness...
Long live DIYA and similar sites, just exactly as they are!
I think the root cause of this divide, where some see issues with the forum, and some are horrified by this, is frankly that some members take themselves or the hobby too seriously. I've pointed out my car hobby analogy before. It's really about individualism. The guy with the latest Corvette and the guy with the vintage Beetle have the same hobby. They talk on the same page. The guy with the Corvette doesn't attack the Beetle owner because his pursuit of the hobby is more "pure" or more "technically sound". They know that what they have in common is they use cars as an outlet for their individualism.
The problem is that a newbie cannot distinguish an argument between experts from
1. an idiot vs. anyone else
2. a popular myth vs. the truth
3. a popular myth vs. another popular myth
4. one way of saying something vs. a different way of saying exactly the same thing
5. a conditional truth used in the wrong context (where it is untrue) vs. the truth
6. a matter of taste and preference vs. someone else's taste and preference
Sometimes it has been suggested that we can solve this problem, by labelling some people as 'gurus'. The problem then is identifying them - there would be little agreement, so it would just move the problem not solve it. Even acknowledged experts sometimes talk nonsense, so the only real solution is for the newbie to acquire sufficient knowledge to make his own judgements and gradually discover who is most likely to offer reliable advice.
Gurus have the nasty habit of entering and pooping the n00b playground. See the classic op amp rolling threads.
Coming late to this particular party, but I find the trust of this thread disturbing. A bunch of guys arrogant enough to decide what is good and what not. And as far as I can see, based on totally arbitrary criteria.
I think it is hard to think of any thread here that goes completely against the spirit of this forum as much as this one.
Jan
True, so true
That's certainly how I see it. Mostly they take the hobby far too seriously. Sometime I have to glance up at the title bar to see if I haven't wondered into diy Utra-HiFi by mistake. I do love super high end audio, but isn't there room here for fun? For practicality? For trying, failing and learning? Audio and music are supposed to bring us joy. Shouldn't the hobby do the same?... some members take themselves or the hobby too seriously.
And remember, there are 40 new threads a day. Who really knows if their quality is going down hill? Who's measuring?
As a newbie I would just say that if the old hands show a bit of patience and the new folk a bit of humility then everyone should run along just fine.
.
Or vice-versa....🙂
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