"'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard themself against common physical dangers."
I still use it this way.
I still use it this way.
Such post would likely have been deleted by the authority, I'm guessing. I've seen posts close to that before they got deleted and I know the poster.
Ahh but that's just the internet. When every person is connected to every other person, it only takes one a-hole spouting and it just propagates and self reinforces in an infinitely growing number of loops.. The question I have is internet law simply an average of purpetuating rubbish?
Audio is simply a low margin/zero margin game and you either compete on bottom line costs (vs china) or compete on high end brand reputation/market dominance. There is no middle ground unless you create something new that gives you a grace period before the bottom/top horde catch up.
As always in product - it's how fast you can capitalise before the business value is lost.
This is my 'maker' hobby. I don't know much but that's the point - it's the journey I find fun. I certainly would be able to sustain a lifestyle on it!
Coming from a software engineering degree background, it's quite nice NOT having to maintain code.. that's why I like tubes.
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I graduated from Bishop Graphics, mylar and a darkroom to Eagle PCB in 1992 with the DOS version 2.5 or 2.6. I upgraded until Cadsoft got eaten by Newark / Farnell in 2015. They wanted big bucks for an upgrade since my simple vacuum tube PC boards require the "pro" version due to their size. Autodesk now wants about $600 per year for a subscription, so I'm stuck at Eagle Version 5.11.
That's fine for all the tube stuff, but any Eagle version from 6.0 on uses a different library format, so my old software will not read an Eagle library part from a newer version. That leaves out all the downloadable parts built from 2015 on including most modern SMD stuff.
Modern electronics design works much the same way. I did PCB design for cell phones and two-way public safety radios. Early on in the product's design cycle an Industrial Designer will assemble a "best guess" mechanical model to achieve the form and function of a new product from drawings and photos. From this model an SLA (an early 3D printer that costs hundreds of K$) prototype will be made. This gets discussed, and argued about in meetings, then the process repeats. Once the outward look and feel of the product is decided on, some real housings with knobs and buttons are created. As with musicians, most of the controls are EXPECTED to be in certain locations. You don't change the layout of a cop or fireman's radio since he will need to rely on instinct to use it in an emergency or panic situation. We had made several trips to the local fire academy and police training grounds with early protos for real world feedback when a couple mm mater. Once the outer box is finalized the electrical design team (us) and the mechanical design team start carving up the insides. This dictates the shape of the PCB and its skyline (Z axis height limitations). Often we will make a dummy PCB with only the critical parts, no routing or layout, just copper for holding the parts. These will be used for destructive testing, vibration and all the other things that a fire or police radio must withstand.....Yes, we have taken radios to the rifle range, and run them over with cars and trucks.
Once all of this fun has created a 3D model of the PCB, then one can start placing parts. As stated things like switched, knobs, connectors, and batteries are defined for you. The rest is up to the PCB design team. For the last 12 years of my career I worked in a research group. My primary job was to create prototypes or Proof Of Concept radios. These were working two way radios to test a newly developed IC, or some new technology. Here I would choose an existing radio design that best fit my needs, copy the design container from the product design group, open up the PCB and rip out everything I didn't need for my proto build. In some cases I just kept the board outline and skyline. I could and occasionally did violate the skyline, then hack up the housing with a Dremel tool. these "radios" had to work, but were not expected to survive real world abuse. They would often wind up in the hands of upper management that controlled your career, so I made them as nice looking as the time and budget dictated.
Nobody else wanted this job......come on, I had an in house PCB fab, an SMD pick and place assembly line, a mechanical model shop, and a huge parts supply at my disposal. On big projects like a complete radio I could get a parts guy or a mechanical engineer too. What's not to like? I usually changed jobs within the company often, but once I got this job I lasted 12 years until I was deemed "expendable" and offered a bucket full of money to leave.
Here is two of the 10 layers that are in this RF board from a radio prototype. The board is about 2 X 3 inches and contains over 600 parts.
Attachments
Please realize that developing discussion like this is only counterproductive. It brings nothing new, no knowledge.
This forum is far better than most in the control and elimination of rubbish perpetuation and name calling.
Speaking of idiots, or liars, I can't determine which is the case here. Does this guy understand what he is showing and shows it anyway, or is he really an idiot who does not know any better. He obviously violates the laws of physics in every video, and lies about his being in the United States since his power outlets are not in the US. He is called out in several videos, but also has too many believers. That's the scary part.
I found out a few years ago that between 22% and 28% of any average human population consists of psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists. People with these conditions are literally incapable of having empathy. At best they do not care about your welfare; at worst, they actively enjoy making other people miserable. What this means, essentially, is that a quarter of humanity is made up of fundamentally malignant people, whom we would all be better off without.
That was a shock, but it also explains a great deal about why humanity suffers from the problems it does, and why there is always so much cruelty and indifference in the world. The statistical fact is that one out of every four randomly selected people doesn't give a tinkers cuss about you, or your welfare. Or worse, they would love to torment you and enjoy the show. Internet trolls are not the worst of it (one out of every four women in North America has been, or will be, assaulted by her partner in her lifetime.)
But your hobby is for you, and not for anyone else, correct? In my case, I got interested in audio electronics at a young age that guaranteed I had no peers; they were chasing each other around playing cops and robbers while I was trying to figure out the right value of base resistor to bias that pesky transistor. I had nobody to share my interests with, but that didn't make electronics itself less interesting to me.
Nothing's really changed in all the years since. Before the Internet, I did my various hobbies in almost complete isolation. My family didn't care, and neither did my friends. Nowadays I might post details of a project on this forum if I think it might interest or help anyone else. But often I don't bother - the amount of activity on the sub-forums that interest me has been asymptotically approaching zero for some years now. Why bother typing up posts and attaching photographs, when it's all just going into cyber-oblivion?
So a lot of my posts in recent years are more about helping someone else, than about discussing one of my own projects. If someone asks a question on these forums, to which I have a potentially useful answer, then I'll usually chime in with my two cents. I like helping other people when I can, even if it's only in a small way.
And yes, some of the people who asked for help will respond with rudeness and ingratitude. There's that malignant 25% of humanity rearing its head again. C'est la vie.
But your hobbies are for YOU. Don't worry about how other people might or might not react. If your hobbies give you pleasure / satisfaction / happiness, and don't cause suffering for anyone else, that's what matters. Our new smartphone-dominated culture is more narcissistic by the day, but you don't have to participate in the "Look at me, look at MEEE!" going on all around us. Your life is your own, your projects are your own. No need for external validation from other people.
-Gnobuddy
That percentage is higher online. Why? It's the anonymity factor and protection behind the keyboard, a.k.a "keyboard warrior". If you aren't sure what I mean, take a look at Twitter for some examples.
Right. As for those who post their claims on forums of hearing / perceiving something by switching audio components, what makes them want to do that?
I really liked helping an American field biologist with a bird monitoring project via this forum, about two years ago. He needed microphone preamplifiers with high-pass filters for his project, which he paid for himself. I designed a very straightforward circuit for him, he built several of them and monitored birds with them.
I saw Bigfoot outside my window last night. I almost missed seeing him, because I was polishing the Nobel prize I was awarded last year when he showed up. Bigfoot snarled and was getting ready to attack me, but ran away yelping in fear when I threw my thirty-million-dollar Faberge egg at him.
See, there's one reason why people post claims like that. It gets you attention, and you get to boast about all the wonderful things you own. Both of those are things narcissists love. 😀
-Gnobuddy
It seems to me he is making money off his nonsensical videos, and doesn't care at all if they have any basis in reality.
So he's catering to his own self interest, and doesn't give a hoot what happens to anyone else.
(Or maybe it goes beyond not giving a hoot. Maybe he actively enjoys tricking and fooling his victims. Maybe it gives him a chuckle.)
This is entirely typical behaviour for a psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, or a person with a Machiavellian personality.
My guess is that this guy falls into one of those categories, i.e. his personality puts him somewhere in the Dark Triad ( https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/understanding-dark-triad.htm )
-Gnobuddy
I see, so you resort to name calling. That sure makes the internet forums wonderful environment to be in, no? Didn't someone recently post, "People with these conditions are literally incapable of having empathy."? 🤔
So @Evenharmonics , to get back on topic, did the fun go out of DIY audio for you and if so, how and why?
Not name calling, just a behaviour description.
That guy is not an idiot, far from that, he´s clearly having fun making these.
The circuit he uses is always the same: a 12V fed Class A amplifier, passing full idle current through speaker voice coil which is BAD but hey, it works, sort of.
He feeds them Audio signal from an earphone out, powers them from a DC supply (a 12V SLA battery) and gets audio at a speaker .... he´s not actually LYING.
Well, except on power output that is. 😉
He has at least some basic Technical knowledge: one of his projects was built around a multi pin power amp, pulled from a broken TV.
I watched him cut IC legs at the root 😱 thinking "whaaattt theee fuuuuuccckkkk?????" ... yet the amp he made worked as well as the others.
WTF?
So I read the IC label (some Korean TV thingie), searched for its datasheet .... and he had chopped off most leads, leaving direct access to internal power transistors.
VERY clever.
So not fool at all, and the remaining explanation is,what else? , narcissism and profit.
Each video has some 2.000.000 views 😱
many in different channels, but they are either copycats or duplicated accounts.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=powerful+bass+amplifier
Oh, and at least the last one mentioned by Tubelab is in VietNam.
In a way, "truer" than the free energy videos, those condensing liters of pure water from desert atmosphere, etc.
Also, the magic words are powerful and Bass.
That guy is not an idiot, far from that, he´s clearly having fun making these.
The circuit he uses is always the same: a 12V fed Class A amplifier, passing full idle current through speaker voice coil which is BAD but hey, it works, sort of.
He feeds them Audio signal from an earphone out, powers them from a DC supply (a 12V SLA battery) and gets audio at a speaker .... he´s not actually LYING.
Well, except on power output that is. 😉
He has at least some basic Technical knowledge: one of his projects was built around a multi pin power amp, pulled from a broken TV.
I watched him cut IC legs at the root 😱 thinking "whaaattt theee fuuuuuccckkkk?????" ... yet the amp he made worked as well as the others.
WTF?
So I read the IC label (some Korean TV thingie), searched for its datasheet .... and he had chopped off most leads, leaving direct access to internal power transistors.
VERY clever.
So not fool at all, and the remaining explanation is,what else? , narcissism and profit.
Each video has some 2.000.000 views 😱
they are not demonetized so he collects a nice sum, and as of the ego massaging side, go no further than:
the list goes on and on, and he has dozens of videos.
many in different channels, but they are either copycats or duplicated accounts.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=powerful+bass+amplifier
Oh, and at least the last one mentioned by Tubelab is in VietNam.
In a way, "truer" than the free energy videos, those condensing liters of pure water from desert atmosphere, etc.
Also, the magic words are powerful and Bass.
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Donno, the only way I managed to make any money in this hobby is to buy up broken audio off ebay, CL, etc, fix, and reselling. I then put the proceeds into a brokerage account chocked full of stocks like AMD, Facebook, etc.
Otherwise, I am just happy to have a hobby that has the potential to not only learn something constructive, and also making a quick buck.
Its surprising how many times I have picked up a nice piece of audio gear, and upon inspection, found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Feel kinda bad when that happens. I mean, like, really nice stuff.
Other time just replacing a blown diode or resistor, or a recap, sometimes, just reseating a fuse, or a software reset. I was buying those fancy Pioneer ICEPower based Home Theater Receivers (SC07, SC09, etc) years ago for less than $100 broken, and all they needed were a software reset (pressing two buttons upon startup), and firing right up...then reselling for $650 working perfectly fine...and this was all found via a simple google search...too bad the secret got out...
Otherwise, I am just happy to have a hobby that has the potential to not only learn something constructive, and also making a quick buck.
Its surprising how many times I have picked up a nice piece of audio gear, and upon inspection, found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Feel kinda bad when that happens. I mean, like, really nice stuff.
Other time just replacing a blown diode or resistor, or a recap, sometimes, just reseating a fuse, or a software reset. I was buying those fancy Pioneer ICEPower based Home Theater Receivers (SC07, SC09, etc) years ago for less than $100 broken, and all they needed were a software reset (pressing two buttons upon startup), and firing right up...then reselling for $650 working perfectly fine...and this was all found via a simple google search...too bad the secret got out...
Exactly. Thank you!
As they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, most probably it is a duck. If a person behaves like someone with a personality from the dark triad, most likely they have a personality from the dark triad.
Describing a duck as "a duck" isn't name-calling. It's a concise description of the animal.
Describing a narcissist as "a narcissist" isn't name-calling. It's a preliminary diagnosis, one that might be helpful to potential victims.
Knowing something about electronics helps protect you from the "1300 W" class B audio amplifier running on a 12-volt battery.
Knowing something about dark-triad personalities helps protect you from being taken advantage of, or abused, by them.
Dr. Ramani has a number of excellent You Tube videos about narcissism. Here is one:
-Gnobuddy