DCEmulation

Some grammar errors, but...yeah.

_________________

"A pointless complaint was in my parent's new home and he wishes to allow it to be a waste of time and money with limited appeal to others."

This generator is good sir, you should patent it.

_________________
Makaqu engine blog / website.

⇈ ⇊ ⇆ ⇆ B A Start

That sounds like something he would make. See? Hours of fun.

_________________

I nominate this for best thread of 2010

"A Victorian desk was given to him by his gf and he will convert it into a coffee table with a HDMI output"

I don't know about you guys, but that sounds pretty sweet!

DMF ftw.

_________________

I couldn't stop laughing. This is quite fantastic and true.

_________________
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man

BoneyCork's Inventory is really nice.

_________________

Sorry, folks. The correct answer is:



An antique wall phone was found on Craigslist, and he will restore it and convert it to work on modern phone lines.

Thanks for playing; better luck next time.

It's the only way he copes with his weight-gain.

_________________

"He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand-to-mouth." -Goethe

Here it is in JavaScript
http://roofus.blueguerilla.org/dmfproject.html

A Victorian desk was given to him by his girlfriend and he will restore it and give it the features of a coffee table with WiFi

A pointless complaint was in his parents' new home and he shall change in into a laptop with ink ribbons

looks like someone already beat me to the phone penis comment.

_________________
*The Cadillac of signatures*

A winner is you!

_________________

DMF's been a little quiet lately. I heard regarding his latest project: An antique fiddle was bought in a thrift store for 1$ and he plans to change it into an MP3 player with wifi.

If he puts it up on ebay, I'll start my bid at $20.

_________________

You just haven't been paying attention. This is the correct answer:



I'm torn between restoring them as they are (very durable hardware, but all the sound quality of the 1920s), and installing modern headphone drivers in the cans (which will sound better but probably won't last nearly as long). In either case--they work as they are, but both the leather headband and the cloth wire covering have some dry rot, and need to be re-covered.

That's actually pretty sick. I would love to hear what those sound like, even if it is bad. Are they mono or stereo? I can't tell by that epic jack.

As long as it doesn't have some crazy value to it in the condition it's in, I would definitely restore them.

_________________

Except for some special cases, old headphones are of negligible value. As originally wired they are mono, but since you do have a driver for each ear, all it would take is a new lead wire to make them stereo. The reason the plug is so big is because it's an adapter; the built-in plugs are individual pin connectors.

In terms of the sound quality, I'd say it's about on par with an old (pretty much anything pre-80s) telephone receiver. A bit muted and definitely low-fi, but a soft rather than harsh sound. They are not as loud as modern headphones, though; on my iPod, for example, I have to go up to full to get a moderately decent listening volume.

My dilemma isn't about restoration vs. leaving them alone; it's about whether to restore them to original condition, or put modern drivers in them. I really admire the original hardware in that it's built to basically last forever; as constructed, these things should still work when I'm old and gray. However, as I mentioned, both the volume and the sound quality are not exactly suited for any serious music listening. I'm always torn when it comes to stuff like this.

Ah ok. Then question I would ask myself is, do I plan on using them? Or would I just keep them in my collection? If you plan on using them, then it's worth sourcing some good quality headphone speakers and cable. I myself am considering to purchase a pair of electrostatic headphones in the near future. Not yet decided on brand/model etc.

I'm a bit of an audiophile nut, and like the sound of tube gear. I just purchased one of these:


It's a Yaqin CD-2 Tube Buffer. It comes with some Chinese tubes which sound okay, but I purchased the unit with plans to do some tube rolling (upgrading the vacuum tubes). So I got my hands on a NOS pair of Mullard CV4010 tubes, which are the high-end models of the EF95s. These were made either in the late 60s or early 70s for the UK government's military. Right now I have them burning in, and should be ready by the end of the week for listening.

_________________

Eh... not big on modern tube gear. It mainly strikes me as a fad to fleece people out of money, and often (A) doesn't sound much if any better (a lot of lower-end modern tube equipment even underpowers the tubes... and as a matter of audio "purity," transistors are better because they have lower distortion), and (B) is priced far above what any difference from conventional solid-state gear is worth. The big exception, of course, is guitar amplifiers, where solid state gear is very apparent and the "tube sound" is almost universally preferred.

What I *do* like is taking old things and making them useful again, reducing waste, and choosing things that are built to last. That led me to start getting interested in antique radios, which I've always liked from an aesthetic standpoint. Sure, the big 1938 Zenith console in my living room doesn't have anything approaching the features or the treble response of even a low-end modern receiver. But it's been working since 1938, which means both that it's kept out of the landfill and that it's one less modern piece of junk that needs to be made, if and when something goes wrong it's easy enough to fix that it will likely far outlast me, it does its job, and it looks damn cool doing it.

A modern component would have more features, and sound "better" (subjectively, of course; I don't want to get into the accuracy vs. warmth debate here) while it works... but it's got no character to it, no history, and when it breaks in five or ten or twenty years it's done. The Zenith is all point-to-point hand wiring with standardized, documented, and easily replaceable components. With proper maintenance, it could effectively last forever.

That's sort of our philosophy with a lot of things. We try to stick as much as we can to mechanical clocks, hand tools, human powered implements (one of the family heirlooms we're inheriting is a treadle sewing machine, and I've also been looking at buying a pedaled scroll saw), we cook with cast iron, and we ride bicycles whenever we can. I've even started using a straight razor, both for the cleaner shave and because I was sick of having to buy and throw out disposables all the time. I'm not opposed to the new, but it's not as interesting to me. I like things that tell a story, and my greatest appreciation is for things that are built to last. Few things are, any more.

It's a lifestyle as much as it is an aesthetic.