dsavitsk

The software that runs the Arduino on the Shepeoko/X-Carve will allow you to essentially do this from a computer keyboard, and it costs way less than $5K. It is very easy. There are easier ways, though, so my guess is that you'd not actually use it that way. I am happy to let you play with mine to your heart's content if you pop down to Hartford. If there is a good dinner involved, it might find its way up to you

There is a new Shapeoko coming out (which I guess they have renamed the X-Carve). They are super easy to use, don't require much in the way of a computer (I use an old X201 with mine -- they are going for $100 on eBay right now -- and even that is more than is necessary), cost under $1K, and have idiot proof design software available. If you can draw a square in illustrator, you can use the software. For desktop work, this is all nonsense. The Shapeoko/X-Carve requires you know how to load a browser in Windows or Mac OS (or Linux) and that you can connect a USB cable to the Arduino it comes with. It is all very complicated stuff. If you need to do 5 axis stuff and want production level quality, yes, hire a professional. If you need some quick one off protos and have a little patience, desktop kits are pretty amazing.

Yes. You might be able to convince them to use nickel cores on a pair. It might do good things. You could also use something else off board. I also might have a source for more bobbins. With them you could have more transformers made. The problem is that Jack does not stock the nickel, so you'd have to make a minimum buy which will run close to $1K. With sufficient interest, I could organize a run.

Expectation bias works in both directions -- if you don't expect a difference, you probably won't detect one.

McMaster

I am selling off some surplus PCBs for various projects including for the L-2, Black Diamond, and the Apsara. In the case of the Apsara, there are also wood sides available, and the possibility of convincing me to build a pair -- just ask https://squareup.com/market/ecp-consolidated-productions-llc

http://www.newswise.com/articles/noise-induced-hidden-hearing-loss-mechanism-discovered http://m.jneurosci.org/content/29/45/14077.short http://m.jneurosci.org/content/26/7/2115.short

Insider knowledge fell asleep early, but I'll ask in the morning.

I'll see if I can track some down.

Actually, many of the db meters on phones are amazingly accurate. Erika has one in her lab that cost well into 5 figures, and the one on her phone reads about the same. In bad news, there is some new research showing brain damage occurs before measurable hearing damage. That is, damage from loud noise leaves people able to pass a hearing test just fine, but not actually process what they hear.

Happy Birthday!

And to get that out of my system ...

Being from Indiana, there is little better ...

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

http://www.audiostream.com/content/qa-thorsten-loesch-amrifi

For the desperate: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/dining/chi-hot-dougs-day-paulina-meat-market-20150224-story.html

Not with cables necessarily, but there is gobs of research (including fMRI) showing how very subtle suggestions can influence how people think. Maybe we can write a grant to get time on the new fMRI in Erika's building to do this

That's fair in that expectation bias can certainly have real effects. But I think that is a red herring here. I am talking about comparing actual systemic and repeatable differences where there is no expectation -- i.e., in a DBT. Specifically, just because there is a measurement technique, even one that has been around for a long time, does not mean it is useful or that it correlates to what people think it does. Unless one establishes a reason to think that some measurement is meaningful, relying on it is just as subjective as relying on anything else. As for speaker preferences, we can agree to disagree, though wouldn't an equivalent thickness of MDF be more damped than birch?

You are creating a false equivalence, and trying to make me look dumb in the process. Different power cables are thought by some to sound different likely because of a confirmation bias. There is no measurable difference, and in a double blind test, there would likely be no perceived difference. Different speakers (or different circuits) with clearly different measurements may actually sound different in a double blind test. In that case, the one with "better" measurements according to some scale may not be perceived as sounding better. The argument is that if this is the case, the scale is not well correlated with perceived quality. I'll take the one I prefer in a DBT over the one that your scope prefers according to some arbitrarily chose scale.

Wrong I can send you recordings taken from the brain stem showing how dissonant distortion is amplified and consonant distortion is minimized.

In this day and age when you can buy a basic CNC for around $500, I don't know why anyone would get out a jewelers saw.

That's way too simple. Different types of distortion are perceived differently due to both physiological and psychological factors. If one speaker sounds better, and another measures better according to some chosen scale, the scale is wrong.

Happy Birthday!