@awk@phendrick@narfcake
… and at 15IPS for audio quality. I didn’t see this post earlier, but added the Teac 3340S later on in the forum. Never knew a Ballfinger – either sounds kind of kinky (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or maybe a mix of James Bond titles. I’m assuming very high-end studio equipment. But yeah that looks like a nice machine – I’m guessing a lot more recent than the Teac from the '70s.
And, yeah, tape splicing. Used to be the old way to “fake” audio, before it became easy in the digital editing generation.
@narfcake@steveml OK now that is something I never knew existed. I do remember an Oldsmobile Toronado (front-wheel-drive, heavy as a tank, about 7 MPG). with an 8-track. And as a young child my first introduction to recorded music was a “Symphonic” receiver with built-in 8-track. And due to my mom’s hippie boyfriend at the time (long story), I started with Three Dog Night and Credence Clearwater. Probably not a bad start actually.
I never cared for headphones with radios built in, and I thought i was too cool for prerecorded cassettes.
I’ve still got big wooden speakers, but I’d never use them for tables. Besides, the mains are too tall, and nothing would stay on the subwoofer very long.
@heartny remember when those would say on the front how many transistors they had. Like I guess a 12-transistor radio was better than an 8-transistor radio. Imagine if that was done on stuff today like a computer, or your phone, for that matter: 3.45-billion transistor. Or your car, except now they can’t make the cars because they can’t get the chips with the billions of transistors. Since we no longer make 'em in this country. We used to.
Notes: Led Zeppelin play their first North American show, in Denver, the day after Christmas 1968. Robert Plant, John Bonham and Jimmy Page travel to Los Angeles on December 23rd, while John Paul Jones meets up with them at the Denver show. https://www.ledzeppelin.com/show/december-26-1968
@f00l Did you know who they were when you went to that concert? My friend had no idea, she was going for the other band playing that night.
I’m jealous of both of you…
@f00l@Kyeh I got to see Page & Plant in the '90s as I was a toddler back in '68. There is a level of musicianship that few reach, where whatever they are performing, it is effortless, completely improvisational, and is viscerally experienced as bearing witness to sheer human brilliance.
Page & Plant was as close to LZ as I would ever experience, and being there was one of the greatest concerts of my lifetime. And after attending countless Jazz Fests, that is quite rare company to be … in that number with fellow legends like SRV, BB King, Aretha, Christina, Elton, Stevie, Winton Marsalis, Aaron Neville, Otis Clay, George Clinton, David Byrne, …
We still have the giant wooden speakers that would double as end tables. I have tried to get rid of them many times but my husband refuses to part with him. They were apparently a really good speaker back in the day and cost a lot of money. Idk what brand they are, but he does.
That doesn’t change the fact that they haven’t been used in a couple of decades, but we have to keep them for …nostalgic sake maybe? Oh well, our kids can toss them in 20 years or so?! Or use them as really rad end tables.
@hchavers I did have some big ones just like this I think I hauled back-and-forth to college all 4 years. I think they were bigger actually.
I did eventually move on to Acoustat electrostatic speakers which are about 7 1/2 ft tall. I just can’t seem the part with them though I’m not actively using them anymore. And a bit worse for the wear with 30 years of dust plus occasional duty (not advised) as a cat scratching post.
@hchavers@pmarin I grew up listening to music on my Dad’s Dynaco stereo with AR4 speakers. They probably could have been used as tables. Unfortunately the cat liked to use the front grill as a scratching post, so the acoustics eventually suffered.
@mc2d2000@PooltoyWolf Two years ago when I needed space for my new home business we finally got rid of these decades old dust collectors. And many others. Somehow, we still have way too much crap.
@mc2d2000
We’re polish so we had speakers staked on top speakers bc we didn’t wanna get rid of the first pair so we just put the newer pair on top of them.
@mc2d2000@PooltoyWolf They were worth nothing sitting there for 25 years. Yes, my husband got an OK price from a dealer who loved them and was still using them in his store last time we were there. On the other hand, I’ve made a lot more than that by having that space to work in.
Space > unused speakers
@mc2d2000@Star2236 And you’re saying that like it’s a problem. I remember in the old days of rock concerts there would just be a boatload of speakers of various kinds, piled on top of each other. Not that there was much audio design going on there. It was really how to crank out the dB with anything you got. And pack it up to drive to Cleveland the next day. And set it up again.
EDIT this is in response to the speakers on top of speakers 'cause we couldn’t get rid of 'em post.
P.S. There’s almost no audio stuff that I let go that I don’t regret. Unfortunately I love this stuff and wish to just be buried along with it. In my house full of stuff.
@callow@mc2d2000@PooltoyWolf Wow that Kenwood receiver. Really elegant design with the buttons and knobs. So nice to be able to get to everything quickly without having to navigate on-screen menus like most things now. Also that beautiful long horizontal tuner area (I’m assuming that’s where the FM tuner frequency was set).
Reminds me that one of the “cool” things of that era was the flywheel tuning, where you could give the knob a spin and it would keep going with momentum so you could quickly move it around but still have precise control when you wanted it. Sometimes there were fairly complicated mechanical contraptions inside to do this.
@callow@mc2d2000@pmarin Flywheel tuning used to be a given for equipment from that time period. It wasn’t all that complex, just the mentioned flywheel on the tuning knob shaft to give the knob extra weight. It really did give the machines a solid, quality feel, though. I’m always surprised now when I go to turn a tuning knob and don’t feel it.
I picked vinyl, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say I’m nostalgic for it. I have a ton of new vinyl, and generally prefer my good stuff to be on vinyl. My 2-channel system (which is used largely to play my vinyl) is bonkers… Is there a word for something that one would be nostalgic for, had it not come roaring back??
@compunaut@shahnm honestly there was nothing better than my vinyl system in its prime. But it fell into disrepair over several moves and decades.
You get some amazing acoustic guitar plucks or high-range female vocals on good vinyl audio (cartridge/amp/speakers) and I’ve never heard anything like that since. I had the setup where the sound was precise and amazing, but at only one point in the room (Electrostatic Speakers). But when it actually all worked together it was better than recent live concerts I’ve been to.
Fought the digital for years (remember arguing with a Motorola engineer in Scotland on a business trip about whether 44KHz was adequate sampling – that was in the 80’s. Eventually he agreed I was right.)
Honestly I have not given the new higher-sampling digital a try on a quality system (both bitrate and # of bits). So there might be hope if that’s the world we are going to. And sure a lot more convenient (there are portable hi-res digital players).
BTW does “bonkers” mean super-good or really f-ed up? I don’t know all the new lingo!
@sillyheathen I think I still have a yellow one that was the “sports” model with the o-ring around the cassette compartment so it was semi-waterproof. I’ve been temped to get rid of it many times but just don’t seem to be able to. Also I had one of the first CD models but unfortunately I think I got rid of that.
P.S. @sillyheathen great (weird) username. must be a story behind that…
@f00l I am so bummed I dropped my old one of these (I think same model) into a phone/MP3 recycling bin. These are now vintage classics and would love to have it again – even hearing/feeling the internal hard-drive spin up was part of the effect.
The internal battery went bad and it wouldn’t power-on at all but apparently that could have all been fixed. Kind-of like people that scrapped old Airstream trailers and VW Vanagons 20 yrs ago and now they are all super-collectible.
@f00l I want one of those pretty bad in a way that makes no sense at all. There’s virtually no chance I’d use it.
I remember destroying a third-gen iPod (perhaps least aesthetic of the entire line, with no actual buttons, touch only), when it glitched and turned my audio up too loud, and I uh, chucked it. Little spinning HDD inside.
At some point I picked up a false memory that Apple’s last “classic” iPod held 160 GB while the penultimate one went up to 320, was just now looking for a reference for that “interesting” “fact”.
@eeterrific I just found two old Sansa (name came up before Game of Thrones – go figure! – maybe some connection there?).
One actually plugs into a USB port, same as a memory drive, and proudly says 2.0 GB, which was pretty frickin amazing at the time. And it has a micro-SD slot. The other is older and used the proprietary Sandisk port (similar time to when Apple came out with the infamous 30-pin connector many of us still have for legacy stuff). Obviously the Sansa stuff dissolved away in the face of Apple and other products. But for the time it was pretty good.
EDIT: actually I think I have a “Sansa clip” model also, somewhere. Not sure where it is.
Now I just need to make the bot say Awesome.
@eeterrific@pmarin I love my Sansas! I have a few from Woot! I bought a Sansa Clip Sport from Target not too long ago, so they are sort of still available. I don’t know if it’s any better than the OG ones, as I can’t seem to give them up because my music and playlists are on them.
@eeterrific@heartny@pmarin I loved my Sansa Fuze but it eventually died. The ones in the aftermarket can go for 3-4 times their original price because people value them so highly. The Clip Sport is still readily available, but IMO, it and all of the other subsequent iterations (Clip, Clip+, Fuze+) are inferior to the Fuze because the click wheel was replaced with 4-way buttons.
@DrWorm@eeterrific@heartny@pmarin
I was also an avid Sandisk Fuze fan back in the day. Trashed mine after (many) years of frequent use when I left it outside and it got rained on. Tried to recover it in a jar of rice but never could get it to work again even though it would power up fine.
@eeterrific I still have a Sansa Clip. I used it daily when I went in to the office but since I started working at home, I only use it once in a while, and the battery no longer holds a charge for very long any more. Sad.
I think the tag line was “Everything you need, nothing you don’t”.
@eeterrific The Sansa Clip and Clip+ were great. All of the subsequent, tiny Sansa players are inferior.
Unfortunately, the screen on my clip died a few years ago after about a decade of service.
Having a discrete position on the power slider switch to lock the controls was brilliant. It was 1000 times better than “press and hold to lock” controls, which then become unlocked once that button gets inadvertently pressed again.
Was going to say vinyl but then the big wooden speakers used as furniture got me nostalgic.
Plus I messed up my old turntable which was vintage audiophile, and the only way I’d do it again properly seems to be a $1K+ investment. Yeah, first-world problems. So I’m just skipping it for now but not sure what to do with several crates of old vinyl I can’t let go of, but can’t play either.
@medz Delta 88 that is pretty cool. I had one in trunk of a Mercedes. It’s like OMG 6 CDs of music all with you on a road trip – life is going to be awesome! (also trying to trigger the bot…)
@medz@mike808@PooltoyWolf What would be typical lb/ft throttle setting at cruising altitude? I looked up max power but obviously you don’t use that often. Gotta find out how much it costs to cruise in that Delta88, oh, wait, I mean the aircraft.
@medz@mike808@pmarin The thrust rating for the JT8D is about 18,000 lbf thrust per engine, so double that for the aircraft. As for how much less they burn at cruise vs. takeoff thrust, it’s significantly less, but I also know that compared to piston engines, turbines don’t consume all that much more fuel at full throttle than they do at idle. (Railroads learned this very quickly in the 1960s!)
@mehcuda67 My high-school electronics teacher (in the 70s) was a tube-era guy and he insisted that we understand tubes first, then can move onto those newfangled transistor things. In a way he was right.
But in my old audio days (80s) I did some experiments with tube preamps and amps and I definitely say I liked the results. This was particularly in the early days of CDs where it really seemed to “help” the “unpleasantness” of digital audio, compared to vinyl.
And yes the faint orange glow of tube filaments really does bring warmth to the heart, as well as the sound.
Does my Columbia House 15 CDs for $1 or whatever and a 5-CD changer in my bedroom as a teenager count? I mean, sure, I can get all that music and more in a couple of tappy taps on my pocket supercomputer now but that feeling of independence and experimentation (and in a couple of cases, regret), and the anticipation of waiting for my music to come in, all of that was a fun time. Everything now just comes and goes. Those CDs were a commitment (especially after the introductory offer).
Ha…Ya kid, you… Mine were vinyl and I can still remember the 4 disk box set from Chicago and the 3 disk set from Woodstock arriving in the mail! Moved then around for 15 yrs or more thru a dozen moves.
@PooltoyWolf Is that actually your setup or just an image found? I swear I think I had that exact TV. It was a rare widescreen CRT and weighed as much as a small vehicle, it seemed like.
And BTW is that a Danganronpa figure on the right speaker? Monokuma I guess, I forgot had to look that up. Don’t want to annoy Monokuma, trust me.
@pmarin Considering that’s my fursuit head on the right speaker stack, that’s my setup LOL. Sony Trinitron KV-40XBR800 40-inch HD CRT TV! This was a 4:3 model, and weighed 300 pounds. Your widescreen model may have been a KV-34XBR960.
@pmarin@PooltoyWolf I think you meant KD-34XBR960. That’s what I have, but I don’t have the official stand like you do.
I have an old IKEA TV stand that happens to fit it, but I worry slightly about it holding up to the weight.
If I crashes it will destroy a Wii, a Playstation 2, a Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, an NES, and a TI-99/4A.
@PooltoyWolf Yes, the widescreen CRT was a 34" I’m pretty sure. Heavy enough. The 40" probably even heavier but in the 16:9 format, the 34" was probably as wide, just not as high. The glass on the CRT had to be super-thick especially on the widescreen, because CRTs as vacuum containers really prefer to be symmetrical and round.
Yeah I think it had component video in and would do 480p as I recall. There wasn’t HDMI yet. I don’t think it had DVI but that was starting to be common in higher-end computer monitors, replacing VGA.
@pmarin 3/4 inch thick leaded glass on the CRT front! My set has DVI and will do 1080i/720p. I’ll never get rid of it! I have a full set of spare parts to keep it going.
@pmarin Forgot to address your other question! That character you see on the speaker stack is my personal character (or fursona), Mac the wolf. That’s just his head, which I keep on display; the rest of the fursuit is stored elsewhere.
Analog audio, with all its little imperfections, was still the best audio we’ve ever had. Digital audio may be more “accurate” and infinitely reproducible, but it has never had the presence that top-notch analog audio was able to create.
I’ve been preaching this for 35 yrs but now listen to … Apple Music, cause it’s easy. And my ears aren’t as good anymore. But there’s literally a visceral reaction I would get from listening to pure analog audio (even with some pops and clicks) that I’ve never matched with digital. Especially, for me, in guitar plucks or female vocals.
I think one problem now is that most people of the “target consumer” age don’t even know what could be possible (and once existed). You did need very good speakers and cartridge to really get the benefit. And most never experienced that, even then, and it’s even harder to find now.
So in other words, most don’t know what they’re missing.
In the late 90’s, popular music changed character as the culture shifted.
And unabridged audiobooks became commonplace.
And those became my listening refuge. They became then, and still are, the private listening experience that moves me.
Compression and lossy conversions and bitrate wars and insane fidelity and all that that don’t matter much with spoken word performances.
It’s all about content, with audiobooks.
And about that time, most music I encountered went digital.
(I then knew college aged people who seemed to have everything)
But the music just lost something. I no longer found it compelling to listen.
I now wonder if the loss of my visceral and emotional connection to music wasn’t due in large measure to the digitization.
When I was young, it was so compelling and almost physically necessary to listen to music every day, even if all I had access to was the crappiest source format and equipment.
Music just lost so much in the transition.
I’m not really moved by it now in at all the same way (unless I’m at a live performance)
Even tho the sources and playback equipment are supposedly so much cleaner and better.
@Tadlem43
We still have one in my dads garage. He also has one of those things that’s you see from 20’ or 40’ movies that you wind up and it plays the record. It’s really cool bc it’s in a huge wooden box that’s probably 4” tall. He was born in 42 so we still have A track players and A Traks if my brothers haven’t thrown them out (they’ve been on this huge purging spree and don’t think anything is worth money) I was in a the garage a little while ago and found a huge box with brand new cassettes still in the wrapping. It’s definitely a time trip looking through my dads stuff.
@Star2236 That’s awesome!
I take it you’re talking about a Gramaphone? Those are worth a LOT of bucks! So are some of the cassettes and 8 tracks! Don’t let them go!
@Star2236@Tadlem43 Yep, that’s a Victrola! Mine works well, but the previous owner let it sit in a damp barn for years, so the wood finish looks abysmal.
@Star2236@Tadlem43 Correct, the brand name was owned by RCA for most of its actual lifespan…these days it’s just slapped on Chinese electronics, usually turntables.
@mike808 There’s a modern version of the 808 called the TR-08, so you can relive the past in hardware. (To say nothing about all the software versions and 808 sample kits out there.)
@thebigtverberg I bought a specific sony cd walkman that was designed for running (S2D-SJ301) and it had a cool velcro handle and the play button was located by my thumb. It was awesome. I listened to a lot of Sevendust on that thing…
@zinimusprime
Awesome, mine was silver but I couldn’t find a photo of it. I suppose the walkman was some time around 2000, and then my buddy gave me his old 1st or 2nd gen ipod in the 8th/9th grade…what a game changer.
That clunky headset radio. In garish yellow plastic. 4x AA batteries, two each side. Telescoping antenna. Abysmal reception. They were “portable” but you had to stand humiliatingly still in an awkward position to consistently receive the signal.
Thunder Lizards. The foam margins on the woofers in mine finally fell apart, and the cones were getting kind of iffy, and what the hey, after 30+ years I didn’t exactly figure they were state of the art anyway (if they ever were), but I still miss their hugeness on top of the entertainment center shelves. (Those particle board boxes really were El Crappo Sliced Dairy Substitute Cheesy, though.)
I can hardly think of an audio technology that I’m not nostalgic for, starting from cassettes, including CDs, headphones, Walkman-like off-brand portable players, the rise of MP3s and file sharing, iPods, and parents’ living room speakers.
It’s really only streaming where I don’t think I’d be too prone to look back with that favorable pang after whatever the next shift is.
Actually, I’m trying to move toward CDs, kind of like a vinyl person but more emphasis on permanence + movement away from whosever iteration of “the algorithm”, and with an intention to rip them all.
@InnocuousFarmer I think it’s the physical aspect of it – that you have it in your hands versus having some service doling it out if they allow you to listen to it.
@narfcake Yeah it’s definitely a different equation, from personal discovery to ownership, on the one hand, and “keep paying us and maybe we’ll let you keep listening to some of the music we’re putting in front of you” on the other.
@InnocuousFarmer@narfcake
I get the physical thing…I think a good compromise is digital copy, so you can rip if you want/need. I really like BandCamp for this reason. I pretty much only buy music on BC now actually.
I still stream, because my music tastes are expansive and diverse, and I’m not wealthy enough to own copies of everything…
I really miss my creative zen juke box. All of my music fit on that. Even then ones I permanently borrowed from the internet. Thousands of songs, Possibly more than 10,000.
Our family had a giant, wooden Zenith boat anchor Console TV with a remote that worked on high-pitched sound so every time a car would drive by the house, the volume would go to the moon. The damned thing even had a telephone built into it that sounded like you were speaking into a Rubbermaid trashcan … when new from the factory. Had to be moved with a fridge dolly or taken apart, piece by piece and reassembled to be moved. Looking back, I used to think “wow, how did they get this whole car into this shopping mall” and now as an adult, I think “how did we ever get that TV out of there” and “why has that blasted thing outlived generations of this family?”
I love vinyl, and while I have a handful of cassettes (as they were the only physical format available for artists I wanted to support), I don’t have a tape player and I really don’t get the cassette revival. It was a pretty crappy format, and I still remember seeing little tumbleweeds of cassette tape in gutters and at curbs from my childhood and early adolescence. To each their own, I suppose.
@chienfou@compunaut@sanspoint Yeah on road trips cassette was the way to go. (we’ll ignore 8-tracks as an aberration in history). My friend and I took a road trip to Idaho at Spring Break in college with about 20 cassette tapes for the drive, which was about 20 hours. It was for skiing and also his parents lived there.
I hacked a Pioneer cassette player into what used to be the ashtray compartment of a '68 Cadillac. Back in those days ashtrays in cars were everywhere and huge, 'cause, smoking. Pioneer had an underdash model but I was able to somehow conceal it into what used to the huge ashtray door. In some ways I think I had better skills at 18 than I do at 58.
I am nostalgic for the day I was excited about new music. I’ve tried really hard to get into 21st century music and for the most part, I just don’t care for it.
Most people think you get locked into what music was popular when you were young and that really isn’t the case for me. If I am watching a 1940’s musical on TCM and a song comes on that I have never heard of before, I will almost certainly like it (and I hated this kind of music in my teens and twenties). Additionally, some times friends will share with me something from an obscure 70’s or 80’s band I have never heard of and I dig it.
So it isn’t the fact that its new to my ears, there is something really inherent about current music that turns me off, and I really don’t know what it is.
@DrWorm A lot of newer music I listen to is by independent artists who work in styles I like (mostly, minimal synth, coldwave, or just straight up synthpop.) There’s probably plenty of newer artists making music you’d like, you just have to work to find them because they’re not getting radio play.
@DrWorm@sanspoint BTW not directly related, but check out magnatune.com. There is some you can listen to all the time but pay for a membership and you basically have the ability to stream or download tons of stuff. Mostly acoustic, new-age (or whatever it’s called now), classical, folk. I paid the one-time fee about 10 years ago, but yeah it’s a high one-time fee. You support independent artists and groups that want to make their music available while also sharing some revenue. I was worried that with all the internet wars the site would go away, but luckily seem to be sticking in there.
@DrWorm@Kyeh@Limewater Regarding the “loudness war” yeah there was this thing that went on with re-mixing where music really had less purity and just more “loudness.” Many reviews of “remastered” albums from older times say the music was kind-of ruined by remixing to a different standard, which was often optimized for people listening to compressed internet sources and probably with things like bluetooth headphones. which at least used to suck a lot and now probably suck a bit less.
@DrWorm Guess I’m getting off-topic but what did you like 20-30 years ago, and maybe see what’s going on now with them. For example I’ve always loved female vocals and loved music from Natalie Merchant (orig in “10,000 maniacs”) and Alanis Morissette, both from the 90’s. Recently they still have been doing stuff most people probably haven’t heard. And just as we all do they age and mature, which changes their perspective, and to some extent, their voice. And that’s good, because we all change and it’s nice to see that.
This morning, Alanis Morissette was on one of the morning TV shows. Obviously, now, about twice the age when she was the angry young woman in Jagged Little Pill, and she performed a revised version of “Ironic,” acoustic, and solo. With a different voice and style because we all change. It was only TV audio and not super-high quality but it was still really impactful. So I do enjoy finding things like that.
@sanspoint@thebigtverberg I have been thru this drill with friends before and despite their assurances of “you will like this”, it is almost always unlistenable to my ears.
And the whole “you just have to look for it” is part of my point. Not having to “look for it” is what I am nostalgic for. When I was 25 years old, I could pick a radio station at random and it was almost always at least listenable. Even the genres that I didn’t even really care for. Now, flipping thru the dial (or pandora/spotify), its rare I find something that is even tolerable, silence is preferable.
@pmarin I do engage in that strategy. A couple of weeks ago Cheap Trick released a new album and I would say I liked the majority of it. I think it proves my point it isn’t the “newness” (having never heard it before) that turns me off, but some more fundamental difference.
I also had a Kenwood 5 MiniDisc changer in my Skyline when I lived in Japan. That was pretty sweet. I could go to the music store, rent a few CDs for a couple hundred yen, (less than $5) use my portable CD player with optical out and portable MD recorder to copy the CDs in the parking lot, then return them a few hours later. I could leave with my disc changer full of new music. This was 1996 or 97, a few years a way from the MP3 revolution.
@xenophod Out of the DAT vs MD vs DCC “analog cassette replacement” battle in the 1990s, the winner was CD-R and CD-RW. The fast development and pricing from the computer sector meant it made more sense instead of spending $400-600 for a DAT/MD/DCC recorder and $10-$15 a blank to copy $12 CDs.
@compunaut@narfcake@xenophod It’s not subjective. DAT had the highest sound quality ceiling and was capable to better-than-CD audio.
DAT was also used in professional audio recording studios.
@compunaut@narfcake MiniDiscs are not CD audio quality, but I can’t really tell. It uses ATRAC audio data compression, (that’s what everything I have is based on,) but they later added linear PCM digital recording that was close to CD quality and ATRAC3plus with higher bit rates. They also had 1GB discs that you could use to save documents and such (over USB). It was a cool technology. I can’t hear the compression artifacts with ATRAC like I can with MP3.
DCC used compression, and it was probably a little better than ATRAC, DAT was the better of the 3.
My little Walkman. Those things were awesome. I’m not sure if that falls into the category of cassettes, but either way the Walkman deserves an honorable mention.
OK so for old history, there is the reel-to-reel. Used in high-end audio (around the '70s) and a lot in studios.
We had 2 of them in a mini-studio in my high school along with a bunch of other equipment, mix panel, turntable. In electronics class we had a “distortion analyzer” (to measure THD) and we’d learn to use all the equipment for out future careers in whatever. or just listening to loud music.
@chienfou Ah, yes. Those things were marginally better than listening to crying babies. The headphone version of the pneumatic tube delivery system. I find it hard to miss either. I’ll take my noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones, thankyouverymuch.
@chienfou@rockblossom The worst part was when they started charging you to “rent” those pneumatic tube headsets. I think that was basically your fee to watch the in-flight movie. But also get other audio with that selector dial.
I remember at one time there was a channel of in-flight cockpit-to-ground air traffic control. Which I found super-interesting because they’d request to change altitude or heading and then you’d feel the plane start to bank, engines throttle up/down. Mostly over Nevada/Arizona there wasn’t much going on but it got pretty interesting on final approach (I used to go CA-TX for work a lot.) This was in the '80s. I think after some time they stopped making the cockpit audio available unfortunately.
disclaimer: non-parent. yes I know they are cute and grow up to be nice. maybe.
That’s right… and maybe not… What is the line you almost always hear after some horrible murder/mass shooting etc? He seemed like such a nice child… I would have never imagined he would {insert crime here} or conversely, "He was always weird, and we wondered what kind of F’ed up shit he would do later in life…* Kids are a crap shoot.
Remember, Jeffery Dahmer has somebody’s child.
@chienfou@pmarin@rockblossom Trust me. Becoming a parent does not make it any easier to listen to a crying baby. Honestly, I’d say it makes it worse.
But becoming a parent also makes it a lot easier to sympathize with the poor parents of the crying baby.
EDIT yes it’s 7 1/2 feet tall. And each speaker needs to plug in to provide a 5000 volt bias to the electrostatic panels. Not an amp. It does need an amp, a big amp if you got one.
@pmarin Adding: and you can’t use it as an end-table because you’d need a ladder to get to the top, and it’s fairly small, so no place to put your drink (7+ feet up).
Mine are ivory wrap and woodgrain base. Unfortunately though it’s not an end-table, it did turn out to be extremely successful as a cat scratching post. or sometimes in the younger cat days I’d find a cat halfway up, hanging on for dear life. And the dear life was probably in danger either of me finding the cat destroying my prized speakers, or maybe because of hitting the 5kV grid somewhere in there.
a co-worker loaned me one of these to play with just for fun. along with a car-trunk load of other amps. nice having friends like that. Unfortunately I had to give 'em back. This was late 80s.
With those speakers, without it even being too loud (but definitely loud), I got to the top row of LEDs which was the Headroom Exhausted light.
@pmarin Max Headroom was great!
TV got kind of odd and interesting and creative for a while there before lapsing back into predictable sitcoms and stupid so-called reality shows.
@craigthom I don’t know about that. Any tape that needed EQ at the speakers was a strong indicator of a shitty engineer/producer.
That said, I was listening to electronica (what is now OG synthwave, darkwave) in the late 80s in New Orleans. RIP, Doug B. The club was a dive, long and narrow with a wall of 901s and a Bozak with an amazing DJ who did 14-hour seamless sets, dusk to dawn.
/youtube ministry The Angel extended
The original Bose 901 speakers had nine midrange drivers. That’s it. They came with a required equalizer that adjusted the sound to compensate for the lack of woofers and tweeters . The equalizer came with the speakers.
For separates the EQ box went between the preamp and the amp. For integrated amps and receivers, it went in the tape loop, which was basically pre-out main-in.
It was called the tape loop because it allowed you to listen to tapes as they were being recorded.
I saw a lot of 901s used as PA speakers, turned backwards with the eight rear drivers facing forward, but that was because they were loud and could handle a lot of power, not because they were accurate.
@craigthom That makes sense. These were run through an EQ/sound board in the club now that I think about it. They were hung from the rafters with the drivers facing a thick brick outer wall of the building. At ground level were large bass cabinets.
/image reel-to-reel
@awk … with 4-channel record capability (incl. sound on sound) and a good supply of blank audio tapes.
@awk These legitimately sounded great. Better than whatever stuff vinyl nerds made up.
@awk @brennyn Don’t forget the razor blades for OG mixtapes.
@awk Noice!
I have one of these that I need to refurbish.
Not sure where I’m going to get the tapes…
@awk @brennyn @mike808
/image tape splicing block
@awk @phendrick @narfcake
… and at 15IPS for audio quality. I didn’t see this post earlier, but added the Teac 3340S later on in the forum. Never knew a Ballfinger – either sounds kind of kinky (not that there’s anything wrong with that), or maybe a mix of James Bond titles. I’m assuming very high-end studio equipment. But yeah that looks like a nice machine – I’m guessing a lot more recent than the Teac from the '70s.
And, yeah, tape splicing. Used to be the old way to “fake” audio, before it became easy in the digital editing generation.
An .mp3 player with good randomization.
@yakkoTDI yeah… … no!
8 Tracks!
@steveml I have one of these RCA 8-track changers somewhere:
@narfcake @steveml OK now that is something I never knew existed. I do remember an Oldsmobile Toronado (front-wheel-drive, heavy as a tank, about 7 MPG). with an 8-track. And as a young child my first introduction to recorded music was a “Symphonic” receiver with built-in 8-track. And due to my mom’s hippie boyfriend at the time (long story), I started with Three Dog Night and Credence Clearwater. Probably not a bad start actually.
@narfcake @steveml
/image olds toronado 1974
@narfcake @steveml I never heard of a 8 track changer either. Probably because it was too rich for my blood.
Interesting to see how it works.
I never cared for headphones with radios built in, and I thought i was too cool for prerecorded cassettes.
I’ve still got big wooden speakers, but I’d never use them for tables. Besides, the mains are too tall, and nothing would stay on the subwoofer very long.
Vintage AM transistor radio
@heartny remember when those would say on the front how many transistors they had. Like I guess a 12-transistor radio was better than an 8-transistor radio. Imagine if that was done on stuff today like a computer, or your phone, for that matter: 3.45-billion transistor. Or your car, except now they can’t make the cars because they can’t get the chips with the billions of transistors. Since we no longer make 'em in this country. We used to.
Led Zeppelin 4th row center seats for $10.
/giphy led zeppelin
@f00l Or at any price at this point…
@f00l
I have a friend who was at THIS CONCERT:
Notes: Led Zeppelin play their first North American show, in Denver, the day after Christmas 1968. Robert Plant, John Bonham and Jimmy Page travel to Los Angeles on December 23rd, while John Paul Jones meets up with them at the Denver show.
https://www.ledzeppelin.com/show/december-26-1968
@Kyeh
I saw them that year or the next year.
For $10. 4th row center seats.
They were insane, as incredible as imagination can conjure.
Plant wore jeans so tight that I’m kinda in wonder that he didn’t get gangrene from lack of circulation.
And i couldn’t hear properly for a week after. I made people write stuff down.
/youtube Led Zeppelin live stairway
@f00l Did you know who they were when you went to that concert? My friend had no idea, she was going for the other band playing that night.
I’m jealous of both of you…
@f00l @Kyeh I got to see Page & Plant in the '90s as I was a toddler back in '68. There is a level of musicianship that few reach, where whatever they are performing, it is effortless, completely improvisational, and is viscerally experienced as bearing witness to sheer human brilliance.
Page & Plant was as close to LZ as I would ever experience, and being there was one of the greatest concerts of my lifetime. And after attending countless Jazz Fests, that is quite rare company to be … in that number with fellow legends like SRV, BB King, Aretha, Christina, Elton, Stevie, Winton Marsalis, Aaron Neville, Otis Clay, George Clinton, David Byrne, …
@Kyeh
Yeah I played all the albums to death more or less.
@f00l @Kyeh So it went over like a Lead Zeppelin?
@f00l @pmarin Har. My friend is a fan all these years later, but I suppose it was a heavy experience.
Wow, man - that’s heavy…
We still have the giant wooden speakers that would double as end tables. I have tried to get rid of them many times but my husband refuses to part with him. They were apparently a really good speaker back in the day and cost a lot of money. Idk what brand they are, but he does.
That doesn’t change the fact that they haven’t been used in a couple of decades, but we have to keep them for …nostalgic sake maybe? Oh well, our kids can toss them in 20 years or so?! Or use them as really rad end tables.
/image cerwin vega wood speakers
@hchavers I did have some big ones just like this I think I hauled back-and-forth to college all 4 years. I think they were bigger actually.
I did eventually move on to Acoustat electrostatic speakers which are about 7 1/2 ft tall. I just can’t seem the part with them though I’m not actively using them anymore. And a bit worse for the wear with 30 years of dust plus occasional duty (not advised) as a cat scratching post.
@hchavers @pmarin I grew up listening to music on my Dad’s Dynaco stereo with AR4 speakers. They probably could have been used as tables. Unfortunately the cat liked to use the front grill as a scratching post, so the acoustics eventually suffered.
@mc2d2000 Show me your speakers and I’ll tell you what theyre worth
I collect vintage speakers.
@mc2d2000 Can’t believe I sat on that typo for long enough that the edit window timed out, ugh!
they’re*
@mc2d2000 @PooltoyWolf Two years ago when I needed space for my new home business we finally got rid of these decades old dust collectors. And many others. Somehow, we still have way too much crap.
@callow @mc2d2000 You got rid of HPM-100s?? For Shame!!
Five shame, at least. I’ve checked the numbers.
@mc2d2000 @PooltoyWolf No, for money!
@mc2d2000
We’re polish so we had speakers staked on top speakers bc we didn’t wanna get rid of the first pair so we just put the newer pair on top of them.
@callow @mc2d2000 I hope you got what they’re worth! I’ve got a pair of HPM-700s and I wouldn’t sell them…except for maybe some NS-1000s
@mc2d2000 @PooltoyWolf They were worth nothing sitting there for 25 years. Yes, my husband got an OK price from a dealer who loved them and was still using them in his store last time we were there. On the other hand, I’ve made a lot more than that by having that space to work in.
Space > unused speakers
@mc2d2000 @Star2236 And you’re saying that like it’s a problem. I remember in the old days of rock concerts there would just be a boatload of speakers of various kinds, piled on top of each other. Not that there was much audio design going on there. It was really how to crank out the dB with anything you got. And pack it up to drive to Cleveland the next day. And set it up again.
EDIT this is in response to the speakers on top of speakers 'cause we couldn’t get rid of 'em post.
P.S. There’s almost no audio stuff that I let go that I don’t regret. Unfortunately I love this stuff and wish to just be buried along with it. In my house full of stuff.
@callow @mc2d2000 @PooltoyWolf Wow that Kenwood receiver. Really elegant design with the buttons and knobs. So nice to be able to get to everything quickly without having to navigate on-screen menus like most things now. Also that beautiful long horizontal tuner area (I’m assuming that’s where the FM tuner frequency was set).
Reminds me that one of the “cool” things of that era was the flywheel tuning, where you could give the knob a spin and it would keep going with momentum so you could quickly move it around but still have precise control when you wanted it. Sometimes there were fairly complicated mechanical contraptions inside to do this.
@callow @mc2d2000 @pmarin Flywheel tuning used to be a given for equipment from that time period. It wasn’t all that complex, just the mentioned flywheel on the tuning knob shaft to give the knob extra weight. It really did give the machines a solid, quality feel, though. I’m always surprised now when I go to turn a tuning knob and don’t feel it.
I picked vinyl, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say I’m nostalgic for it. I have a ton of new vinyl, and generally prefer my good stuff to be on vinyl. My 2-channel system (which is used largely to play my vinyl) is bonkers… Is there a word for something that one would be nostalgic for, had it not come roaring back??
@shahnm
pricey?
@shahnm I believe the phrase you’re looking for is “Hella OG-retro”
@compunaut @shahnm honestly there was nothing better than my vinyl system in its prime. But it fell into disrepair over several moves and decades.
You get some amazing acoustic guitar plucks or high-range female vocals on good vinyl audio (cartridge/amp/speakers) and I’ve never heard anything like that since. I had the setup where the sound was precise and amazing, but at only one point in the room (Electrostatic Speakers). But when it actually all worked together it was better than recent live concerts I’ve been to.
Fought the digital for years (remember arguing with a Motorola engineer in Scotland on a business trip about whether 44KHz was adequate sampling – that was in the 80’s. Eventually he agreed I was right.)
Honestly I have not given the new higher-sampling digital a try on a quality system (both bitrate and # of bits). So there might be hope if that’s the world we are going to. And sure a lot more convenient (there are portable hi-res digital players).
BTW does “bonkers” mean super-good or really f-ed up? I don’t know all the new lingo!
@compunaut @pmarin
I guess it could mean either, but in my current usage I mean the former…
@compunaut @pmarin @shahnm
It’s national candy month, so:
/image Bonkers
@compunaut @narfcake @pmarin @shahnm
I miss my Walkman.
/giphy just don’t make em like they used to!
@sillyheathen I think I still have a yellow one that was the “sports” model with the o-ring around the cassette compartment so it was semi-waterproof. I’ve been temped to get rid of it many times but just don’t seem to be able to. Also I had one of the first CD models but unfortunately I think I got rid of that.
P.S. @sillyheathen great (weird) username. must be a story behind that…
@pmarin @sillyheathen I still have that yellow sport-model Walkman too! It’s in good shape, really.
@Kyeh @pmarin but do you have all your awesome old tapes to put in them?!? And a better question is do you have enough pencils???
FOOLS! TOOLS! JEWELS! AWESOME!
@pmarin @sillyheathen Actually, yes and yes! (I have a bit of a problem with getting rid of things…)
@Kyeh @pmarin I must say I’m an ickle bit jealous!
I still love my click wheel 160gb IPod classic.
Sometimes still listen to audiobooks on it.
/image IPod classic
@f00l I am so bummed I dropped my old one of these (I think same model) into a phone/MP3 recycling bin. These are now vintage classics and would love to have it again – even hearing/feeling the internal hard-drive spin up was part of the effect.
The internal battery went bad and it wouldn’t power-on at all but apparently that could have all been fixed. Kind-of like people that scrapped old Airstream trailers and VW Vanagons 20 yrs ago and now they are all super-collectible.
@f00l I want one of those pretty bad in a way that makes no sense at all. There’s virtually no chance I’d use it.
I remember destroying a third-gen iPod (perhaps least aesthetic of the entire line, with no actual buttons, touch only), when it glitched and turned my audio up too loud, and I uh, chucked it. Little spinning HDD inside.
At some point I picked up a false memory that Apple’s last “classic” iPod held 160 GB while the penultimate one went up to 320, was just now looking for a reference for that “interesting” “fact”.
The 27 club.
Sansa clip. Awesome! Still have some that are really old but keep going.
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
@eeterrific I just found two old Sansa (name came up before Game of Thrones – go figure! – maybe some connection there?).
One actually plugs into a USB port, same as a memory drive, and proudly says 2.0 GB, which was pretty frickin amazing at the time. And it has a micro-SD slot. The other is older and used the proprietary Sandisk port (similar time to when Apple came out with the infamous 30-pin connector many of us still have for legacy stuff). Obviously the Sansa stuff dissolved away in the face of Apple and other products. But for the time it was pretty good.
EDIT: actually I think I have a “Sansa clip” model also, somewhere. Not sure where it is.
Now I just need to make the bot say Awesome.
@eeterrific @pmarin I love my Sansas! I have a few from Woot! I bought a Sansa Clip Sport from Target not too long ago, so they are sort of still available. I don’t know if it’s any better than the OG ones, as I can’t seem to give them up because my music and playlists are on them.
@eeterrific @heartny @pmarin I loved my Sansa Fuze but it eventually died. The ones in the aftermarket can go for 3-4 times their original price because people value them so highly. The Clip Sport is still readily available, but IMO, it and all of the other subsequent iterations (Clip, Clip+, Fuze+) are inferior to the Fuze because the click wheel was replaced with 4-way buttons.
@DrWorm @heartny @pmarin I have three clips, I have two fuzes, I have the Sansa View, and…two old e200’s…which still work. And I use them all.
@DrWorm @eeterrific @heartny @pmarin
I was also an avid Sandisk Fuze fan back in the day. Trashed mine after (many) years of frequent use when I left it outside and it got rained on. Tried to recover it in a jar of rice but never could get it to work again even though it would power up fine.
@eeterrific I still have a Sansa Clip. I used it daily when I went in to the office but since I started working at home, I only use it once in a while, and the battery no longer holds a charge for very long any more. Sad.
I think the tag line was “Everything you need, nothing you don’t”.
@eeterrific The Sansa Clip and Clip+ were great. All of the subsequent, tiny Sansa players are inferior.
Unfortunately, the screen on my clip died a few years ago after about a decade of service.
Having a discrete position on the power slider switch to lock the controls was brilliant. It was 1000 times better than “press and hold to lock” controls, which then become unlocked once that button gets inadvertently pressed again.
@chienfou @DrWorm @eeterrific @heartny Is a Sansa Fuse good with rice?
@eeterrific I still have a Sansa Clip but the last firmware update screwed up the random so I haven’t used it in years.
@chienfou @DrWorm @heartny @pmarin Its good with rice, pasta, salads…you name it.
Was going to say vinyl but then the big wooden speakers used as furniture got me nostalgic.
Plus I messed up my old turntable which was vintage audiophile, and the only way I’d do it again properly seems to be a $1K+ investment. Yeah, first-world problems. So I’m just skipping it for now but not sure what to do with several crates of old vinyl I can’t let go of, but can’t play either.
CD changer in the trunk of my Delta 88.
@medz Delta 88 that is pretty cool. I had one in trunk of a Mercedes. It’s like OMG 6 CDs of music all with you on a road trip – life is going to be awesome! (also trying to trigger the bot…)
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
@medz Someone say Delta 88??
@medz @PooltoyWolf Not the plane, Boss!
/image Tatoo Fantasy Island
We’re talking about the fucking land yacht!
@medz @mike808 Oh I know
Just couldn’t resist a chance to show off my most favorite airliner!
@medz @mike808 @PooltoyWolf Now that I want. I don’t care if it gets 7MPG.
(this is regarding the car, not the plane. I think the plane gets a bit less MPG. Though I kind-of want one of those too.)
@medz @mike808 @pmarin Thrust-specific fuel consumption on the JT8D engines is about .730 pounds per pound/foot per hour.
@medz @mike808 @PooltoyWolf What would be typical lb/ft throttle setting at cruising altitude? I looked up max power but obviously you don’t use that often. Gotta find out how much it costs to cruise in that Delta88, oh, wait, I mean the aircraft.
@medz @mike808 @pmarin The thrust rating for the JT8D is about 18,000 lbf thrust per engine, so double that for the aircraft. As for how much less they burn at cruise vs. takeoff thrust, it’s significantly less, but I also know that compared to piston engines, turbines don’t consume all that much more fuel at full throttle than they do at idle. (Railroads learned this very quickly in the 1960s!)
My big wooden (well, I think it’s mostly MDF, but) speakers are studio monitors. Please don’t put drinks on them.
Tubes.
Some people say they sound warmer.
Probably because they make the whole room warmer.
@mehcuda67 My high-school electronics teacher (in the 70s) was a tube-era guy and he insisted that we understand tubes first, then can move onto those newfangled transistor things. In a way he was right.
But in my old audio days (80s) I did some experiments with tube preamps and amps and I definitely say I liked the results. This was particularly in the early days of CDs where it really seemed to “help” the “unpleasantness” of digital audio, compared to vinyl.
And yes the faint orange glow of tube filaments really does bring warmth to the heart, as well as the sound.
@mehcuda67 Tubes combined with analog power meters. 2KW FTW.
@mehcuda67 @pmarin Tube glow is one of my simple pleasures in life.
Does my Columbia House 15 CDs for $1 or whatever and a 5-CD changer in my bedroom as a teenager count? I mean, sure, I can get all that music and more in a couple of tappy taps on my pocket supercomputer now but that feeling of independence and experimentation (and in a couple of cases, regret), and the anticipation of waiting for my music to come in, all of that was a fun time. Everything now just comes and goes. Those CDs were a commitment (especially after the introductory offer).
@djslack
Ha…Ya kid, you… Mine were vinyl and I can still remember the 4 disk box set from Chicago and the 3 disk set from Woodstock arriving in the mail! Moved then around for 15 yrs or more thru a dozen moves.
DEFINITELY the speakers.
@PooltoyWolf Is that actually your setup or just an image found? I swear I think I had that exact TV. It was a rare widescreen CRT and weighed as much as a small vehicle, it seemed like.
And BTW is that a Danganronpa figure on the right speaker? Monokuma I guess, I forgot had to look that up. Don’t want to annoy Monokuma, trust me.
@pmarin @PooltoyWolf
So I looked up Monokuma (I know next to nothing about the anime world) and I think he has a real @Koolhandjoe vibe to him!
@pmarin Considering that’s my fursuit head on the right speaker stack, that’s my setup LOL. Sony Trinitron KV-40XBR800 40-inch HD CRT TV! This was a 4:3 model, and weighed 300 pounds. Your widescreen model may have been a KV-34XBR960.
@pmarin @PooltoyWolf I think you meant KD-34XBR960. That’s what I have, but I don’t have the official stand like you do.
I have an old IKEA TV stand that happens to fit it, but I worry slightly about it holding up to the weight.
If I crashes it will destroy a Wii, a Playstation 2, a Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, an NES, and a TI-99/4A.
And possibly one of my children.
@Limewater @pmarin Yes, there was a digital TV ready version!
@PooltoyWolf Yes, the widescreen CRT was a 34" I’m pretty sure. Heavy enough. The 40" probably even heavier but in the 16:9 format, the 34" was probably as wide, just not as high. The glass on the CRT had to be super-thick especially on the widescreen, because CRTs as vacuum containers really prefer to be symmetrical and round.
Yeah I think it had component video in and would do 480p as I recall. There wasn’t HDMI yet. I don’t think it had DVI but that was starting to be common in higher-end computer monitors, replacing VGA.
@pmarin 3/4 inch thick leaded glass on the CRT front! My set has DVI and will do 1080i/720p. I’ll never get rid of it! I have a full set of spare parts to keep it going.
@pmarin Forgot to address your other question! That character you see on the speaker stack is my personal character (or fursona), Mac the wolf. That’s just his head, which I keep on display; the rest of the fursuit is stored elsewhere.
Analog audio, with all its little imperfections, was still the best audio we’ve ever had. Digital audio may be more “accurate” and infinitely reproducible, but it has never had the presence that top-notch analog audio was able to create.
@2many2no this. exactly.
I’ve been preaching this for 35 yrs but now listen to … Apple Music, cause it’s easy. And my ears aren’t as good anymore. But there’s literally a visceral reaction I would get from listening to pure analog audio (even with some pops and clicks) that I’ve never matched with digital. Especially, for me, in guitar plucks or female vocals.
I think one problem now is that most people of the “target consumer” age don’t even know what could be possible (and once existed). You did need very good speakers and cartridge to really get the benefit. And most never experienced that, even then, and it’s even harder to find now.
So in other words, most don’t know what they’re missing.
@2many2no @pmarin
In the late 90’s, popular music changed character as the culture shifted.
And unabridged audiobooks became commonplace.
And those became my listening refuge. They became then, and still are, the private listening experience that moves me.
Compression and lossy conversions and bitrate wars and insane fidelity and all that that don’t matter much with spoken word performances.
It’s all about content, with audiobooks.
And about that time, most music I encountered went digital.
(I then knew college aged people who seemed to have everything)
But the music just lost something. I no longer found it compelling to listen.
I now wonder if the loss of my visceral and emotional connection to music wasn’t due in large measure to the digitization.
When I was young, it was so compelling and almost physically necessary to listen to music every day, even if all I had access to was the crappiest source format and equipment.
Music just lost so much in the transition.
I’m not really moved by it now in at all the same way (unless I’m at a live performance)
Even tho the sources and playback equipment are supposedly so much cleaner and better.
Not necessarily this one, but the old consoles were great! Turntable, radios, everything right there, and good quality speakers that filled the room.
@Tadlem43
We still have one in my dads garage. He also has one of those things that’s you see from 20’ or 40’ movies that you wind up and it plays the record. It’s really cool bc it’s in a huge wooden box that’s probably 4” tall. He was born in 42 so we still have A track players and A Traks if my brothers haven’t thrown them out (they’ve been on this huge purging spree and don’t think anything is worth money) I was in a the garage a little while ago and found a huge box with brand new cassettes still in the wrapping. It’s definitely a time trip looking through my dads stuff.
@Star2236 That’s awesome!
I take it you’re talking about a Gramaphone? Those are worth a LOT of bucks! So are some of the cassettes and 8 tracks! Don’t let them go!
WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!
@Star2236 @Tadlem43 Or a Victrola!
@PooltoyWolf @Tadlem43 ![][1]
It’s gotta be the victorla bc it looks pretty close to this thing. I’m definitely taking a lot of that stuff.
[1]:
@PooltoyWolf @Star2236 That is SO awesome!!
Victrola, btw, is a brand name. They made gramaphones and turntables, etc.
POKER! JOKER! NOT MEDIOCRE! AWESOME!
@Star2236 @Tadlem43 Yep, that’s a Victrola! Mine works well, but the previous owner let it sit in a damp barn for years, so the wood finish looks abysmal.
@Star2236 @Tadlem43 Correct, the brand name was owned by RCA for most of its actual lifespan…these days it’s just slapped on Chinese electronics, usually turntables.
@PooltoyWolf @Star2236 @Tadlem43 Just got rid of this working Columbia Grafonola type F-2 too.
Duh.
/image Roland 808
@mike808 There’s a modern version of the 808 called the TR-08, so you can relive the past in hardware. (To say nothing about all the software versions and 808 sample kits out there.)
/image bozak mixer
/image Technics MK1200
@mike808 I got a pair of 1210 MKIIs somewhere in my mess.
/image wall of vinyl
CD-walkman(don’t forget the a Anti-Skip!)… It seems so strange that I used to carry around one of those huge things.
@thebigtverberg I bought a specific sony cd walkman that was designed for running (S2D-SJ301) and it had a cool velcro handle and the play button was located by my thumb. It was awesome. I listened to a lot of Sevendust on that thing…
/image sony discman
DIPLOMAT! RAT-A-TAT! FAT CAT! AWESOME!
@thebigtverberg that isn’t it above, here is a picture of it…
@zinimusprime
Awesome, mine was silver but I couldn’t find a photo of it. I suppose the walkman was some time around 2000, and then my buddy gave me his old 1st or 2nd gen ipod in the 8th/9th grade…what a game changer.
VAN MURALS! GROUND SQUIRRELS! SPIT CURLS! AWESOME!
That clunky headset radio. In garish yellow plastic. 4x AA batteries, two each side. Telescoping antenna. Abysmal reception. They were “portable” but you had to stand humiliatingly still in an awkward position to consistently receive the signal.
Good times…
Giant boom box people carried around on their shoulder.
Thunder Lizards. The foam margins on the woofers in mine finally fell apart, and the cones were getting kind of iffy, and what the hey, after 30+ years I didn’t exactly figure they were state of the art anyway (if they ever were), but I still miss their hugeness on top of the entertainment center shelves. (Those particle board boxes really were El Crappo Sliced Dairy Substitute Cheesy, though.)
Ear trumpets. A fashion statement, and surprisingly effective compared to battery-powered hearing aids.
/image iPod mini
Mine was even this color.
I can hardly think of an audio technology that I’m not nostalgic for, starting from cassettes, including CDs, headphones, Walkman-like off-brand portable players, the rise of MP3s and file sharing, iPods, and parents’ living room speakers.
It’s really only streaming where I don’t think I’d be too prone to look back with that favorable pang after whatever the next shift is.
Actually, I’m trying to move toward CDs, kind of like a vinyl person but more emphasis on permanence + movement away from whosever iteration of “the algorithm”, and with an intention to rip them all.
@InnocuousFarmer I think it’s the physical aspect of it – that you have it in your hands versus having some service doling it out if they allow you to listen to it.
@narfcake Yeah it’s definitely a different equation, from personal discovery to ownership, on the one hand, and “keep paying us and maybe we’ll let you keep listening to some of the music we’re putting in front of you” on the other.
@InnocuousFarmer @narfcake
I get the physical thing…I think a good compromise is digital copy, so you can rip if you want/need. I really like BandCamp for this reason. I pretty much only buy music on BC now actually.
I still stream, because my music tastes are expansive and diverse, and I’m not wealthy enough to own copies of everything…
I really miss my creative zen juke box. All of my music fit on that. Even then ones I permanently borrowed from the internet. Thousands of songs, Possibly more than 10,000.
Console TV’s
Our family had a giant, wooden Zenith boat anchor Console TV with a remote that worked on high-pitched sound so every time a car would drive by the house, the volume would go to the moon. The damned thing even had a telephone built into it that sounded like you were speaking into a Rubbermaid trashcan … when new from the factory. Had to be moved with a fridge dolly or taken apart, piece by piece and reassembled to be moved. Looking back, I used to think “wow, how did they get this whole car into this shopping mall” and now as an adult, I think “how did we ever get that TV out of there” and “why has that blasted thing outlived generations of this family?”
Wow- great memory. A true piece of furniture indeed! Also TV Repairmen…
I love vinyl, and while I have a handful of cassettes (as they were the only physical format available for artists I wanted to support), I don’t have a tape player and I really don’t get the cassette revival. It was a pretty crappy format, and I still remember seeing little tumbleweeds of cassette tape in gutters and at curbs from my childhood and early adolescence. To each their own, I suppose.
@sanspoint
yeah, back in the day, the only real reason for cassettes was the capability to create the ubiquitous Mix Tape
@chienfou @sanspoint Well, and to record albums for listening in the car or portable devices…
/image vintage auto cassette player
@chienfou @compunaut @sanspoint Yeah on road trips cassette was the way to go. (we’ll ignore 8-tracks as an aberration in history). My friend and I took a road trip to Idaho at Spring Break in college with about 20 cassette tapes for the drive, which was about 20 hours. It was for skiing and also his parents lived there.
I hacked a Pioneer cassette player into what used to be the ashtray compartment of a '68 Cadillac. Back in those days ashtrays in cars were everywhere and huge, 'cause, smoking. Pioneer had an underdash model but I was able to somehow conceal it into what used to the huge ashtray door. In some ways I think I had better skills at 18 than I do at 58.
I think this was it:
/image kp-500
I am nostalgic for the day I was excited about new music. I’ve tried really hard to get into 21st century music and for the most part, I just don’t care for it.
Most people think you get locked into what music was popular when you were young and that really isn’t the case for me. If I am watching a 1940’s musical on TCM and a song comes on that I have never heard of before, I will almost certainly like it (and I hated this kind of music in my teens and twenties). Additionally, some times friends will share with me something from an obscure 70’s or 80’s band I have never heard of and I dig it.
So it isn’t the fact that its new to my ears, there is something really inherent about current music that turns me off, and I really don’t know what it is.
@DrWorm Auto-Tune sure gets tiresome, for one thing.
@DrWorm @Kyeh The Loudness War really took off post-2000 as well.
@DrWorm A lot of newer music I listen to is by independent artists who work in styles I like (mostly, minimal synth, coldwave, or just straight up synthpop.) There’s probably plenty of newer artists making music you’d like, you just have to work to find them because they’re not getting radio play.
@DrWorm
Yes.
@DrWorm @sanspoint
I have to agree with Sanspoint…what kinda bands were you into? Who knows, maybe one of us could point you towards something?
@DrWorm @sanspoint BTW not directly related, but check out magnatune.com. There is some you can listen to all the time but pay for a membership and you basically have the ability to stream or download tons of stuff. Mostly acoustic, new-age (or whatever it’s called now), classical, folk. I paid the one-time fee about 10 years ago, but yeah it’s a high one-time fee. You support independent artists and groups that want to make their music available while also sharing some revenue. I was worried that with all the internet wars the site would go away, but luckily seem to be sticking in there.
@DrWorm @Kyeh @Limewater Regarding the “loudness war” yeah there was this thing that went on with re-mixing where music really had less purity and just more “loudness.” Many reviews of “remastered” albums from older times say the music was kind-of ruined by remixing to a different standard, which was often optimized for people listening to compressed internet sources and probably with things like bluetooth headphones. which at least used to suck a lot and now probably suck a bit less.
@DrWorm Guess I’m getting off-topic but what did you like 20-30 years ago, and maybe see what’s going on now with them. For example I’ve always loved female vocals and loved music from Natalie Merchant (orig in “10,000 maniacs”) and Alanis Morissette, both from the 90’s. Recently they still have been doing stuff most people probably haven’t heard. And just as we all do they age and mature, which changes their perspective, and to some extent, their voice. And that’s good, because we all change and it’s nice to see that.
This morning, Alanis Morissette was on one of the morning TV shows. Obviously, now, about twice the age when she was the angry young woman in Jagged Little Pill, and she performed a revised version of “Ironic,” acoustic, and solo. With a different voice and style because we all change. It was only TV audio and not super-high quality but it was still really impactful. So I do enjoy finding things like that.
@sanspoint @thebigtverberg I have been thru this drill with friends before and despite their assurances of “you will like this”, it is almost always unlistenable to my ears.
And the whole “you just have to look for it” is part of my point. Not having to “look for it” is what I am nostalgic for. When I was 25 years old, I could pick a radio station at random and it was almost always at least listenable. Even the genres that I didn’t even really care for. Now, flipping thru the dial (or pandora/spotify), its rare I find something that is even tolerable, silence is preferable.
@pmarin I do engage in that strategy. A couple of weeks ago Cheap Trick released a new album and I would say I liked the majority of it. I think it proves my point it isn’t the “newness” (having never heard it before) that turns me off, but some more fundamental difference.
I had a playskool record player as a kid. I loved that thing
@mbersiam those were ace!
MiniDiscs anyone? You could make a mixtape, but skip the songs you didn’t like, or delete them completely and record a new song in it’s place!
I also had a Kenwood 5 MiniDisc changer in my Skyline when I lived in Japan. That was pretty sweet. I could go to the music store, rent a few CDs for a couple hundred yen, (less than $5) use my portable CD player with optical out and portable MD recorder to copy the CDs in the parking lot, then return them a few hours later. I could leave with my disc changer full of new music. This was 1996 or 97, a few years a way from the MP3 revolution.
@xenophod Out of the DAT vs MD vs DCC “analog cassette replacement” battle in the 1990s, the winner was CD-R and CD-RW. The fast development and pricing from the computer sector meant it made more sense instead of spending $400-600 for a DAT/MD/DCC recorder and $10-$15 a blank to copy $12 CDs.
@narfcake @xenophod But which of them has better (subjective, I get it) sound quality? Or do they all suffer compared to clean analog?
@compunaut @narfcake @xenophod It’s not subjective. DAT had the highest sound quality ceiling and was capable to better-than-CD audio.
DAT was also used in professional audio recording studios.
@compunaut @narfcake MiniDiscs are not CD audio quality, but I can’t really tell. It uses ATRAC audio data compression, (that’s what everything I have is based on,) but they later added linear PCM digital recording that was close to CD quality and ATRAC3plus with higher bit rates. They also had 1GB discs that you could use to save documents and such (over USB). It was a cool technology. I can’t hear the compression artifacts with ATRAC like I can with MP3.
DCC used compression, and it was probably a little better than ATRAC, DAT was the better of the 3.
My little Walkman. Those things were awesome. I’m not sure if that falls into the category of cassettes, but either way the Walkman deserves an honorable mention.
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
Man returns Bob Dylan album to library — 48 years overdue
https://mobile.twitter.com/i/events/1400291376831496194
No love for the esteemed …
/image zune
@mike808 I still have mine, purchased from Woot.
@mike808 @narfcake My husband still used his Zune daily.
OK so for old history, there is the reel-to-reel. Used in high-end audio (around the '70s) and a lot in studios.
We had 2 of them in a mini-studio in my high school along with a bunch of other equipment, mix panel, turntable. In electronics class we had a “distortion analyzer” (to measure THD) and we’d learn to use all the equipment for out future careers in whatever. or just listening to loud music.
/image teac3340s
Wax cylinder player - I got to listen to one of these at our university library. (But I’m not really nostalgic for them, although they look pretty cool!)
Image from https://www.antiquephono.org/spotters-guide-edison-standard-phonograph/
no love for the old air powered earphones the airlines used to use?
@chienfou Ah, yes. Those things were marginally better than listening to crying babies. The headphone version of the pneumatic tube delivery system. I find it hard to miss either. I’ll take my noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones, thankyouverymuch.
@chienfou @rockblossom The worst part was when they started charging you to “rent” those pneumatic tube headsets. I think that was basically your fee to watch the in-flight movie. But also get other audio with that selector dial.
I remember at one time there was a channel of in-flight cockpit-to-ground air traffic control. Which I found super-interesting because they’d request to change altitude or heading and then you’d feel the plane start to bank, engines throttle up/down. Mostly over Nevada/Arizona there wasn’t much going on but it got pretty interesting on final approach (I used to go CA-TX for work a lot.) This was in the '80s. I think after some time they stopped making the cockpit audio available unfortunately.
@chienfou @rockblossom BTW almost anything is marginally better than crying babies. Most things are substantially so.
disclaimer: non-parent. yes I know they are cute and grow up to be nice. maybe.
@pmarin
That’s right… and maybe not… What is the line you almost always hear after some horrible murder/mass shooting etc? He seemed like such a nice child… I would have never imagined he would {insert crime here} or conversely, "He was always weird, and we wondered what kind of F’ed up shit he would do later in life…* Kids are a crap shoot.
Remember, Jeffery Dahmer has somebody’s child.
@chienfou @pmarin @rockblossom Trust me. Becoming a parent does not make it any easier to listen to a crying baby. Honestly, I’d say it makes it worse.
But becoming a parent also makes it a lot easier to sympathize with the poor parents of the crying baby.
The best of “affordable” cassette decks. Still about $400 at the time. Some went into the $1000s.
/image Nakamichi 480
and don’t forget the “metal” formula tapes to go with it
/image Maxell MX
@pmarin RE: Metal Tapes
Slayer’s 1986 thrash classic Reign in Blood was 28 minutes long, so they just put the whole thing on both sides of the cassette release.
And the speakers
/image acoustat 1+1
EDIT yes it’s 7 1/2 feet tall. And each speaker needs to plug in to provide a 5000 volt bias to the electrostatic panels. Not an amp. It does need an amp, a big amp if you got one.
@pmarin Adding: and you can’t use it as an end-table because you’d need a ladder to get to the top, and it’s fairly small, so no place to put your drink (7+ feet up).
Mine are ivory wrap and woodgrain base. Unfortunately though it’s not an end-table, it did turn out to be extremely successful as a cat scratching post. or sometimes in the younger cat days I’d find a cat halfway up, hanging on for dear life. And the dear life was probably in danger either of me finding the cat destroying my prized speakers, or maybe because of hitting the 5kV grid somewhere in there.
a co-worker loaned me one of these to play with just for fun. along with a car-trunk load of other amps. nice having friends like that. Unfortunately I had to give 'em back. This was late 80s.
With those speakers, without it even being too loud (but definitely loud), I got to the top row of LEDs which was the Headroom Exhausted light.
/image carver m1.0-t front headroom exhausted
P.S. unrelated trivia, right around that time, a super-cool TV show called Max Headroom came out. Way ahead of its time. Check it out if you can.
@pmarin Max Headroom was great!
TV got kind of odd and interesting and creative for a while there before lapsing back into predictable sitcoms and stupid so-called reality shows.
My friend and one-time roommate had these. He still had them a few years ago, but minus the foam covers.
/image dcm timewindow
EDIT I see the pic it found is also without the foam covers. That foam didn’t hold that well after 30 years. Or a few cats.
After reading many of the above posts the consensus seems to be that cats are a scourge on tower speakers.
@chienfou A minor revision.
let’s see if this works.
EDIT yup, got it!
/image maxell the chair ad
Before they went to crap, these were state of the art in college dorm/apartment living.
/image Bose 901 construction
@mike808 I don’t know. Any speakers that needed EQ (stuck in the tape loop) to sound reasonably flat sounded fishy to me.
@craigthom I don’t know about that. Any tape that needed EQ at the speakers was a strong indicator of a shitty engineer/producer.
That said, I was listening to electronica (what is now OG synthwave, darkwave) in the late 80s in New Orleans. RIP, Doug B. The club was a dive, long and narrow with a wall of 901s and a Bozak with an amazing DJ who did 14-hour seamless sets, dusk to dawn.
/youtube ministry The Angel extended
@mike808 I didn’t say anything about tapes.
The original Bose 901 speakers had nine midrange drivers. That’s it. They came with a required equalizer that adjusted the sound to compensate for the lack of woofers and tweeters . The equalizer came with the speakers.
For separates the EQ box went between the preamp and the amp. For integrated amps and receivers, it went in the tape loop, which was basically pre-out main-in.
It was called the tape loop because it allowed you to listen to tapes as they were being recorded.
I saw a lot of 901s used as PA speakers, turned backwards with the eight rear drivers facing forward, but that was because they were loud and could handle a lot of power, not because they were accurate.
@craigthom That makes sense. These were run through an EQ/sound board in the club now that I think about it. They were hung from the rafters with the drivers facing a thick brick outer wall of the building. At ground level were large bass cabinets.