Todays jokey email.

[inhuien]

Got the in the post today and it made me smile.


HOW TO CALL THE POLICE WHEN YOU'RE OLD AND DON'T MOVE FAST ANYMORE.
George Phillips of Marsh Green, Wigan was going up to bed when
his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the
garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window.
George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that
there were people in the shed stealing things.
He phoned the police, who asked 'Is someone in your house?' and
he said 'no'. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he
should simply lock his door and an officer would be along
when available. George said, 'Okay,' hung up,counted to 30, and phoned the
police again. 'Hello, I just called you a few seconds
ago because there were people stealing things from my shed.
Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I've
just shot them.' Then he hung up. Within five minutes three police cars,
an Armed Response Unit, and an ambulance showed up at the
Phillips' residence and caught the burglars
red-handed. One of the Policemen said to George: 'I
thought you said that you'd shot them!'
George said, 'I thought you said there was nobody available!'

[GamePlayer]

That's hilarious

[Tleilax Master B]

Fucking cops

[orald]

Fucking cops

Aye, pigs must die.

I wouldn't be surprised if they persecuted him for lying to a cop though, cops are like that.

Fucking cops.

[Pardot Kynes]

Nah, they wouldn't

Good for him.

[orald]

Nah, they wouldn't

Yea, fucking pigs too busy eating their donuts.


Pigs.

My work manager's husband is a pig...must tread lightly.

[SandChigger]

(There could be people here whose relatives are law enforcement offices as well. Have you considered that? No...your bad experiences with some bad cops are all that matter. )

[A Thing of Eternity]

Yeah Orald - My uncle's a cop, you heartless jerk . That said, he hates the "justice" system more than anyone I've ever met. He's a pencil pusher now because he pissed to many people off.

[Freakzilla]

Yeah Orald - My uncle's a cop, you heartless jerk . That said, he hates the "justice" system more than anyone I've ever met. He's a pencil pusher now because he pissed to many people off.

(there may be members here that are pencil pushers who find your post offensive.)

[A Thing of Eternity]

Yeah Orald - My uncle's a cop, you heartless jerk . That said, he hates the "justice" system more than anyone I've ever met. He's a pencil pusher now because he pissed to many people off.

(there may be members here that are pencil pushers who find your post offensive.)

Touché!

[Freakzilla]

Keep in mind, I only say that after a life of debauchery, followed by a short stint in the army as an armored reconaissance specialist (cavalry scout) and ending up designing commercial fire alarm systems for Honeywell.

Looking back, pencil pushing isn't so lethal even though my family doesn't appreciate it, but It pays the garnishments.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I just work in purchasing for a Music Equipment company, so I don't even get a pencil! That's a lie, I have one somewhere. Being a pencil pusher is fine by me, I enjoy the work I do and it pays pretty well. I'm working on building my own recording company, and have a pretty decent education in audio engineering (not official education though, I've looked into the schools and they're a money stealing joke, I could almost teach their classes). Someday I hope to publish some SF, but I'm not banking on it, it'll go wherever it goes, for now I just enjoy the worldbuilding and such - then I'll really be a pencil pusher.

[Omphalos]

I do a lot of pencil pushing, but I go into the field a lot too. I like traveling for business.

[SimonH]

Keep in mind, I only say that after a life of debauchery, followed by a short stint in the army as an armored reconaissance specialist (cavalry scout) ...

that sounds pretty dangerous

[SimonH]

I just work in purchasing for a Music Equipment company, so I don't even get a pencil! That's a lie, I have one somewhere. Being a pencil pusher is fine by me, I enjoy the work I do and it pays pretty well. I'm working on building my own recording company, and have a pretty decent education in audio engineering (not official education though, I've looked into the schools and they're a money stealing joke, I could almost teach their classes). Someday I hope to publish some SF, but I'm not banking on it, it'll go wherever it goes, for now I just enjoy the worldbuilding and such - then I'll really be a pencil pusher.

nice. after getting a degree and phd in bio/mechanical engineering, I realised that I would have loved to do audio engineering. I'm building a little home studio piece by piece (literally). AToE - do you build any DIY electronics for the audio stuff? I've just about finished building my first mic preamp. good fun, but slow going.

[Freakzilla]

Keep in mind, I only say that after a life of debauchery, followed by a short stint in the army as an armored reconaissance specialist (cavalry scout) ...

that sounds pretty dangerous

I had a life expectancy of 9 seconds after breaking radio silence.

[A Thing of Eternity]

nice. after getting a degree and phd in bio/mechanical engineering, I realised that I would have loved to do audio engineering. I'm building a little home studio piece by piece (literally). AToE - do you build any DIY electronics for the audio stuff? I've just about finished building my first mic preamp. good fun, but slow going.

Just some really basic stuff, I'm designing a kick microphone right now and I'm planning to do some preamps and amps. I'm not very well educated in electronics, I can fix basic gear if it breaks - up to a point. All I can really do is fix woofers and tweeters and guitars, and poke around on a circut board to find a cold-solder point... really fixing things unless I know what capacitor blew or whatever is out of my league. I'd love to get into building pre's and comps and such, but I need to do some learning, and find some time. Building them from other peoples designs is probably what I'll end up doing, I'd just botch it if I tried to design that kind of stuff myself.

I wouldn't worry about not being an audio engineer, it's a tough job to get (I don't have one, I'm building the company to get experience and a proper portfolio, then I'll try and get real jobs as a producer/engineer) and it sure doesn't pay much. The education system is a joke, and studios don't even take graduates any more seriously than some random kid who has a good reference or portfolio. I'll be really lucky if I end up making a full time job out of it, more likely I will end up having to have real income to supplement it.

What's the preamp like? Did you use a board to organize all the components or are they all just floating around like in a heathkit amplifier? I like the look of the rats nest circuts in a heathkit, but it'd be a pain to repair. Tube? EQ? Etc? Did you use a kit or use some schematics, or did you design your own? DIY would be a blast, when I get a new soldering setup I'll have to get a kit off the net.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Keep in mind, I only say that after a life of debauchery, followed by a short stint in the army as an armored reconaissance specialist (cavalry scout) ...

that sounds pretty dangerous

I had a life expectancy of 9 seconds after breaking radio silence.

Fuck

[SimonH]

nice. after getting a degree and phd in bio/mechanical engineering, I realised that I would have loved to do audio engineering. I'm building a little home studio piece by piece (literally). AToE - do you build any DIY electronics for the audio stuff? I've just about finished building my first mic preamp. good fun, but slow going.

Just some really basic stuff, I'm designing a kick microphone right now and I'm planning to do some preamps and amps. I'm not very well educated in electronics, I can fix basic gear if it breaks - up to a point. All I can really do is fix woofers and tweeters and guitars, and poke around on a circut board to find a cold-solder point... really fixing things unless I know what capacitor blew or whatever is out of my league. I'd love to get into building pre's and comps and such, but I need to do some learning, and find some time. Building them from other peoples designs is probably what I'll end up doing, I'd just botch it if I tried to design that kind of stuff myself.

I wouldn't worry about not being an audio engineer, it's a tough job to get (I don't have one, I'm building the company to get experience and a proper portfolio, then I'll try and get real jobs as a producer/engineer) and it sure doesn't pay much. The education system is a joke, and studios don't even take graduates any more seriously than some random kid who has a good reference or portfolio. I'll be really lucky if I end up making a full time job out of it, more likely I will end up having to have real income to supplement it.

What's the preamp like? Did you use a board to organize all the components or are they all just floating around like in a heathkit amplifier? I like the look of the rats nest circuts in a heathkit, but it'd be a pain to repair. Tube? EQ? Etc? Did you use a kit or use some schematics, or did you design your own? DIY would be a blast, when I get a new soldering setup I'll have to get a kit off the net.

sounds like you know more than me in some areas . Yeah, I got that impression re: education. Like everything in music, there are always people out there doing something for free, so it is hard to make a good living.

the preamp is a bastardisation of a commerical kit. I have replaced the little pots and jumpers with nice switches and proper pots, and put it in a good travel box. I'm not at an understanding where I could build from scratch yet! No EQ yet either. will put that into another box later on. or will put all together in a rack unit when I get more tools.

not tubes, just op amps at the moment. I'm on a mega tight pre-baby budget (only 2 weeks+ to go!) I have been looking into tubes or building a compressor next.

Check out this forum:
http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/index.php
There's heaps of links for projects, group buys of equipment/boards and smart dudes by the looks of it.

What are you using for the kick drum mic?

[A Thing of Eternity]

Hey, congrats on the baby!

I'm going to have to take a look at that website, I don't know as much as it sounds like I know...

Some times you can make big improvements just by switching out components like you're doing. I know a guy in Edmonton who takes mid priced guitar pedals like boss and hot-rods them. He basicly just does research into what brands and kinds of components would be used in a really high end pedal of a similar type (think hundreds and hundreds of dollars) and then he buys those parts and uses them to replace their equivalents in the cheaper pedal. He also does a lot of really common "famous" mods like fixing the gain problems on tremolo pedals, making new TS9 tubescreamer pedals sound like vintage ones, or making a really bright distortion pedal sound thicker... etc.

For the mic, it's pretty basic in construction, it's the "details" that are going to take a lot of fine tuning. A condenser would be a million times above my head. I assume you're familiar with the physics of a dynamic mic transducer? Anyways, for a transducer/diaphragm I'm using a high quality 5ish inch woofer with a foam surround (important for attack time and mid-high frequency response). The body is going to be a two foot long by six inch pvc pipe. I'm wiring the woofer for a balanced signal, and mounting it at one end of the pipe (the woofer frame is exactly six inches wide so it'll fit perfectly). Where it gets fancy is in the length of the body which, through the phase relationships of the soundwaves hitting the front of the woofer and the back, will determin it's overall frequency response. Since I don't have the engineering abilities to figure out what exact length is optimum for the tone I want, I'm taking the guesswork out of the equation. Over top of that six inch diameter pipe will be another slightly wider pipe forming a pretty snug fit, but not too tight. This will not be fixed in place, allowing me to slide it back and forth to change the length, and therefore tone, of the mic to suit any situation. I can make it more or less bassy or whatever I want. The back opening will be a pvc grill, with the XLR jack. My logic tells me that as I make the tube longer I should get lower and lower frequency peaks, but I won't know for sure until I test it. It will be able to shift from between between 24" and 44"ish in length.

I don't expect this mic to have much high frequency response, so it will be used in combination with a regular kick mic - this mic is just for the massive bass! Yamaha makes a similar product, but I expect mine to blow theirs out of the water. I will probably have to add some resistors to get the impedance up to optimum, but I won't be able to experiment with that until I can hear this thing in action. I used an 18" speaker as a mic once, sounded like shit but it lead me down the mad scientist road.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Keep in mind, I only say that after a life of debauchery, followed by a short stint in the army as an armored reconaissance specialist (cavalry scout) ...

that sounds pretty dangerous

I had a life expectancy of 9 seconds after breaking radio silence.

Fuck

Hey FreakZ, I forgot to mention (in my shock ) that I have a massive amount of respect for soldiers. Takes a lot of guts, and I've only ever met a few who joined for the wrong reasons.

[SimonH]

Hey, congrats on the baby!

I'm going to have to take a look at that website, I don't know as much as it sounds like I know...

Some times you can make big improvements just by switching out components like you're doing. I know a guy in Edmonton who takes mid priced guitar pedals like boss and hot-rods them. He basicly just does research into what brands and kinds of components would be used in a really high end pedal of a similar type (think hundreds and hundreds of dollars) and then he buys those parts and uses them to replace their equivalents in the cheaper pedal. He also does a lot of really common "famous" mods like fixing the gain problems on tremolo pedals, making new TS9 tubescreamer pedals sound like vintage ones, or making a really bright distortion pedal sound thicker... etc.

For the mic, it's pretty basic in construction, it's the "details" that are going to take a lot of fine tuning. A condenser would be a million times above my head. I assume you're familiar with the physics of a dynamic mic transducer? Anyways, for a transducer/diaphragm I'm using a high quality 5ish inch woofer with a foam surround (important for attack time and mid-high frequency response). The body is going to be a two foot long by six inch pvc pipe. I'm wiring the woofer for a balanced signal, and mounting it at one end of the pipe (the woofer frame is exactly six inches wide so it'll fit perfectly). Where it gets fancy is in the length of the body which, through the phase relationships of the soundwaves hitting the front of the woofer and the back, will determin it's overall frequency response. Since I don't have the engineering abilities to figure out what exact length is optimum for the tone I want, I'm taking the guesswork out of the equation. Over top of that six inch diameter pipe will be another slightly wider pipe forming a pretty snug fit, but not too tight. This will not be fixed in place, allowing me to slide it back and forth to change the length, and therefore tone, of the mic to suit any situation. I can make it more or less bassy or whatever I want. The back opening will be a pvc grill, with the XLR jack. My logic tells me that as I make the tube longer I should get lower and lower frequency peaks, but I won't know for sure until I test it. It will be able to shift from between between 24" and 44"ish in length.

I don't expect this mic to have much high frequency response, so it will be used in combination with a regular kick mic - this mic is just for the massive bass! Yamaha makes a similar product, but I expect mine to blow theirs out of the water. I will probably have to add some resistors to get the impedance up to optimum, but I won't be able to experiment with that until I can hear this thing in action. I used an 18" speaker as a mic once, sounded like shit but it lead me down the mad scientist road.

thanks - looking forward to the impending madness

Wow. sounds like a great project. I'd love to see some pics when you are done. Maybe some sound files too.

Mechanical frequency response is something I know a little about. I'll think about how you could model the PVC to get a better idea of the actual mechanical response. If the outer cylinder is the only stiff section then it could be quite easy. From memory, the governing equation is resonant freq = sqrt(stiffness / mass), so less stiff, heavy things have a lower resonant frequency than stiff, light things. So, like you said a longer (less stiff) pipe should have lower resonant frequencies.

[A Thing of Eternity]

If the outer cylinder is the only stiff section then it could be quite easy. From memory, the governing equation is resonant freq = sqrt(stiffness / mass), so less stiff, heavy things have a lower resonant frequency than stiff, light things. So, like you said a longer (less stiff) pipe should have lower resonant frequencies.

I think you are correct in that equation, but I'm hoping to dampen both cylinders to the point where I can hear pretty much zero resonance. Any suggestions you might have in doing this would be greatly apreceated, I'm down to some pretty lame bracing and caulking ideas (for the inside surface of the inner pipe and the outside surface of the outer pipe).

The frequency response variable I'm working on is caused by the actual phase relationships / time delay of the signal hitting the back of the diaphragm vs the signal hitting the front. As the pipe gets longer it should cause lower and lower frequencies to be delayed by so much time that phase problems are eliminated. Of course, low freqs with long waves wont be as effected by this as higher freqs, so in order to get the best low freq response I need an ever longer delay time. I may even end up building an extension kit which would add up to ten feet onto the current design. Or it could turn out that my logic is junk and it works backwards of that theory - woohoo mad science!

I also need a cool name to stencil on the outside.

P.S. I checked out that site, and I'm not even on the same planet as those people. I need help figuring out a resistor's value let alone discussing what types sound best! I truly have no clue how most of that stuff works, when it comes time to add resistors to my mic I'm going to be soooo lost. There's some big rectangular component I've never seen anywhere else inside some dynamic mic's... I'm hoping it's a resistor because otherwise I can't fathom what job it does.

EDIT: do you know of any good sites to buy kits and such from?

[orald]

Yeah Orald - My uncle's a cop, you heartless jerk .

May as well not mention nazies in Germany/Austria cuz someone's grandfather was one...

You get the picture? There's no point in shuting up just 'cause someone's relative(or someone him/herself IS) a cop.

I can curse lawyers too, and do, and my sister's one.



AToE, what are the wrong reasons to join an army anyway?
I like Joker's reasons personally(Full Metal Jacket).

[A Thing of Eternity]

Yeah Orald - My uncle's a cop, you heartless jerk .

May as well not mention nazies in Germany/Austria cuz someone's grandfather was one...

You get the picture? There's no point in shuting up just 'cause someone's relative(or someone him/herself IS) a cop.

I think we were joking. Hence the

AToE, what are the wrong reasons to join an army anyway?
I like Joker's reasons personally(Full Metal Jacket).

Don't worry about it. I just know some people who... haven't gained any respect from me because of why they joined up. Let's just say that an example of a right reason would be because it's something you believe in.