Test Equipment Anonymous

Zenith wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 5:17 pm Others I'd pay to see include The Mediaeval Baebes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXrdfTSLWCY

David Munrow, Music of the Gothic Era.
Emma Kirkby, A Feather on the Breath of God.
Both on yootoob, if you must.

I wonder if their interpretation of early music manuscripts is correct. We'll never know, but it is pleasing.

Plainsong, not the later choral traditions.

Bach (and earlier) music is pure. Later music is impure twaddle.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 6:26 pm

Zenith wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 5:17 pm Others I'd pay to see include The Mediaeval Baebes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXrdfTSLWCY

David Munrow, Music of the Gothic Era.
Emma Kirkby, A Feather on the Breath of God.
Both on yootoob, if you must.

With YouTube you can explore it without shelling out. Both of these I will investigate.

I think a difference came when music changed from being a thing you paid for; sheet music, a 78, 45 or 33rpm record, to something essentially free; cassettes, and CD and DVD recorders, which the recording industry fought a losing battle against. I never had much sympathy for the recording industry. At one time they were lobbying for a general tax on cassettes, from which they would receive a payout to compensate for supposed lost revenue.

Then there's difference between music which is performed in the background to dancing or whatever, and the performance being part of an act.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 6:26 pm I wonder if their interpretation of early music manuscripts is correct. We'll never know, but it is pleasing.

Plainsong, not the later choral traditions.

Bach (and earlier) music is pure. Later music is impure twaddle.

Pronunciation of language centuries ago is sort of agreed on from rhymes in poetry and other means. This is something I like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHspDQZKvwg
No way would that have been conceived and performed in the 13th century. There were very definite and nearly mutually unintelligible dialects of English until the 20th century.

I'm not sure you can draw so clear a line between pure music and impure twaddle. Blues, Jazz, Ragtime, Kweala?

Vivaldi was a contemporary of Bach. They met and Bach transcribed some of Vivaldi's works. He spent much of his time teaching in an orphanage for girls in Venice. Vivaldi's orchestra of little girls were considered to upstage the best professional musicians. I've come across one account of his playing. An evening at which a large number of bottles of wine were consumed and maestro Vivaldi played impossibly difficult pieces and was thought to be showing off. I always thought he found it too easy.

I was unclear and imprecise; classical music after Bach is impure. There are exceptions, but often the specific performance is important. Sometimes one performance is delightful whereas other performances of the same piece is turgid.

The same is true of modern music; in many cases the sound engineer should be considered a member of the band. George Martin was celebrated, but others should be too. Sometimes even remixes from the master tapes can be dire; Bridge Over Troubled Water was one such.

I found ancient music to be best while reading a book without interruptions. Definitely no electronic devices other than music players!

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 9:22 pm I was unclear and imprecise; classical music after Bach is impure.

I'm happy to venerate Bach. But I also venerate Beethoven. Vivaldi is fine (a bit pop, mind, but that might be modern performances), but Bach is much better at going nowhere in particular in an interesting way. I have a weakness for early music on original instruments. My idea of an ideal evening is some fine music, a good book, and some decent beer.

This computer doesn't do audio, so I didn't look up the "most recognisable rock intro", but I trust it was "Smoke on the Water" (although I don't have any of their stuff).

Beethoven never manages to evoke any emotion in me. It didn't help that music lessons at school still had a distinct whiff of "Q: who is the best composer? A: Beethoven".

Vivaldi is OK, in an obvious unsubtle way. I prefer Scarlatti.

If you stray from The Four Seasons, done to death in adverts, which is four concertos in a set of twelve called The Contest Between Harmony and Invention, you might investigate his cello concertos, which are sublime. There's no question in my mind that Vivaldi had nailed it. Bach was also consistently good. Beethoven is something of a curate's egg. Never did take to Mozart, but I'd concede he had his moments.

It seems the aim of school music teachers was to put children off music. Thumbs up for Scarlatti. I'll have to look for Vivaldi cello concertos. Agreed that not all Beethoven is wonderful, but the odd numbered symphonies and #5 piano concerto are.

EC8010 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2026 9:13 am It seems the aim of school music teachers was to put children off music. Thumbs up for Scarlatti. I'll have to look for Vivaldi cello concertos. Agreed that not all Beethoven is wonderful, but the odd numbered symphonies and #5 piano concerto are.

I remember seeing Peter Ustinov's anecdote on Parkinson (a prime time chat show un the 70s) "At school we were asked to name a Russian composer on a general-knowledge paper. The answer was Tchaikovsky, because we had been studying him. I put Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and I was upbraided in front of the whole school for showing off."
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver ... .features7

A good example of both rote learning and anti-intellectualism.

Then there's boogie woogie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPKkBBFckE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBQ19DsE6Vk

I must get back to dealing with the accumulated TE.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2026 6:06 pm When "Satisfaction" was released here many famous bible thumpers wanted it banned because of the "suggestive" lyrics and they especially got their panties in a knot over Mick's "girly action". Funny how many of those same famous bible thumpers in later years were found to be perverts or thieves.

American evangelism was only a thing I looked at briefly from the outside. Drive in chapels in California. TV evangelists, "Put your hand on the TV screen and feel the power of the Lord flow into you. Then get your check book out and let the Spirit of the Lord help you fill out a cheque and send it to us." Not convincing.

Apart from Billy Graham, the only one I recall was Jimmy Swaggart, a man intent on extending his ministry to The Oldest Profession. People didn't understand and jumped to the obvious conclusion that his interest was less than godly. It's hard to see how taking pictures of them in the nude contributed to saving their souls.

The current trend in the post-S.A.W music factory is indeed to approach a 0dB crest factor. One has to be more eclectic in ones search of music rather than just condemn society based on the lowest common denominator. As a natural consequence of being an Einstürzende Neubauten fan, I these days listen a lot to the collaborations between Blixa Bargeld and Teho Teardo, which have a lot of depth, filmishness and references and can go from a whisper to a roar in a blink. Very dynamic. My recommendations.

EC8010 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2026 9:18 am Wow! That power supply is (as the seller honestly declares) "in bad shape". Whatever happened to it to cause that? Parachute failed to open?
(SNIP)

mnem
not touching that with a barge pole.

For those who're interested, I finally got around to posting pics from my visit to the October VRCMCT Swap Meet:

mnem
Come one, come all; browse, comment, question, cheer or jeer!

Courtesy of a Freecycle donation of lots of Spur shelving uprights, I'm about to put up some more shelves. The new shelves will replace old shelves that used the space inefficiently (didn't use all of it) and will add another shelf. The extra space may be needed if I go to the Model Engineering Exhibition this Thursday...

Then there's loading on the walls and floor to consider.

Weigh it carefully before going to the Model Engineering Exhibition this Thursday. It may turn out to be a life changing event. Consider Odysseus who blocked his crews' ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast, so he could hear the sirens' calls, but had placed himself so as to be unable to answer them. The modern equivalent would be deliberately going there with just enough money for petrol.

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 8:35 pm Then there's loading on the walls and floor to consider.

Weigh it carefully before going to the Model Engineering Exhibition this Thursday. It may turn out to be a life changing event. Consider Odysseus who blocked his crews' ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast, so he could hear the sirens' calls, but had placed himself so as to be unable to answer them. The modern equivalent would be deliberately going there with just enough money for petrol.

I tried something similar at W-s-M. I didn't have enough money for the Agilent VNA. I was pointed to the ATM in the nearby supermarket.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 8:43 pm

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 8:35 pm Then there's loading on the walls and floor to consider.

Weigh it carefully before going to the Model Engineering Exhibition this Thursday. It may turn out to be a life changing event. Consider Odysseus who blocked his crews' ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast, so he could hear the sirens' calls, but had placed himself so as to be unable to answer them. The modern equivalent would be deliberately going there with just enough money for petrol.

I tried something similar at W-s-M. I didn't have enough money for the Agilent VNA. I was pointed to the ATM in the nearby supermarket.

I confess I did slightly mischievously point you toward the magnificent Marconi TF2700 for £15, but had nothing to do with the acquisition of the VNA. When the deal was done, I never go to these things without at least £200, because you never know what you'll come across, and would have been happy to bail you out, but you were off to the cash machine, conveniently close. I did help place the VNA onto a truck, wheel it, and load it into the back of your car.

This is a true and faithful account of my involvement with tggzzz's acquisiitions at W-s-M.

Well, almost. He did point me toward a generic component tester, which has a few problemettes, but is pretty good for identifying odd transistors and was well worth £10.

I probably had a couple of hundred quid on me, but that wasn't enough for the (rather good) VNA.

Some of the tiny component testers are surprisingly useful as a first line tool for investigating components. Definitely not meteorological grade, but frequently sufficient. A good use case is measuring an electrolytics ESR before deciding whether it is likely to be the cause of problems.

EC8010 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2026 11:27 pm OK, so there's a limit to what the forum can handle, and it's time for a new thread...

I've been struggling with quasi-anechoic loudspeaker measurements today. I can persuade the audio test set to produce the chirp on its S/PDIF digital output, the audio DAC is happy, and the DUT (loudspeaker) produces the sound. But the analyser isn't triggering to produce the FFT of what the microphone is hearing. The software is not intuitive and I'm struggling. Whinge, gripe, whine. I'll get there, but it's annoying.

As the original TEA thread is starting to slide down the TE page and in time will disappear onto P2 and beyond....it might be an idea to post a link to it in the OP of this thread by way of an edit to add it.
viewtopic.php?t=6&sid=8f73b110f51c4846d83eee43d97b2ec3

Looks like the weather is going to Odysseus's job for me; I won't go if it's soggy. If I do go, it will be expensive because I'll probably get get four quick change tool holders to fill the empty spaces on my rack, plus some milling cutters.

tautech wrote: ↑Tue Oct 13, 2026 9:17 am As the original TEA thread is starting to slide down the TE page and in time will disappear onto P2 and beyond....it might be an idea to post a link to it in the OP of this thread by way of an edit to add it.
viewtopic.php?t=6&sid=8f73b110f51c4846d83eee43d97b2ec3

It won't disappear from my "home page", viz search.php?search_id=unreadposts

It would be nice if the DB could be poked to reset the number of page views, so we could see the info again.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 9:44 pm I probably had a couple of hundred quid on me, but that wasn't enough for the (rather good) VNA.

Some of the tiny component testers are surprisingly useful as a first line tool for investigating components. Definitely not meteorological grade, but frequently sufficient. A good use case is measuring an electrolytics ESR before deciding whether it is likely to be the cause of problems.

It's small, handy and surprisingly good for identifying, checking and matching transistors and OK for checking capacitors and resistors - as long as the value isn't too high, it gets progressively worse after 100K, but I use a DMM anyway. It's probably a generic design. There are much better ones, such as sold by Peak, and then there are full blown curve tracers. But that little thing was good value for £10.

There's an advantage to buying a cheap tool such as a £15 angle grinder, in that you can see what it can do and whether it's something you are likely to find useful, without blowing your wad on a Makita, which you may turn out not to use.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Tue Oct 13, 2026 10:01 am

tautech wrote: ↑Tue Oct 13, 2026 9:17 am As the original TEA thread is starting to slide down the TE page and in time will disappear onto P2 and beyond....it might be an idea to post a link to it in the OP of this thread by way of an edit to add it.
viewtopic.php?t=6&sid=8f73b110f51c4846d83eee43d97b2ec3

It won't disappear from my "home page", viz search.php?search_id=unreadposts

It would be nice if the DB could be poked to reset the number of page views, so we could see the info again.

Yes indeed. There's a lot of useful repair information in that thread.

Zenith wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 9:25 pm
This is a true and faithful account of my involvement with tggzzz's acquisiitions at W-s-M.

Here, we have a micro-payment service for cellulars that even the old hams and their widows have learnt to use. I never carry cash except when I need to go to the punk club that does all in cash. "Swish" as the service is called is instant and trustworthy-- I know people who work there and I trust them as much as I trust my bank. Which I have to.

I'm not up to date with such things.

We have credit card terminals connected to mobile phones. Traders now rely on them when their stall is in the middle of a field, or similar.

Non-traders don't have them, e.g. the person who sold me the VNA.

And then there's PayPal friends, of course.