On Sunday, November 13, 2011 11:11:06 PM Florian Paul Schmidt did opine: I almost didn't send that, but the sound reminded me of the sound I inherited when I became the CE at WDTV-5, back in '84, here in West Virginia. That put me off so much I told the GM I hadn't heard so much heavy breathing since shortly after lights out last night, when I asked for permission to replace a brand new piece of gear with something I knew would do the job and be essentially transparent to the listeners, an old CBS Labs AudiMax, followed by, on the other end of the studio-transmitter microwave path, an equally ancient CBS Labs FM Volumax. They worked, but it was extremely rare and took a trained ear, to detect that they were working. As a C.E.T., I had fun keeping them running, first replacing all the small electrolytics used for coupling capacitors with paper/mylar, which put a stop to the twice annual rebuild by shotgunning all the caps, then eventually the gain controlling tetrode nuvistor vacuum tube faded away (they are made of pure unobtainium now) and I had to adapt a dual gate Mosfet transistor to handle that. But those 2 processors made it to about 50 years old by the time we switched to all digital in mid 2008. Now I'm going to wander off topic, sort of. Frankly, broadcasters sorely need such a characteristic device in the digital path right now, and if some enterprising coder were to write that code to interface with the usual EIA digital audio format, and build it into a black box with the usual connectors on it, he/she would find themselves busier than that famous cat on the equally famous tin roof until they had filled up the market, which is, here in the states, 1500 to 2000 tv stations. Multiply that by the number of channels the digital broadcaster is using today, which for us is 4, and you'll have to hire help building them for 2 or 3 years. I don't know if there is all that much info out on the net on how the Audimax worked, but surely any patents have long since expired. In the maintenance manual there was a rather complex test method to determine if it was working correctly, but its only controls were input and output gain T-pads so one could establish the correct internal levels for optimum operation. The Volumax is much easier to explain as it was designed to prevent HF over modulation only, caused by the 17db of pre-emphasis the 75 microsecond boost caused, allowing full mid-range levels, but rolling off the high end to prevent the HF stuff from exceeding the allowed occupied bandwidth, +-75khz for FM's and +-25khz for tv. Its gain control response was sub millisecond, both ways. But in digital, no such control is needed, but we surely, sorely need the equ of the Audimax. In fact, that is one of the reasons I have remained subscribed to this list. If somebody does this, I will be in the GM's office asking for a P.O. for 4 of them tomorrow morning. So please somebody do it before I fall over. Now 77 YO & diabetic, retired (insert laugh track here, they never really let you) for 9 years, I still appear to have that sort of clout on the 2nd floor. Thanks Flo. [...] Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television. - David Letterman

On Monday, November 14, 2011 12:20:10 PM Florian Paul Schmidt did opine: Yeah, but back then we didn't even have the concept of null pointers, it was all analog, hopefully linear stuff and thd's were in the 1 to 2% areas. We've come a long way since then, and I hope its been an improvement. :) But that does bring up the unspoken requirement that a modern digital version of such a device has to be capable of withstanding huge longitudinal over voltages from nearby lightning strikes and the EMP associated which means power strip types of varistors to absorbed them, and absolutely un-crashable, fully capable of year+ uptimes. Such code can be written, I've done it, without benefit of watchdogs, and some of my code has been in continuous use at the broadcast facility I wrote it for, for open ended periods that have approached 2 decades with only hardware failures and repairs thereof interrupting it. One was written in 1802 hex code, and one written in Basic09 for the os9 operating system on TRS-80 Color Computers. But my little helper scripts I use here, today, were all done in bash & I haven't quite managed to make my kmail helper immune to out of order startups, yet. Am I prolonging the agony of old age? Probably, but no one knows better than I that I am not the coder I was 20 years ago on far simpler hardware than this quad core phenom picking up my keystrokes now. Besides, I have waaaayyyy to many interests, including making sawdust and furniture in my waneing years. Currently working on a gunstock for a black powder rifle, one that hasn't been seen on such primitive weapons yet, modern thumbhole style, my 5th such project in the 50 years since the first one. Pretty much, the i/o itself will be mostly cut & paste from existing designs. The art in box metal will likely be limited to the cutting and bending/punching for connectors, a decent paint job (black is not a requirement, but a euphemism) and silk screening or engraving the labels. Connector costs will be perhaps 15% of out of pocket once the design is committed to production. That sort of hardware can be farmed out lots cheaper than you can set yourself up to do it, see the back pages of most any issue of Circuit Cellar for a choice of those. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? -- Steven Wright

On Monday, November 14, 2011 01:03:25 PM Florian Paul Schmidt did opine: But now the overall level is -50db. I can just barely hear the .ogg. Same player. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> Humor in the Court: Q: ...any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial? A: The victim lived.

On 11/14/2011 07:09 PM, Florian Paul Schmidt wrote: BTW: the ogg plays perfectly fine here with mplayer.. Flo

On Mon, 2011-11-14 at 16:30 -0500, gene heskett wrote: Dunno what this thread's about, anyway, Iceweasel is able to play the file and FWIW, for my taste it's good music. I was able to listen to it using Iceweasel too, also a good piece of music for my taste, but this link plays "one-legged" ;). Hm? Iceweasel's preferences for OGG is "always ask" but it doesn't ask me, simply played those files without asking :D. Hope this information helps :p, sorry Ralf

On 11/14/2011 10:53 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Weird. Something must be funky with my oggenc version.. Flo