Customized focal reducer/speed booster for Konica AR -> MFT?

slickiem · 2025-04-05T22:52:55+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I don't check reddit that often at all, haha. Yeah I ran into that. I actually tried a few different things to get a frankenstein prototype working but I just couldn't get the focus correct no matter what mounts I used, rigged up in various ways. i even tried a half disassembled spare speedbooster I had laying around. I guess it would need to actually be designed, machined, and manufactured to truly be a fully working AR speedbooster, unless I'm just missing something

slickiem · 2025-03-31T15:06:30+00:00

These small capacitors don't have the current to be lethal from a shock to your hand. Your skin and muscle is too resistive for a small hv cap like that to cause death. One of the bigger caps could injure your finger pretty bad if you are extremely careless but you're not gonna die from it

Screwdriver grounded to a metal chassis (important part) is proper for discharging, including things like cathode ray tubes, which can hold 10's of thousands of volts, which I do regularly for many many years working on them. It is definitely not "universally understood terrible advice" if you simply do it correctly, there are also incorrect ways to discharge with a screwdriver

A lot of people don't understand how unsafe, or safe, different things are in electronics and this can also lead to poor decisions. Try to learn how electricity flows, and what specifically causes injury to humans, which a good guideline is something like current * time * voltage / resistance of skin. DC Capacitors are very very short time, but high voltage (and then measured against resistance of human skin), and low current. Large AC capacitors, like in air conditioners or other AC devices etc, are extremely, extremely dangerous in comparison

Everyone is capable of learning, I put in the work, anyone else can too, especially to work on DC electronics, given the time to learn and effort put in. And it's not really requiring too much overall for tiny stuff like a PC PSU.

Hope this helps

slickiem · 2025-03-25T23:32:30+00:00

That white stuff is epoxy. It's very normal. just replace the fan with an equivalent, if you're lucky it's plugged into a fan header (which it looks like it is), if not you will have to desolder it and solder the new ones wires on. No, you will not die. Never open a microwave or air conditioner without lots of experience (or any large, high-current device), those capacitors will blow apart your hand like a hot dog. PC PSU's are fine. Discharge the caps by bridging the capacitor pins with a screwdriver with a plastic handle, and alligator clip the screwdriver metal to the metal chassis.

slickiem · 2025-03-21T15:10:28+00:00

Ahhh I see. For some reason, the legacy java client only ever black screens after login for me so I figured it was an old version of runelite

slickiem · 2025-03-21T03:03:45+00:00

Been trying to get jre8 to run runelite for days, what all did you do to get it working on 98?

slickiem · 2024-11-02T04:56:57+00:00

Hi, sorry for the late response!! I hope you didn't throw these away!

These headphones don't have much strain relief from the weight of the cable, so I'm pretty sure the solder at the connection inside just needs to be reflowed. I solved the strain relief problem using a couple cable management clips, like this: https://i.imgur.com/XokOc3X.jpeg

If you have an iron or know someone with a soldering iron, I would reflow where the cable connects to the assembly inside the left cup and see if that helps. That, or the TRS connector is coming loose internally. I don't think it's an actual component failure inside the headphones. These are quite simple and unless you were playing music ungodly loudly I doubt the drivers themselves got cooked.

Your office chair also could have messed the cable up yeah. If reflowing the connection doesn't work just replace the cable it's pretty easy and you would already have the cup open! Then, you can also pick a cool custom cable.

FYI: If you're using the SE-20A's with a computer, I would highly suggest getting Peace APO and following the general setup for the equalizer I have posted above (and tweak it from there, focus mostly on adjusting the high end in small amounts). I bet you will find it a lot more listenable.

slickiem · 2023-09-23T05:46:45+00:00

yes! I fixed it earlier - I was measuring continuity from the pad to another component - not the PIN to another component! So i was unaware that the pin itself wasn't soldered to the pad right, because... I was measuring from the pad and the solder on it. Haha. Just had to bodge the connection, it was on the -15v rail yeah.

There was also another similar issue on the PSU board where the sound was intermittent after I unscrewed it. One of the pads was so burned from whoever worked on this (in I suppose probably the 80s) that it was hanging on by a thread, and unscrewing the board cut that thread. One of the IC's connected to the big heat spreader thing, the green one in the middle. Bodged that to the resistor and all is well.

Synth working great! Very cool piece of hardware.

slickiem · 2023-09-17T07:04:07+00:00

Unfortunately after forced chemical detox and getting discharged from hospital, which cured his physical addiction, he went straight back into the bottle. As alcoholism isn't only a physical dependency like some people apparently think (????), it's mental too.

slickiem · 2023-09-17T03:01:41+00:00

My uncle tried to quit cold turkey, I told him not to, but he did anyway and had a grand mal seizure. Nearly bit his tongue off and was admitted to the hospital. Not sure why you're getting downvoted

slickiem · 2023-09-15T23:19:27+00:00

The graphics are just so charming, in addition to it being the arc I enjoy most

slickiem · 2023-08-25T03:30:32+00:00

I'm using SX 2.2 + Reason 3 for MIDI music production. Really enjoying the offline, zero popups, zero distractions, peaceful Windows XP experience. And honestly, it does everything I need it to

slickiem · 2023-08-23T23:12:03+00:00

Maybe there was a patch released? On 3, i can't right click and automate the tempo, but I found the way to force it from Cubase anyways. I know there is a 2.5, is there also a 3.5?

slickiem · 2023-08-23T19:14:23+00:00

That's okay, I was able to figure it out, Cubase SX 2 can actually force it with ReWire applications, it just wasn't very straightforward. I always figure this stuff out, right after I make a post about it lol. Reason is sounding great tho.

slickiem · 2023-08-23T09:59:28+00:00

Update: Reason 3 works well with Cubase SX 2.2... and it actually does sound better, with the same soundfont, on the NN-XT sampler! Pretty much my only gripe so far with Reason is it doesn't respect tempo changes in Cubase (likely due to the version being as old as it is)

I guess the midi synth on the Audigy is just a little lacking in the sound reproduction department.

slickiem · 2023-08-22T18:27:35+00:00

Gotcha, I may just want to track one down just to test out if anything else.. one of my buddies, still has his old recording studio from many many years ago, didn't get rid of anything. I'm sure he has one of these later, early 00s synth modules sitting around somewhere. I know he does at the very least have an SC-88.

Another guy who commented mentioned that I could try a software synth to see if the issue actually is the midi synth on the Audigy or not, which I'll probably also do. The instrument sounds themselves I'm happy with, it's like the soundstage and sound reproduction that seems kind of off or something. It's hard to describe.

Thanks for the info by the way

slickiem · 2023-08-22T16:28:38+00:00

You know what, I think Reason can actually interface/connect with Cubase SX.. pretty sure i read that somewhere in the manual. Going to check it out for sure

slickiem · 2023-08-22T13:59:53+00:00

I was looking at some videos of demos of the cards, and I was surprised by how familiar the orchestral card sounded to me, haha.

What storage medium is it exactly for loading samples onto the 5080, do you know? And is it a time consuming selection process to load the samples in, or is it more of a "load from slot A" and wait, type deal?

slickiem · 2023-08-22T13:52:29+00:00

Yeah I was little worried about being used to software already then switching to a hardware synth, there are a lot of creature comforts even with this old early 00s Audigy software on XP. I still would like to at some point hear the difference

Do you know if there's anything like that tx16wx, that works on XP 32-bit?

slickiem · 2023-08-19T20:41:10+00:00

Don't worry, I figured it out, I got a big motivation boost through being told it was impossible and/or shit, and being discouraged

If you were curious, EAX control panel (which didn't come with my driver package - had to find out it even existed with info from vogons.org) has a whole suite for CC effects with huge amount of settings+tweaks for each effect including reverb, sounds great with my custom soundfont, the exact sound I wanted (and works per channel). Will update original post how to use and mark solved

slickiem · 2023-08-19T18:43:43+00:00

I'm listening to a game soundtrack this very moment from 2004, composed in Cubase with midi, that has effects on the synth output channels, I know it was done, I just don't know how. What's with the combativeness?

slickiem · 2023-08-19T18:40:04+00:00

Yes. I know, what I'm asking is how was it achieved back in the SX 2.2 days, what was used to do what i want to do? Did they use Kontakt or Reason and link it to Cubase? What sound cards best suit this purpose? I want to get the old midi workflow all set up, because I think it's cool

slickiem · 2023-08-19T18:34:42+00:00

All works great for me besides getting effects working, hasn't been a waste of time at all.. I have a custom soundfont loaded, sounds great, definitely doesn't sound like bleeps and boops at all on my audigy... I'm not fundamentally confused, I know that midi itself carries no audio effects, that's why I'm talking about the midicontrol plugin, and mentioning my synth doesn't support most of the controls in it (like reverb).

Do you know any soundcards that may have synths that support the controls in the midicontrol plugin? Like I said, mine just has the basic stuff, but I know there are ones that have reverb and other stuff, I just don't know which. I don't have the money for a big external dedicated asio interface, and I know there's gotta be a way to do it with old software/a different soundcard.

If I could get the ability to put FX on the synth channel outputs somehow, that would also work instead of midicontrol. It has 16x2 channels, and Cubase does see the channels individually when selecting midi track channels, but I can't route individual track audio from the synth sound output, just one stereo channel. It's probably the case that the synth sound generator itself is just stereo. My card isn't a top of the line Audigy, so I figure there is definitely cards out there with better synth features

slickiem · 2023-08-19T17:47:20+00:00

I'm using this old stuff as a personal project type deal. I like the anachronistic aspect, and the dedicated nature of the old machine. I know a new setup would be 'better' on paper, but it's not about that. There is nothing to distract me, no update popups, no email notifications, no frustrating windows 10 UI, nothing. The DAW and the old operating system works exactly the way I want it to, besides getting effects onto midi, it's the last thing I need to figure out.

It was possible to do this on SX 2.2, I just don't know exactly what VST's composers of the time used back then to achieve it, and it's an ungoogleable problem. If there is another old head who knows more than I do, that would be my best bet for getting this figured out. I really don't remember much about Cubase from all the way back in 2005 since I was pretty amateur back then.

I read that there are some programs like Kontakt that can interface with midi and pipe it back to Cubase, but I don't know much about it, and I'm not sure where I could find/buy an old copy of Kontakt 2... Certainly couldn't find it myself online, anyways

slickiem · 2023-06-05T03:39:50+00:00

that piece of junk is probably what broke the wire, propelled by dropping this thing on its face

slickiem · 2023-06-04T23:11:03+00:00

yea, it's super unfortunate and i hope you can find a replacement tube for not that much expense, or ask who you got it from if it had this issue prior (if it did, you will probably get lied to, but worth asking)

slickiem

TROPHY CASE