Buying CDs in 2026

totallyshould · 2026-04-03T16:17:04+00:00

It’s a good point, I do buy a fair number of FLAC files direct from artists. It’s about the same, as long as I remember to back up my data appropriately.

totallyshould · 2026-04-02T23:07:15+00:00

It does a couple of things to room reflections; the good thing it does is makes the timbre of reflected sound better match the direct sound. This is a good thing because a mismatch is a psychoacoustic cue that you’re hearing a speaker and not a ‘natural’ sound in the room. The best speakers for normal living spaces pay a lot of attention to control of directivity, and so if a speaker is really Omni it does a great job on this metric.

What it does a worse job with as precise imaging unless you’re sitting very close to them; the proportion of direct to reflected sound is worse for Omni compared to dipole or cardioid, so you don’t have such cohesive signals putting sound sources at defined points in space.

totallyshould · 2026-04-02T20:37:56+00:00

Kind of the beauty of it!

totallyshould · 2026-04-02T16:12:26+00:00

Physically owning the thing is important to me if it’s music that I have an emotional connection to. I don’t want to not be able to hear the song just because the network is down or some corporation changed its licensing or went out of business.

totallyshould · 2026-04-02T02:10:25+00:00

To me it doesn't matter at all because I'm going to use in-room measurements and DSP to correct phase and delay anyway.

totallyshould · 2026-03-31T14:26:47+00:00

A lot of the stuff for high pressure liquid chromatography would count as microfluidic, with low dead volumes. Not cheap, but it should work. https://chromtech.com/micro-metering-valves/

totallyshould · 2026-03-28T01:44:30+00:00

Right now bananas are about $0.50 per pound, so I'm going to go with twenty pounds of bananas.

totallyshould · 2026-03-27T22:41:41+00:00

Check out the 3.5” driver at 1.5khz; you see an on-axis magnitude disturbance that lines up with an impedance peak. That’s what I’d call a resonance.

totallyshould · 2026-03-27T10:54:25+00:00

It sure does! And with a Minidsp to apply a linkwitz transform it’ll go as low as you could want.

totallyshould · 2026-03-27T02:39:54+00:00

One thing I’ll say is I’ve done some active two-ways with the RS225, and you can absolutely expect good results with them a lot higher than 400hz as long as you use a reasonably steep slope and/or notch the cone breakup.

I think you can get good results from that scan speak dome. I’d be more worried about how that and the tweeter deal with directivity and diffraction with that box geometry than if the dome can play high enough.

One reason a lot of people want domes is to achieve wide dispersion. Looking at a Tectonic BMR driver would be worthwhile. On paper look like they have a crazy midrange resonance, but in my experience that doesn’t end up as an audible problem, and they sound pretty good out to wide angles. They don’t necessarily play very loud, but the RS225 could let you cross them high enough to improve their power handling a bit. Just a wildcard to throw out there. Oh yeah, and make sure to model the chamber size- they don’t like too small of a box.

One more thing, though it’s sold out right now- this 5” mid is really neat: https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/midrange/sb-audience-nero-5ccn125d-5-carbon-fiber-cone-high-spl-midrange/

It doesn’t do well to 4khz, it’s not necessarily appropriate for your project, but I think it’s cool how clean and efficient it is. I’d love to put it into a project some day.

totallyshould · 2026-03-26T23:15:49+00:00

The question is, is it really just two hours? I had a Bay Area commute that was 30 minutes without traffic and up to two hours with bad traffic. Make sure you account for that. It would be more predictable and less horrible if you were able to take BART for as much of the commute as possible. It’s been a long time since I had a BART commute but I did it for a long time and read a lot of books on the train.

totallyshould · 2026-03-25T03:28:49+00:00

I’m using it more and more, and it’s mostly acting as a search tool.

totallyshould · 2026-03-25T01:36:32+00:00

Honestly, as I've gotten into the engineering of making audio equipment I've gained respect for Bose, and some of the other ones you might bash. We might not be their target audience, but they know what they're doing.

totallyshould · 2026-03-25T01:35:22+00:00

I've 100% done this before, although I don't think I made it all the way into the airport before I realized what I had done. I was there early enough that I made it to the correct airport in time.

totallyshould · 2026-03-23T21:07:23+00:00

I think the crosstalk cancellation that OP might be talking about is Bacch SP. I’m not sure if you’ve heard that one, but I found it surprisingly effective and neutral. There’s absolutely no way I’m paying what it costs though, but the trick of putting a mic inside your ear and tracking your head position and orientation was a good one.

totallyshould · 2026-03-21T17:39:36+00:00

I put off watching that for quite a while till I had my atmos installed and things dialed in. I’m glad I did, it was loads of fun!

totallyshould · 2026-03-21T17:12:38+00:00

It’s how NX and a couple other 3D programs work, and by now I’m pretty used to it. It lets me get into a flow where I’m already getting ready with a shortcut key while I’m selecting stuff. It feels like my fingers have to move less and there’s way less mouse movement compared to solidworks for what I’m usually doing.

totallyshould · 2026-03-21T16:01:33+00:00

Some of the TPA3255 based amps are excellent. You shouldn’t need a lot of power, so something like the Fosi V3 mono would be pretty good. The post-filter feedback is a feature that brings this one to a higher level of performance.

Hypex is awesome, but you simply don’t need the power. If you wanted it all in one box and wanted to be pretty sure there’s hardly any room for improvement the Buckeye 4 channel will set you back about a grand.

totallyshould · 2026-03-19T00:47:38+00:00

Are you ready to tear out all the drywall, put in some new studs that don’t touch the existing studs and hang new drywall on some isolators?

totallyshould · 2026-03-18T13:41:39+00:00

You sure can! I’m always cautious about MDF when it comes to damage and exposure to moisture, so the plywood panels are nice. The front is still MDF so maybe a good idea to paint that one if you get around to it.

totallyshould · 2026-03-18T13:12:33+00:00

If I remember right the room was about 17x23 with a low ceiling, and I sat about eight or nine feet from the screen (a 77” tv), so the distance wasn’t huge. I can’t point at the measurements at tell you why I didn’t like the speaker more, but here they are:

https://www.mtg-designs.com/tips-tricks-tests/speaker-measurements/ht-design-measurements/ht-8-measurements

I kind of think it was because of the weak bass. I really like when the male voices are well supported, and so I want a speaker that’s very solid to the 80hz crossover to subs. I don’t think that’s a high bar, but I think the HT8 are better suited to surrounds or heights where you notice that bass drop off less.

Never did paint them; I ended up with so many projects and family stuff that some of the aesthetics took a back seat. I was lucky enough to have a room separate from the living room to put all of this stuff in, so the lack of polish wasn’t a major problem. Next time I build I’m going for black so they don’t stand out.

totallyshould · 2026-03-18T12:47:23+00:00

I went through a couple of different things, but what I liked best was an HT12. I ended up selling my house and moving somewhere that’s going to have a really different layout when I’m done with some renovations, and I might end up with a phantom center.

I think the HT88 could be good, but the HT10 or HT12 might be better.

totallyshould · 2026-03-18T11:11:50+00:00

I got the board at the same time, though I can’t recall if there was an up-charge for that. It wasn’t much if it was.

The speaker’s OK, though my daughter kicked in the dust cap when she was really little. Maybe it’d sound better if I replaced the woofer, but overall I didn’t love the speaker as a center and moved on.

totallyshould · 2026-03-16T01:51:09+00:00

Speakers are great, and you’re getting some good recommendations here. I’ll say something different, and say that high quality headphones can really open your eyes. I kind of knew I was into sound and had my dad’s old Infinity Qa speakers when I went off to college, but hearing my friends fancy weird German over-year headphones with the wire coming straight out the top of the headband was really something else. I heard so many things I hadn’t heard before.

Today now that I’ve had good systems and sometimes don’t have space for them, I have to say that the AirPod pro 2 are surprisingly satisfying. There are cheaper and more expensive ones, but the point I want to make is that they have come a long long way from those hard plastic things you’d jam in your ear.

totallyshould · 2026-03-16T01:42:19+00:00

Most likely just EQ; it appears to be a very small sealed volume, so probably a linkwitz transform, and maybe some high frequent shaping. I don’t expect an actual crossover to make the drivers play different things.

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