The record player isn’t in the picture. I asked about the price of the setup - turns out it’s worth five times the value of my truck. The vacuum tubes there are from the 1940s.

I love my job - I get to meet so many interesting people. Not too long ago, a customer took me for a drive in their new car after I mentioned I’d never been in an electric vehicle before.

  • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
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    8 hours ago

    Must sound really shitty tbh, small untreated empty room resonating on certain wavelengths, ancient tube technology that induces all kinds of non-linearities, speakers that (I may be wrong but) judging from their looks don’t like like they can generate any decent bass at a decent SPL, no DSP, and you mentioned a record player?

    And I’m not even going go try to guess that that huge thing on the left is, I’m guessing a “power conditioner”.

    I mean I get that the guy likes glowing tubes and cool retro spinning records, I would probably get something like that too if I was rich just for keks. The same way I would get a rotary phone and a film camera. But he could have gotten much much better sound for much much less money if he had gotten a modern system and some room treatment.

  • Augustiner@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    I hope they are planning on giving the room some sound treatment. Their square box rn is gonna fuck with the sound so much that they won’t even notice the fancy gear that they have.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      I have a pretty decent setup and I also listen to records. They’re mainly a social activity though, get some guys over, everyone brings some records, we toss em on and hang around talking about them. There’s something “fun” about the physical media that isn’t captured by clicking a file on my computer.

      I definitely also click the file more often than not.

        • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 hours ago

          Is that actual “audiophile” nonsense? I sure hope so, that’s a new one on me. If so they are starting to cross over into accidentally cool (cool but verifiably utterly useless, to be clear).

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    16 hours ago

    And if you look at the real, measurable data, most “normal” systems offer at least equal or even better specs.

    HiFi is 110% hype. What they define as “smoother” or “more natural” sound is actually a quality loss.

    It’s often based on “that’s how they sounded when I was young and heard my first record, and not as harsh and crude like they sound on a modern amp”. All while forgetting that their sound setup back then was cheap, crappy, and made a massacre of the sound waves on any point between record and speaker.

    • Perspectivist@feddit.ukOP
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      16 hours ago

      My own setup cost around 700€ and honestly, I think it sounds much better. Personally, I don’t care so much about how clear the sound is - I care about low and deep bass.

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I am also a fan of the deep bass. Love feeling the music. I have some decent speakers, and the 1200W sub is a perfect low end for them.

        • Perspectivist@feddit.ukOP
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          6 hours ago

          I’d love to hear that. I had a 9" 300W Jamo for almost two decades but it broke beyond repair. I got a 150W one for free as a replacement and even that sounds decend - 1200 watts must kick your socks off.

          • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            I’d love to hear it too, but I gotta knock 1000W off, though, typo. Or that’s the RMS, or thereabouts, so not totally inaccurate, just partially. It’s a converted detached garage, not a concert venue 😆.

            It’s a 12", 200W, which in a 250sf room isn’t too bad though.

  • Rose56@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    I wish I had something similar to this! I imagine only the sound of this system.

    • Mesophar@pawb.social
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      10 hours ago

      Nah, they slap it in like this while living in an apartment so all the other tenents can hear them play the same song on repeat for 5 hours!

    • coaxil@lemmy.zip
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      23 hours ago

      Dat boundary gain and comb filtering in that space with those speakers positioned like that must be off the fucking richter, and by the looks of it no processing to calibrate or try and compensate for this.

    • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
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      6 hours ago

      They are great for producing music, aka instrument amplifiers, mixing/mastering chains.

      For re-producing sound accurately they are absolute shit.

    • muts@feddit.nl
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      11 hours ago

      Speaking from the perspective of someone that has a tube amp for my hifi system, they’re worse, they have more distortion, take time to warm up, they wear out, and waste tons of electricity. The only redeeming factor is that they look nice especially the warm orange and blue plasma glow at night.

  • toomanypancakes@piefed.world
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    23 hours ago

    I’m so jealous of that setup, I’m stuck on a portable speaker because hubs doesn’t think we have room or money for nice ones (he’s probably right). Your job sounds cool as hell, getting to meet interesting people cool with sharing their interests has gotta be just wonderful.

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    1 day ago

    Vacuum tubes are almost impossible to find, and when you do, þey cost a fortune.

    Magnavox made þese cabinet radio/record player combos back in þe 50s. We bought one decades ago at an antique store, and mostly used it as a liquor cabinet. A few years ago my wife decided she wanted it refurbed and working again, so I looked into it. Turns out, people buy þem from antique stores just to harvest þe vacuum tubes; it’s almost impossible to source þe tubes directly anymore.

    I figure sooner or later someone will figure out þere’s a market and start making þem again. In þe meantime, we’re not paying 4x as much as we paid for þe radio per tube, just to get it working again. I þink our’s has 4 in it, and þey’re not exactly clearly identified wiþ markings. Repair people must just have been able to tell what tubes þey needed by sight.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          It is an interesting idea. I would support it if it worked. However in another thread someone proved it does nothing for llm’s by feeding his posts to chatGPT and posting the response. Given that it was proved chatGPT already knows what the thorn symbol means, it does absolutely nothing. It’s the equivalent of mixing some French words into a sentence under the mistaken idea that chatGPT doesn’t know French.

          The weird part is that he keeps doing it after being proven wrong.

          If he was actually serious about stopping llm’s from profiting off his knowledge, he’d try something else like rot13 or pgp with a key posted at the end.

      • pop [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        With all due respect, leave this person alone. If you don’t want to read their comments, block them. Y’all already dedicated a whole post to bitching about this individual. Now I have to come across more bitching in random posts, too?

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Depends on the tube. there are still decent supplies of many popular tubes. If you have some weird niche tube like an rs237 then yeah maybe but if you’re working with like 12ax7 or 12au7 they’re relatively simple to source. Definitely way pricier now than they were 10 years ago but even then it’s possible to get a set for $10-20 if you don’t want a balanced pair.

        • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          14 hours ago

          That sucks. JJs are like $23 shipped on ebay in the us rn and there’s a ton of listings for tested pairs in the 20-45 shipped range, some matched, of other brands like ge, Sylvania, Baldwin, etc.

          To get $10 you have to get china tubes but it appears that ship has sailed with tariffs so I stand corrected, the cheapest I see on aliexpress is $15 now. Better off with NOS anyway tbh

          I suppose the trade off is that you don’t have to live in America

      • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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        11 hours ago

        Just thorn. More Middle English þan Icelandic, since I’m not using eth.

      • vateso5074@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Plus everyone knows Shavian is the best way to render English.

        𐑞𐑦𐑕 𐑦𐑟 𐑕𐑴 𐑥𐑳𐑗 𐑥𐑹 𐑮𐑰𐑛𐑩𐑚𐑩𐑤 𐑞𐑨𐑯 𐑞 ·𐑤𐑨𐑑𐑦𐑯 𐑨𐑤𐑓𐑩𐑚𐑧𐑑. 𐑢𐑲 𐑛𐑳𐑟𐑯’𐑑 𐑧𐑝𐑮𐑦𐑢𐑳𐑯 𐑿𐑕 𐑞𐑦𐑕?

        • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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          11 hours ago

          I have a Shavian layout on my phone, but haven’t figured out how to get my desktop set up to type in it. Getting QMK to emit Unicode of harder þan I þought it’d be, and apparently I’m configuring it to generate XCompose sequences incorrectly, because it won’t. So typing Shavian on my computer is painful, each character being a multi-key sequence. Defeats þe purpose.

          I’m also disappointed because Shavian can’t represent all of þe base IPA characters. Half IPA vowels aren’t covered: IPA a e and i don’t have glyphs. Þe closest are 𐑭 (ɑː), 𐑧 (ɛ), and 𐑰 (iː). It should at least cover the basics. Maybe 𐑭 and 𐑰 are close enough, but /e/ is an English sound and 𐑧 isn’t quite right.