>almost like they see it as part of cycling.

Well to be fair, do enough commuting amongst crap drivers and you get into a bit of a 'some ****'s cut me up' state of mind.

If there was no overtake involved, it sounds like they're being a pair of tits – but on the other hand they must have had some (slight) reason to get ticked off – tho' it sounds like abuse was OTT.

On the mtb on road I get enough idiots overtaking just to sit at the bacl of the traffic queue 10 or 20 yards further on that I usually have a fairly filthy mutter.
When I'm riding my recumbent it's get even more annoying 'cos a) the space to the next stationary car I use to slow down in, to avoid putting a foot down and b) I'm frequently travelling at the same speed as the traffic, so it's a bit bloomin' pointless.

We've got some B+W speakers recessed in the kitchen ceiling (left by our predecessors) – sound pretty good despite a rubbish location. *And* they're routed 20 or 30 ft from our study with something not much better than bellwire, for the interconnectophiles amongst you 😉

re the weeing problem – just a thought, but have you tried normal skin shorts with tights over the top? – some years back when I was doing mtb orienteering (trailbreak thingies) I used a simple pair of braces to hold the shorts and tights up (mainly cos I had shorts rather than bib shorts). At least with those you can undo 'em relatively easy to slip them down for a quick pee.
(I think I used to wear tights *under* shorts at one point, but have done the same more recently and it's felt like sandpaper 😮 – mebbe the saddle shape's different)

FWIW – Roubaix's great in the middle of winter, shorts+thin tights are fine now in the evening, shorts up to a few weeks ago. Oh, and a thermal under a s/s shirt will probably do from now till it gets a fair bit nippier so long as you're not dawdling

Dunno if you've come across 'em – but have a look at the Corinne Dennis gear – most of it is aimed at women. IFAIA they've stopped making 'em, but I've been wearing a CD women's roubaix-stylee top for years, picked up something similar a few years ago. Pity is they don't appear in many bike shops. Well worth checking out if you can find it, the fabrics are a bit different to the normal stuff available and more snag-resistant.

(And cotton for any exercise related gear is just wrong – gets damp and stays damp…)

>I run BB5's on my HT

allegedly the BB7s are a fair bit better – I've got one to put on one of my recumbents, so I can't yet comment (and it's to go on the back anyway, so it won't get heavy use..)

@bonbadillo

Problem is, it'd be nice if the world were black and white like that. But just becase a law exists doesn't mean it's the right law, it was just made at a time when it was appropriate.

I've been out for a ride with some of the older (retired) neigbours in our Close and was a bit surprised to see half/most of 'em get onto the pavement along a section I cycle most days approaching some lights.
Why ? – cos a few of them (ok, their OHs) are quite timid in traffic and feel intimidated by it. The answer of 'MTFU/WTFU' ain't gonna happen at their age. While I'm not in favour of people riding on the footpath by default, if they're that scared of the traffic and not riding like tits, let 'em get on with it. If there was less traffic around (as there probably was when they learnt to ride) they'd stay on the road – which was where they were in the quieter backroads.

Oh, and fwiw, in that section I mentioned a postie was knocked off his bike last year by a truck and lost his lower leg !

>oh and just buy one you like the look and feel of, don't worry about the pickups too much.

And listen to it 😉

Just to confuse the issue, you can also get single coil humbuckers – they keep the narrowness of the single coil, but have two windings to give you the hum rejection of a humbucker. (I think Seymour Duncan Hot Rails might be one example). The hum, btw, is just picking up radiation from the mains wiring.

Strats are typically s-s-s, and Gibsons h-h. Ibanez etc do variants such as h-s-s and h-s-h. You can generally fit any of those on a 21/22 necked body, but 24 fret necked bodies more usually have a single coil nearest the neck (otherwise you're losing wood from around the neck pocket which will weaken it to a degree)

The bridge pickup will sound the most trebly, whilst the neck pickup will be more bassy – tho' the neck pickups probably used more in lead rather than rhythm 'cos of the way it sounds.

To confuse the issue further, on Strats (and probably some Strat-stylees) there's an out-of-phase setting for some of the pickups. I think it originally came about by setting the pickup selector between two positions – and that has a different tonal character (tho' my guitars have humbuckers, so I dunno much more than that)

To add to the Amy Lee/Tarja (etc) selections:
Angela Gossow
Floor Jansen

T-cut? – or just something mildly abrasive like Jif (sorry, Cif) or Brasso – try a small area first tho'.

Had it once for tennis elbow, after ultrasound hadn't done much – seemed to stir everything up for it to start healing (I'd had it several months by that point). Most bizarre bit was a needle in the web of the thumb/first finger – felt incredibly hot – another guy at work had a similar experience but almost fainted from it!

'Want some sweeties little girl?'

'NO – show us yer c*ck first !'

IGMC…it's the mac with the pockets cut out…

😉

Don't buy anything regularly 'cos there's no old-stylee sweet shop I've yet found in Surrey (AFAICS). A few favourites used to be lemon sherbets and cola cubes..the former remove the skin from the roof of my mouth, I've discovered (wtf?), and I'm sure I'd find cola cubes a bit horrible nowadays..

>Hold on… let me get this right.

You obviously missed the interconnect thread – *this* was the more sensible one (just) 😉

Wot's been said – give it a few months to get a good grasp of engaging muscles and getting breathing right (tho' equally you may get it pretty quickly)

Not sure I've ever found anything especially relevant, biking wise, more that it's a good complement to just doing weights or any other training.

I've always had pretty decent core strength/flexibility but it's definitely improved with Pilates – I've been doing it for something like 7 or 8 years now. There's always a more challenging version of any particular exercise, anyone that says it doesn't do much, really isn't trying 😉

>30 minutes with half a hooker should be something that he remembers for the rest of his life.

Nah, that'll blow his…err…mind.
Bumper bag of p*rn (not of the bicycle variety)..you won't see him for the next few years 😉

I can barely see through the tears and my throat hurts from giggling – outstanding !
🙂

FWIW a couple of sisters I knew used to direct each other in the car by 'watch' and 'bracelet' for left and right 😉

Ah, good 🙂

Yeah, it's a pretty decent tool, with a simple ball-bearing race at one end to make the press action smooth – I've used it to fit an FSA, and a Hope.

(It wasn't the fault of the press, but the Hope was a bit of a PITA. I have the press blanks for both their headset and their xc hubs, but gawd knows what headset tool they're supposed to fit – I had to do one end at a time, very carefully, tho' once the cups were most of the way in the rest was fine.)

>I meant the motor :o)

I thought you probably were 😉
Dunno if you remember Elektor magazine back in the 70s/80s, they couldn't seem to get past a half year without feeling obliged to lob in a class D amp !

Yer cheek git Ads 😉
I may have the
a) beard
b) CAMRA membership
c) recumbent
– but sandals really *are* a no-go zone !

In any case, anything will sounds like sh*t if you lob Pantera thru' it on 11 🙂

dunno offhand, but just measured mine (crap placcy verniers I'm afraid) and the step diameters are:

~26.4mm
~29.9mm
~33.7mm
~37.9mm

HTH

>and it'll sound like shit

I think it's come on a long way – saw some figures on something recently and was surprised it was something less than 0.1% thd.

~0.01%:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1358802
http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/40-06/class_d.pdf

(No, I'm not gonna get into an argument about 'it's not all thd') – this stuff's primarily aimed at being efficient – high power and compact/low dissipation, or portable)

>I'm not sure you care about efficiency, just the noise spectrum from all the switch crap going on.

Agreed, to the extent that someone wants to run their amp off a UPS.
But a UPS is *normally* going to be designed for something that can't afford to be switched off (quickly, at least) and with a limited battery limit, so it'll be designed to maximise efficiency, rather than it's sinewave fidelity – hairchested's link is a a computer ups.
There's nothing stopping you designed something different if sinewave accuracy's what you're after, but that's not yer typical UPS.

>Well, no. I'm not going to comment. No no no no no…

😉

Lo' Ads – offhand I dunno – I reserve the right to talk b*llocks 😉

But if you built it as a class D amp – ie using pwm – then you can choose your sample rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_amplifier#Class_D
and it's probably pretty efficient.

Aha:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation
In fact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverter_(electrical)#Circuit_description
(including the smelly 'lob a square wave in the general direction of a transformer !).

I guess there's no reason you couldn't just use something like a wien bridge and a couple of transistors +centre-tapped transformer to be realtively linear, but the efficiency wouldn't be very good.

Since I came across the ticket stub this w/e:
Slunt

>ask yourself why would the designer not incorporate suitable mains filtering?

Judging by the interconnect thread, some people think it isn't so much designed as pulled out of a virgin's chuff 😉

Seriously – you could add a 'mains conditioner' but all it'll do is suppress typically non-periodic transient/switching noise*, and maybe some high frequency noise (tho' your amp supply ought to do that anyway). If that's what you're after then that ought to be fairly cheaply obtainable – I'd guess significantly more than 30 quid and you're being ripped off or into the realm of rapidly diminishing returns.

*actually, transient noise *is* high frequency by its nature, or more accurately, wide-band, but some of the spikiness may get through the amp psu – depends on how the amp's been designed and how spikey the spikiness is.

A UPS generates 50Hz ac from a dc supply – in doing that it'll generate some low level periodic noise (tho' not necessarily audible) – you'll get less supply glitchiness but you equally may get most of the way with a simple mains filter.

If you've got anything particularly noisy on the mains, it'd make as much sense to find whatever it is and deal with that (at a guess appliance motors, switches, dimmers).

>Amused at the thought of someone soldering caps across the mains
Cue 'what caps for house destruction or general messiness ?' thread 😉

Or if your neighbours like wildlife or gardening, don't get a cat, unless you want some very pissed off neighbours.

IMO cat owners are frequently a bit like the part-time smokers you used to get in pubs – they'd have a couple of drags, but most of the time it'd be smouldering on the table next to you stinking the place out til they got bored/desparate enough to take another drag.

Ditto re cats – often people that won't commit to the effort, say, of a dog, but are still want something fluffy around for their occasional convenience/satisfaction. Meanwhile the local wildlife suffers.
A mate got another cat at his missus' insistence (now she wants a bloody dog too..) – some months back the frigging thing was bringing in stag beetles during the one time of the year they're wandering around..daft twunt seemed to think he couldn't keep the cat in for a couple of weeks.

I've found the odd bundle of feathers ripped out of something in the last few years – at least one of the little feckers near us has taken out relatively large things like jays/magpies/pigeons – probably 'cos they take longer to get off the ground. The bird feeders we've got are elevated and generally where there's good visibility, or in a cage on the ground for smaller birds, but the larger birds still wander off browsing the lawn towards the borders, where the cat thoroughfare appears to be.
Magpies and pigeons are two a penny round here, but jays we see a little less frequently, and we've always got at least a pair of collar doves resident nearby – I'd be *particularly* pissed off the the cat got 'em.

Oh, and one of furry shit machines has now taken to spraying up my freshly painted side gate…p'raps I ought to wire it up to the mains..

FWIW, fox shit's more of a nuisance in our garden, but that's probably 'cos I don't dig/hoe it over very often

I actually quite like cats, but I couldn't eat a whole one.

Can't get on with rotary shavers m'self – but I think my beard grows particularly parallel to the skin, which is a bit sensitive too, so I wind up scrubbing the razor to get everything and just get a sore neck. YMMV, lots of people manage to use 'em.

Used a cheapo Braud foil thing for years 'til I bust the sideburn trimmer, so went back to wet shaving with a single blade (double edge) safety razor. But I only shave a few times a week (if that), more frequently and I'd get shaving rash. Foil seemed to work the best for frequent shaving.

>Sofatester . – Load of old shite. The rumour anout JDW buying short dated stock. Stop and think about it. Why make something with a years shelf life, pay for the ingrediants, package it, store it, wait 9 months then sell it cheap to JDW. Its a load of balls.

Most of what JDW sell (at least in number of pumps, if not volume) is real ale rather than the nitrogenated stuff that'll keep for ages. I dunno how accurate the short-dated claim really is, but it's probably gonna be more relevant to real ale than lager, etc.

Basically…pop one open, if that's ok then the rest probably will be ok
Probably a year or two over the mark for Guniness and lager and you won't notice…

>Metallic taste leaching from teh can over time
IMO Guiness always tastes like that to one degree or another…

Boils down to people trying to tell other people that they hear stuff that has no relationship to the science behind it.

Jeez, can't believe you bunch are still at it…

Bog simple safety razor – it's the only thing that cuts into sideburns and around the (long) goatee/beard I've got, unless the last shave was within the last few days.
I was using my father's razor 'til the thread gave up last year (probably about 50 yrs old or more).
I picked up up an adjustable 60's thing off fleabay, but tbh I spend all my time trying to keep it set to the same blade angle as my father's, anyway.

Did think about one of the Merkurs…then again, if I thought I could manage to strop a cutthroat without buggering up the blade I could be tempted…

Don't normally faff with special soap – just use washing soap a few times to soften it, that seems to do the trick – or the foam stuff if I'm in a hurry.

I'm surprised none of you lot haven't heard of non-causal chain wax..the dirt falls off before you've even arrived at the puddle that the dirt came from.
Or comes from.
Or will come from.

Err…whatever….I've read on some internet forums that it's really really good tho'….

>I do have a Masters degree in Physics, give me some credit mate

'Fraid I don't have ESP 😉 – the comments you made come over as someone that knew a little about a few things but not their relationship/significance to anything else – bear in mind there seems to be more than a little of that in this thread.

Actually, perhaps the difference is this – an engineer is always looking to make something 'good enough' – it's rarly any use spending 100x to gain a notional 0.01% of performance. Eg the old 'engineering approximation' used to be 10% – but it obviously depending what you're designing for (and one may want to use error analysis to verify changes). As an engineer, if it has no significant effect, you generally forget about it (unless of course you're worried about error accumulation). In physics you may want to know it's there and squirrel away the fact for later use.

>The way the metal is extruded determines the way the structure is formed and therefore must have an effect on performance

Must? On what basis ?

Oh, I checked with my mate re his Naim stuff…curiously he's never been the slightest bit bothered to try faffing with cable directions, and on his Naim kit the connectors used make it impossible to easily swap 'em round anyway.

>the beatles (all of them)

It's not just me, then 😉

>I wouldn't dispute that for a moment.

I probably would, depending on what that £1/m wire is. Equally if you've wound up the excess wire on the cheap one that'll make a difference, 'cos you've just stuck an inductor between the amp and a speaker. Try drawing a lot of current through a rolled-up extension cable (reel type thing) – it'll get hot, and that's just at 50Hz

I'd certainly expect there'll be a difference regarding whether it's on the stand on on the floor – equally move it in the room too – well, not by 3mm 😉 – that'll make a difference because the pressure waves off the speakers will reflect around the room differently

>Even a few atoms of impurities in a crystal of metal in a wire would affect the electron transport through that structure – after all that's how semiconductors work. Loads of factors involved here.

You've only half the story. You don't have a semiconductor just of one n or p type – it's how you use them together that's important, the crystalline structure of the copper is effectively random (and even it its weren't there doesn't appear to be any reasoning as to why that would make a difference.)

That qed mail's here:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/interconnects-speaker-cables-switches/177452-qed-original-speaker-cable-directional.html

There's an interesting quote from a paper from the 90s, the summary seems to be 'mebbe there's some directionality but it's down in the noise*' (*no pun intended).

Almost more interesting is post #37, which is where some of the directionaily fud may stem from. If you wire the two speakers out of phase (as the guy had done) you *will* detect a difference (and it's easily measurable). But that's very difference from directional wire.

>If they can't measure a difference, how do they know it's there?
To be fair, there is the case of having the right test. For example, you could just sweep a sine wave from 10Hz to 30kHz through an amp, and measure the response/phase delay through it, or you could pulse-test it – both tests will tell you useful stuff, but mebbe not the whole picture.
But in the case of an amp, it's got non-linear components, wheras an interconnect is a relatively simple thing to analyse/measure

>What do you make of the "crystalline strucure" part of the email?

Curious! – if you think about it, current in the cable is a bunch of electrons moving to/fro' – the signal in the cable is *alternating*, so what's in one direction one moment is in t'other the next. Non-linear cable? – I doubt it…..

Bear in mind too that this stuff is built onto a copper-clad fibreglass pcb – there's no such thing as directionality.

@coffeeking – ta, I'll look into that further, that rings a bell.
Tho' that sounds like you have a (n effectively differential) pair running from the sensor, and the shield is a shield, not a ground return – got any links to hand ?

>No matter what people read in reviews or what geometry/spec a bike has

I guess the same bike will appear different to two people just on riding style. Given two bikes of the same geometry and different manufacture they'd still be quantifiably difference in some way (eg loading vs frame flex) – but how you'd relate that to the way is rides is another thing. Whilst Mr Woppitt is kinda right in saying his ears are the final arbiter he's completely missing the point in thinking that's the only comparison, and the only reliable one at that.

>admire the level of engineering expertise on display and am SO SORRY that I may have hurt your feelings after so much hard work and sacrifice to get to where you are today, but the proof of the musical pudding is in the ears eating it, I'm afraid, no matter what the test bench results indicate.

I'm not offended – the point was merely that I'm probably one of the more qualified posters on here rather than pulling rubbish out of thin air.
I'm only offended by people's ingnorance and unwillingness to listen to what I'm trying to get over.

In any case, who do you think designs this stuff, the audio-fairy?
No, blokes like me.

Do you think Naim (et al) pull some circuitry out of a hat? .
No.
It'll be designed/built/analysed/redesigned. Listening tests will be part of that, but they'll still measure stuff on a bench. That's how designing electronics works.

If there's a difference, you'll be able to measure it. How much you can relate the measurements to what you hear is another matter, but it *is* quantifiable. If it isn't quantifiable, you're imagining it.

Why do valves sound better than transistors in amps ? Because their non-linearities produce even harmonics, rather than odd harmonics, which 'sound' better. So, yes, the final arbiter is your ear, but it may still be measured.

But as far as interconects are concerned, it's p*ss-simple linear electronics with nothing interesting going on.

>(to extend the analogy)? How peculiar.

It's not extending the analogy. It's two completely different things. The points is what has a *significant* effect (as demonstrated by the Quad guys). Crap decoupling, poor component choice, or designing an earth loop into the innards of an amp or preamp will probably have far more effect than a short run of *screened* telephone wire between and amp and preamp, for example (depending on crapness, of course). Do you even know what the characteristic impendance of a piece of telephone wire is ? No, thought not. If it wasn't for picking up mains hum or noise you'd probably even be able to do without it being screened.

That's still a subjective test, which is exactly what the snake-oil salesmen rely on. I'll settle for a good microphone and an audio spectrum analyser thankyou very much.

As glenp said, lets have some engineering details.

>the subject a little further either on the web or via their pockets before they resume talking b0ll0cks.

Oh excuse me.
5 years apprenticeship/technican at BT; degree in Electronics ; 18 months postgrad at B'ham uni on RF comms; about half of the least 20 yrs as an electronic engineer doing highspeed board design (where pcb trace lengths and ground loops *are* significant, depending what you're doing).

It's mostly b*llocks* at audio frequencies – you'll probably get away with a pretty scummy shielded cable for a short run so long as you don't move* it and the connections don't oxidise. If it's a long cable (lots of metres) then in theory the cable impedance should correspond to the output impedance of the driving end…but you still need the receiving end to be the correct impedance anyway so as not to reflect back to the source. That's called impedance matching.
Which is why it's pretty academic for a short cable, and reflections happen in a v. short space of time compared to the wavelength of the highest audio you're likely to hear.

By comparision, in the electric transmission industry it *is* important, because the distances between source and destination points are so great that they can lead to what's called 'standing waves' as a result of reflecting energy from the receiving end back to the source. You can get the same thing with a radio transmitter, except now the cable lengths are very short, the result of the reflected energy can be to overheat the output stage.

In baseband (ie voice) telecoms (frequency range is only above 300Hz – 3.4Khz) similarly due to the distance involved, you want impedance matched cables – not necessarily just to reduce reflections, but to maximise the amount of power received. Years ago there used to be something called 'lump loading' – basically a filter in the line at periodic distances to equalise for the characteristics of the line, which itself was less than ideal.

Re ground loops – I find that a little difficult to believe, if the (pair of) cables are only grounded at one end then there's no reference ground at the other end and you're relying in whatever scummy ground there is via the mains (if there is one). At each end the grounds of the connector will be physically (=electrically) close so I can't see why there should be a ground loop issue, at least for hifi.
I can imagine there be an issue if you fed through several levels of equipment and back into the first, mebbe that's what TINAS is referring to – but when chaining stuff end-to-end I'd expect they'd be grounded both ends. (AdamT – you heard anything like that when you were at Harman ?)

*you can get microphonic/movement noise on cables – eg guitar leads are made from 'Low noise' stuff – it's actually mechanically generated noise due to moving the cable.