Firefox

Ok OK, Firefox you could have waited 2 or 3 days for AV to start developing symptoms. You no fun lah :-)

He already knew it was an urban legend la.. LOL..

Something you guys need to know before shooting more strange bugs:

 

WARNING: From the University of North Florida

 

An article by Dr. Beverly Clark, in the Journal of the United Medical Association (JUMA), the mystery behind a recent spate of deaths has been solved. If you haven't already heard about it in the news, here is what happened.

 

Three women in North Florida, turned up at hospitals over a 5-day period, all with the same symptoms. Fever, chills, and vomiting, followed by muscular collapse, paralysis, and finally, death. There were no outward signs of trauma. Autopsy results showed toxicity in the blood.

 

These women did not know each other, and seemed to have nothing in common. It was discovered, however, that they had all visited the same restaurant (Olive Garden) within days of their deaths. The health department descended on the restaurant, shutting it down. The food, water, and air conditioning were all inspected and tested, to no avail.

 

The big break came when a waitress at the restaurant was rushed to the hospital with similar symptoms. She told doctors that she had been on vacation, and had only went to the restaurant to pick up her check. She did not eat or drink while she was there, but had used the restroom. That is when one toxicologist, remembering an article he had read, drove out to the restaurant, went into the restroom, and lifted the toilet seat. Under the seat, out of normal view, was a small spider. The spider was captured and brought back to the lab, where it was determined to be the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata) , so named because of its reddened flesh color. This spider's venom is extremely toxic, but can take several days to take effect. They live in cold, dark, damp climates, and toilet rims provide just the right atmosphere.

 

Several days later a lawyer from Jacksonville showed up at a hospital emergency room. Before his death, he told the doctor, that he had been away on business, had taken a flight from Indonesia, changing planes in Singapore, before returning home. He did not visit (Olive Garden), while there. He did, as did all of the other victims, have what was determined be a puncture wound, on his right buttock.

 

Investigators discovered that the flight he was on had originated in India. The Civilian Aeronautics Board (CAB) ordered an immediate inspection of the toilets of all flights from India, and discovered the Two-Striped Telamonia (Telamonia dimidiata) spider's nests on 4 different planes!

 

It is now believed that these spiders can be anywhere in the country. So please, before you use a public toilet, lift the seat to check for spiders. It can save your life! And please pass this on to everyone you care about.

 

Officer Sylvia Steele

University of North Florida

Science Dept

4567 St. Johns Bluff Road, South

Jacksonville, FL 32224-2645

Urban Legend lah Rameish....

Anyway, very few species of spiders can kill an adult unless the adult is allergic to the venom..

FYI, the Two-Striped Telamonia is a spider jumping spider that's very common in Singapore.. It's not venomous and at it's largest size of 11mm (females), it can barely bite through human skin. I caught a heck load of them before when I was younger..

Thanks Kenshinz. I will monitor and see whether the battery lasts longer than the original. Main thing I wanted to be sure of is that I don't fry the camera.

It shouldn't fry the camera.. but 1,500mAH is a little too optimistic for a small cell.. A true 7.4v 1,500mAH Li-ion battery is about 20mm * 60mm * 40mm in size.

So a 3.7v will be at least half that size.

Saw them before at Interactive Media, but haven't been to SLS for eons, so maybe they dun sell anymore

Yea... Interactive Media Solutions closed down many years back...

TerraTec soundcards are sold in SLS, but not sure about this model

Sure or not? The last shop selling this kind of good stuff closed down many years back... Still remember that I got my Xfire and Eizo LCD there.. They had the 3ware Escalade RAID cards too.. Yummy..

Later my Xfire was replaced with a brand new Sixpack because it was more expensive to ship the card back to Germany for repairs.. LOL.. All this just because one jack had a loose contact.. LOL..

Heh heh.. Happy Birthday Jeff..

Here's a tiny bugger that I caught resting on a flower at the botanical gardens. It was no bigger than my thumbnail. I think its time to save up for a real macro lens.

You just need a Gitzo tripod, an Arca Swiss Ballhead and a Macro focusing rail from Manfrotto. You current lens can close-up well enough.. Oh... And you need to stop being lazy and bring your tripod down.. LOL....

You can try PM-ing lengcm. He has a pair of SR-225's to let go. I can attest to them being in very good, if not, mint condition..

Oh well, with the recent copyright law all this discussion is moot. Duplicating your audio cds is going to be illegal in Singapore, even if you OWN the cd.

Actually, the act of buying a CD gives you the right to make a duplicate copy of the CD.

shagged

 

I hope U mean shagged out.................shagged means copulation.

Used interchangably.. But in the manner he wrote that line, it indeed sounded like he was laid (and I hope not some guy laying him) after this lesson.. LOL...

interesting article

Like I said in my little summary, glass masters are very important. And I know that a glass master is not going to stamp out 72 million copies w/o breaking. Odds are that they used 2nd or even 3rd generation glass masters to stamp out the CD in the link. =)

Anyway, to finish off, here's a simplified guide for duplicating audio CD's.

Try to use a better quality CDR.

You need not get a Mitsui Gold.

Simply any Taiyo Yuden Gold or Ricoh Gold CDR's will do. As will other brands that have these 2 companies OEM for them.

It's worth the slightly higher price.

Read & Burn at low speeds.

Have the drive reading the source disc do so at lower speeds, I'd recommend 4x or 8x. You'll get a more accurate copy that way.

Similarly, when burning the CDR, use 4x or 8x. These 2 speeds are low enough not to suffer from issues with high speed burning.

At the same time, they're not so low as to cause failure/ errors on high-speed dyes.

Reading to an image on the harddisk before burning is a very good idea. Copying on-the-fly is not a good idea.

Software.

Use CloneCD 3.xx if you can find it. Otherwise, Alcohol 120% is an equally good alternative. These will allow bit-for-bit copying.

Using EAC to rip to .wav files and then burning a compilation will change the characteristics. Therefore, I can't recommend doing so.

Hardware.

If you have an older 12x/ 24x/ 40x Teac CD-RW drive, use it! The last 52x burner from Teac is not the same. It's a cheap Taiwanese OEM and the quality is not as good as the 3 listed above. TDK and Yamaha burners seem to be okay from my experience. Avoid BenQ/ Acer like a plague.

There are 2 main factors as to why CD's and CDR's sound different.

1) Readability.

2) Servo-mechanisms.

Readability is affected by:

How well the original CD is pressed. A CD from a smaller production run is likely to be of better quality than one from a very large production run (mainly popular music CD's).

The reason is that CD's are pressed from what is called a glass master. The first glass master is cut out via high precision machinery using lasers. This is called the 'father'.

CD's on a limited production run usually use the 'father' only. Their quality is more of less ensured. On larger production runs, you can't just use the 'father' as it'd be too slow to stamp out CD's.

Hence, more glass masters have to be produced. Unfortunately, these 2nd generation glass masters (called 'son') are not made using the precision machinery.

They're casted from molds which are made from the 'father'. The 'son' will therefore be degraded. If more are required, you'll have the grandfather, father & son etc..

This will affect the quality of the CD's being produced.

For CDR's, the readability is affected by the CD writer/ burner and the quality of the CDR.

A CDR burnt at low speeds is usually but not always. As CD burners get faster, newer burning strategy dyes are developed to allow the CDR's to match the high-speed writing.

That's to say, a high speed CDR would not appreciate being burnt at 1x or 2x. Doing so would result in a less readable CDR.

I'd recommend burning audio CD duplicates at 4x or 8x only. These 2 speeds are low enough not to suffer from issues associated with higher speed burning.

By burning at lower speeds, the pits formed are more rectangular than being like trapeziums. Meaning that they're easier for drives to read and are closer to what pits on a good stamped CD would be like.

Another factor is the type of dye and reflective layer used. Not all dyes & reflective layers behave the same.

The various combinations are:

Cyanine w/ gold (slight blue-greenish hue; later generations are greenish in hue), Cyanine w/ silver (bluish hue);

Pathlocyanine w/ silver (silver hue), Pathlocyanine w/ gold (light greenish hue), Pathlocyanine w/ real 24K gold (Found only on archival grade Mitsui Gold and Kodak Ultima Gold media; Deep green-gold hue);

Early generation AZO dyes (Deep blue hue; AZO dyes are used only on Mitsubishi & Verbatim media; Verbatim is a subsidary of Mitsubishi), later generation AZO dyes (Super-AZO, Sonic-AZO etc; Light blue hue similar to cyanine w/ silver)

Pathocynanine w/ gold offers one of, if not the, best quality and readability. I've never had a Mitsui Gold CDR fail to be read on any drive/ player. Even 14 yr.o. players read them like a charm. They're also probably the longest lasting medias around. In laboratory tests, they can withstand the equivalent of more than a 100 years of environmental exposure easily. The top grade Mitsui Archival media (now known as MAM-A) which uses real 24K gold withstands 300 years of exposure.

In my own private listening tests the following medias performed from best to worse:

1) Mitsui Gold (Indistinguishable from original media). Expensive media, no longer sold in Sg.

My last purchase cost $1.10/ pc. This pricing is w/o jewel cases and is the same whether you take 50pc/ 100 pc bulk pack.

Mitsui bulk pack archival grade is approximately S$2.00/ pc for 50/ 100 packs online, not inclusive of S&H.

2) Ricoh Gold & Taiyo Yuden Gold (Both Pathlocyanine w/ gold). Very subtle differences from original. Best value for money. Their CDR's can be had for about $0.40/ pc. Most people would not notice the differences between originals and these.

3) Mitsubishi 1st generation Phono Super-AZO & Metal-AZO media.

4) Mitsubishi later generation Super-AZO, Blue diamond AZO & Sonic-AZO media, SmartBUY coloured, SmartBuy Platinum & SmartBuy Grade A gold media. The Smartbuys use Cynanine dyes with silver for the coloured and Platinums, Gold for the Grade A Gold media. These are pretty much dirt cheap but of reasonably good quality. I'd draw the line here as the minimum grade of CDR's you'd want to use.

5) TDK Gold, Emtec (BASF), Prodisc & other various super-cheap media. These are truely blacksheeps. The layers peel easily and they should not be used for archiving/ backing-up any data for more than 1 month. Readability is also particularly poor.

I personally use an Emtec disc for testing old & 2nd hand players. If the player is able to read a well-burnt Emtec, it's lens is basically in very good condition.

Some lens simply won't read these medias. My Panasonic DVD player when new rejected the Emtec outright.

The next main factor which I'm to discuss is the CD player servo-mechanism.

Different CD players use different transport mechanisms, lens, servo-control chips and power supply.

A good transport mechanism will provide a stable platform and this can help the lens better read difficult discs. Similarly, a well designed & built lens will be able to read a disc better.

The most important factor is actually the power supply and servo-control chips and mechanism. These react differently to the type of disc inserted into the player. All the various components of the servo-mech. pollute the power supply. The manner in which the power supply is polluted depends on how the servo-mech. runs.

Since it runs differently with each inserted CDR or pressed CD, that's where the sonic differences come in.

If the mech. pollutes the power in a spectrum outside of the analog section domain, then you'd not hear a degraded sound.

However, if the inserted media causes the mech. to react in such a manner as to pollute the power in the same spectrum as the analog domain, you'd deem that disc to have a worse sound.

Next, you have the power supply. If the power supply does not feedback the pollution to the transformer or mains (highly unlikely situation), you'd not hear the difference between a CDR or pressed CD of equal readability. As I've stated this is extremely unlikely. However, the degree of pollution varies very largely.

Most CD players use a single transformer to supply power to both the mechanisms, lens, display, digital section & analog section. By sharing a transformer, the degree of pollution is increased.

Worse yet, most people regard toroids as superior to E/R/C core transformers. This is not true.

Toroids are more efficently BUT they're the most reactive. Almost all pollution will pass back to the other windings (used for the other sections, especially the analog output section) as well as the mains.

Take a look at the high-end CD players. Most of them use seperate and/ or non-toroidal transformers for the servo-controller and digital sections and the analog sections. An example can be seen in the Cary 303 player. It uses an EI core transformer as well as a R-core transformer for the different sections.

These are the main factors as to why CDR's sound different from pressed CD's and also why pressed CD's from different countries do sound different.

The odds are that factories in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand etc. receive 2nd or 3rd generation glass masters. Whereas in countries like Japan, UK & USA, the factories are the ones producing and using the 1st generation glass masters.

Hehe... Spotted a miniscule mistake... The rectifier in the picture is a half-wave rectifier which is equivalent to 2 diodes, not 4 diodes as with full-wave rectifiers.

ok will try that next

yday abit raining.. very hard to camp

Yea, it was.. I was going to shoot at the 'thieves market' but it was just after a downpour and not many people were there..

Actually, there's a nice spot for night shots but you need to walk quite a distance.. It's on the highway. You've gotta walk down from the field quite a bit to get to the stairs leading up.

If you can, I highly³ recommend using a buffer for the virtual ground.

hi guys.. just joined few days back. didnt realise there's actualli a local site dedicated for us audiophiles.. this is cool..

 

well.. im using a creative nomad jb zen xtra and a cheap pair of ($50) sony mdr-033s (the street style clip-ons type - i couldnt find a link... they've discontinued this series anyway) but u guys can prbly gauge the specifications i guess.

 

so... the question is, would any headamp actualli make much of a diff?

 

1) shd i save up and invest in a better headphone first.. and if so, what do i look out for.. (i tried in vain to find some info on the net regd freq range, impedance, they all basically sound like machine code to me)

 

2) a headamp is still quite viable.. and then the next question would be, which type of amp prbly suits my need. cmoy/cmoy2/a47?

 

i just picked up a book off the library to learn more about electronics.. hopefully things will start to make more sense. maybe once im more experienced i'll post out some of this theory, it'll prbly help alot of noobs like me get started wif the terminology.

 

and lastly, wat's the deal wif the gain. well.. i sort of figured that its related to the impedance of your 'phones. meaning the higher range of 'phones will prbly need a gain of abt 7-11...something like dat? well then... based on my current setup.. how much gain do i need? and how do i adjust this in terms of the circuitry? put more voltage across the op-amp?

 

phew. i hope i made sense.

1) Yes.

2) Build an A47. If you're half-competent with a soldering iron and with reading schematics, it's not going to take much effort to build it.

An A47 is only very slightly more difficult to build than a basic cmoy but not as difficult as a buffered cmoy (sometimes known as uber-cmoy). However, it's substantially better than the basic cmoy and IMO, also superior to the uber-cmoy circuits.

The gain of 3 on an A47 is good enough if your hearing isn't shot. If it is, I'd recommend spending the money on visiting an ENT specialist.

10MP? Is that the resolution you usually get when the photo labs scan images from your film into CDs?

At least the lab I go to... Hehe... And best of all, it's less than 10min away from my place.

Since some birrrdy wanted to see the old woman's face.. hehe..

Firefox,

 

My 2¢

 

1st shot: Nice but is underexposed (you dont capture the expression on the guys face)

 

2nd Shot: The boredom would have been captured better with the inclusion of the woman face.

 

3rd Shot: Nice but tighter cropping (ie cropping out the man bending over on the left altogether) would have captured the essence better. A higher angle to whould have also shown what they are looking at. Although the woman who saw you has a nice expression.

 

4th Shot: The background/foreground is clutterd - but the woman has a nice expression. Should have gone closer.

 

Nice pictures - very film like ;-)

Yup.. Was testing out the camera la.. Anyway, no cropping on the shots.. Was trying to frame as well as possible.. LoL.. Kinda difficult when I'm shooting across the walkway of others.. The woman in the 4th pict. a bit garang la.. Don't dare to venture too close.. Wait kenah one times slipper smack my face.. Haha..

Can do some cropping actually.. Since I've got the shots in 10MP resolution... Hehe..

I deliberately told the guy to not compensate any exposure/ colours hence the underexposed shot.. Made a stupid mistake of metering off the grey tiles.. It wasn't close enough to 18% grey.. LOL..

Sometimes, you just got to slow down and look around you...

A splitter should give better sonics if it's a good splitter.. However, you may run into some problems as another forumer did if you're running from 2 sources into an amp.

erm, nobody's answered my question. Could 1000uF caps "slow" down the sound?

Not if they're just used for signal coupling.

When did your get these BGs and how much they cost?

Since your used such good parts for mod, I will suggest adding some 0.1uF MKP or MKS bypass caps.

They should be much better than the tiny X7R caps EMU used.

The BG NX-HiQ's are not meant to be bypassed. At least, that's what I gather from users' experience.. I'm not a BG fan anyway.. There wouldn't be much of an improvement bypassing them as they're already low-ESR caps. It's more of a tweak when non-low-ESR caps are used.

Adrian: How much is the EMU-0404? I might consider getting one.. Heh.. Been using onboard sound for too long.. LOL.. Have to get a proper soundcard since I've been handling lots of video media conversion and video edtiting work lately..