thanks for the suggestions, guys. Peteamer , I thought it might be a fruitless quest, but I thought it was worth a shot anyway. Didn't know that's how laser printers worked; I learned something new today :D . rtsai , I wasn't looking for something silent when it's in use; as much as I would love one...

Just remember when you're debating the quality of burnable CD-Rs that even the cheapest, crappiest one you can buy is leagues better than the best-quality redbook CD. As long as you take good care of them, they shouldn't be too much of a problem. cheap DVD-Rs, on the other hand... :roll: Sorry, but...

Nice link, tay . Here is a discussion on the differences among various optical media in a non-forum format. Check it out. Specifically the physical differences between CD and CD-R, and then much further down the page when it discusses the use of a glass master for CD production. (I personally find t...

Hi all, My old inkjet printer just died and I need to replace it with something. I do a lot of music engraving, so it needs to be something fairly specific: B&W laser 1200x1200 dpi duplex capable network capable (ethernet port) ~$1000 (or less :D ) Something that prints very consistently for a long ...

Since designing a product involves engineering, an engineer must somehow measure what he is doing. If he is doing something that is not measurable, then his design is based on a hunch .... I guess the design now depends how good their hunch is. I am willing to be convinced that at least some of the...

Just remember when you're debating the quality of burnable CD-Rs that even the cheapest, crappiest one you can buy is leagues better than the best-quality redbook CD. As long as you take good care of them, they shouldn't be too much of a problem. cheap DVD-Rs, on the other hand...

There is one big problem with getting high quality media, you often don't know what you're getting, "major brands" usually outsource to companies like CMC magnetics(bad), moser baer, mitsubishi chemicals(good), or Taiyo Yuden(good). Taiyo Yuden is the stuff, if you can find those anywhere you're go...

Doesn't that just mean that the error correction worked 100% of the time? Somehow I have a suspicion that those results are not uncommon. That's correct, 100% of the drives on the market should theoretically be able to do this with 100% of the media. All it means is that EDC/ECC is working correctl...

@ mathias :lol: :lol: I would generally stay away from Plextor, as their drive quality has decreased greatly the last few years while their prices have increased. :roll: Also stay away from Sony and Lite-On (they're actually the same drive, one's just rebranded) as they tend to be pretty loud. The N...

It's a little pricey, but gaff tape works wonderfully. $15 for a duct-tape-sized roll...but it's black (good for my 3000B) and it won't ever leave any residue if you decide to pull it off. Holds just as well as duct tape, too. I swear by the stuff for many, many household applications

Just got my S-12 in yesterday, but thanks to Monarch still don't have a mobo to plug it into yet :( . Just for kicks I jumped it (green wire to any black on the 24-pin connection) and played around with my fan controller. I know there's no heat in the case yet but man, that fan is quiet . I'm pumped.

[ Once everyone is on the same page, this debate can really take off, but until then, it's just going to be you vs. the world, and you're not even going to be talking about the same thing! . It's like when I try to talk to my wife :lol: :lol: I think you have a point, though....it does seem like we...

I think that the HS fan can add an appreciable amount of vibration to the motherboard....not too many people even around here have decoupled that particular fan...woudn't be like unmounting a hard drive, but could make a measurable difference.

ckpurvis wrote:I don't know if building a computer submerged in lard would be awesome, or terrifying.

It would be the coolest. thing. ever. Plus it would make a delectible pie crust

the mineral oil route is probably the safest.

vegetable oil? hmm....the only problem with that is that it's a poly-unsaturated fat, and tends to go rancid pretty quickly when exposed to heat and light. The heat is obvious....and you've gotta put it in a clear case if you're going to do something like that 8) Rancid fat smells, well.....nasty. P...

"SHLOWELY BUT SHURELY" WTF? "By Computex, most graphics cards will be 512MB as, of course, 512MB is two times bigger than 256MB and folk like to buy big numbers." :lol: It's possible that they could mean ATI's new r520 core and nVidia's new 70 core, both of which are supposed to have their "officia...

Yaaaay! I win! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: j/k thanks for the vote of confidence peteamer , I couldn't even remember what I wrote though, had to go back and check :oops: . The whole point is though... does it improve your listening pleasure... if it does,... what other people think does not. This is interes...

Aside from the extra 256 MB of RAM being currently worthless (or possibly even detrimental, see some reviews of the X800 XL 512 around the web), that's an extra memory controller and twice as much ram dumping heat into the case....until games start taking advantage of that much RAM there's no way an...

Green Shoes: nice link ;) But regardind the ideal reproduction of a performance, 90% of performances will be in some kind of reverberating room/space, so there is more detail than the microphones can capture. Sounds behind you are muffled by your ears, for example, and I don't think there is an eas...

@ Devonavar (well, the first half of your post, I'm not going to quote it all here). You make a good point but the recording industry has been having this argument for years. If you truly wanted people to have the most accurate reproduction possible, you would mix on only one pair of speakers, a set...

Bias or Discrimination , on the other hand, is the act of judging a single person based on the actions of other similar people, which is what this thread is possibly rampant with. Possibly? Possibly ?!? Where's your doubt coming from?!? Aw, c'mon, I'm just messin' with ya. :wink: I agreed, didn't I...

And I am still quite convinced that there are plenty of people (particularly included in this thread) that would be perfectly happy to loop myself in with the lunatics. I consider generalization to be just that, generalization. You either do it, or you don't. It's plenty clear to me who is. Especia...

Green Shoes, Yep, speakers matter. All the distortion values in cd players and amps are like 0.000x but in speakers and filters a lot more goes 'wrong'. The room can make just as much or more of a difference though, as I found out at my neighbour's. Have you ever seen the blueprints for a professio...

i cant deny there is "something" with vinyl that doesnt exist on all the digital media.. It's the miracle of analog! :D Seriously, it is. Not having to deal with sampling rates and bit depth really helps the sound...the bad thing about vinyl is it has (as alleycat mentioned) a hard time standing up...

nice post niels . Still to this day the only place I can really hear huge differences in sound is the speakers; I don't mind dropping a load on those. the algorithms that the pre/pros use can be pretty big, too. Gotta know where the money counts (like CRT front-projection....mmmm....) Oh, I made thi...

I have a Fluke somewhere around this house that I picked up for ~$50...it does everything but the temperature sensing, so if you've got a probe somewhere that could be a compromise.

boy, the audiophile/computer crossover has come up a lot recently. Poodle , are you on carpet or some hard surface? Audio spikes, unless you can find a really good deal, are going to be much more expensive than a very soft solution (also keeps vibrations from being transferred). If you wanted to go ...

yeha , you had me rolling on the floor. But I think when you said and so many of the perceived improvements in sound actually take you further from the sound-as-recorded (i.e. you're moving away from source transparency, not towards it) you really hit the nail on the head. It's one thing when you'r...

This thread is a spinoff of a discussion contained in the latter part of this post. Please read the aforementioned post before responding to anything here! We do not need to repeat ourselves.

To answer the second part of your question, since you're buying now you might as well go Venice. As I write this a retail box Venice 3000+ is selling for the exact same amount of money as a retail Winny 3000+. The Venice has an improved memory controller (which probably won't make too much differenc...