BigRedX

The problem with any kind of serious HiFi is that most of the supposed advantages are entirely wiped out by the way that anything since 1990 was actually recorded. It would do most "HiFi buffs" a world of good to actually have a look at a typical recording studio and see just how many 100s of metres of very ordinary cable the average audio signal passes through. Add to that the fact that most processing occurs either in the digital domain inside the computer or an a external device that is probably full of tightly-packed surface-mounted components. They would be far better off spending money on some basic acoustic treatment for their listening space instead of the diminishing returns of ever-more expensive and esoteric playback devices (and goes for both analogue and digital systems).

But you did. It's a vibrato mechanism [/pedant]

AFAICS it's more down to the fact that Thomann don't appear to process any of the orders for dispatch until the end of the week. I have never had an email saying that my order was with the carrier service until the Friday. The delivery time after that is pretty standard for non-priority from the EU mainland.

TBH once your tape speed goes to 15ips and the track width 1/4" you don't really need NR. And 30ips speed brings its own new set of audio artefacts (IIRC the speed of the tape starts to interact with the bias frequency and not in a good way). In the end everything is compromise. Improve in one area and you can often make it worse in another.

Listening without actually watching the video the differences between the three were far less obvious and would have completely disappeared once the EQ and compression had been adjusted for them to fit into a band mix.

Except IIRC Ped borrowed the idea off the owner of "Bassworld" who probably borrowed the idea off TalkBass...

Yes all those other factors have an effect but the main one is the slew of the digital to analogue converter makes the curve virtually smooth again. Plus the fact that your crude illustration neatly avoids showing that, for CD quality audio, peak-to-peak there are 65,536 vertical steps and 41,100 horizontal steps for ever second making each of those absolutely tiny in the first place. Having spent years of my musical "career" struggling to overcome the limitations of analogue systems - the budget ones are terrible, and the good ones require constant maintenance to get the best performance out of them - for all the supposed benefits of analogue audio they can't beat the convenience of digital. IMO both systems have drawbacks when it come to audio fidelity, but for appropriately prepared (mastered) audio I'll take 16bit 44.1kHz or better digital, over any analogue system every time. If you were really serious about analogue audio you'd be looking at high-speed 1/2" 2-track tape with Dolby A NR on a properly calibrated playback system over any vinyl reproduction. For me, so long as the delivery system is not noticeably intruding on the audio signal, I'd rather just listen to the music rather than worry about the format it comes on.

Except that it has got very little to do with Quantisation and Timing Jitter and a lot more to do with the fact that no electronic device can jump between two different voltage states instantaneously, so all those hard steps get turned back into smooth curves due to the nature of physics. There. I managed to say it in two lines with no need for an over-large and inaccurate diagram.

What a waste of time posting an image that is so wrong and takes up an inordinate amount of room to say so. If you really believe that is shown on there you need a hearing test.

This is the most important thing anyone has said in this thread so far.

True Temperament means that you'll only ever be in tune with other True Temperament instruments.

At a gig any 2.4GHz wireless unit will be competing for bandwidth with every single mobile phone user in the venue. After a few of problems with the much more professional Sony 2.4GHz system I have (In particular I had two gigs where the transmitter unit mysteriously changed channels mid-gig, both were venues where either the FoH or monitor mix was being controlled by WiFi connected tablets) I've stopped using wireless. ATM I no longer play enough venues where a standard 20' jack lead isn't sufficient to cover the whole stage area. When it gets to the point that I need to look at wireless systems again I'll take EBS Freak's advice and go for a professional standard system that doesn't use WiFi frequencies.

Really? Not my experience at all. No matter what I have ordered (so long as it is in stock) whether it be a bass guitar or a single set of strings or anything in-between it always arrives on the Wednesday of the week following the one when I placed my order (irrespective of the day on which the order was made). Actually it appears that the cut-off point is some time around mid-day on Friday, so anything ordered Friday morning will arrive the next Wednesday while anything ordered in the afternoon will arrive the Wednesday after that. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

How to play all the songs I wrote for one of the bands I play in, after having spent very little time on them during lock down. Even the new song we wrote is a dim and distant memory... We have a fairly important gig coming up in two weeks time.

It's strange how any discussion of HiFi especially when it comes to playing vinyl descends into some weird "willy-waving" one-upmanship of ever more ridiculous cost and complexity. It is in my nature to be suspicious of anything that requires massive amounts of money spent on it in order to be "properly" enjoyed. Ultimately it is the music and not the delivery medium or playback system that is important. For many years my music listening was done on a Dansette purchased from a junk shop in the mid 70s for £7, and which played one side of the stereo image considerably louder than the other, to the point that when I did finally get a decent hifi system it revealed all sorts of additional instruments I hadn't previously been aware of in the mix, and not always to the improvement of the music IMO, which all goes to show that we end up liking the sounds we are used to, and not necessarily those that are technically the best. These days I own reasonably decent Project turntable that is used for one purpose - to transfer recordings only available on vinyl to my computer. Then I can remove all the pops, clicks and other unwanted artefacts that will detract from my listening enjoyment. However this is not a simple or straight-foward process, and therefore I have found it more effective to buy the CD or digital download copy of anything I have only on vinyl and rip that instead.

A lot of the vinyl Vs digital is down to what we are used to hearing and whether the imperfections of the delivery system are intrusive (or not). For me listening to a lot of independently produced records in the late 70s and early 80s the pressing quality was variable at best, and pretty appalling at lot of the time, and that got in the way of my listening enjoyment. Pops, crackles and general surface noise do not enhance the experience for me no matter how much more warm delivery medium supposedly sounds. The loudness wars of CDs only existed because the medium allowed it, without any adverse physical effects. At least the CDs were still playable (even if the music didn't sound as good as it could have done), unlike several records I owned where the amplitude of the pressing would cause a lot of styluses to jump to of the groove on playback. The true test of vinyl vs CD is to take albums that have been released on both media and separately mastered for the appropriate formats and ask the musicians who produced them which they prefer. In my case the Díck Venom & The Terrortones album "SnakeOil For Snakes" was done this way. The vinyl pressing isn't bad (although these days it has to be - if they were as bad as those made 40 -45 years ago no-one would stand for it), but the CD version is far closer to what we heard (and liked) in the studio when we were doing the final mixes.

I don't slap and therefore none of your 5-string problems affect me (also I've being playing 5-string pretty much exclusively since I came back to bass guitar in the early 90s so I'm well used to it). However I can't imagine that a down-tuned E string will be any easier to slap then trying to avoid hitting the low-B (you ought to have your string-muting sorted out to avoid this anyway). If you really want to go the drop tuner route, I suggest that you retune a 4-string bass and see how you get on with it for a week or two before you spend any money.

I think maybe the import question to ask is why you are conserving moving from 5-string bass to 4-string?

I haven't used the Hipshot drop D tuner, but for me down-tuning the E string to D makes it far to slack for my playing style. Therefore I've stuck with 5-strings with an extra-heavy low-B. You can try this for yourself by simply doing what I did which was to change the tuning of the E string and see if you can get on with the feel. I couldn't, nor could I find a compromise by going slightly heavier on the E (tuned to E it was too stiff and tuned to D to slack, but I am very particular about my string tensions/compliances and even when playing guitar, I have a separate instrument permanently tuned to drop D with an extra-heavy E string). Bear in mind that on a standard bass guitar string set, every 5 semi-tones of down tuning is handled by a string 20-25 thou heavier, so it shouldn't be surprising that using a single string to handle tunings two semi-tones apart is always going to be a bit of a compromise.

Is September 24th 1991 the greatest day in music history? No. I have almost no interest in any of those bands or records.

I'm sure if I'd been a snotty teenager just discovering music in the early 90s I'd have loved Nirvana. However I was in my 30s and to me it just sounded like a dumbed-down version of The Pixies. Grunge held little interest as I was mostly listening to (and playing) House and other electronic dance music.

I think I either: own, have owned, or would like to own, every bass featured in this thread except the Bongo. I've tried one on several occasional and have always been underwhelmed by both the playability and sound, especially when you consider the price, and the fact that's it is essentially a mass-produced instrument.

Which typeface is it? I'll have a look as well. I suspect given what you have reported is that it's an extra glyph in OTF set and most modern applications will recognise when "x" is being used as a multiplier symbol and when it's simply a lower case x. Just as a test will it replace * with the multiplier glyph if I type 2*10? Edit - that's interesting it keeps the glyph but moves it's position. Now I need to do some more investigation with the actual typeface.

I used to be in a band with a guitarist who worked for the company doing the UK distribution for Parker. I was massively impressed with the guitar version of the Parker Fly, and couldn’t wait try the bass. Unfortunately it is possibly the most uncomfortable instrument I’ve ever had the misfortune to play. Weird considering that the concept originally started life as a bass.

I think it’s a combination of both. The typeface supports an extended glyph set which differentiates between “x” and when it is used as a multiplier symbol. I’d have to download the typeface and check it in the glyphs palette of InDesign to se if there are actually two separate glyphs or it’s simply a positioning algorithm. Now if typeface designers can just do away with typewriter quotes and implement proper feet inch/minutes seconds glyphs then we’ll be on our way to typographical perfection.