RealMarkDeneen

I'm with ya' brother!

I definitely have a bias and preference for physical media over files or cloud media. Probably due to my age. I like "owning" versus renting. I like handling media, and maybe even carrying it with me on occasion. I gave up LPs a few years back even though i loved that form best. A bit too much hassle involved and they took up a lot of space. I very much enjoyed album cover art and liner notes. The covers could entice me, call me, to play the record. I would see a cover and think "yeah! That's what i want to hear." Over the past 50 years my musical interest has become very binary. I love it, or i can't be bothered with it. What i love is primarily music I've loved for decades. If i loved it in 1960, I'm still loving it today. When i play an old favorite, I'm moving back in time and feeling the ideas and people of that moment. A great singer in 1960 still sounds great today. I have Spotify. I don't think it sounds very good overall. I use it mainly like an encyclopedia to find new versions of old songs i like. I started doing home studio recording a couple years ago using 4-trackers and that got me into cassette format. I've bought a lot of music on cassette as a result and i really like the sound of that media a lot. It's like s teaspoon of honey. And i have an unhealthy addiction to cassette recorders and players now. I also love big cars from the 1970s. There might be a connection there? Comparing musical media is a lot like comparing the paper media in photography. When i was heavily into doing photography exhibitions i would buy all these exotic papers to print my photographs, and of course this led to agonizing hours over which paper gave a particular photo the best presentation? Also, lots of wasted ink on paper that didn't look good. And, there was the usual problem of everyone having a different opinion. It was agonizing. Events and Players inhabit two uniquely different realms. No photo of Paris is ever going to convince me "I'm there." And no music media players will ever convince me "There's a woman singing La Boheme in my living room." I gave up and just accepted that simulacrum will always come in behind lived experience.

A significant feature of zipcord is that one conductor has "ribs" molded in making it easy to have (+) and (-) conductors using one color of insulator.

Right. I think the most significant change that killed off investigative reporting was the outrageous 21st century stampede to prosecute and imprison "whistle blowers." Dozens of men and women have been thrown in the clink by the DOJ for exposing "truths" or "facts" that were just too inconvenient, and this has effectively smothered old school investigatove journalism. When I hear people say they want REAL news, I want to remind them that those reporters are in JAIL CELLS rotting and waiting to die - no names need be mentioned. But, this all leads to a much MUCH bigger social problem: Populations are buying the illusions of civilization wholesale. They are accepting the entire theatrical presentation of the competition of nations, religions, political parties, news, sports, surveillance grids, wars, TV, Internet, economics, as though they were thinking, "Yeah - this is what life is!" And being swept into this synthetic vortex of relentless "behavior control" they have lost the 2M year heritage of the species. They are trading in life's magic for endless E-ticket rides through a synthesized Disney-like experience being staged by the likes of silly businessmen, celebs, and Pols. It's REALLY hard to resist the vortex!

Perfectly brilliant! Thanks for typing all that out!

Humans are infinitely curious and crave gossip. News is just the technological incarnation of gossip. No one thinks a reporter is in the War Room, or in a Cabinet meeting, or in the FBI as they review cases, right? Ergo, what reporters get is a statement from a spokesperson. That is simply gossip. They have no conceivable way to verify what they are told, aside from more statements by more spokespersons. All governments everywhere operate in as much secrecy as they can muster. When the government speaks they are naturally creating the narrative they want people to accept. To ever know what's going on the tool we peasants have is the "exhaust vapors." Track the historical data that flows from government action. For example, with inflation one can look back at mountains of data from 2019-2022 and pretty easily piece together what happened to cause this inflation. But you won't get their spokesman to explain it to you on the news.

@Audible Nectar it's always fabulous when we get down to the raw fundamentals!

Every person alive suffers under the illusion that the world should always turn their way. "News" is a manufactured stimulant to keep the population engaged in advertising messages. Angry is good--it drives more news consumption. There's nothing else important about it. The world is organized around creating wealth, not creating wellness. Follow the money. The US economy is 70% consumer buying. That machinery is the most important to keep going. If that merry go round stops the roof falls in. So advertising is absolutely required to keep the game going. And what better cracker to serve it up on than "gossip" -- also called "news". It's a vehicle for wealth creation and has no other inherent value as it now exists in society.

Well, people have no conceivable means of determining what's true. Truth is a red herring when it comes to so-called news. What people do is assign trust to sources that confirm their established bias. News is nothing but a business opportunity like diapers, TVs, and smart phones. The product is cheap to produce, cheap to distribute, and extremely profitable. Media companies owe their shareholders the same dedication to profits that a car company owes their shareholders. They owe nothing to their viewers who are the product they deliver to their advertisers. News is NOT a public service.

Two equally good outcomes.

Twitter's customers are advertisers. Twitter's product to sell is User Behavior. User Behavior is governed by an extensive Terms of Service Agreement between Twitter and the tweeting users. So, how does "free speech" become an issue here? It seems to me a better complaint would be: Eliminate the TOS Agreements for these private platforms functioning as public utilities. Entirely too much of our daily activity is now governed by corporate contacts rather than civil law. That is dangerous.

As a basic advertising business, in the end the advertisers will decide what they are willing to be associated with. Tweeters will consume endless bowls of gruel, but advertisers may not want to pay for it if it gets out of mainstream acceptability. And, I don't think they have been adding many new accounts for the past couple years. Their daily active users has been growing at a snails pace for 5 years already. They are 16th most popular social media app in a rapidly falling segment of business. What a buy!

No crystal ball here, but with tech stocks losing *cough THREE TRILLION DOLLARS *cough in market cap this year, I can't see Twitter being worth much at all. As for Musk, he is a bona fide "Master of the World" and as such he absolutely is capable of Big Effects and Big Things. However, he already has a lot of balls in play, and for Tesla to maintain the spectactular insane stock price he will be fighting off some very big competitors from here forward. There's only 24 hours in a day, even for Musk. Maybe that's why he tried his damnedest to NOT BUY that turkey?

I didn't know the Constitution was involved in the sale? 😀

Way over-paying for an unprofitable Social Media property just when the Social Media Craze has come to it's end doesn't look like much of a deal. Hmmm? What would make more sense - plowing $40B into battery development, spaceship development or a silly, failing, non-profitable social media sewer?

I didn't watch the video (too long for today). The takeaway for me about the Epstein fiasco, is not any political or spy intrique angle -- but about the naked revelations of how the US two tiered justice system works against all the interests of regular (99.9%) people. When Alex Acosta, a US Attorney from the DOJ, helps bat down and cover over massive locally derived evidence of dozens of sex crimes in order to provide a "non-prosecution agreement" in Epstein's favor, the "rigging" is 100% out in the open for the public to see. Considering how soon this was after the DOJ refused all Wall Street prosectutions for the 2008 Financial Fraud Regime, I don't know how anyone could retain respect for the DOJ. For the DOJ, all the young girls that were Epstein's victims were just part of the US "throwaway population" - about 5M-10M people at the outermost social and economic margins of society who the government repeatedly demonstrates have "no value" to society, and are not therefore due protections or justice.

Hi Bruce, Hard to say. I thought the 6H30 was better sounding for my ears, and they were easier to obtain quiet ones than the 6DJ8. It's a pretty easy upgrade. I can post the original schematic too. I found that one also. These days, I find any discussion about "sound quality" to be like discussing fine wines. I have no way to relate my tastes to anyone else. So, the answer is..........."maybe"..

Well, I think people put up with a lot of my mistakes and reliability issues, so I'm happy to give it away. I don't think it's anything more than a few pennies at this point. I probably should have done it when I retired. But, I appreciate your generous comment!

JMA CDROM? Now, that I am deep into the backup files, and putting up schematics and what not, maybe the smartest move is to create a "JuicyMusic CDROM" with ALL the stuff for ALL the products? Manuals, schematics, BOMs, etc. Seems like that would be a no-brainer. One and done, kind of thing.

Absolutely true. In my exprience, bringing any "idea" to life will almost always require stepping out on uncertain ground, taking chances, and what I like to say is "betting on yourself." If you won't bet on you, it's hard to expect others to.

Tercel Phono Preamp Schematic - -

JuicyMusic Merlin Schematic - @Marvel This is the schematic for the Merlin with 6H30 tube. It should be very close to any Merlin out there.

Hi, Thanks for the comments. As for one man band I really stretched the idea to the limits. Of the 20 skills i really needed, I really only had 3. The rest I had to play by ear. As for the circuit you mentioned I "probably" heard it between 1974 and 2010, but I'm not sure. Over the years i scratched up dozens of phono circuits and of course we all had the Big Red Radiotron book... so probably. In my Paragon Audio and ADC days we used active eq, but when I began to fool around for Juicy circuits i got hooked on eliminating feedback. If I recall the BBX eq was within 1/2dB or so. I fell in love with the simplicity of the thing. Like most designers I wish I had done 10 or 20 things differently, but.... that's life!

Thus far, I haven't located a Merlin schematic. If I have to I think I can recreate it from memory. It's the simplest of all the preamps. But, I'm still rumaging through backup disks. Mark

Original BlueBerry Schematic -- General Schematic of the original BlueBerry