Just realized how to add buttons to the blog part that say "MORE ANGRY", "LESS ANGRY" and have AI-generated text where the prompt consists of the original post, except angrier, or stupider, or rhyming, etc., iterated as desired. Like a knob you can turn up or down, a filter, applied to the text.#
- (2 min read)#
- #
- "I can't mess with anything or else it will break." Welcome to my world, kid. Everything wants to break, all the time. Sometimes you can fix it. You never know.#
- Tonight we listened to music played by my other new tape deck from 1986, the NAD 6240 Stereo Cassette Deck. This lasted for as long as the kid could stand, which was not as long as I'd have liked, but longer than I think would actually cause him to drop dead from not being able to put the Nintendo Switch on the big screen. So not too long. But long enough for me to feel pretty good, because I fixed it myself.#
- The first tape deck I ever purchased was an NAD 6240. I am pretty sure I got it on discount because it was the previous year's model, but I selected carefully. It was the best cassette deck I could afford. I really wanted an NAD 6300, but they were several months' rent. Later I traded that deck to a friend for an NAD 6325, which I never liked as much (the deck, not the friend). I looked up the specs recently, and it turns out that deck rolls off at 15 kHz because there's no MPX filter switch. So apparently I could hear that difference.#
- I don't trust my ears too much, because it turns out my ears are kind of slutty. They like the sound of everything. I get used to the sound of something, and I can find something to grab onto and marvel at, no matter how high fidelity or digital or pure it isn't. You can get everything you need from music from a mono AM radio. Music is magic that way.#
- I fixed the playback on the NAD 6240 thanks to a thread on Tapeheads. The output was down around 6 dB in the right channel, and even more on the left. I replaced a capacitor that had gone dead, and now playback works great. Recording is another matter, it is completely broken in that way, so I have more to do. But tonight we listened to a TDK AD60, recorded on the NAD 6300, of Melos, Vassilis Tsabropoulos, Anja Lechner, U.T. Gandhi. Lots of piano and violins. I haven't done any mechanical work such as changing the belts, or lubrication, on the 6240 yet. Its wow and flutter are already basically within spec, 0.08%, so I could leave that alone if I wanted. (I will not be leaving it alone, of course.) #
- This is the other system, which is a pair of Alexis Sound monitors, which feature crossovers by Dennis Murphy, driven by a TU-8500 tube preamp I built from an Elekit, with power and gain provided by a Blue Circle Audio BC204 hybrid power amp. I call this the mono rig because the record player hooked up is outfitted with a mono cartridge, but it's stereo. And it sounded really, really good. The TDK AD is a Type I cassette, not the fancy chrome, and the 6300 that made the recording was calibrated to Maxell UD XLI, and I haven't done any adjusting to the bias, nor really tried to optimize recording levels yet. #
- But it sounded really, really good. And I fixed it myself.#
Just realized how to add buttons to the blog part that say "MORE ANGRY", "LESS ANGRY" and have AI-generated text where the prompt consists of the original post, except angrier, or stupider, or rhyming, etc., iterated as desired. Like a knob you can turn up or down, a filter, applied to the text.#
- (2 min read)#
- #
- "I can't mess with anything or else it will break." Welcome to my world, kid. Everything wants to break, all the time. Sometimes you can fix it. You never know.#
- Tonight we listened to music played by my other new tape deck from 1986, the NAD 6240 Stereo Cassette Deck. This lasted for as long as the kid could stand, which was not as long as I'd have liked, but longer than I think would actually cause him to drop dead from not being able to put the Nintendo Switch on the big screen. So not too long. But long enough for me to feel pretty good, because I fixed it myself.#
- The first tape deck I ever purchased was an NAD 6240. I am pretty sure I got it on discount because it was the previous year's model, but I selected carefully. It was the best cassette deck I could afford. I really wanted an NAD 6300, but they were several months' rent. Later I traded that deck to a friend for an NAD 6325, which I never liked as much (the deck, not the friend). I looked up the specs recently, and it turns out that deck rolls off at 15 kHz because there's no MPX filter switch. So apparently I could hear that difference.#
- I don't trust my ears too much, because it turns out my ears are kind of slutty. They like the sound of everything. I get used to the sound of something, and I can find something to grab onto and marvel at, no matter how high fidelity or digital or pure it isn't. You can get everything you need from music from a mono AM radio. Music is magic that way.#
- I fixed the playback on the NAD 6240 thanks to a thread on Tapeheads. The output was down around 6 dB in the right channel, and even more on the left. I replaced a capacitor that had gone dead, and now playback works great. Recording is another matter, it is completely broken in that way, so I have more to do. But tonight we listened to a TDK AD60, recorded on the NAD 6300, of Melos, Vassilis Tsabropoulos, Anja Lechner, U.T. Gandhi. Lots of piano and violins. I haven't done any mechanical work such as changing the belts, or lubrication, on the 6240 yet. Its wow and flutter are already basically within spec, 0.08%, so I could leave that alone if I wanted. (I will not be leaving it alone, of course.) #
- This is the other system, which is a pair of Alexis Sound monitors, which feature crossovers by Dennis Murphy, driven by a TU-8500 tube preamp I built from an Elekit, with power and gain provided by a Blue Circle Audio BC204 hybrid power amp. I call this the mono rig because the record player hooked up is outfitted with a mono cartridge, but it's stereo. And it sounded really, really good. The TDK AD is a Type I cassette, not the fancy chrome, and the 6300 that made the recording was calibrated to Maxell UD XLI, and I haven't done any adjusting to the bias, nor really tried to optimize recording levels yet. #
- But it sounded really, really good. And I fixed it myself.#