This site is awesome.. You ncan find alot of stuff here you cant find anywhere else..

This place and MSFN are K-RAD!!

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2023-08-29, 11:19:

What was your first reason to join Vogons? Was it for support on any topic? Was it to promote any program you were working on? Was it for community guidance?

I didn't intend to join. It just happened. It was a happening.

There was a day when I asked myself: What can my old computer do that my new computer can't?

It turns out the answer is invariably linked to audio. Computers are like musical instruments, and the sounds produced by one audio card can be as distinctive as the sounds produced by a crafted wooden instrument. Emulators exist, but software doesn't reproduce EMI noise or capacitor jitter - it means software emulation of PC hardware falls into the same "uncanny valley" that software emulation of human voices falls into!

Suddenly my old computers had value. But, isolating their differentiating characteristics was now about insulating the silicon by removing superficial influences like fan noises. Old fans, mechanical drives, and cheap speakers - these were replaced to make acoustically neutral environments that surface the effects of transformations that had long ago been fixed in silicon. By seeking out specific parts I could reproduce the audio engineering constraints of specific eras.

Then it became nuanced. There are variations in specific boards, specific chips, specific DAC chains. Before I knew it, I had a collection. Then I had opinions. Then I had an account.

I swear, it wasn’t intentional. I just slipped in and nobody stopped me!