New direction for Exxos...?

[mrbombermillzy]

I'm not been in a position where I can spend much time on anything recently, but I'm hoping to get more into the audio side of things sooner or later.

If you are asking what sort of things people would be interested in, I would love something like an improved DBX encoder<>Decoder circuit to push cassettes to over 100db or something.

Although saying that...I know cassettes are meant to be having a bit of a comeback, but finding cheap unused metal tapes (they don't seem to be coming back) is a bit on the expensive side and you would be pushing it to get the noise reduction levels from a ferrous tape.

Other than that; yeah, high end amps are of interest, as well as good quality DAC playback equipment.

@exxos Maybe a good business venture would be using a current gen inexpensive motherboard in a small form factor case, with Linux and some custom designed HQ audio circuitry for a high end digital media playback device?

[exxos]

If you are asking what sort of things people would be interested in, I would love something like an improved DBX encoder<>Decoder circuit to push cassettes to over 100db or something.

Although saying that...I know cassettes are meant to be having a bit of a comeback, but finding cheap unused metal tapes (they dont seem to be coming back) is a bit on the expensive side and you would be pushing it to get the noise reduction levels from a ferrous tape.

Not sure I really follow.. Cassette tape suffered from very low sampling rates.. I think it was in the order of 12KHz IIRC. to improve them you would "simply" have to speed up the motor to increase the sampling rate.. As to if the rest of the circuit could keep up or not...

Other than that; yeah, high end amps are of interest, as well as good quality DAC playback equipment.

@exxos Maybe a good business venture would be using a current gen inexpensive motherboard in a small form factor case, with Linux and some custom designed HQ audio circuitry for a high end digital media playback device?

But that sounds like a enormous amount of work again.

I was more looking for simple DIY type audio projects such as digital amplifiers as I know a lot about them already. I do know stuff about linear amps but this is going back to like 20+ years ago now. But I may look into recreating some vintage gear at some point. I don't know much past this type of stuff I'm afraid. Once you get into DAC's and encoding / decoding type stuff you it into very time-consuming and expensive projects.. I already did enough of those with Atari stuff

[mrbombermillzy]

If you are asking what sort of things people would be interested in, I would love something like an improved DBX encoder<>Decoder circuit to push cassettes to over 100db or something.

Although saying that...I know cassettes are meant to be having a bit of a comeback, but finding cheap unused metal tapes (they dont seem to be coming back) is a bit on the expensive side and you would be pushing it to get the noise reduction levels from a ferrous tape.

Not sure I really follow.. Cassette tape suffered from very low sampling rates.. I think it was in the order of 12KHz IIRC. to improve them you would "simply" have to speed up the motor to increase the sampling rate.. As to if the rest of the circuit could keep up or not...

I was talking about noise levels really, so in laymans terms, if we are using words like 'bitrate', its like a sample rate at 8bit vs 16bit at the same bitrate. And despite the lower audio granularity, being analog, theres none of that 'jingle bells' type compressed/lossy sound you get with a e.g. 96kps MP3. A good metal tape with DBX encoding can give a surprisingly good noiseless sound. (I suppose, I love the idea of a tape sounding close to CD quality.)

Its a bit of a pointless exercise though, if metal tapes are going the way of the '060

Other than that; yeah, high end amps are of interest, as well as good quality DAC playback equipment.

@exxos Maybe a good business venture would be using a current gen inexpensive motherboard in a small form factor case, with Linux and some custom designed HQ audio circuitry for a high end digital media playback device?

But that sounds like a enormous amount of work again.

I was more looking for simple DIY type audio projects such as digital amplifiers as I know a lot about them already. I do know stuff about linear amps but this is going back to like 20+ years ago now. But I may look into recreating some vintage gear at some point. I don't know much past this type of stuff I'm afraid. Once you get into DAC's and encoding / decoding type stuff you it into very time-consuming and expensive projects.. I already did enough of those with Atari stuff

Ok, thats fair enough. Never mind then. Dont want you escaping one binding stress to jump into another.

[exxos]

I was talking about noise levels really, so in laymans terms, if we are using words like 'bitrate', its like a sample rate at 8bit vs 16bit at the same bitrate. And despite the lower audio granularity, being analog, theres none of that 'jingle bells' type compressed/lossy sound you get with a e.g. 96kps MP3. A good metal tape with DBX encoding can give a surprisingly good noiseless sound. (I suppose, I love the idea of a tape sounding close to CD quality.)

yeah but noise levels on 12khz is a bit pointless IMO . CD samples at 44KHz. So you would have to increase the tape speed 4x to get the samplerate of CD. Technically with a quality tape you can surpass the audio quality of CD as its analog. THEN you look into improving the recording technology.

Its why you get all the hiss on tapes as the samplerate is so low. Trying to reduce noise levels on 12KHz is kinda like polishing a turd really

Get a quality tape deck & cassette.. Gear the motor to run 4x as fast and see what happens.

[IngoQ]

yeah but noise levels on 12khz is a bit pointless IMO . CD samples at 44KHz

Hmm, am I missing something here? Aren't cassette tapes analog and DBX is a analog noise suppression method, like Dolby was?

[mrbombermillzy]

yeah but noise levels on 12khz is a bit pointless IMO . CD samples at 44KHz

Hmm, am I missing something here? Aren't cassette tapes analog and DBX is a analog noise suppression method, like Dolby was?

Yeah, its amplitude compression though. So basically, tapes have a SNR of ~44db...DBX takes a higher level input, compresses it to fit the 44db tape level, then on output, expands it back. It can therefore reach around 80-90db IIRC.

Hence my comparison to 8/16 bit samples rather than the sample rate. (Although, I will say, a top end consumer deck; Nakamichi Dragon or comparable, and a good Type IV tape can reach around 22khz equivalent). And remember actual digital samples are not as nice sounding as analog 'fuzzy' resolution.

Get a quality tape deck & cassette.. Gear the motor to run 4x as fast and see what happens.

That sounds like a fun experiment...attempt to reach reel to reel audio quality by cranking up the tape speed.

Its a shame there is not a limitless supply of quality metal tapes (or AA+ decks of the exact same brand available, so you could do the same mod and not have to mess with loads of different variables between decks), otherwise you could market the resulting 'super deck'. Maybe match it up with a very good amp too.

[exxos]

I still think about all this often. Not just the direction of the forum but me personally.

When I started doing upgrades there was almost nobody doing them. That was my main motivation to support the platform. In recent times, whatever I start designing, others do the same. Great to support the platform, but for me continuing its not good.

It again goes back to when myself and Alison developed PeST. It was a good seller for us and gave us motivation to do more projects. Alison started on a hard drive as there was nothing. Then jookie decided to finish satandisk after Alison asked him for some help. Then all the clones were born. So it was pointless to continue . Same with PeST. So many clones now its not worth doing anymore.

I have the same problem with my falcon RAM boards. They was a good seller until others started to make them. Now I sell almost none. I probably lost a lot of money in that project as a bulk purchased simm sockets and other parts. Same again with multiple other projects. I don't make anything as it is. Eventually money runs out and that's it.

Yeah people say competition is good and exxos doesn't like it. I'm not against people doing stuff. Its good people create things for the old platforms. But also there becomes a point where there is simply no need to develop items anymore. The market was tiny when I started and it only ever gets smaller.

Then there is motivation. I really have none anymore. I have been routing PCBs for almost 30 years now. Its not enjoyable anymore its just a never ending chore. When if I wanted to, I can't, because my hands always hurting. It slows everything down and just gets frustrating.

Mix in parts shortages where parts are impossible to find. Crazy prices. Things may improve but currently it's not helping. As people know it's been hell getting stuff built lately and that's only half the battle. Not fun at all. After all that, I cannot ship items now outside of the UK (at the time of typing). Maybe it will be fixed soon , maybe not. Though I really would have to reprogram my store to use different postal systems. Its just more 100s of unpaid work. Again, not fun.

There is also the "exxos haters" who just want to bash anything in say or do all the time. Why should I bother to research all the problems when a lot of people just want to destroy it ? Not my problem people just can't / won't understand basic things. Its just "Groundhog day" all the time. There are lots of bugs in the machines which need solving yet. But I just don't have motivation for it anymore. I present my findings and find solutions and some just endless complain. I wish I never mentioned the DMA or parity Simms issues and other stuff I've worked on over the years.

Like I almost finish my new falcon clock patch. But will anyone understand it ? I wrote loads about it all already. Solved the long term mysteries about it. Does anyone care ? Are people going to buy my latest or just buy the cheapest one sold elsewhere ?

Also I am seeing more and more fake China parts lately. Things like CPU,FPU,GAL etc I think are almost gone now. The prices are increasing and I've wasted almost £400 now in buying parts trying to get parts which actually work. The problems of these old parts and sourcing them is not improving. Just buying a CPU used to be simple. Now its a ongoing knightnare.

As regular people know, I'm having to change PCB supplier every couple of orders due to endless issues dealing with idiots. They keep doing things wrong no matter how many times I explain things to them. Then there's quality issues with some PCBs, not being cleaned properly,incorrect assembly or parts missing. Dealing with some of these companies is like dealing with a bunch of teenages where it's there first day on the job. I just don't have the time or patience for it anymore. I dare say I'm on the 30th fab house no. This has been ongoing for 20+ years.

Overall while some people help with various things, there just isn't enough active people to help with a lot if things anymore. Just look at the chaos with GB7 in there is no real help or information on how to do anything. Again , there is just no fun anymore in fighting endless battles . I'm not going to spend a year learning assembly to write a few lines of code for software nobody cares about.

Whichever direction I try and move in, I basically hit a brick wall. There just isn't anywhere for me to go anymore. Even when I do something I just think it's a waste of time bothering. I mean yeah it was a bit of fun at the time getting a searchable floppyshop index online. But my site stats show nobody ever visits the page. So was there really any point in doing it? It was a LOT of work.

It's like a lot of time went into the H4/H5. Years of bug fixes and upgrades. It should be big news all over the internet. But its like the project doesn't exist . One of the main issues people had was lack of easy expansion. H5 has lots! Fixes all common bugs on original machines and improvements. Some said it was to expensive. But all the work was done for free. I can't giveaway the hardware for free as well. Really the H5 should be more like £20,000 per board.

Hobbies are supposed to be something to do for fun, something to enjoy and unwind. But it just isn't. Its just more stress and endless thousands of unpaid work hours. The whole thing is a uphill battle these days regardless of how I look at things. Keeping the server running is a full-time job by itself and the ongoing nightmare with buggy software etc

So I keep thinking maybe its just time to think about retiring. This doesn't mean I will close the forum or leave totally or close my store just yet. But indeed I don't think there is much point in continuing on the path which things are on for me personally. I keep asking myself what do I get out of all this personally and I cannot even think of one single thing which is enjoyable about all this stuff. So maybe it is just time to move on and look for something which is actually enjoyable to do in whatever form that will be.

[stephen_usher]

I can totally understand what you're talking about.

With regards to the lack of Internet visibility for the recreation motherboards, I think you've hit bias for certain platforms. The ST isn't regarded in the same way as the C64, Amiga or ZX Spectrum and, indeed, there's still the anti-ST snobbery in parts of the community. I've seen this a lot of times on the RMC Discord. The ST is almost sneered at. It's all very school playground stuff. *sigh*

And yes, many people would rather buy a rip-off on eBay than buy an original and then complain when it doesn't work. A sign of the times I'm afraid.

As for the Falcon clock patch... let's face it there weren't very many Falcons built. I bought a clock fix just in case even though my Falcon is odd in that it works. I'll probably buy the revised one as that looks to be based upon a far more comprehensive investigation of the problem.

[sporniket]

I totally get it, a hobby should be enjoyable, at the very least.

[nemox]

I'm waiting for Falcon patch 3 as a small miracle. A hobby should be for fun, otherwise it is not a hobby...