Ask Lemmy

I'm really just starting to get into audio and that's kind of by accident.

I actually started fixing electronics, and then some good quality audio equipment came into my life. I didn't know it was good, I thought my little piece of crap bose was awesome but holy moly no, in retrospect. Really all I wanted to do was to fix the obvious minor issues and sell it all. But I do test things meticulously before I sell them.

My first experience was listening to Stevie Wonder As and initially running up to the speakers because I thought I was hearing noise or distortion or something. No, it just turned out there was detail in the music I literally had never heard.

Well I moved that set down the line and sold it because another amazing Yamaha receiver and sub set came into my life, and then two weeks later I got some amazing studio monitor speakers for 10 bucks. Whoever priced them had no idea what they were. And they sound even more amazing in my little apartment than the other setup.

So I guess what I'm telling you all is my weird audio journey that I didn't mean to get into, and now I've become the thing I have always despised, an audiophile.

So basically just drive a dump truck starting with around $180,000 up to my place and then I can get a clean chain of great audio gear, and the appropriate reference audio to play upon it.

Also somebody to teach me what the hell I'm doing with audio stuff. But they can just scoop a few bricks of money off the pile from the dump truck.

A debit card with limitless funds

A workshop 😅

I guess an Eleiko barbell:

Pretty much the Rolls Royce of barbells.

I'm into fly fishing and the holy grail for many anglers is catching native brook trout. Most trout are stocked or introduced with wild reproduction. Brookies were plentiful at one time before the loss of habitat. There are those that crawl on their hands an knees through brush to catch a 6" fish out of a stream you can jump over

Electronics / hardware hacking and development. I have a Saleae Logic Pro 8 which is probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought in a weight to cost ratio at £933 for 60g.

Works fantastically, though, and the analog function and high sample rate is what truly sets it apart from other analysers.

I don't have a personal need for a 16 channel analyser currently, so couldn't bring myself to cough up the extra £500 for that model.

Clayfighter 63 1/3 Sculptors Edition

A server rack with a few A100s

No it isn't crypto

Like the “real” grail, it doesn’t exist. A mutual standard and compatibility between aftermarket automotive components. IOW, if I’m building a car, I’d want a third party automatic headlight system to work with the backlighting in the instruments, the wiper controller to work with a stock steering column switch, the air conditioning to work with any temperature sensor and thermostatic control at all…. Yeah. You need to be a programming expert and have the ability to design a controller to get all these proprietary systems to function coherently. But instead it’s cadging together systems and trying to not make it clunky and distracting.

Also, gaming: the grail would be for abandoned games that require online servers to play are turned over to the gamers. Run your own servers and mods. Licensing servers can be contracted out to third parties, so you can still buy the game and a royalty is paid to the original studio, but they don’t have to maintain it anymore.

I'll try to keep these both short.

Magic the Gathering - the "Power Nine"

There's 9 cards from the first few printings that were simply deemed too powerful. Once they were out in the real world, the folks in charge realized they weren't fun to play against, and resulted in wildly uneven games. In extreme cases, the opponent could lose without even getting a single turn. They've been banned from every format*, and have never been reprinted*. *Except of course when they are. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Nine

Model railroading (O-gauge). Lionel 770e Hudson

For O gauge size, the train everyone wishes they had in their collection is the 1937-1941 Lionel 770E. This was a super-unusual toy for its day, pretty much everything else had been aimed at younger children and a lower price point. Lionel decided to take a gamble and build a hyper realistic scale model that was aimed at young adults. It was honestly not a great seller in its day due to the high price point and the looming threat of WW2. But it was, and still is, considered one of the highpoints of the industry. You could argue that the current Lionel company is founded on this concept, as their VisionLine products are focused on ultra-realistic toys for grown ups (which will always be funny, as yes, our track has 3 rails). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdDw0-Tflg

Black Lotus. You gotta shell out bank or win some vintage tournament to acquire one these days.

Size 14 socket head

Gunpla. That one rare, out-of-print kit that is only available on ebay for like $500. I have 3 grail kits, and fortunately, 2 of them are going to get reissued in the next 6ish months, and there's a fair chance the third one may be reissued in the near future as well.

Another one for me is Godhand SPN-120-L. They are considered to be the best nippers on the market, and this is the left-handed version. Unfortunately, they're only available on Godhand's official site, and they only ship to Japan.

My hobby is Chess, and to me it would be to beat a Grandmaster(impossible under normal context). I have beaten only once a National Master in a simul, to put things in perspective.

rock band 4 legacy adapter. they stopped making them years ago and the prices went from 20 bucks to over 500 bucks. i had one and it broke because it used a shitty ass micro usb

The Klon Centaur is a highly praised guitar pedal that, since it had a limited production, has an unsustainable price for most of the players (some people paid up to 20.000$ for one).
Luckily the circuit is easy to copy and over the years many clones from other brands came out. But still, the original one holds a special charm and has become a higly collectible trinket.

Designing small electronics:

Unlimited money for iterated prototyping and being able to afford 0.4mm pitch BGA fabrication and rigid-flex 😂

Maybe holy grail "Item" would be an expensive electronics lab with a very nice R&S scope and a nice soldering station with a trinocular microscope.

It's called Black Lotus, I think. Not totally sure since I have never been interested in mtg as anything but something to have fun playing at a medium-high level, but I've heard copies of their original release go for many thousands of currency notes. Much to expensive for my means, but that's okay.

unattended bag of chips

The Babel Fish