The gear thread

[Cooee]

Ok I managed to blow the fuse in my amp and shoot a spark out the side of it.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that nothing is damaged - beside the fuse. Can anyone tell me how I should go about replacing the fuse? It's marked with "T 1.6A L 250V". My engineering friend says that T means its a slow burning fuse, but I can't find much on the net to support that claim. Anyone have any idea?

Obviously I need to match the Voltage and Amperage, but anything else?

[Cooee]

Not to worry. I found a site that seems to cover all my questions.

http://www.stagebeat.co.uk/C/56/FUSES/

[AdamS]

I'm going out with a friend this week to a few music shops. I'm going to check out some amps and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations? I know it's all based off of what kind of sound I'm looking for, but I'm behind on what's out on the market at the moment and just looking for some places to start from. Thanks.

[ImprintedLife]

Another gear related question guys?

I have a Schecter C-1 Hellraiser with EMG 81(B) and 85 (N), would it be safe to put the 85 in the bridge and the 81 in the neck, a lot of guys do that, will it cause any problems? EMG have the quick release connections, so switching them is a breeze, but your opinions?

Also, I am looking at putting a set of the new Seymour Duncan Blackouts (basically a Duncan 81 / 85) in instead of the EMG's, any opinions as well???

[Nebulous]

The EMG swtich would definately be "safe", ie, they shouldn't break or anything. Don't see why they would hehe.

As for the blackouts, go with what you like there. I have no experience with them.

[Nebulous]

Uh........ I hate when this happens. I've got serious GAS over this Burny Les Paul:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....ksid=p3907.m29

I noticed the seller had two identical sales for this guitar going at once, the first which ended without a sale, or even a single bid. I'm guess it's the same guitar. He also has a white one, but this just looks so hot. When I last played a Burny I really liked the feel, but let it go (at a decnet price) because it was a little beat up and I wanted a new guitar at the time.

I have 4 days to make a decidsion, or contact him to see if he'll put it up again if it doesn't sell.

[sadisticsatyr]

Originally Posted by bsercombe

Ok, for those of you who have read my previous looooong posts in this thread regarding headphones, MP3 players, compression and the importance of being earnest be warned: I just got my Cowon iAudio7 and am listening to Rain. 1st impression: OMFG!!!!!! Audio quality is astounding and I'm still using lossless since I have not had time to do any ripping to FLAC. Once I've had a decent chance to assess the device I'll post one of my usual longwinded descriptions. But for now I'd have to say the iaudio7 makes the Zen Audio quality seem shameful! Now if only I could find out how to turn the volume down!!

Old topic digg

Looking at buying the 16GB version of this....bsercombe, do you know if there are any file size limitations for using this as a removable storage device? ie, does it use FAT16 file system and have a 2GB file size limit?

Would like to be able to store a full DVD iso on this if needed at times.

[bsercombe]

Let me try and see I'm sure I can find a huge file around somewhere and test it. I don't have the machine with me today so it'll take me a day or two. Incidentally, if the 16Gb version is out then I'll go buy one and give my 8Gb to my wife I'd say it's very likely to be FAT16- I mean, why bother when you're primarily storing MP3s and stripped down movies??

[bsercombe]

Well, I couldn't find anything on this in TFM or the web so being a good amateur scientist I decided to run tests myself...

Note- before doing this I updated my firmware to V1.17 and I'm using an 8Gb Iaudio7. I see no reason why the 16Gb version would use a different file system, particularly when they both use the same firmware. Note that as is fairly common with these kinds of devices updating the firmware wipes all your custom settings like EQ.

Method:

1. Remove all files from my stuffed full 8Gb Cowon Iaudio7 (40 minutes later)
2. Get a 4.05Gb 3D seismic file and copy it to the player. I'm doing this on an XP-64 machine but don't think OS will make any difference
3. Rename the file and copy it back
4. Use ExamDiff Pro 4 (download on 30 day eval) to compare the two files byte-by-byte

Result:

There was a big pause when I tried to copy the file to the player (Windoze goes "You What?!?"). Write time was about 12 minutes, as was read time.
I then loaded up the two files for a binary file comparison in ExamDiff. Much disk thrashing later (I should have put them on two different HDDs damnit!) ExamDiff says they are identical binary files but that it can't allocate the memory to display them (Duh!).

So I think the short answer is that, yes- you can store DVD ISOs >2Gb on the device and expect them to work when you copy them to something else.

Interestingly, it took over 30 seconds to register the delete of the 4Gb file from the MP3 player.

If you're going to do this to "non-fresh" filesystem it may take longer, though I suspect that fragmentation will not be a huge issue on these things if you've put a lot on and off it over time your 4Gb of free space might be in a hundred or so locations. Originally I tried to use 7-zip to create an archive then uncompress it, but seismic data is very compressible such that I'd have had to add the same file to the archive 5 times, even on minimal compression and it would have just taken too long. Pity, as you'd have had a CRC check and not have to use ExamDiff. Still, the thought of uncompressing 20Gb of data just didn't do it for me...

[sadisticsatyr]

^^ Perfect! You should join mythbusters! Yea, i was expecting that i could do it. Im surprised this "funtionality" isnt even touched in reviews of the majority of mp3 players. Apparently there is a known issue with the 16gb models where they set the cluster size wrong out of the box. You just have to reformat it with 16k cluster size instead of the factory 8, otherwise you get abysmal USB transfer speeds. Considering i can get this player for about $270 Aussie (from a legit shop, not ebay) I think it is well worth it now.

[bsercombe]

Reposted from Slashdot...

"Sound card giant Creative caught plenty of flak for its recent driver debacle, and has long been criticized for bullying competitors and stifling innovation. But few have been willing to compete with Creative head-on, allowing the company to milk its X-Fi audio processor for more than two and a half years. Now the SoundBlaster has a new challenger in the form of Asus' $90 Xonar DX, which delivers much better sound quality than the X-Fi, PCI Express connectivity, and support for real-time Dolby Digital Live encoding. The Xonar can even emulate the latest EAX positional audio effects, providing the most complete competition to the X-Fi available on the market."