Do you have a multimeter?

[Richard Dale]

2 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

If I try to take distance, even from when I was at the age of ten helping my father with "repairing" his reel to reel decks and self made amplifiers and my own building of my first stereo from two lamp radios, building a TT and of course speakers, and also avoiding my always fully automated (with relais) model railroad endeavours from of the age of 11 ...

 

So then for mere normal audio:

 

Measuring the health of fuses;

Measuring the end to end connection of (self made) cables;

Measuring the difference in ground potential between devices (but can be done by carious means);

Measuring the resistance of color coded resistors because I never learned the codes by heart;

Measuring whether 230V applies although I got fairy much used to just briefly touch by hand;

Measuring the DC Offset of output channels.

 

Maybe I forgot something obvious. But I recall coming over at houses where I soon needed a multimeter to help out with whatever, and could not believe people did not even have such a necessity of life in their houses.

Thinking about it, what I actually said about most audiophiles not needing a multimeter is wrong as a result of reading your list!

[sandyk]

31 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Measuring the resistance of color coded resistors because I never learned the codes by heart;

 

32 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Measuring the resistance of color coded resistors because I never learned the codes by heart;

 We were taught a simple way of remembering the colour code values when I was a trainee at Telstra many years ago.

 It was very racially incorrect these days though.

[PeterSt]

39 minutes ago, Richard Dale said:

Thinking about it, what I actually said about most audiophiles not needing a multimeter is wrong as a result of reading your list!

 

There is even something funny about the necessity of measuring, which only applies to people in countries like mine and a few more with this kind of mains connector:

 

 

 

 

 

The polarity of the mains (hot vs neutral). But mind you, this doesn't really go my means of a multi meter, but merely by means of a mains polarity checker with a looking device similar to this: 

 

This is THE foremost SQ improvement tool, but in must countries it isn't even applicable because the polarity can't be changed in the first place. Thus e.g. with these this is not possible (UK and USA respectively):

 

This is related to the mentioned measuring of the ground potential between two devices, but with the notice that you can't really do much about it in countries like UK and USA (and a whole world more) unless you go the path of changing the wires in the outlet or cables. And this, while it is crucial to the sound. Anyway, in the end (and as far as I understands its working) this device measures radiation because of a difference in potential between devices and that in itself caused by a not matching mains polarity.

I don't think these can still be bought but for those which can change the polarity of mains plugs it is the most crucial measuring tool for audio. And those who can't change the polarity miss out and are just stuck (but you won't know about the phenomenon either, haha).

 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Measuring the resistance of color coded resistors because I never learned the codes by heart;

Or when you do know the colour codes, but the direction isn't obvious.

[Daccord]

Shouldn't anyone who uses batteries have a multimeter?

[psjug]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 We were taught a simple way of remembering the colour code values when I was a trainee at Telstra many years ago.

 It was very racially incorrect these days though.

When I was in school they had already taken out the racist part (replaced "black" with "bad").  They left in the part that is offensive to women!

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, psjug said:

When I was in school they had already taken out the racist part (replaced "black" with "bad").  They left in the part that is offensive to women!

I always though the coding was pretty intuitive.

[psjug]

3 minutes ago, mansr said:

I always though the coding was pretty intuitive.

You are joking, right?

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, psjug said:

You are joking, right?

Not at all.

[Teresa]

I don’t have a multimeter but OTOH I hate comparing stuff, and have no desire to electronically measure stuff. One of the reasons I use audio equipment until it dies. Looks like I'm in a minority here.

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, Teresa said:

Looks like I'm in a minority here.

In this thread, but certainly not in the forum itself.

[SoundAndMotion]

29 minutes ago, sandyk said:

In this thread, but certainly not in the forum itself.

Indeed, you mentioned only 20% of the forum owns multimeters*, and that very few have a tape loop or similar capability, and you know what most members are and are not willing to do....

I'm truly impressed with how much you know about all the members!! How did you learn so much about them?

 

*somehow this poll is WAY off!

[jhwalker]

57 minutes ago, SoundAndMotion said:

Indeed, you mentioned only 20% of the forum owns multimeters*, and that very few have a tape loop or similar capability, and you know what most members are and are not willing to do....

I'm truly impressed with how much you know about all the members!! How did you learn so much about them?

 

*somehow this poll is WAY off!

The poll is off because it is self-selecting, like a lot of online polls.  Only people who know what a "multimeter" IS are likely to click on the topic in the first place, and only people who enthusiastically use one are liable to answer the poll.

 

I've never owned one, and would have no clue how to use one if I did.  That said, electronics (in general) is a subject I'm starting to become more interested in, so I may get one sooner or later

[Paul R]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

In this thread, but certainly not in the forum itself.

 

Replied to wrong post, sorry! 

[Paul R]

3 hours ago, Teresa said:

I don’t have a multimeter but OTOH I hate comparing stuff, and have no desire to electronically measure stuff. One of the reasons I use audio equipment until it dies. Looks like I'm in a minority here.

 

Probably not in real life. 😉

 

i suspect most most of us around these parts not only keep a meter or two around, but also still have slipsticks, just in case!!  

 

I found several slide rules including a circular one stuffed in a box, with instruction cheat sheets for some ancient computers I programmed/worked on on as well. 

 

[Sonicularity]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

Or when you do know the colour codes, but the direction isn't obvious.

 

I recall some 5-band resistors that were extremely difficult to figure out which end was the tolerance band.   I always had to measure them to make sure.  The technicians would sometimes make bets for a beer on what the value was before it was verified with a bridge or multimeter.  Is it 2kΩ 2% or 210Ω 1%?  

[Ralf11]

13 hours ago, sandyk said:

  They don't.

Have a close look at the names of the posters and look at some of their posts and you will see that almost all of the respondents come from a technical background, or are well into DIY ,with many being qualified E.Es. and most are regular posters in the General area where most of the tech types prefer to hang out together.

 They are NOT your average member who isn't in the least interested in  the measurement side of things, no matter how much Dennis would like to believe. 

The typical Audiophile doesn't give a damn about the measurement side of things, and is only interested in getting the best bang for their buck , and the enjoyment of music.

Personally, I have a foot in both camps.

As well as which, several of the respondents here even do measurements BEFORE listening to the actual music, and have already made up their mind how it is likely to sound.  

 

This poll is useless and proves 5/8 of S.F.A.

 

This post is useless and is just a bunch of speculation.

[sandyk]

9 hours ago, SoundAndMotion said:

Indeed, you mentioned only 20% of the forum owns multimeters*, and that very few have a tape loop or similar capability, and you know what most members are and are not willing to do....

I'm truly impressed with how much you know about all the members!! How did you learn so much about them?

 

*somehow this poll is WAY off!

 

1. Very few Preamplifiers etc. these days have Tape Loops, for the simple reason that very few people these days have,  or still use Tape decks. Neither do most members need Tape Decks these days when they can save their music to HDD or SSD.

Those older Preamps that do have this facility normally send the original high level input out to the Tape Deck, with the better types having a unity gain Buffer amplifier to negate the degrading effect of an additional cable capacitance in parallel with the selected input.

 

2.   10 years of observations in this forum has shown me that a large percentage of posters who post in other areas of the forum don't even have a soldering iron or a DMM. Many They pay for companies to even make short DC leads for them, or the other connecting leads that they require .

 This is distinct from a core group of Objective members who rarely post in other areas of the forum,  and when they do it is often to disrupt threads by Subjective members, or try to teach them how to do things their way.

 

 I will admit though, that a few members such as Mansr, (when the wind is blowing the right way,) can sometimes be quite helpful to the non technical members in other areas of the forum.

[Shadders]

5 minutes ago, sandyk said:

This is distinct from a core group of Objective members who rarely post in other areas of the forum,  and when they do it is often to disrupt threads by Subjective members, or try to teach them how to do things their way.

Hi,

OK - i see what you mean. We objectivists must post in all the other threads, as they are being neglected. Thanks for letting us know.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[sandyk]

8 hours ago, jhwalker said:

The poll is off because it is self-selecting, like a lot of online polls.  Only people who know what a "multimeter" IS are likely to click on the topic in the first place, and only people who enthusiastically use one are liable to answer the poll.

 

I've never owned one, and would have no clue how to use one if I did.  That said, electronics (in general) is a subject I'm starting to become more interested in, so I may get one sooner or later

 

 You won't regret it John, and a decent soldering iron if you don't already have one may come in quite handy too, especially  if you wish to make high quality interconnects at a fraction of the typical asking price.

Regards

Alex

 

 P.S.

A cheap DMM can often come in handy when you experience electrical problems in your car, such as slow starting etc, and you are then also able to verify that the Alternator is charging correctly.

This is an area where you may save yourself a lot of money, and perhaps avoid being stranded when the car battery decides to suddenly let you down, as very few batteries don't first give some warning signs.

[sandyk]

6 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

OK - i see what you mean. We objectivists must post in all the other threads, as they are being neglected. Thanks for letting us know.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

Richard

 Nowhere have I ever included you in the core group of Objective members who often engage in these spoiling tactics.

Yes, it wouldn't hurt for members like yourself to give suitable practical advice in the areas of power supplies etc. when these types of questions arise, which is quite frequently.

Alex

[Shadders]

Just now, sandyk said:

Richard

 Nowhere have I ever included you in the core group of Objective members who often engage in these tactics.

Yes, it wouldn't hurt for member like yourself to give suitable practical advice in the areas of power supplies etc. when these types of questions arise, which is quite frequently.

Alex

Hi Alex,

Yes - i was mucking about.  😎

Regards,

Shadders.

[Ralf11]

Very many Preamplifiers etc. these days have Ext. proc. loops which are just like Tape Loops

 

maybe you want Fruit Loops

[fas42]

12 hours ago, psjug said:

You are joking, right?

 

I always check the resistance of every resistor I pick up to use; because the colour coding bands are borderline clearly one colour versus another - reddish is the worst offender; is this brown, red, or orange?

[sandyk]

29 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Very many Preamplifiers etc. these days have Ext. proc. loops which are just like Tape Loops

 

maybe you want Fruit Loops

 

 No, I don't want or need you !