EEVblog #711 - Mailbag

[Fungus]

I've got one of these external boxes:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221681003044

It's USB and has headphone, mic, line in/out, SPDIF, etc. but it's absolute garbage. I can't believe they cost about $90 new. I can actually plug a pair of headphones into it and go around the room finding RF interference hotspots with the buzz it produces. It's really sensitive/directional for that usage scenario but not really what you want in a sound card.     It also has an incredibly bright blue LED on it that flashes when it's receiving audio - absolutely useless in a dark room 

Maybe I should send it to Dave for a teardown and laugh.

(or maybe I could try and get $25 for it on eBay)

I swear I'll never buy another Creative Labs product as long as I live. I once bought some of their "THX certified" desktop speakers because all the PC magazines were going crazy giving them gold stars that month. The sound was so bad I actually felt guilty about selling them on eBay the next day in case a musician bought them or something. It doesn't give much confidence in PC magazine audio reviews either.

PS: I can put my cheapo PCM2704 DAC right next to the WiFi router and it's completely OK (presumably because it's in a metal case).

The PCM2704 also has about 8db more dynamic range than the AD1825 used in that SoundBlaster - winner, winner, chicken dinner!

[Fungus]

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/accessories/de806038b48c13d7/

Hey, cool!

I'm a bit of a fan of Audio Technica (I use their Headphones, etc.)

I wonder where I could buy one of those...

[f4eru]

Dave, the glass-piezo delay line is for PAL, coz PAL combines two lines to average out color info ( phase changes, so the error cancels)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#Colour_encoding

For the car ECU, it's really old school and robust.
These DIP packages are OK, and the whole thing is properly tested on big shakers, so no worries.

I'm much more worried with modern ECUs, which more and more have BGA packages. These ones can fail badly.

I've seen relays and caps hot snotted in a body controller (approx 5 million /year produced) the material was carefully chosen for the temp range, the dispensing automatic and the design validated, so it was OK

[rgammans]

I wonder if the two mods Dave showed on the PAL decoder where 'end user' mods - rather than manufacturer mods.

The R+C between Sync + Green looks like the classic trick to add Sync on Green output to a device which doesn't already have it.

I wonder if the CMOS logic was some sort of Sync combiner/separator too. Many monitors of the period could be quite set in their ways about the type of sync they got.