As someone who does science for a living, I find the quality of discussion in this new sub-forum pretty awful. Science is not fancy equipment, big words, or fancy degrees. Science is simple. Make a guess about some phenomenon. Do an experiment. Observe. Reject bad guesses. Iterate until it...

I'm re-discovering my (electric) guitar. Given how there is such a rich history of musicians and tinkerers tweaking amplifier heads and effects to get the sounds they want...I was surprised to have such difficulty finding any decent DIY efforts. Nope. It is difficult to get certain tones (ie...

I live in St. Louis, which amongst other best-in-class options such as violent crime, car theft, congested roads, hot&humid summers and ignant public schools also offers a mega-load of allergens. Grass pollen. Tree pollen. Mold. Even ozone levels are consistently beyond what other cities bring...

I'm thinking of installing a reverse osmosis + deionization system for drinking water at home. Anyone have experience with remineralizing the water? I'm looking for a drop-in tablet or low pressure drop flow-through cartridge with packing that I can add on as the last stage.

Many audio cable designs aim to employ low dielectric shields around the conductor. Why? Background: The dielectric value is a constant placed into equations describing how the electrostatic field at one point in space will propagate to another point in space. Wikipedia does a decent job...

Finally caught the DIY bug, and will hopefully be starting on some Twisted Pear stuff in the next week or two. For many moons, I have spent my lunch breaks reading threads here, and at diyaudio (and yes, I've read the stickies). Still have some unanswered questions! 1. Internal wiring...

This is a polite request for everyone who has gear listed in their signature to please remove it! The reason is simple--the signatures show up in search results, and yield MANY false positives when trying to search for previously discussed topics. Gear can be listed in your profile, where there...

I was having a discussion with a friend who teaches college macroeconomics, about how the Google generation (that is, people currently <21 or so) seem much less willing to do their own research, on any topic. That is, if they cannot Google it and find a top-ranked answer in 15 seconds, or...

Hi gang, Two relatively inexperienced but appreciative classical newbs here, looking for joyful, emotive Bach to play at our wedding. We'll have a piano, cello and solo male vocalist (baritone, maybe bass)...and possibly a violin or trumpet, should the music make the case for it. HUGE church...

I'm marrying a wonderful gal in several months, and we're planning a honeymoon. I thought maybe Head-Fi'ers might be a good source for unusally good recommendations, and I'd love to hear (err, read) them! We're American, so it is unfortunate that the forecast for the $USD is so weak. Cost is...

I'm sick of my mouse pad sliding around my desk every 30 seconds. Can anyone recommend a good mousepad for less than $20 USD? My desktop is glass and I use a Logitech MX700 optical mouse, so the mousepad would have to be opaque enough for a decent signal. A non-slip backing is essential. I do a...

My desktop's motherboard recently died on me, and I'm quickly tiring of using my laptop at home. It has been a while since I built my last machine, and I'm not current on trends/reviews...can anyone who's up on this stuff give me some recommendations? I'm not looking for someone to "do my...

There's a lot of debate about whether or not we can perceive audio information encoded at frquencies higher than our ears can perceive. Without entering that argument per se, I recently ran across an interesting article arguing that we can in fact perceive this information, and thought it was...

Several people have requested that I post a mini-review and photos of the new Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3 Studio, since I seem to be one of the few who has purchased a pair. Mine are the clear version, from Guitar Center. Price was $99. The clerk said they were on sale this week, but I wouldn't be...