OT: Maplin sold to Pizza Hut owner for £85 million

[Huge]

Depends what you mean by "reasonable"! I wouldn't buy an un-refurbished '57 or '63 and refurbished ones are > £1K.

[Adrian C]

Yup, that's

If I were better at 3D computer graphics, I'd make a virtual reality store you could wander around, and ask stupid questions of virtual store assistants. Perhaps do a game element in there. Say you've been tasked with constructing a critical control board for a nuclear power station or a mission to Mars, and current day Maplin is your only hope for parts....

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A pal had the '57s and there was simply no finer sounding speaker within the (relatively) low SPLs it could achieve. And I doubt there is now either. But they did require fairly frequent trips to Huntingdon for servicing - at least compared to more conventional designs. The '63 could go louder and was more robust - but IMHO lost a little of that magic.

[Tim Watts]

Not the cafeteria tea I assure you...

[John Williamson]

Boiler water only for *proper* railway tea. Then stewed for hours either on the guards van stove or a handy hot bit in the loco cab. Diesels and electrics have a hotplate in the cab, but I'm told the tea doesn't taste as good with tap water.

Can't stand the stuff myself.

[alan]

It been an very expensive (crap) toys for boys outlet for many years. The two outlets where I live always seem to be completely devoid of custom every time I go past.

[Bill]

A few people find them interesting:-

>

[John Rumm]

There is a whole new "maker" movement these days, but whether that has (or ever will) grow to the point it could support a business on the scale of Maplin these days is doubtful.

Yup can't say I ever really warmed to Tandy - at least in the UK guise.

Sadly I can think of a few people... but as you say, they would need to be able to demo it properly.

[John Rumm]

Although worth noting that many of the employees in the early days were engineering or electronics graduates working holiday jobs or "year out" type work experience etc. Its perhaps less likely that you will people and retain 200 branches worth of staff at that calibre.

[alan]

"before walking out of the store without making any attempt to pay for the items which were worth £425."

They may have put the decimal point in the wrong place.

It's much like metal theft. Thieves stole metal worth £1000 really means the metal was worth £50* in scrap but it cost £1 to repair the damage.

*Probably less for the thieves who would need to find a bent dealer who also wants larger profit on dodgy gear.

[ARW]

I did walk past it every day for 3 months on my way to and from work earlier this year!

[charles]

That shop was once a branch of Rymans

[tony sayer]

Still hankering after a pair then;?..

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

The 57 and 63 are both electrostatics but the 63 does work on a differing point source principle. Take a pure point of sound then transact the waves coming from that on a plane surface and you'll get differing timing points across that surface thats why there delay lines in the 63

and I quote;)..

The distortion produced by the ESL-63 is extremely low. The ability to produce a square wave that actually looks like one is quite unique. Average distortion is 0.03%, only rising to 1% at 40 Hz -90% lower than that of quality dynamic woofers- at a sound pressure level of 96 dB. Maximum excursion of the membrane is ± 2.5 mm. Thickness is 3 micron ?. Membrane Polarization voltage is 5.25 kV. Maximum audio voltage is 10kV. The two high quality transformers give a 250 step-up rate. Total membrane surface is approximate 0.4 m2.

Both excellent speakers used within their design ratings..

People have stacked the 57's which have heard and impressive that is too!.

I think that theres a firm in Germany that still make them ESL 57's that is;!..

Ah!, here we go!..

[tony sayer]

Of course thats why;!...

Lurve it, gallons per day;)..

[Johny B Good]

====snip====

It's that last bit (about fixing the lack of dolby playback in software) that's grabbed my attention! :-)

Can you accurately emulate the Dolby B NR playback process in software? I've been looking, on and off for many years now, for just such a way to 'properly' decode Dolby B recordings, captured to a digital format with the Dolby NR on the tape deck turned off.

The only ones I've seen are merely software approximations to the Dolby B playback correction process which simply aren't quite good enough to justify bypassing the NR built into the tape deck itself so I'm prompted to ask if you've actually found an accurate software Dolby B decoder.

I ask because an accurate software Dolby B replay process would allow me to correct for deficiencies in frequency response and sensitivity level calibration in both record and playback[1]l before applying the Dolby decoding algorithm rather than leaving it to the vagaries of the tape playback system itself to perform an accurate Dolby B playback.

If you still have the original tape deck and it hasn't clocked up a high level of head wear, you could run your own calibration test recordings on the actual tape used (glass crystal heads offer the best chance of the machine retaining its original playback / record characteristics) and thus correct the frequency response and level errors that are so detrimental to the accuracy of Dolby B encoded recordings.

There's usually spare tape unused at the end of most recordings where such test calibration recordings can be made by which you can create a playback correction filter profile.

If the recordings were made using just one or two different brands of tape, say Maxell UD and TDK SA, you could could test a few examples of each type and confirm the consistency of the required correction filter profile which would prove useful in cases where there's no unused space available to run the calibrate test non-destructively.

Even in such cases, there's still the possibility of sacrificing the recording _after_ you've digitised it if you can accept such destructive testing of the original media which, imo, would only be worth doing with non-dolbied recordings or the software NR processing can trusted to do an accurate enough emulation of the original analogue replay NR system for the replay calibration correction to make a worthwhile net improvement.

[1] Provided you're using the original tape deck that made those recordings in the first place or (second best) use an identical model to the original tape deck.

[Huge]

Yep. :o)

[tony sayer]

Best do it before ye olde hearing starts going;!!...

[Huge]

It already has. "Fortunately", I have top end loss in one ear and low end in the other.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Theo Markettos escribió:

No idea. Maybe I should have said "they'll asset-strip what's left of the business"