When the average person entered the computer age it was either enough to get you committed or totally hilarious. Some business men were offended by such things as graphics (other than pie charts), a 12 year old who could write code and being forced to deal with the guys with the screwdriver in the pocket protector. Color other than green was strange. I always figured it was because it was the color of money. I think it was Word Perfect that come out with a blue screen and I had several people that thought something was wrong. Programs came with huge instruction manuals and they always had glitches. I would get weekly updates for one program that had 12 books. Sometimes the update would be 20 or 30 pages long. Then the update got updated. I had a six foot long bookcase with 4 shelves devoted to the hardware manuals and I read them all. Those got updated too. There were memory upgrades that couldn't be accessed except by turning off the programs that needed the data that was stored on the upgrade. Not all floppies were 5.25. There were also 8 inch. I think I may even have a few somewhere. The computer is long gone but DH keeps taking them out of the trash. There's even a partial roll of flat rainbow wire for making cables to connect anything. You had to make your own because there were no standards between manufacturers. To change printers or add stuff you had to know which of a half dozen or more toggles to flip inside the CPU. And that was after making a cable that had up to 64 wires on each end to hard wire. Clip on type connectors were a great time saver. Do they still sell diddle sticks? A common practice was to protect a program from being copied by changing the speed of the disk drive to the point where the data was read only or insert so many blank areas on the original and the copy would automatically eliminate them and make the copy crash. All a teenager needed to pirate a program was a diddle stick (you couldn't use a regular screwdriver to adjust the screw that controlled the speed). If the case covering the drive was missing the screws that held it on you knew you had a pirate. Are you bored yet?

I guess, it get down to technology you are familiar with and is the easiest for one use. Many people are still threaten by technology - even in today's internet age. That why reel to reel users are still around - they are lost in the 60s analog era and never got out in the real digital world. For example, I sure their are people who are still using the CRT TV to view stuff. They don't care to compare one's 1960s CRT black and white TV to the new 32 million color 4K LED TV. It still the great to them because that all they are familiar with. LOL! But the way; nothing is being recorded in any major studio in reel to reel anymore. It all on the computer hard drives - mostly on SSD type drives. The control mix board are connected to software on a computer and hooked up to the audio system - speakers! This post was edited by harry_wild on Sat, Sep 6, 14 at 11:17

Tube amps, by their nature, will have some hum, as I understand it, more than solid state. True, they sound nicer, but there's more hum. As for 'interconnects' or fancy power cables, 'Monster' cable or others, it's all a bunch of nonsense, as any real engineer will tell you, or, at the very least the 'gain' in these fancy cables are not worth the money. Whilst I'm not working at the moment, I've spent my entire working life in the film and tv industry and spoken to many many professionals who know more than me, and they're all agreed about how much bunkum there is about fancy cables. The other thing to consider is, I presume there are signals sent through the power network like there is in Australia, for off-peak power etc - that means there's a modulation if you like, over the waveform - I don't know better how to explain it, but you'll hear this as varying different hums and buzzes in things like audio equipment or sometimes in fluorescent lights. A separate circuit with a dedicated ground (if legal) is considered best practice for audio and video stuff, the hospital grade thing ought to work, but there are limits to what you can do. Power conditioners are great and sexy but should be unnecessary with correctly functioning equipment, that's correctly designed. Other things to look out for is coiling of power cords, or running power cords and audio and speaker cables too close to power cords, or in parallel with them - if you must go near the power cable, try to cross it at right angles. It may be worthwhile, if you're handy, to shorten the power cords to just what you need, to reduce clutter and to help keep cables apart.

I was a total rink rat when I was a kid. I won my first transistor radio (first place ladies all ages) in a speed skating contest for the public. I think I must have been around 11. Because I won most of the races I had to start back at the wall instead of the starting line along with a couple of older girls that were in speed club. My older brother worked as a floor guard and in the summer I would go with him to open up and stay all day when I didn't have a competition. Sunday was club day and we had classes and practice. Then private lessons after school during the week. Friday nights there was a sock hop after the last session. So much fun and all the rink romances . LOL The manager's daughter and I were friends and we both got puppies at around the same time. We would bring them to the rink with us and they'd run around with us while we skated until the rink opened for the public.