Best Audio Related Story (or joke).


With all the stress and pressure going around at Audiogon these days, (posting issues, complaints and legal issues), seems like this would be a good opportunity to inject some light hearted audio related comments, stories or just plain old jokes. Please share yours!
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Here's a true story. When I got my new speaker system (a four-piece system with an active crossover), the guy who built it didn't have monoblock crossovers for me, so he gave me two stereo ones, both prototypes, to use till the new ones were built. The speakers were built in a large warehouse, not hermetically sealed. When he arrived with the new crossovers, I went to take out one of the old ones and found a dead bird under it (don't ask me how, but I'll bet it flew into the 3 1/2 inch port of one of the subwoofers in that warehouse)! Of course, I turned to the guy and told him with a straight face that no wonder his speaker sounded dull to me, it had a dead tweeter. He then hit me on the head with my new crossover......
Ray, in response to your question in new postings, copied and pasted here at this site: Does anyone know of any collections of audio-related humor on the web? I miss the Lirpa articles in Audio (I know there are two listings on Audioreview). This will bring this thread up to the top, where you may access them, and hopefully post something of your own. Albert
Is Audioreview the Bose and Grand Enigma reviews? Anyway, here is a mishap that happened the day before Christmas in our household. I would not recommend this CD to cat owners. I have copied and pasted the following from a previous email...I picked up a holiday CD at a thrift shop that is entitled "Jingle-Cats", real kittens singing 20 holiday classics, from "Silent Night" to "Auld Lang Syne". I had thought that the cats (the little men) would enjoy it, but by the time the second song had finished they were in an uproar. One had sprayed one of the speaker stands and two of the others were trying to attack the speakers (that are on 29" stands). It was a total disaster. I had to put them outside and then later keep an eye on them around the speakers for the next 24 hours, as even with "normal" music playing they kept eying the Reynauds. Finally their tiny little brains forgot all about it and everything is back to normal (normal meaning that they are now peeing the Xmas tree that I brought home yesterday morning).
That story about the Jingle Cats is hysterical! I have a huge white Persian cat, and I've played this CD every Christmas and New Years for the last three years. My guests laugh, and my cat listens with a strange look on her face. It is priceless, and lucky for me, the cat is female and prefers to look disgusted, rather than pee on anything.
Back in '73 when Quad (remember 4 channel?) was in vogue, I built a chip-based CD4 decoder to experiment with. But I only had 2 channel, so the plan was to demo it on an engineer friends' 4 speaker rig. Plugged everything in & powered on to the sound of an audible "pop" & 120 Hz buzzing (amps in hard DC clipping). Shut it all down right away, but the damage was already done. Two woofers' cones were frozen forward, & the smell of burning coil varnish then became evident. I had neglected to install coupling-caps on the decoders' output lines, placing +24 Vcc supply right into direct-coupled amps' inputs! The amps only needed new fuses, but I ended up buying him a pair of new woofers. Not to mention the embarrassment right in front of several other engineers... It wasn't terribly expensive, but I'll never live that one down.