earfluff and eyecandy

The finished results As can be seen, it was never my intention to make an entirely new binding, so it maintains the patina of an old book. I just wanted to stabilise the original one and make the book useable and considerably less fragile.

Final assembly begins with gluing the edge of a piece of Japanese paper to the original purple paper. This was done with just a thin line of glue (about 5 mm wide). (In this photo, you see the back of the Japanese paper that will be glued to the inside of the cover.) Then, the gauze was glued down and then the entire side of the paper that you see there was coated with glue. This is then attached to the inside of the cover. (I realised after it was too late that I take blurry, out-of-focus…

The first step was to prepare the spine reinforcement with gauze and bookbinding glue. The gauze is about 3x the width of the spine. The extras on the sides will form part of the hinges when they’re finally glued to the inside of the covers. I made a temporary support out of wood for gluing the curved cardboard to the underside of the cloth that will become the new back. Fat-resistant baking paper is placed between the cardboard and the wood to make sure it doesn’t all stick together. The…

Step 1 of the dismantling was to cut off the back of the cover. I had my doubts about whether I wanted to slice through that nice leather, but it was the only way to ensure that the new binding would be done properly. All of the loose paper shreds had to be shaved off the spine. Initially, this was done with a scalpel, and then with 80-grit sandpaper. Luckily, all of the sewing and the cords are still in place, so I didn’t have to completely disassemble the book and re-sew it. The card and…

I have a bunch of hobbies, and I am particularly pleased when they intersect or overlap. This weekend’s project started with a visit to a good friend who has a large collection of magazines and books about radio and audio dating back over 100 years. One of the books on his shelf was a bound set of Radio Uge-Revue magazine from 1926, however, after 100 years and much use, the binding has disintegrated. So, I took the book home with an agreement that I would try to repair the book and, in return,…

#109 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos publicly available. This video demonstrates some of the individual components of a room’s acoustical contributions.

#107 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos publicly available. This video demonstrates some of the individual components of a room’s acoustical contributions.

#106 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos publicly available. This video demonstrates some of the individual components of a room’s acoustical contributions.

This one is actually by request, but I was reminded that it’s one of my pet peeves as well. The nice thing about this one is that someone else has written about this topic, so I don’t have to do it. There’s no such thing as RMS power.

Yesterday, I once again read something on the Internet by someone saying something like “of course, as you know, high frequency sound travels faster than low frequencies”. This is not true for any practical purposes within the limits of human hearing. The speed of sound in air, in m/s is approximately 331.67 + 0.607*Temperature So, at 20°C, the speed of sound is just under 344 m/s. I normally say 345 m/s, partly because 22°C is a good guess, and it’s easier to type. Any dependency on frequency…

Sometimes, on a rare occasion, I can muster up enough gumption to admit that I’m wrong. This posting is just such an admission… Once-upon-a-time, I learned about equal loudness contours (I will explain these below…). Then I learned about weighting filters and how they’re used to make a measurement system as imperfect as we are. (I will also explain this below). The short explanation at the end of that lesson was “A-weighting is for measuring quiet sounds, and C-weighting is for loud sounds.”…

#106 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos publicly available. This video demonstrates some of the individual components of a room’s acoustical contributions.

Once-upon-a-time, I taught a course in electroacoustic measurements at McGill. I used to devote an entire 3-hour class to explaining decibels, partly because we use them so often in audio, partly because I had such difficulty wrapping my own head around them when I was starting off, and partly because the reason I and many other people have that problem is largely due to the laziness of others. Yesterday, I found myself being annoyed once again by this laziness as I edited a scan of a document…

#105 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#104 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#103 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#102 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#101 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#100 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here.

#99 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here. Part 2: Frequency vs. Time

#98 in a series of articles about the technology behind Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers I’ve started working with a number of my colleagues on a series of videos for internal training at Bang & Olufsen. They were kind enough to make some of these videos public, so I’ll post some links to them as they become publicly available here. Part 1: Basics of Sound and Acoustics

When I was growing up in Newfoundland, we had an old gramophone in our basement that I was told, came from my great-grandfather’s house. That was about 50 years ago. On a recent trip home from Denmark, I dismantled it and brought it back with me, with a plan to restore it. The first step […]