Editor's Review (Oct. 1973)

MAYBE IT'S JUST a sign of the times, what with Watergate, the Soapbox Derby champ being busted (or is it washed out?), mass murder/sex crimes, two dollar devaluations, food so expensive you can scarcely afford to buy it, but I seem to have had a rash of complaints about audio gear lately. What struck me as odd about the complaints was that they were about equipment and manufacturers I knew to be good and reliable.

Further, fully three-quarters of the complaints were for alleged poor service either before or after the sale, and I could see no reasonable basis for the complainers thinking that they ought to have been treated differently, since they would only have gotten worse service.

There probably is something I don't understand about all this, and I used to put such things down to what my father called the innate animosity of inanimate objects. (We need not go into the fact that I tend to use simpler, plainer, more descriptive Anglo-Saxon words.) But I am beginning to wonder now-perhaps I'm getting old--whether or not we've a right to expect a very complicated machine, such as a receiver, to work right the first time and every time thereafter. Indeed, the very expectation that such machines ought to work in that fashion is something of a tribute to the engineers who design systems for putting all that stuff into one relatively little box. After all, who ever said that a turntable had to work as well as a hammer. (No, wise guy in the back row, that's not what turntables do to records.) Mostly what my complainers wanted was to have their hands held until the pain and shock of a broken expectation went away. They got that, with an apology from me for perhaps having told them that the equipment they bought after reading our equipment profile would never break down or produce more than I percent THD under any circumstances.

The fact of the matter, as I have indicated above, is that we have come to expect and do actually receive an extremely high level of performance from audio equipment. Further, the state of the art seems to be advanced every couple of years and it is becoming more and more difficult to attain that level of performance at all, let alone consistently.

I'm not suggesting that we ignore shortcomings of components, but rather that we be a bit more tolerant of the service rep. Everybody knows all the jokes about complaint windows, but I've never seen the owner of a smoking amp joke at all. I certainly wouldn't want to have a job where my only relief from checking transistors, resistors, and capacitors was to have such a guy holler at me.

Maybe the next time you take your busted component to be serviced, it might be nice to thank the guy behind the counter for doing something you can't or don't want to do yourself.

Electronics Design Contest

Motorola HEP Semiconductors has announced a "Design-In," an electronic project design contest offering scholarships totaling $9,000. Open to students, experimenters, technicians, inventors, teachers, and professional engineers, the contest will run until December 31st of this year.

There are two general categories, with professional engineers in one and everyone else in the other, and equal prizes are being offered for both. Grand prize in each category is a $2,500 scholarship; first prizes are $1,000 scholarships; second prizes, $500 scholarships; and two third prizes in each category are $250 scholarships.

First elimination judging will start at the close of the contest, with judging based on originality and simplicity of design, usefulness of the project, convenience and ease of construction, and suitability of design. Parts must cost less than $100 total and must include at least two HEP semiconductors.

Contestants selected for semi-final judging will be provided with all parts required for their project at no cost and will then be expected to construct their projects for final judging by a panel of electronics experts. Contest rules and entry blanks are available from any HEP supplier.

"Aw, Gee Whiz" Dept.

According to a wire service story, the Clark Equipment Co.'s Industrial Truck Division in Battle Creek, Mich., has installed an anechoic chamber to test lift trucks for noise emission levels.

Said to be one of the first of its kind to be used in assisting in the design and manufacture of material handling equipment, the chamber has a "silenced" ventilation system which completely changes air in the room every minute, allowing the instruments to be monitored while a truck is running. Thank goodness for that silenced vent system.

I wouldn't want to be overcome by a lack of emission controls while testing noise controls.

-E.P.

(Source: Audio magazine.)

Also see:

Editor's Review (Nov. 1973)

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