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What is your point? Do you like to imply being involved with open source is hypocritical unless you are using it 100% of your life? That tells me more about yo

by atoav 3y ago

What is your point? Do you like to imply being involved with open source is hypocritical unless you are using it 100% of your life? That tells me more about you than it does about them. You must walk through your life extremely carefully not to do things that are inconsistent with each other. If you rent a venue a lot of the tech needed for a conference is already going to be there — and for such a conference they will not have a ton of choices. Secondly open hardware is not very established in the conference hardware space. The reason for that are multiple, but one has to do with the fact that most of the gear requires extremely specialized build chains or equipment and you'd have to compete with decades of R&D and optimized manufacturing processes. Your open source SM58 is going to be more expensive and less reliable unless you invest decades into it. To get out an okay microphone. Can you tell me why anybody should in your opinion be doing that in their spare time?

necovek 3y ago
While I agree it's unavoidable to use non-open hardware, someone out there should be investing in an open SM58: that is the only way for smaller shops to compete with the likes of Shure. Building together and ensuring no-paperweight-if-you-go-out-of-business will reassure some of your potential customers and speed up your development.
- atoav 3y ago
  I am not against your idea. In the end the hardest parts are going to be automating the winding of the coil and creating/fixing the membrane. So maybe there is someone out there who enjoys going through a ton of prototypes to get something reliable out. But the issue I think this is going to have is how reproducable that is going to be for your followers. I think in open source there is a spectrum: one the one side you have things like most software or simple standard-parts open hardware projects. On the other side you have things like an open source marble statue, where you still need to bring all the knowledge of how to make the marble statue — draw a circle, draw the rest of the owl and all that. A microphone with complex coil winding and gluing a micron-thin membrane to a coil is going to be somewhere inbetween. What exists btw. are condensor mics, but there you need to buy the membrane-assembly yourself.

by atoav 3y ago

necovek 3y ago

While I agree it's unavoidable to use non-open hardware, someone out there should be investing in an open SM58: that is the only way for smaller shops to compete with the likes of Shure. Building together and ensuring no-paperweight-if-you-go-out-of-business will reassure some of your potential customers and speed up your development.

atoav 3y ago
I am not against your idea. In the end the hardest parts are going to be automating the winding of the coil and creating/fixing the membrane. So maybe there is someone out there who enjoys going through a ton of prototypes to get something reliable out. But the issue I think this is going to have is how reproducable that is going to be for your followers. I think in open source there is a spectrum: one the one side you have things like most software or simple standard-parts open hardware projects. On the other side you have things like an open source marble statue, where you still need to bring all the knowledge of how to make the marble statue — draw a circle, draw the rest of the owl and all that. A microphone with complex coil winding and gluing a micron-thin membrane to a coil is going to be somewhere inbetween. What exists btw. are condensor mics, but there you need to buy the membrane-assembly yourself.