When I was 8 or 9, my dad gave me the job of crawling inside of the family TV to remove vacuum tubes to check for replacement. We would throw them into a paper bag and carry them to the local grocery store where there was a tube tester, a cabinet with plugs, dials and switches and a light that would measure the strength of each tube. Then, for about a dollar twenty-five, you could bring home a new tube to fix the set so you could watch an episode of Hogan’s Hero’s that night. The great thing about vacuum tubes was they were replaceable but the bad was that they generated enormous amounts of heat and used enough energy to blow the circuit breaker if the Christmas tree lights were on.
And here I'd say that the bad thing about vacuum tubes was that they required regular servicing/replacement, when solid-state electronics using transistors and integrated circuits have lifetimes that far exceed them even with problems like capacitor failure.
I used to work with a blind woman who enjoyed the sound of electrical interference while she used Jaws on her computer. It gave her a pleasant level of confidence that an invisible dialog from Norton or something didn't hijack her cursor and have her typing into oblivion. Of course tech support couldn't help her when she would say "well, it normally makes a whirr on this dialog box, but now it's going tick-tick-tick, I don't think I'm in the right window, and Jaws isn't telling me anything". That's when I would sometimes get involved. Tricky though, because she valued her independence and didn't want to disturb me, but I thought it was SO COOL how she used her computer and was fascinated to see how her computer betrayed her. Asking her if I could turn on her monitor to see what was happening always seemed funny to me.
Using audio interference to determine when a machine crashes is actually pretty common. My Apple IIgs is good for that. I also used it a few times during my tech years on various crappy shielded PCs. We had a FM radio in the shop that would go dead with some particularly poor shielded machines!
Oh yeah, the IIgs did the thing where when you pulled down a menu you'd get a different noise for each menu item. Didn't make the connection until you mentioned it!
When we were using CDC9766 mainframe disc drives I worked with a software engineer who could tell the progress of his software booting by watching the gentle vibrations of the drive as the heads moved.
One way to tell if the vacuum tube is actually doing anything is to tap on it. Tubes are microphonic, so if you tap on one that's in an audio circuit, you'll get a "pwong" sound in the audio. But that's clearly not a real VU meter. A VU meter is supposed to have a slower response to the audio level, not bounce around wildly at the slightest amount of background noise!
You should install all three cooler master units into the same tower and route them through each other for maximum audio quality. That was obviously the manufacturer's intent
10:45 aaah the memories. Certain sound cards pick up a ton of RF noise produced by the motherboard. Tubes have a high input impedance, and therefore often very sensitive to such stuff. If there's no frequency range limitation (such as a capacitor between grid and capacitor) it will very happily amplify and sometimes "detect" (make audible) these spurious signals.
From what I remember, the analogue cable connecting my CD ROM to my sound card picked up a ton of noise. I ended up using a SPDIF connection out to a "dac/AC3 decoder". Not the greatest solution, as it meant that CD audio wasn't mixed in with the rest of the sound,.
Back in my C64 days, if I turned up the volume on the monitor loud enough, it would actually have this high-pitched whine when I had the drive on and you could actually hear the data transfer between the drive and C64, and there was a noticeable difference between the normal way of loading and when a fast loader was present (the C64 game Spindizzy is one that had a built-in fast loader).
Yep, the IRQ lines on the motherboards were basically unterminated antennas given only one card would be connected leaving decent length traces radiating the IRQs as RF. You would also get tons of noise from the harddrives loading down the powersupply.
Isn't this mainly a power supply issue? Or rather a poor smoothing in this device? The amp shares the same power supply as the rest of the PC. Even tiny tasks like moving the mouse make the CPU draw more power, making the power line unstable in that matter. And yes, always when I saw that CDROM audio cable, take it out!
They make them for eurorack - would that do? 3u is 5.25in so they should fit perfectly with a lil ingenuity to make a rack, same +-12v and +5v power too
Also the lack of an output transformer... But it makes you wonder why they went through the trouble of building the 300VDC anode supply if the tube isn't used at all
Even audio equipment with properly implemented tubes are largely a gimmick. It's audiophile meme stuff, like vinyl records also being supposedly superior, usually described using unquantifiable buzz words like "warm". Like Clint said "more pleasing analog distortion".
Those aren't from the CRT, it's from data transmission within the computer itself. CRTs could produce some interference on nearby radios, but - at least in my experience - never had any impact on interference on audio devices. The other way round, i have had issues. Active speakers with big transformers could distort the colors on my screen due to magnetic deflection of the electron beam in the CRT.
Yep. I also remember how I could set my old cellphone near the computer and I would hear the buzzing sound letting me now I was getting a call before the ohone responded. I also had one of those blinky antennas laying on my shelf and it would flash by itself sometimes. Never found iut what was triggering it though
We had an old Capehart and we it would breal down, my Dad would call the local repairman, Mr. Daggett. I was intrigued with electronics even then, and he would have me test the tubes right there at home. Such a warm giving gentleman and my love of electronics has been with me all of my life since. I have been an Electronics Tech for about 50 years and still going. Just that little push from a nice old repairman fixing an old vacuum tube TV with a single digit kid is a great gift for anyone to give.
Dude - I love Oddware so much. It is still my favorite series on your channel. This Musketeer is quite interesting. For a device released around 2005 with that many electrolytics, I bet the sound quality would improve thanks to some replacement capacitors. It is possible it would reduce some of that system noise (noisy ISA bus and any questionable internal cabling aside). I doubt you would want to go to that much trouble with it as it is just a novelty. With some of those other tube-related products out there, I'll bet you could build a totally tubular machine. Thanks again for all of your hard work.
the capacitors and diodes are not going to go bad in that short of a time period unless it was thrown in a damp shed or left outdoors for years. modern capacitors and electrolytics are built to a higher standard and degree of tolerance than the old ones. they won't just "decay" from time.
I know that this is going to sound a little odd. But as a watcher of youtube videos that show close up, high definition videos, I find it a very nice touch that you take great care of your nails. I am not sure you will see this, but if you do, thank you. If anyone else has thought about this, like my comment ;-)
I actually remember seeing one of these for sale in a local computer shop back in the 2000s - I picked the box up, looked it over, went "Huh! Okay..." and put it back on the shelf.
My Corsair carbide 300r tower thats only 5 years old has 2. I dont know what to put in them though (I dont have optical drives in this PC- they are in my older build), so I never bothered to remove the faceplates. Maybe I should go get some wacky "cool but useless stuff" to stick in there.
@@communications23 It's not about picture moves. When you move your mouse around the menus your computer has to do all the calculations to draw the menus. That's when it draws more power than in idle and that's when you can hear the power supply circuits try hard to power the components. It's usually the lack of filters in power circuits and sound card that makes the sounds to be loud enough to be heard.
I think you redsicovered the reason why all the old 8bit micros were packed into a shielding box :) I bet the "screen noise" that it picks up is some stray bus activity between the CPU and GPU...
@@butre. the initial hum may be a grounding issue, yes, but the effect of "hearing" the start menu change on screen is certainly electromagnetic noise that is picked up by the tube, I am pretty sure about that.
The APPJ tube amp that you show at the beginning is one of my favorites: it’s so small, simple and hefty little fella that just happily churns out music for a small room and I have yet to find any sub $200 tube amp that comes close to the build quality and overall niceness of that design. Just want to shout out to that little tube amp. They are made by all sorts of Chinese companies, just a manner of looking around for the design online.
The signal profile that a tube would provide can be emulated digitally. But it's not about what's better, it's the coolness of the thing. And I have to admit vacuum tubes are cool (when turned off).
Back then most people didn't have 24 bit audio, so there was something to the general idea of analog filters used sparingly to smooth out quantization artifacts in 16/44, or for weird guitar sounds. But now yeah pretty much any digital artifacts are going to be outside of human hearing range. But you can still do some cool somewhat unique effects with tubes like theramins or whatever
I think putting that in a case with that weird drive bay CRT you did a video on a while back would look great. Not sure if it would have any practical usage but would look cool with all the amber.
Absolutely hilarious that your go-to game test for the warm tube sound was Quake III Arena. 😂 Truly a solid pairing with the warm tube of a rocket launcher while gibbing everything that moves in the center pentagram room of Q3DM6!
"That doesn't sound good, but it sounds awesome" I love the cross noise that things makes, I find myself liking all the audio artifacts there, I want to record something just like the faint popping.
IDK, but those orange lights that illuminate the tube and meter are all the right kind of vintage. 👌 Reminds me of my Grandpa's old stereo receiver. It lit up the same kind of orange, and it makes me strangely nostalgic.
Way back in the 90s my friend had a graphic equalizer which fit in a drive bay. This actually did allow you to alter the sound. I think there were 5 sliders per channel. Quite pleasing indeed, but no glowing. Only the glow of the screen and the disk drive light :-)
There's an error. at 0:25 you said "it's a *valve*/vacuum tube audio thing". This can't be correct, if valve had anything to do with it it wouldn't be a 3.
Man, I love these drive bay accessories! It would have been neat to hear you play a sine wave, maybe 440Hz, and just just slowly increase the volume until it starts clipping. You could also run your sound card into an external amp to really overdrive it and get some interesting results.
I built a completely valve TRF radio last year from scratch to my own design using readily available eBay and other parts. I love it x it just sits there, playing away and it is a great link to our tech past... it's just a radio, nothing complicated and no, I don't need an account to use it nor does it collect my personal data!
Was rewatching your video on the Thermaltake CircleFire earlier and thinking of your video on the Musketeer 2, just trying to remember who made it 'oh yeah, it was Cooler Master'. Any time I think of that video I also think about your mention of the Musketeer 3 because it just looked so cool (and indeed, it looks *really* good in your setup here.) Anyway yeah I fell asleep then wake up a few hours later and see this in my notifications. Was an equal mix of 'oh NICE' and 'wow what a coincidence', especially in my just-woken-up stupor where it was a bit trippy to see honestly lol. Great video as ever.
I wanted that thing badly back in the day but in the pre internet days I was limited to what local stores had in store, which meant no luck for teen me.. after watching this video though.. seems like I didn't miss out on all that much in the end :)
Hi Clint! I restore tube gear as a hobby and I absolutely love this ridiculous thing. About the background noise which seems to be influenced by what's on the display: maybe it's the magnetic field of the CRT influencing with the tube? You could try putting the PC a bit further away from the monitor. What boggles my mind a bit is that since the main purpose of this device is simply looking cool, why didn't they go for a tube which glows more? Like a 6J6, for example. That could have looked really nice. And yeah, what most people describe as the "warmth" of analog gear is exactly what you mention: the imperfections, especially at the upper end of the frequency domain. Old consumer-grade equipment wasn't always great at reproducing high frequencies, something which is much less of a problem now in our digital age. Digital audio is often more "correct" in reproducing high frequencies, which can make the audio more crisp. Some people perceive this as more cold or clinical, however. As with so many things in life: it's just a matter of taste. By the way, I've been watching your channel for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I'm commenting. Absolutely loving what you're doing. Please keep going. Greetings!
These Musketeer devices seem purely designed for kids in the early 2000s to make their case look in a certain way of the times. I had a musketeer 1, black, installed in my case for a while back then. I also had a single led fan in an red acrylic support in front that occupied 2 drive bays. A thing of passed, but I'm constantly looking for drive bay accessories now to try and reproduce some of the sillyness. This is one of those things, just fun. Thanks for another one, Clint.
Nice that you have a matching retro PC for any kind of weird device.. This thing could never go in the woodgrain PC obviously, but no worries, the metalunium monster is ready!
@@Blackadder75 Probably Marlboro 🙂 I would like to know what today's designers producing huge tempered glass cases with no external bays are smoking. The 5.25" card reader in my PC gets used every time I use my camera while there are also four different USB leads plugged in the front (a handy place to keep them).
Awesome oddware! I thought the case looked familiar and I just realized that I've had the same Lian Li case since the early 2000s. They are super high-quality and built like literal tanks.
Never heard or seen in my life, never knew existed! The proper nomenclature for this type device would ultimately be "Tube Buffer Stage" or simply "Tube Preamp" . I got one as as kit for my HIfI rig, and can attest to it sounding very pleasing. Its well known amongst audiophiles alike that you generally wanna keep tubes away from noisy electronic components as they will act "microphonic" . You especially keep tubes away from computers! Very cool concept either way!
Usually the term "microphonic" is used of tubes that are going bad, and their internals pick up vibrations. Usual test with tube amps is to slightly hit the glass parts with a wooden pencil (or something similar), and if you hear the hit through the speakers, you should change the tube. But properly working tubes shouldn't do that.
@@ZincSpray Tubes will ring when you touch em, yes, but doesnt mean their going bad by any means. The sound quality will start to wain when theyre on the outs.
I listened to the audio test portion with my eyes closed, to avoid being influenced by being told when switching from native sound card output to the oddware device. I have to agree, the differences were subtle, like going from a local playback source to receiving over FM radio. Noticeable when comparing, and a little worse, but nothing dramatic. I can see why this thing didn't take off more widely, it doesn't really offer anything besides looks, and those are highly subjective.
Depends on input source. It might be interesting to have an electric guitar as the input (different soundwave characteristic to line-in/aux) ...and then record the results on the pc and maybe do some post-production effects and edit.
@@penfold7800 Its virtually the same as the staved plate valve distortion pedals, no proper valve design can run on a standard pedal plugpack - if he ran his modular synths into it with their 10v levels it shoud give some lovely saturation since its designed for speaker level.
The random noise you got when moving around menu items in Windows reminds me of the front audio on my old Antec 900 (v2) case. That was known for having the ground from the USB ports connected to the - on the headphone jack. What this meant in practice was that if you had the front USB connected then you would get load dependent noise on your headphones. There were two ways I knew of to fix it, the first being to disconnect the front USB from your motherboard. The second being to dig in to the black plastic and sever the ground link between the USB and front panel audio. I tried the second option, and instead of fixing the ground loop instead "fixed" the left channel in to not working :(
The nest part of the whole thing was watching the VU meter peg out at max over and over while you were blasting the baddies. LOL That was worth the price of admission right there.
As a musician/ "amateur audio engineer" there's all kinds of cheap tube stuff for that, usually doesnt do much or like you said actually kinda makes it worse. Maybe it would be fun to do a computer build with tube components or do one with all the most useless addons like the cupholder, cigarette lighter ect.
That pc and desktop with icons makes me miss the 90s. I never realized how great CRT monitors were or how awesome of keyboards we had. Also the speakers were actually worth a damn! Man we had it good back then..
Ah, I've heard that weird noise on multiple different machines. Even on my current work laptop you can hear the mouse movements. Whatever signals are running through the motherboard cause interference with the sound circuitry and can be heard as faint noise through the laptop speakers. I also had this exact same issue with my previous sound card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS combined with whatever my last motherboard and CPU combo was which had a PCI slot.
Yeah. So we've just fitted a device that delicately steers electrons to and fro into a PC that has relatively huge amounts of electromagnetic radiation all over the inside of it's sort-of reverse Faraday cage... trap, maybe? And this idea was good for audio how? Love your channel, Clint. Keep bringing us bad ideas in Oddware!
AOpen also made the "AX4PE Tube G" a second-generation tube amplifier motherboard that supported 800Mhz FSB Pentium4 processors. Still using a derivative of the 845 chipset with single channel memory bus. The earlier board you show has the better amplifier though.
I think that maybe using better shielded audio cables are maybe putting some better covering on the unit could make these interference sounds go away. unless it also comes tru the PSU power cable which is also possible I think
This looks great! Agree with your assessment on the audio ... I thought it was a little darker, but didn't seem especially saturated. I mean, I don't even think that would be a desirable effect for general PC audio. Love the modular synth instincts kicking in at 9:53 😁
I also didn't really see any, but perhaps some are in there but have gone bad considering the capacitor plague? I would be shocked if it was that noisy when it was new
I'm not a tube expert but from my understanding their little blurb at 1:50 is pretty accurate. The harmonics at which tubes and transistors distort at are weighted differently, and the harmonics that tubes distort at the most happen to be exactly an octave or two above the fundamental (intended frequency) so it can end up being pleasing rather than crunchy sounding. The thing is of course it's the distortion that's the difference so you have to purposefully overdrive the tube to really hear it. I've noticed PC powered audio stuff tends to have some kind of ground loop that picks up interference when fed audio from the same computer that's powering it. I bet the weird noises would go away if you plugged the audio from another computer into the Musketeer. Sure does defeat the purpose though...
To be more precise, the distortion that arises from most valve or tube topologies is even order harmonic distortion (2 times, 4 times, 6 times the fundamental frequency etc.) which sounds "warm" and not bad, compared to most of the distortion that you can get from (very poorly designed) semiconductor amplifiers which is odd order (3, 6 ,9 * the fundamental frequency.
As an audiophile - anytime someone describes something as sounding “warm” I interpret that as just bad sound - rolled off highs and bloated undefined bass seem to be the “warm” flavor so many love, and yes, a lot of tube gear will get you there. High performance state of the art analog gear from the tail-end of the analog-only era, you know, as good as that stuff ever got… yeah, it was never tube, and it was never “warm”… pro-tip to all the vinyl lovers; moving coil cartridges weren’t in vogue at that time either ;)
@@rileyyyyh taste is subjective, I only point out that the fetishization of tube gear is a modern phenomenon. The goals of hi-fi reproduction of recordings are also different from those of a musician who is using their gear in a more creative context.
Your speaker and CRT are close to the device. Could they be causing interference? I'm no expert on this stuff but I was wondering that as I watched. Love these kind of videos. Thanks Clint!
It's not the CRT, it's digital signals (data) flowing through the motherbord at very high frequencies. In good hardware, those signals are confined to the data lines. In mediocre or bad stuff, it can either be radiated as radio waves and picked up by the sound card, or be transferred onto the power connections and spread that way. It was very common in the 2000s. It was especially noticeable when you used onboard sound cards and high gain loudspeakers.
For a real test, try comparing the Musketeer with the direct audio from the sound card routed through about a metre of low-quality audio cables draped through the very noisy EM environment inside the case!
As soon as I saw that you had to drape the audio in and out through the whole case I thought the same thing. Would have liked to see how it would sound outside of the case
As a music producer I’ll tell u what this is for .. this is the first phantom power .. this is worth alot of money in some circles it’s the first phantom power to turn crappy pianos into better sounding synths .. cheers man
From the closeup shots and all the reflections around it, i couldn't even tell if the tube filament was the source of the light or not. I could see someone building something like this, using a burned out tube and illuminating it with some other source, all so it looks good. Still enjoyed the video. 🙂
Looks cool, but as a guitarist, anytime I see gimmick tube stuff like this, I hafta say "show me the circuit & operating conditions!" Anyhoo, they could leave out the backlight for the tube & let the heater glow visibly. Which, on that closeup, there's no filament glow. So I wonder if the tube is doing anything at all & it's not all that complicated gizmotron stuff?
The heater does work, check the typical ECC8x filament flash at 08:56. The ends of the filament are uncoiled and not thermally connected to the cathode and light up brightly before the inrush current gets limited by the rest of the filament heating up. This is normal for these types of tube, but not for others. Because ECC8x tubes don't light up very brightly, you often find LEDs under/around them. If you look at them from the top or from the bottom, you can see a faint red dot (like from a tiny tiny cigarette) of the cathode cylinder. Mounted in this position, it'll be hard to see.
Would be interesting to try it with some guitar heavy music, vacuum tube amps are highly sought after in the guitar(ist) community. Note: I understand that in guitar signal chain the tube amps are used way differently than in the playback case, but I think it would still be interesting to try.
@@liquid_psyche Thanks!! Your thoughts/ statements, based on your professional experience made sense to me. I think tube amps color the guitar sound most in the overdrive mode, and also the transformers for impedance matching may have some effect on the tone, making tube-amps sound different overall from solid-state. In this case, in the absence of those factors (and probable operation at lower than rated voltage) the effect of tube amp is minimal.
So what you need to do it put both recordings (with and without) then do a subtract between the two tracks. You’ll hear exactly what is added or removed!
Would be cool to reverse engineer the schematic! Seems nice and simple single tube amp, even though (obviously) supported by the LM324N that I think is doing the heavy lifting here
Seems too flawed to be worth it. It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a design with better EMI suppression, and maybe a bit of amplification from scratch
@@henryokeeffe5835 After seeing the interference that would be the most sensible conclusion for sure. There are some design out there, but this hybrid tube/opamp design on 12v seems kinda interesting. Although it reminds me of the fake headphone tube amps.
That clicking and popping sound might possibly come from noise on the 12v rail's. Audio stuff require regulated power supply's and and noise will be amplified. The voltage might sag a little bit each time the processor needs to do something.
It's lunacy to run your analogue audio past the motherboard and back as the cable will act like an antenna for interference, hence why you hear those crackles and pops when you move the mouse. Your analogue runs should be as short as possible, like in the case of the external USB audio interface. Very stupid product.
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When I was 8 or 9, my dad gave me the job of crawling inside of the family TV to remove vacuum tubes to check for replacement. We would throw them into a paper bag and carry them to the local grocery store where there was a tube tester, a cabinet with plugs, dials and switches and a light that would measure the strength of each tube. Then, for about a dollar twenty-five, you could bring home a new tube to fix the set so you could watch an episode of Hogan’s Hero’s that night. The great thing about vacuum tubes was they were replaceable but the bad was that they generated enormous amounts of heat and used enough energy to blow the circuit breaker if the Christmas tree lights were on.
I used to love staring at the vacuum tubes in the TV at night as a kid.
That's a time that I didn't know but you gave me a huge shot of nostalgia, somehow.
What a wonderful anecdote!
And here I'd say that the bad thing about vacuum tubes was that they required regular servicing/replacement, when solid-state electronics using transistors and integrated circuits have lifetimes that far exceed them even with problems like capacitor failure.
Much more simpler times. Tv sets designed to be fixed yourself unlike now. Mostly just junk but unfortunately needed.
I used to work with a blind woman who enjoyed the sound of electrical interference while she used Jaws on her computer. It gave her a pleasant level of confidence that an invisible dialog from Norton or something didn't hijack her cursor and have her typing into oblivion. Of course tech support couldn't help her when she would say "well, it normally makes a whirr on this dialog box, but now it's going tick-tick-tick, I don't think I'm in the right window, and Jaws isn't telling me anything". That's when I would sometimes get involved. Tricky though, because she valued her independence and didn't want to disturb me, but I thought it was SO COOL how she used her computer and was fascinated to see how her computer betrayed her. Asking her if I could turn on her monitor to see what was happening always seemed funny to me.
Using audio interference to determine when a machine crashes is actually pretty common. My Apple IIgs is good for that. I also used it a few times during my tech years on various crappy shielded PCs. We had a FM radio in the shop that would go dead with some particularly poor shielded machines!
Oh yeah, the IIgs did the thing where when you pulled down a menu you'd get a different noise for each menu item. Didn't make the connection until you mentioned it!
Having to turn on her monitor to see what was happening.... Yep. I totally agree, that is REALLY cool.
When we were using CDC9766 mainframe disc drives I worked with a software engineer who could tell the progress of his software booting by watching the gentle vibrations of the drive as the heads moved.
it would have been so cool to give her a lil speaker that made the monitor scan frequencies audible.
One way to tell if the vacuum tube is actually doing anything is to tap on it. Tubes are microphonic, so if you tap on one that's in an audio circuit, you'll get a "pwong" sound in the audio. But that's clearly not a real VU meter. A VU meter is supposed to have a slower response to the audio level, not bounce around wildly at the slightest amount of background noise!
You should install all three cooler master units into the same tower and route them through each other for maximum audio quality. That was obviously the manufacturer's intent
10:45 aaah the memories. Certain sound cards pick up a ton of RF noise produced by the motherboard. Tubes have a high input impedance, and therefore often very sensitive to such stuff.
If there's no frequency range limitation (such as a capacitor between grid and capacitor) it will very happily amplify and sometimes "detect" (make audible) these spurious signals.
From what I remember, the analogue cable connecting my CD ROM to my sound card picked up a ton of noise. I ended up using a SPDIF connection out to a "dac/AC3 decoder". Not the greatest solution, as it meant that CD audio wasn't mixed in with the rest of the sound,.
Right? I actually kinda miss that failure mode. Haven't seen that in years since I moved the DAC out of the PC
Back in my C64 days, if I turned up the volume on the monitor loud enough, it would actually have this high-pitched whine when I had the drive on and you could actually hear the data transfer between the drive and C64, and there was a noticeable difference between the normal way of loading and when a fast loader was present (the C64 game Spindizzy is one that had a built-in fast loader).
Yep, the IRQ lines on the motherboards were basically unterminated antennas given only one card would be connected leaving decent length traces radiating the IRQs as RF. You would also get tons of noise from the harddrives loading down the powersupply.
Isn't this mainly a power supply issue? Or rather a poor smoothing in this device? The amp shares the same power supply as the rest of the PC. Even tiny tasks like moving the mouse make the CPU draw more power, making the power line unstable in that matter.
And yes, always when I saw that CDROM audio cable, take it out!
10:56 - I want a internal personal computer geiger counter!
how radioactive is your PC?
They make them for eurorack - would that do? 3u is 5.25in so they should fit perfectly with a lil ingenuity to make a rack, same +-12v and +5v power too
There's a distortion pedal called the Geiger counter. You should check it out. It has a very unique sound.
The crazy thing is… These actually exist.
The fact that the tube itself doesn't glow at all makes me... Highly doubt if it's actually even used for anything or just a marketing gimmick.
Same bro. Likely it's just for looks. 12AU7 are so cheap and plentiful it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Also the lack of an output transformer... But it makes you wonder why they went through the trouble of building the 300VDC anode supply if the tube isn't used at all
Even audio equipment with properly implemented tubes are largely a gimmick. It's audiophile meme stuff, like vinyl records also being supposedly superior, usually described using unquantifiable buzz words like "warm". Like Clint said "more pleasing analog distortion".
It glows , i have 2 of these.
I disabled the led in one of them.
the shroud being made of plastic should say all you need to know
Had completely forgot about that electromagnetic interference from CRTs, but those distinct popping sounds brought back memories.
Those aren't from the CRT, it's from data transmission within the computer itself. CRTs could produce some interference on nearby radios, but - at least in my experience - never had any impact on interference on audio devices.
The other way round, i have had issues. Active speakers with big transformers could distort the colors on my screen due to magnetic deflection of the electron beam in the CRT.
Yep. I also remember how I could set my old cellphone near the computer and I would hear the buzzing sound letting me now I was getting a call before the ohone responded. I also had one of those blinky antennas laying on my shelf and it would flash by itself sometimes. Never found iut what was triggering it though
We had an old Capehart and we it would breal down, my Dad would call the local repairman, Mr. Daggett. I was intrigued with electronics even then, and he would have me test the tubes right there at home. Such a warm giving gentleman and my love of electronics has been with me all of my life since. I have been an Electronics Tech for about 50 years and still going. Just that little push from a nice old repairman fixing an old vacuum tube TV with a single digit kid is a great gift for anyone to give.
Dude - I love Oddware so much. It is still my favorite series on your channel. This Musketeer is quite interesting. For a device released around 2005 with that many electrolytics, I bet the sound quality would improve thanks to some replacement capacitors. It is possible it would reduce some of that system noise (noisy ISA bus and any questionable internal cabling aside). I doubt you would want to go to that much trouble with it as it is just a novelty.
With some of those other tube-related products out there, I'll bet you could build a totally tubular machine. Thanks again for all of your hard work.
the capacitors and diodes are not going to go bad in that short of a time period unless it was thrown in a damp shed or left outdoors for years. modern capacitors and electrolytics are built to a higher standard and degree of tolerance than the old ones. they won't just "decay" from time.
I know that this is going to sound a little odd. But as a watcher of youtube videos that show close up, high definition videos, I find it a very nice touch that you take great care of your nails. I am not sure you will see this, but if you do, thank you. If anyone else has thought about this, like my comment ;-)
I actually remember seeing one of these for sale in a local computer shop back in the 2000s - I picked the box up, looked it over, went "Huh! Okay..." and put it back on the shelf.
This is what I miss about the 5" bays on cases, you could install useful things in them, and weird, wacky useless things as well, it was great!
You can still buy cases with them. 😊
Yes, some of us dinosaurs still use optical drives.
My Corsair carbide 300r tower thats only 5 years old has 2. I dont know what to put in them though (I dont have optical drives in this PC- they are in my older build), so I never bothered to remove the faceplates. Maybe I should go get some wacky "cool but useless stuff" to stick in there.
Yeah, there is a revival of these wacky things for cases but unfortunately all proprietary.
Mine came with a cup holder!
I just bought a new case with 2 drive bays. Optical drive in one for sure, now I’m just looking to fill the second spot.
The VU meter bouncing around during Quake was most enjoyable. 😄
What a cool looking thing, even if it really has no utility. Perfect Oddware.
Yeah that's the cool part. Analog moving thing that picks up when a digital picture moves? Freaky!
@@communications23 It's not about picture moves. When you move your mouse around the menus your computer has to do all the calculations to draw the menus. That's when it draws more power than in idle and that's when you can hear the power supply circuits try hard to power the components. It's usually the lack of filters in power circuits and sound card that makes the sounds to be loud enough to be heard.
Its a staved plate valve distortion pedal
@@MaxusR I should have thought of that, it's kind of neat though.
I think you redsicovered the reason why all the old 8bit micros were packed into a shielding box :) I bet the "screen noise" that it picks up is some stray bus activity between the CPU and GPU...
nah I'm familiar with this. it's a ground loop
@@butre. A ground loop would be a constant bassy 60 Hz buzz wouldn't it?
@@ax14pz107 nah that's a shielding problem. ground loops are a separate issue
@@butre. the initial hum may be a grounding issue, yes, but the effect of "hearing" the start menu change on screen is certainly electromagnetic noise that is picked up by the tube, I am pretty sure about that.
Could it be microphonic?
In 2010 I spent an entire two weeks looking for one like it was a full time job! Such a cool thing.
LOL I understand entirely, this was primo 2010 material.
Thank you for always uploading these with accurate subtitles. Helps a lot.
Thanks!
The APPJ tube amp that you show at the beginning is one of my favorites: it’s so small, simple and hefty little fella that just happily churns out music for a small room and I have yet to find any sub $200 tube amp that comes close to the build quality and overall niceness of that design. Just want to shout out to that little tube amp. They are made by all sorts of Chinese companies, just a manner of looking around for the design online.
11:08 i used to get that on audio devices all the times, i could tell when the processor or disks were really going at it.
The signal profile that a tube would provide can be emulated digitally. But it's not about what's better, it's the coolness of the thing. And I have to admit vacuum tubes are cool (when turned off).
Back then most people didn't have 24 bit audio, so there was something to the general idea of analog filters used sparingly to smooth out quantization artifacts in 16/44, or for weird guitar sounds. But now yeah pretty much any digital artifacts are going to be outside of human hearing range. But you can still do some cool somewhat unique effects with tubes like theramins or whatever
speaking of sounds ... your voice sounds very good. RUclipsr is the perfect job for you 😁
Thanks!
Vacuum Tubes with a name like "Musketeer". This product had Oddware written all over it! 😊
I think putting that in a case with that weird drive bay CRT you did a video on a while back would look great. Not sure if it would have any practical usage but would look cool with all the amber.
Underrated comment
Hi LGR!!! Discovered your content recently. Been loving going through your backlog, and oddware in particular. Glad to see you're still making them!
Absolutely hilarious that your go-to game test for the warm tube sound was Quake III Arena. 😂 Truly a solid pairing with the warm tube of a rocket launcher while gibbing everything that moves in the center pentagram room of Q3DM6!
"That doesn't sound good, but it sounds awesome"
I love the cross noise that things makes, I find myself liking all the audio artifacts there, I want to record something just like the faint popping.
IDK, but those orange lights that illuminate the tube and meter are all the right kind of vintage. 👌 Reminds me of my Grandpa's old stereo receiver. It lit up the same kind of orange, and it makes me strangely nostalgic.
It's a shame they never made Cooler Master D'artagnan.
I wonder if they had an Amigo unit.
Good luck in life/finance/federal court 😉🙃😉
yeah, they missed an opportunity not naming these Athos, Porthos, and Aramis...
The most Gascony of audio devices.
Only comes with the Musketeer 3-pack
Yayy! you found one! Been after one myself for years, such a neat bit of visual flair for a case.
Way back in the 90s my friend had a graphic equalizer which fit in a drive bay. This actually did allow you to alter the sound. I think there were 5 sliders per channel. Quite pleasing indeed, but no glowing. Only the glow of the screen and the disk drive light :-)
There's an error. at 0:25 you said "it's a *valve*/vacuum tube audio thing". This can't be correct, if valve had anything to do with it it wouldn't be a 3.
Man, I love these drive bay accessories! It would have been neat to hear you play a sine wave, maybe 440Hz, and just just slowly increase the volume until it starts clipping. You could also run your sound card into an external amp to really overdrive it and get some interesting results.
I'd love to see a null test of this thing!
This is LGR, not LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER. Different genres of madman.
I built a completely valve TRF radio last year from scratch to my own design using readily available eBay and other parts. I love it x it just sits there, playing away and it is a great link to our tech past... it's just a radio, nothing complicated and no, I don't need an account to use it nor does it collect my personal data!
Nice video Clint
Was rewatching your video on the Thermaltake CircleFire earlier and thinking of your video on the Musketeer 2, just trying to remember who made it 'oh yeah, it was Cooler Master'. Any time I think of that video I also think about your mention of the Musketeer 3 because it just looked so cool (and indeed, it looks *really* good in your setup here.) Anyway yeah I fell asleep then wake up a few hours later and see this in my notifications. Was an equal mix of 'oh NICE' and 'wow what a coincidence', especially in my just-woken-up stupor where it was a bit trippy to see honestly lol. Great video as ever.
I wanted that thing badly back in the day but in the pre internet days I was limited to what local stores had in store, which meant no luck for teen me.. after watching this video though.. seems like I didn't miss out on all that much in the end :)
Oh MAN!.... perfect video for this Friday!.... Thanks Clint!
Hi Clint! I restore tube gear as a hobby and I absolutely love this ridiculous thing.
About the background noise which seems to be influenced by what's on the display: maybe it's the magnetic field of the CRT influencing with the tube? You could try putting the PC a bit further away from the monitor.
What boggles my mind a bit is that since the main purpose of this device is simply looking cool, why didn't they go for a tube which glows more? Like a 6J6, for example. That could have looked really nice.
And yeah, what most people describe as the "warmth" of analog gear is exactly what you mention: the imperfections, especially at the upper end of the frequency domain. Old consumer-grade equipment wasn't always great at reproducing high frequencies, something which is much less of a problem now in our digital age. Digital audio is often more "correct" in reproducing high frequencies, which can make the audio more crisp. Some people perceive this as more cold or clinical, however. As with so many things in life: it's just a matter of taste.
By the way, I've been watching your channel for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I'm commenting. Absolutely loving what you're doing. Please keep going. Greetings!
These Musketeer devices seem purely designed for kids in the early 2000s to make their case look in a certain way of the times. I had a musketeer 1, black, installed in my case for a while back then. I also had a single led fan in an red acrylic support in front that occupied 2 drive bays. A thing of passed, but I'm constantly looking for drive bay accessories now to try and reproduce some of the sillyness. This is one of those things, just fun. Thanks for another one, Clint.
Nice that you have a matching retro PC for any kind of weird device.. This thing could never go in the woodgrain PC obviously, but no worries, the metalunium monster is ready!
?
Brushed Stainless or Aluminum and woodgrain were a common combination in the late seventies.
@@TWX1138 what were they smoking? 😇🤔
@@Blackadder75 Probably Marlboro 🙂
I would like to know what today's designers producing huge tempered glass cases with no external bays are smoking. The 5.25" card reader in my PC gets used every time I use my camera while there are also four different USB leads plugged in the front (a handy place to keep them).
Awesome oddware! I thought the case looked familiar and I just realized that I've had the same Lian Li case since the early 2000s. They are super high-quality and built like literal tanks.
Every time a Cooler Master thing ends up on oddware I know it's a good time.
I haven't seen a video of yours in my feed for near two months thanks to the algorithm and I am subscribed. Just to let you know.
Never heard or seen in my life, never knew existed! The proper nomenclature for this type device would ultimately be "Tube Buffer Stage" or simply "Tube Preamp" . I got one as as kit for my HIfI rig, and can attest to it sounding very pleasing. Its well known amongst audiophiles alike that you generally wanna keep tubes away from noisy electronic components as they will act "microphonic" . You especially keep tubes away from computers! Very cool concept either way!
its a starved plate saturation unit
Usually the term "microphonic" is used of tubes that are going bad, and their internals pick up vibrations. Usual test with tube amps is to slightly hit the glass parts with a wooden pencil (or something similar), and if you hear the hit through the speakers, you should change the tube. But properly working tubes shouldn't do that.
@@ZincSpray Tubes will ring when you touch em, yes, but doesnt mean their going bad by any means. The sound quality will start to wain when theyre on the outs.
That noise when the computer first starts up is the crt powering up and running, watch how it mostly stops after the tube is fully powered
I listened to the audio test portion with my eyes closed, to avoid being influenced by being told when switching from native sound card output to the oddware device. I have to agree, the differences were subtle, like going from a local playback source to receiving over FM radio. Noticeable when comparing, and a little worse, but nothing dramatic.
I can see why this thing didn't take off more widely, it doesn't really offer anything besides looks, and those are highly subjective.
Depends on input source. It might be interesting to have an electric guitar as the input (different soundwave characteristic to line-in/aux) ...and then record the results on the pc and maybe do some post-production effects and edit.
@@penfold7800 Its virtually the same as the staved plate valve distortion pedals, no proper valve design can run on a standard pedal plugpack - if he ran his modular synths into it with their 10v levels it shoud give some lovely saturation since its designed for speaker level.
"For surround it might take three or four musketeers"...I couldn't stop laughing when you said that LGR! Great fun.
The random noise you got when moving around menu items in Windows reminds me of the front audio on my old Antec 900 (v2) case. That was known for having the ground from the USB ports connected to the - on the headphone jack.
What this meant in practice was that if you had the front USB connected then you would get load dependent noise on your headphones. There were two ways I knew of to fix it, the first being to disconnect the front USB from your motherboard. The second being to dig in to the black plastic and sever the ground link between the USB and front panel audio.
I tried the second option, and instead of fixing the ground loop instead "fixed" the left channel in to not working :(
I had the Musketeer II for YEARS. I loved the blue analog meters!
[speaker roars demonically]
Subtitles on point
The nest part of the whole thing was watching the VU meter peg out at max over and over while you were blasting the baddies. LOL That was worth the price of admission right there.
As a musician/ "amateur audio engineer" there's all kinds of cheap tube stuff for that, usually doesnt do much or like you said actually kinda makes it worse.
Maybe it would be fun to do a computer build with tube components or do one with all the most useless addons like the cupholder, cigarette lighter ect.
You would need a tower RAID server for ALL of the pointless components. Those things had at least 8 of the 5 1/4" drive bays on the front.
That pc and desktop with icons makes me miss the 90s. I never realized how great CRT monitors were or how awesome of keyboards we had. Also the speakers were actually worth a damn! Man we had it good back then..
Ah, I've heard that weird noise on multiple different machines. Even on my current work laptop you can hear the mouse movements. Whatever signals are running through the motherboard cause interference with the sound circuitry and can be heard as faint noise through the laptop speakers. I also had this exact same issue with my previous sound card, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS combined with whatever my last motherboard and CPU combo was which had a PCI slot.
USB polling rates are well within the audio range (I think they top out at 1000hz), makes sense!
@@Aquatarkus96 Yeah, actually Razer has one mouse which can do 8kHz polling and many others have 4kHz polling rate mice available.
6:20 That's the cutest transformer I've seen in at least a month!
That audio interference was common on that era of onboard audio too, so theres definitely some RF interference somewhere.
Yeah. So we've just fitted a device that delicately steers electrons to and fro into a PC that has relatively huge amounts of electromagnetic radiation all over the inside of it's sort-of reverse Faraday cage... trap, maybe? And this idea was good for audio how? Love your channel, Clint. Keep bringing us bad ideas in Oddware!
AOpen also made the "AX4PE Tube G" a second-generation tube amplifier motherboard that supported 800Mhz FSB Pentium4 processors. Still using a derivative of the 845 chipset with single channel memory bus. The earlier board you show has the better amplifier though.
Thermaltake absolutely beside themselves for not thinking of this first. RIP Thermaltake vacuum tube coffee heater.
"Cooler Master" made me think it was an over the top way of preventing your PC from overheating. You ever see the ice water powered stuff?
That company started out making heatsinks and fans. I used to have one for my old AMD CPU.
I like the Vu meter hard drive lighting it kind of gives it an old analog feeling
I think that maybe using better shielded audio cables are maybe putting some better covering on the unit could make these interference sounds go away. unless it also comes tru the PSU power cable which is also possible I think
Yes, this. You could try aluminum shielding tape on the inside walls of the device and shielded cables, that's a good idea.
This looks great! Agree with your assessment on the audio ... I thought it was a little darker, but didn't seem especially saturated. I mean, I don't even think that would be a desirable effect for general PC audio.
Love the modular synth instincts kicking in at 9:53 😁
That thing probably needs some power filter caps or an rf cage. It's pulling noise in a really harmonic way!
Or it's those audio cables in the case acting like antenna.
I also didn't really see any, but perhaps some are in there but have gone bad considering the capacitor plague? I would be shocked if it was that noisy when it was new
I would have loved one of those years ago. This is really niche type of thing. Great video, thank you!
I'm not a tube expert but from my understanding their little blurb at 1:50 is pretty accurate. The harmonics at which tubes and transistors distort at are weighted differently, and the harmonics that tubes distort at the most happen to be exactly an octave or two above the fundamental (intended frequency) so it can end up being pleasing rather than crunchy sounding. The thing is of course it's the distortion that's the difference so you have to purposefully overdrive the tube to really hear it.
I've noticed PC powered audio stuff tends to have some kind of ground loop that picks up interference when fed audio from the same computer that's powering it. I bet the weird noises would go away if you plugged the audio from another computer into the Musketeer. Sure does defeat the purpose though...
To be more precise, the distortion that arises from most valve or tube topologies is even order harmonic distortion (2 times, 4 times, 6 times the fundamental frequency etc.) which sounds "warm" and not bad, compared to most of the distortion that you can get from (very poorly designed) semiconductor amplifiers which is odd order (3, 6 ,9 * the fundamental frequency.
15:57 "I can hear myself dying, in such a .. smoooth warmth that I've never felt before. Mm.. such Analog quality" LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL CLINT XD hahahha
As an audiophile - anytime someone describes something as sounding “warm” I interpret that as just bad sound - rolled off highs and bloated undefined bass seem to be the “warm” flavor so many love, and yes, a lot of tube gear will get you there. High performance state of the art analog gear from the tail-end of the analog-only era, you know, as good as that stuff ever got… yeah, it was never tube, and it was never “warm”… pro-tip to all the vinyl lovers; moving coil cartridges weren’t in vogue at that time either ;)
As a musician, using a low pass filter and a bass bump isn't that uncommon when making synth sounds
I roll my eyes any time people praise analogue audio equipment. Analogue equipment is susceptible to interference.
@@rubiconnn Yes, that's why musicians like it
you sound like you’re fun at parties. as a musician, tube amps sound better.
@@rileyyyyh taste is subjective, I only point out that the fetishization of tube gear is a modern phenomenon. The goals of hi-fi reproduction of recordings are also different from those of a musician who is using their gear in a more creative context.
Was so curious what was up when you posted to twitter. Unique as all can be.
Your speaker and CRT are close to the device. Could they be causing interference? I'm no expert on this stuff but I was wondering that as I watched. Love these kind of videos. Thanks Clint!
It's not the CRT, it's digital signals (data) flowing through the motherbord at very high frequencies. In good hardware, those signals are confined to the data lines. In mediocre or bad stuff, it can either be radiated as radio waves and picked up by the sound card, or be transferred onto the power connections and spread that way. It was very common in the 2000s. It was especially noticeable when you used onboard sound cards and high gain loudspeakers.
I really love your channel, Clint. Its soooo ASMR and educational! 😊❤️
Yet again he found something to smash into a five and a quarter inch drive bay and I love it xD
Makes me wish I hadn't gotten rid of my full-tower case with six 5¼" drive bays.
That's a nice starter pack! But as we all know, to get internet, you need a whole SERIES of tubes.
For a real test, try comparing the Musketeer with the direct audio from the sound card routed through about a metre of low-quality audio cables draped through the very noisy EM environment inside the case!
As soon as I saw that you had to drape the audio in and out through the whole case I thought the same thing. Would have liked to see how it would sound outside of the case
That is so steampunk-looking. Very cool.
As a music producer I’ll tell u what this is for .. this is the first phantom power .. this is worth alot of money in some circles it’s the first phantom power to turn crappy pianos into better sounding synths .. cheers man
From the closeup shots and all the reflections around it, i couldn't even tell if the tube filament was the source of the light or not. I could see someone building something like this, using a burned out tube and illuminating it with some other source, all so it looks good.
Still enjoyed the video. 🙂
Looks cool, but as a guitarist, anytime I see gimmick tube stuff like this, I hafta say "show me the circuit & operating conditions!"
Anyhoo, they could leave out the backlight for the tube & let the heater glow visibly. Which, on that closeup, there's no filament glow. So I wonder if the tube is doing anything at all & it's not all that complicated gizmotron stuff?
Nice to see some others who know lol
The heater does work, check the typical ECC8x filament flash at 08:56. The ends of the filament are uncoiled and not thermally connected to the cathode and light up brightly before the inrush current gets limited by the rest of the filament heating up. This is normal for these types of tube, but not for others.
Because ECC8x tubes don't light up very brightly, you often find LEDs under/around them. If you look at them from the top or from the bottom, you can see a faint red dot (like from a tiny tiny cigarette) of the cathode cylinder. Mounted in this position, it'll be hard to see.
@@mfbfreak Yeah you're right. Missed it because of the backlight. So being it's connected it's still probably starved for voltage lol
Love your videos Clint, hope you're doing well
It might be worth trying a ground loop isolator between the soundcard output and the Musketeer input.
"I can hear myself dying in such a smooth warmth that I've never felt before."
This is truly one of the sentences of all time.
Would be interesting to try it with some guitar heavy music, vacuum tube amps are highly sought after in the guitar(ist) community.
Note: I understand that in guitar signal chain the tube amps are used way differently than in the playback case, but I think it would still be interesting to try.
I’ve had it installed for about a week now playing wildly variant genres of music. Results are the same, if even less notable, with rock and metal.
@@LGR Woah, didn't expect a reply. Been a fan of the channel from a long time. Thanks for the info. :-)
Lgr, run an fm synth through it and crank up tha gain!!!
Create raw sine wave bass destruction
@@liquid_psyche Thanks!! Your thoughts/ statements, based on your professional experience made sense to me.
I think tube amps color the guitar sound most in the overdrive mode, and also the transformers for impedance matching may have some effect on the tone, making tube-amps sound different overall from solid-state. In this case, in the absence of those factors (and probable operation at lower than rated voltage) the effect of tube amp is minimal.
That is the coolest 5 and a quarter inch accoutrement I've ever seen.
So what you need to do it put both recordings (with and without) then do a subtract between the two tracks. You’ll hear exactly what is added or removed!
Could even do it on blerbs
You and "MJD" are the best!☺
Would be cool to reverse engineer the schematic! Seems nice and simple single tube amp, even though (obviously) supported by the LM324N that I think is doing the heavy lifting here
Give it to Big Clive....
@@drjase you read my mind
Seems too flawed to be worth it. It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a design with better EMI suppression, and maybe a bit of amplification from scratch
@@henryokeeffe5835 After seeing the interference that would be the most sensible conclusion for sure. There are some design out there, but this hybrid tube/opamp design on 12v seems kinda interesting. Although it reminds me of the fake headphone tube amps.
There are plenty of circuit diagrams already.
Ahhhh, always love some good oddware.
A decent tube device would mute the audio for a few seconds until the tube warms up. Probably your other tube amp does it.
I love this obscure stuff! I remember the Aopen tube mobo! That will be another good vid when you get one lol
That clicking and popping sound might possibly come from noise on the 12v rail's. Audio stuff require regulated power supply's and and noise will be amplified. The voltage might sag a little bit each time the processor needs to do something.
You know you're talking about so don't doubt yourself. Anyway i enjoy your videos and I've learned a lot. Just wanted to say that.
As I get older, the idea of playing music off a CD on your desktop is starting to feel like oddware 😂
Made my Friday thank you
Ah, I love audiophool snake oil. Bit surprised the tube is even hooked up to the audio rather than just being there for looks.
I like the metal look of it. Its one reason I like my imac, the all aluminum shell which can truly be cleaned like brand new.
It's lunacy to run your analogue audio past the motherboard and back as the cable will act like an antenna for interference, hence why you hear those crackles and pops when you move the mouse. Your analogue runs should be as short as possible, like in the case of the external USB audio interface. Very stupid product.
Such analog, much wow! :D
Pretty ironic that a company named COOLERmaster made a vacuum tube amp
great vid! As soon as I heard aluminum monster, I thought of always sunny lol.