Image credit @zhugunic https://drop.com/talk/67372/gl-2-k
Do I need an amp? What are these acronyms like DAC, DSP, or DSD? What even are all the components that make up an audio chain? Let’s take a beginner’s look at the core, essential building blocks of a digital audio chain, and lay it plain what each piece does. We can cover the major pieces separately, but I’ll still include a few tips to optimize playback here. Please hit the little bookmark button and feel free to check and share this guide whenever you need a reference!
For people who need a visual and audible explanation, or are worried it would take too long to get a working knowledge of the audio chain, here is my YouTube video on this subject that is just 7 minutes long! I like writing though, so let’s get started with an overview, then break it down into what each piece does and how an upgrade would benefit the final sound quality.
Signal Path
Image credit @SpeleoFool https://drop...
As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project.
Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole.
Mechanical Keyboards
Introductory Topics
Mechanical vs Membrane
Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards
Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi)
Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts
Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs
Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations
Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek)
Keyboard Layouts
Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol)
What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try (dovenyi)
Keymap Layout Analysis (Keymap wizardry: Typing out the Harry Potter saga)...
Finding your groove: getting into vinyl with Audio-Technica
I’d like to think that I could’ve been friends with the late Hideo Matsushita, founder of Japanese Hi-Fi powerhouse Audio-Technica. If I could, I’d travel back in time to 1960’s Tokyo, where a young Matsushita curated “vinyl listening sessions” at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts, exposing visitors to the sounds and possibilities of high end audio and the warmth of vinyl records. I imagine sitting with him in a mod coffee shop, listening to the stories of what he witnessed in those sessions, the conversations he had with visitors, and what ultimately motivated him to head back to his small apartment above a ramen restaurant and start an audio company of his own.
In the histories I’ve read regarding AT’s humble beginnings, Matsushita’s motives seem clear. Produce high end audio at affordable prices, bringing audio excellence into spaces and to customers that simply didn’t have access to it before. His first two products, the AT-1 and AT-3 phono cartridges did exactly that, and...
I don’t think this is an article.
I’m pretty sure it’s the beginning of a book.
The "technology" section of every thrift store is a potential treasure trove. Swap meets, estate sales... they're the same. I honestly enjoy sifting through stacks of typewriters, radios, turntables and dusty old keyboards... hunting for treasure. That's what has led me to ask my friends in the hobby a pair of simple but nuanced questions… what’s your dream thrift store find and what’s your holy grail?
It turns out, that for many, that’s the same question. For a lot of people in this hobby, finding the perfect board for you happens at some point, and rather than staring at your collection of boards on the wall, or continuing to buy keyboards until your room looks like Wall-E’s trailer…
Instead, mature keyboard hobbyists tend to do a number of things:
Sell/trade artisan keycaps
Purchase keycap sets
Sell or trade rare/nice (and sometimes new) keyboards to keep things fresh
Most of us haven’t...
I Think My Switch Is Stuck! - The Tale of Cherry MX Locks
Over the years of collecting mechanical keyboard switches, I’ve been lucky enough to have encountered dozens upon dozens of rare and unique ones that have stuck in my mind to this day. Prototypes, factory errors, and even a few switches so rare that there is literally zero documentation about them anywhere in the world all fill that personal list from top to bottom. However, I realize that talking about switches so far outside of most people’s reaches, and even sometimes my own grasp, doesn’t make for the most exciting of articles about switches. To this newest generation of keyboard enthusiasts, though, there is one pretty rare MX-style switch which has made its way to the top of everyone’s “must try” lists – Cherry MX Locks. These often undiscussed and even more rarely seen switches are something that few people have seen and even fewer have had the chance to try at a meetup before. However, the list of people who really know how these unique Cherry switches work is even shorter...
So in my previous write-up, while highlighting the benefits of alternative and custom layouts, I declared without much evidence that QWERTY is not that bad at all, and also that it is in the top 2% of all the possible layouts. Well, like so many times in life: it depends.
I did my original research many years ago - the exact value was in fact 1.82% -, but I forgot to mention that this is only valid in a special case: using my personal corpus and ruleset. It makes sense since back in the day I did this to support the design process of my own custom keymaps.
Anyway, it was high time to redo my original experiment, dive in this topic a bit deeper, and reveal the logic and method behind my calculations. Spoiler alert: I was wrong! Or was I? ;)
QWERTY
Everyone knows QWERTY I guess. Christopher Sholes, Remington 2 typewriter, preventing jamming of type bars, path dependence, whatever. I'm not going to cover it here, check this previous write-up of mine if you are interested...
Figure 1: This is the keyboard of someone (0range) who clearly knows how to ask proper questions.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been lurking around the channels of a couple of different entry level keyboard forums and I have to admit that the experience is quite bleak. I’m not saying this because of “toxicity” or people being given wrong information, rather I see so many people’s questions going unanswered… and to be honest they’re kind of to blame for it. While I recognize that not everyone coming freshly into the keyboard space enters it with the same level of inquisitiveness that I did when I first joined back in 2017, these questions going unanswered really feel way under-thought or over-thought compared to where I was. On one hand, you get questions like this:
What is best gaming keyboard?
And on the other hand, you get questions like this:
Hi, there everyone! I am just now starting to look into mechanical keyboards as an avid gamer and I need some help in...
Hall Effect: What is a Hall Effect switch and will it turn you into a gaming god?
TL;DR: Nope, but there are reasons why you may want to use a Hall Effect Keyboard.
Hall Effect switches are the newest trend in mechanical keyboard switches. From Gateron to Geon, switch manufacturers are starting to release HE switches. With Wooting at the forefront and seemingly the best implementation of Hall Effect technology, many other brands seem to be playing catch-up. We’ve seen releases like the RAKKA, BOOG75, DrunkDeer, and MOD007 HE start to stir up competition. But do you need another keyboard? Is this one going to be the end all be all for you? Is HE Endgame? If you’re like me, a keyboard enthusiast, your answers will probably be: no(yes), no, and no. Do I think that an HE board deserves a spot in your collection? Maybe… Let’s dive into the latest technological update to mechanical switches in a long time, and you can make that decision for yourself.
First, we need to know...
Figure 1: Zeal's own photo of the first production bags of Zealios switches...
I’m guessing that a good number of you reading this article right now clicked on with some sincere degree of confusion from the title. There can’t possibly be any way that ThereminGoat – the guy who has personally tried over 3,000 different switches – is claiming that there won’t ever be another switch like the Zealios, of all things. (I’m sure a few of you are further listing off at least a dozen other medium-heavy tactiles that you can think of that are close enough to Zealios on top of this, too.) While you would be right in calling me out for saying something of the sort about Zealios, the switches, what I’m talking about here is something bigger and more impactful – Project Zealio, a.k.a. the initial groupbuy announcement and ‘Round 1’ release of Zealios switches. I’m here to argue that not only did Project Zealio fundamentally changed the way that the mechanical keyboard community thought...
That would be a cool shop to go to in a mall.
In some of my past posts and reviews I’ve written there have been requests to walk through my own process for building a keyboard for myself. I’m fortunate in that I get to build many keyboards. I haven’t logged every single keyboard that I’ve built, that would have been great, but hindsight is 20/20. The vast majority of the builds that I do are for other hobbyists. I built a small name for myself doing commissions and build services specializing in leveraging my extensive knowledge of the hobby to help acquire unique boards, make recommendations in build materials, and providing a truly personalized board for those who might not have known much about mechanical keyboards before reaching out to me. I started doing this service back in 2018, and now, being a dad, husband and full time IT specialist, I tend to only accept a couple commissions at a time. I’ve got my own backlog of boards, my collection seems to continually grow, and I...
Layout Optimization Best Practices: The Corpus (Part 1)
In this series we are designing our own custom keymaps, logical layouts, you name it. We’ve laid the groundwork by looking into how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers (SpaceFN), and also the huge potential of alternative layouts and custom keymaps. Today, we take the first step in designing your ultimate keymap by exploring our options for compiling a corpus.
What's a corpus? Essentially, it's just a fancy term for a big chunk of text. In this context it means a usually large collection of textual data used directly or indirectly as an input for our layout optimization algorithms. Often literally a single text file.
Why does it matter to you? Because a well-crafted, personalized corpus is crucial for keymap wizards. If you're aiming to design your own custom logical layout, the corpus plays a key role in determining the language statistics that reflect your typing habits, thus the outcome of the optimization. These statistics, which we extract through analysis of...
I must have watched this GMMK Pro pre-sale build video from a YouTuber named IO Sam a dozen times before I pulled out my wallet and pre-ordered it.
In retrospect, I learned a great deal about building keyboards from Sam’s straightforward, professional delivery. I watched and re-watched sections I didn’t understand, and certain phrases and moments in the video stuck with me in ways where I still think about them. Especially at 23:10, when he compliments the MT3 White on Black keycaps with an actual chef’s kiss, locks eyes with the camera and says “Perfecto.” (I still do that whenever I put MT3 WOB on a board.)
In that video, IO Sam introduced me to DROP, when he referenced the MT3 WOB’s and the GMK Kaiju keycaps that he set the Glorious GMMK Pro up with. I was in love with the look and feel of the MT3 profile. (I still am, as you can read in my previous article “In defense of MT3”) As a life-long Godzilla fanatic, I fell head over heals for GMK Kaiju. In the latter parts...
Layout optimization best practices: sources of your personal corpus (part 2)
Welcome back to our series on designing custom keymaps! After looking into how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers, and the potential of custom keymaps, last time we took the first real step by examining your options for compiling a corpus.
As a recap: The corpus is simply a big chunk of text. We use this collection of textual data, often a single text file, to characterize your typing habits (calculating various language statistics), and feed it directly or indirectly as an input into layout optimization algorithms – to find the optimal keymap for you!
Today we’ll expand on this idea by exploring your options if, like me, you prefer a personalized corpus rather than grabbing some general (and mostly irrelevant) data available online.
Image 1: Letter frequencies – the most basic use of corpora – in this very post
We've seen that a well-crafted, personalized corpus plays a key role in determining the outcome of the optimization process. We've also explored...
Fear and loathing on a PCB
At a recent keyboard meetup I was talking to someone very new to the hobby and they said that they bought a board and were surprised to discover that it was not hotswap. They were really intimidated by the idea of soldering their switches into their keyboard. Turns out, for some people, whipping out a blazing hot metal stick and possibly wrecking your expensive purchase gets them jittery.
All kidding aside, for the first year or so in the hobby, I purchased exclusively hotswap keyboards, avoiding soldering for a couple reasons. Firstly, I didn’t want to commit to any one switch. I liked clicky a lot early on (still do if I’m being honest) but I saw that the folks who had been in the hobby for longer moved away from clicky, and I predicted accurately that I too would do the same. Secondly, I was just coming to terms with what it cost to buy and build a keyboard, and soldering seemed like an unnecessary risk.
I can trace my initial...
Typing out all the Harry Potter books would be crazy, right? What would be the point? Seems like a weird flex even by keyboard enthusiast standards. Yep, that's right. Typing it out once makes no sense. That's why I'm going to type out the books a few million times! For the benefit of humanity and especially of you, fellow keymap wizards.
This demonstration of the power of alternative/custom layouts is a shortened version of the original article at kbd.news. Given the huge extent of this topic, we can barely scratch the surface here so consider this write-up a mere teaser.
Imagine you are an aspiring writer with a brilliant idea, just about to start typing out your magnum opus, staring at a yet empty document on your screen. Cursor blinking, annoying orphan relatives locked up in the cupboard under the stairs.
Your story, about a young boy who ends up saving the world, is quite complete. You "just" have to type out heaps of your manuscripts and notes: about 6.5 million...
If you watched Star Wars for the first time, without seeing images of the Empire’s perfectly spaced thousands of goose-stepping minions in spotless white-lacquered armor. If you didn’t see the fleets of black and grey tie-fighters, the immaculately designed star cruisers, the evil moon-shaped flagship… you wouldn’t know that the rebels were rebels.
After all, rebels don’t look like rebels if they don’t have something to contrast them against. They just look like normal people. That’s probably why when you see Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Finn (all rebels) dressed in stormtrooper garb, they somehow seem even more rebellious then they were before. It’s not what they’re wearing, it’s how they wear it. Dirty, scuffed, broken. Helmet missing or askew. An out of place, beat up weapon slung diagonally across their body. It’s the simple act of defacing the uniform that identifies them in our mind as counter-cultural.
Funnily enough, it works in reverse. To the dismay of...
Keymap optimization: language statistics and important indicators
Welcome back to this series where we’re designing kick-ass keymaps! After covering basics like how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers and the potential of custom keymaps, we took the first real steps in designing your tailor-fit keymap by looking into some options for compiling a corpus in general and also with a more useful personal corpus in mind.
Quick recap: in this context, corpus is simply a fancy name for a big chunk of text.
Today, we’re going to analyze your corpus (or pretty much any text if you haven't done your homework yet) and discuss some basic language statistics along with common metrics that can be used to quickly evaluate a keymap, and also to compare layouts. This is the next logical step in our journey if you're aiming to craft the optimal keymap for yourself.
Character/bigram/trigram frequencies
To begin with, let's examine the character frequencies in our corpus. The occurrence of different letters can vary significantly not only between...
Making your keyboard work for you!
When shopping for a new keyboard you may have heard that you want to have a keyboard that is compatible with QMK, VIA, or VIAL. These are three different programs that allow you to modify the assigned keys on a keyboard. This is one of the major advantages of using a custom mechanical keyboard and one that I feel is criminally underused. Making small adjustments to your layers can allow you to tune your keyboard to your exact specifications. For example, I always swap the position of left control and caps lock. I’ve always felt that caps lock was a waste of such a valuable space. For those of you that read some of my earlier articles, you’ll know that my first mechanical keyboard was a Happy Hacking Keyboard. As you’ll see later on, my personal layouts are heavily inspired by this keyboard, even going so far as to mapping my backspace to the pipe key on nearly every single physical layout, yes including tenkeyless. Today, I hope you can take away...
Figure 1: Oh yeah, I meant it when I said obscure...
There’s no doubt that mechanical keyboard switches have gotten increasingly better in their stock forms over the past half decade of releases. Despite switches now having tighter manufacturing tolerances, smoother factory lubing, and overall higher quality per dollar spent, aftermarket modifications of switches is still one of the most discussed topics by people freshly joining the hobby today. This hyper fixation on switch modding is due in no small part to the glut of keyboard content creators that produced videos, shorts, and all manner of content during the peak of COVID talking about the art and science behind lubing and filming for switches. For a while there, it almost seemed as if you had to have some content about lubing, filming, and/or ‘frankenswitching’ switches if you wanted to cut it as being a true keyboard content creator in the space. However, as people like this have flooded the internet with...
Hey all The Skeleton here i've been talking with some users of geekhack and been seeing all of there amazing artisans and I have told them of getting more artisans on MD and they weren't exactly pleased they don't think artisans belong here.
But what do you think? Would you want some more artisans on Massdrop, they would of course have to be small drops but they would still be there at least.
I've noticed that there are many people from Europe which would love to join more drops but are confronted with huge shipping costs and taxes making most products more expensive than they'd be on retail.
Also, I've seen that some products actually come from Sweden, Germany etc. in the first place.
Is there any chance that European vendors could ship directly to European customers or that we'll se a department for other countries in the future?
I'd like to propose creating a "Musical Instruments" community but I need your support!
Like and share this post if like me you want a nice Fender bass guitar or Drumheads or Cymbal packs or other cool musical stuff from Massdrop!
🎸 🎹 🎻 🎷
Let's make this the most popular community, we need 800 votes to get this to the top. Start voting! 🔥🔥🔥
Link: https://drop.com/vote/New-Communities-Poll-1
UPDATED POST: https://drop.com/talk/24007/alright-its-time-to-create-the-musical-instruments-community-guitar-%F0%9F%A5%81-violin-saxophone
Massdrop to Europe!
In europe, It's a pain having to go trough customs to buy in massdrop.
It would be awesome if we could have a massdrop for europe.
I know the products would be different but we had to start somewere... :)
Mechanical Keyboards 101 - An Introduction To The Hobby
Introduction
Let’s tackle the first and most obvious question here: “What’s the deal with these mechanical keyboards, and why in the hell would you pay $100+ for one?!” This simple question is unsurprisingly difficult to answer in many ways. Here's one reason and a thousand words worth:
Hate the way this one looks? I guarantee you I can find one you'll adore somewhere!
Mechanical keyboards are more than just a fancy tech accessory or noisy-disco-show to display on your desk. Mechanical keyboards are a full blown hobby with a huge cult following, years of history containing community DIY projects and group buys, dedicated forums (and silly forum drama), niche’s within the niche (like artisan keycaps), and more recently big brand names investing, collaborating, and directly interacting with the enthusiast community.
Personally, I’ve been heavily involved in the mechanical keyboard community for many years. I run KeyChatter.com - a website dedicated entirely to...
I am tired of import taxes every time I participate in a drop. I don't mind paying the actual price of products in USD even with the Canadian dollar doing so bad. I was wondering if there is any chance of a Canadian branch ever opening up so drops can be mailed quicker and import taxes wouldn't apply. I know there are a lot of Canadian customers who would appreciate this as well. Something similar to what Amazon.ca does.
I thought it would be exceptionally helpful to have a post discussing keyboard layouts, showing what "standard physical layouts" are, and showing what keys differ for many popular alternative layout keyboards. I am not pointing out correct legend placement with these pictures, with programmable boards that would just be a nightmare. It should also be mentioned that I am basing this guide on sculpted profiles (SA, DCS, Cherry, Alps, etc) and NOT uniform profiles like DSA or XDA.
Here is the standard keyboard layout (ANSI and ISO). I have color coded the graphic in this way:
60% - Light Blue
TKL/80% - Green
TK/Fullsize/100% - Yellow
ISO - Dark Blue (Keys that differ from standard ANSI)
So, with this system any keyboard that is covered by light blue/green/yellow caps alone SHOULD be covered by a standard 104 keycap set (like Ducky, Tai Hao, etc). Keep in mind a few more boards can be covered by these sets, just not with the correct profile for each key.
At the end of this article...
This is a test.
Hey everyone,
We’ve been paying close attention to all of you who have discussed our current shipping experience in different parts of the world, particularly in Europe.
Today, we’re kicking off a new shipping method test in European Union countries, so we can better evaluate how we can improve this experience for members located in these markets.
Select audio products will be available to ship from our test warehouse in Europe with delivery expected within 5 business days. Most will arrive at your door with no post office pickup, though some exclusions apply, depending on your address. All prices in this test have been adjusted to include VAT, shipping and handling, and will be in USD.
Quantities are very limited so don’t delay. Once quantities have sold out, we will be evaluating the success of the shipping test, and will move forward either with the new prices that include VAT, shipping and handling (based on USD pricing), or revert to...
I've designed a few keycap sets (Jukebox SA and Jukebox Cubic, GMK Honeywell: The Deskthority Set of the Year in 2017, and GMK Mint Dolch). I've collaborated on countless others, and I've picked up a few good tips and tricks for creating a successful keycap set along the way.
Massdrop has been heavily involved in the mechanical keyboard community for a few years now, and has really become one of the go-to places for custom keycap set drops. Before Massdrop most group buys for keycap sets were run on the forums, which had its ups and downs.
Almost two years ago I created the Jukebox keycap set, which ran on Massdrop as their first SA profile drop, with my second run of the set happening earlier this year. Though the overall design (color, profile) stayed the same, many aspects of the kit changes as a result of the ever changing community and popularity of custom sets since my first drop. A lot of thought and consideration went into the second drop, and I thought it may be...
Artisans are my favorite parts of keycaps, they are a labor of love that are unique and beautiful, and with all of these new artisans coming to Massdrop I ask. Which one is your favorite? my favorite artisan is the nebula series from jelly keys.
Migaloo is the only known all white humpback whale in the world. “Migaloo” is the aboriginal word for "white" in Australia
He was first sighted in the Australian waters in 1991. Since then, people have met him more than fifty times at different times and places, and one of the occasional encounters was particularly exciting. It was captured by photographer Jenny Dean at the Egira Bay in northern Queensland, Australia, the wonderful scene of Migaloo jumping over the water.
At that time, he was rushing out of the water with his symbolic backflip action. The long fins gracefully crossed the air. After hovering for about one or two seconds, the body weight was slowly twisted and fell, making great sound and huge waves.
The graceful "dance", dazzling white, seems to be in the fairy tale world.
The prices here in the UK when compared to the US is insane. Yet, I understand why this is something which is needed by massdrop to keep sending things over. But I ask any ways, can there be a UK based Massdrop. So that I don't have to pay ridiculous prices to ship it over.
hello guys. I have been requested by kinera to post this review for you guys on massdrop.
Here is my review of the product, make sure to watch the full video for a chance to win !
special entry for massdrop users: comment and like this post for extra 2 entries !
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