Oak Creek man builds ultimate old-school gaming paradise (WI)

[geomartin]

I hope this guy's arcade isn't eventually taken down by his significant other (à la Peter Hirschberg's wife). 

From the looks of this guy (age and demeanor), my guess would be he's already had a first wife, learned his lesson, and pre-nupped this one.  God I hope so!

[molton]

Who spends a fortune on vinyl? I get great stuff for next to nothing (sometimes free) and new vinyl is often the same price as a CD...

a fortune on the rent for the warehouse you'd need to have a vinyl collection equal to your average hard drive full of mp3's.

mp3's and mame cabinets are for all us struggling in the lower middle class who haven't lost our minds.

[DaveMMR]

Who spends a fortune on vinyl? I get great stuff for next to nothing (sometimes free) and new vinyl is often the same price as a CD...

a fortune on the rent for the warehouse you'd need to have a vinyl collection equal to your average hard drive full of mp3's.

mp3's and mame cabinets are for all us struggling in the lower middle class who haven't lost our minds.

A warehouse? An Ikea bookcase will hold more records than most people would ever listen to. Maybe a milk rate for smaller collections. Bags Unlimited even sells some sturdy boxes. 

Yes, you will always hold more on a harddrive, but at what point are you having songs on your computer that never get played?  I only have 40 Gigs of music on my drive and I feel that half of it coul be erased and I wouldn't notice. That's the main problem; media has been devalued when there's no effort in obtaining it and it's intangible.

It's like roms. Saying you have 5000 games is really nothing to brag about; anyone can have that. Show me 50 original arcade machines, and it's intimately more interesting and rewarding.

But I'm not downing MP3s or MAME. I use them both lots and love. But a physical collection and digital files are very different.

[molton]

...Saying you have 5000 games is really nothing to brag about...

that is f**king beautiful.  That is why roms and mp3's are great, 100 games, 5000 games, who cares, it's just information.

[boardjunkie]

first of all digital music is still heard in it's analog form, it's not like we hear a bunch of high pitched noise that we convert to music in our brains.

that being said, 128kbps mp3s sure do have that vintage 1996 sound too them  

Digital "music" is an approximation of analog. Once you chop it all up, throw some of it out the window, then convert it back to analog....its not the same. MP3 throws a *ton* out the window, so you end up with something that really has little in common with the analog source material. FLAC is an improvement, but hardly optimal.

I have good ears and have been a musician all my life. I can tell the difference. Most people can't, and this is why we have the whole digital format(s) today. Convenience over quality always wins.....cassettes and 8 tracks are past examples of this trend.

[tommyinajar]

LoL I bet she jumped at a prenuptial, he might have just declared the pins and cabs as "His"!


(That might have been what I would have done)

[CheffoJeffo]

that is f**king beautiful.  That is why roms and mp3's are great, 100 games, 5000 games, who cares, it's just information.

And that is just sad ... failing to see the difference between information and experience ...

[CheffoJeffo]

I didn't know!:cry: I just went looking--when did this happen?!? I've dreamt for years of making a road trip (from here: London, Ontario, Canada). Okay, I'm going hunting for details...

Hey, you live in London ... arcade capital of Canada.

Quit bitching.

[molton]

And that is just sad ... failing to see the difference between information and experience ...

Your experience is determined by the information your brain receives, if your brain is hung up on bragging rights and having the best of the best quality then sure, mame cabinets and mp3's are total ---shoe---.  If however you don't let the original side art not being on the side of the arcade cabinet you are playing or not hearing the music at the best possible audio quality ruin your experience, then mame cabinets and mp3s are great.

also, mp3's are a lot more convenient than 8-tracks

also, to re-iterate, there's nothing wrong with collecting awesome things like vinyl albums or arcade machines, but there's definitely nothing wrong with convenience.

[DaveMMR]

also, to re-iterate, there's nothing wrong with collecting awesome things like vinyl albums or arcade machines, but there's definitely nothing wrong with convenience.

Convenience is awesome.  I have unlimited music available at my fingertips and I can play most any classic arcade game anywhere I want.  I wouldn't want to go back. But understand there's a HUGE difference between having a record (or CD) collection and having a drive full of MP3s much in the same way collecting original hardware is way different than having thousands of MAME roms at your disposal.

What I think a lot of younger generations can't appreciate is the thrill of the hunt. Time was I had to scour the record stores to complete gaps in my record and CD collections. Nowadays, you can just hop on the internet and buy anything you need without breaking a sweat. No challenge = less appreciation.

I know it sounds silly and it may be hard to explain, but it's really satisfying to find that "holy grail" you've been searching for. So much so, I think, that I'm collecting consoles and cartridges and am actively avoiding playing their emulated counterparts (even the legal ones like Wii VC). It's the whole package, not just the "information" stored therein. Popping in the cartridge, sitting on the couch with the original controller, looking at the artwork - stuff like that paints your nostalgic haze better than just loading a file on your computer.

Then again - I'm old.   

[lcmgadgets]

Hey, you live in London ... arcade capital of Canada.

Quit bitching.

Please tell me this isn't true. The only arcades here r the crappy half ones in movie theatres, or a couple of places with those ticket spitting obsenities. Endless Arcade, Quarters, Wizards 1 & 2, Videoland, Endless Amusements, The Silverball, Ace, and Baileys all died many years ago. If u know of another 1 here that I don't, please share!

& bitching is 1 of the few things I'm good at. 

[CheffoJeffo]

Sorry -- I should have been clearer -- London is the home of the greatest number of collectors and available machines that I am aware of.

[CheffoJeffo]

also, to re-iterate, there's nothing wrong with collecting awesome things like vinyl albums or arcade machines, but there's definitely nothing wrong with convenience.

Convenience is awesome.  I have unlimited music available at my fingertips and I can play most any classic arcade game anywhere I want.  I wouldn't want to go back. But understand there's a HUGE difference between having a record (or CD) collection and having a drive full of MP3s much in the same way collecting original hardware is way different than having thousands of MAME roms at your disposal.

What I think a lot of younger generations can't appreciate is the thrill of the hunt. Time was I had to scour the record stores to complete gaps in my record and CD collections. Nowadays, you can just hop on the internet and buy anything you need without breaking a sweat. No challenge = less appreciation.

I know it sounds silly and it may be hard to explain, but it's really satisfying to find that "holy grail" you've been searching for. So much so, I think, that I'm collecting consoles and cartridges and am actively avoiding playing their emulated counterparts (even the legal ones like Wii VC). It's the whole package, not just the "information" stored therein. Popping in the cartridge, sitting on the couch with the original controller, looking at the artwork - stuff like that paints your nostalgic haze better than just loading a file on your computer.

Then again - I'm old.   

This.

The information != the experience.

[brad808]

Ya got that right. Even the 30 year old CD standard wasn't all that great. 44.1khz sampling just kinda guesses above 15k or so. You only end up with a sample or 2...not much to go on.

DVD audio coulda been the "fix" for it, but MP3 had already begun its tenure and 90% of "music fans" didn't care about the increase in sound quality, so it died quietly. Damn shame...

I used to transfer vinyl to quarter inch tape (3M 226) on a Revox A77. Now *that* was quality sound.

I completely agree that nobody cares about sound quality now but I cringed a little when I read this "Ya got that right. Even the 30 year old CD standard wasn't all that great. 44.1khz sampling just kinda guesses above 15k or so. You only end up with a sample or 2...not much to go on." Yikes thats wrong!

I'm sure nobody cares but here are some links to correct it. The bottom line is we can accurately capture any frequency that is half of the sampling rate being used. ie you could capture any and all frequencies ACCURATELY up 10khz if you are using a 20khz sampling rate. So with a sampling rate of 44.1khz we can accurately capture frequencies up to 22.05khz.

http://www.lavryengineering.com/forum_images/Digital_Audio.pdf
http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf (This one is mainly about using higher sampling frequencies such as 192 khz in audio but its still got some good information in it)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem

[boardjunkie]

Accruately? Not bloody likely. Do the math....with a 44.1khz sampling rate, how many samples do you get at 20khz?

And how do you think a complex waveform will be represented at that frequency?

[lcmgadgets]

Sorry -- I should have been clearer -- London is the home of the greatest number of collectors and available machines that I am aware of.

Really? It's news to me!...any contacts u could share?

[brad808]

Accruately? Not bloody likely. Do the math....with a 44.1khz sampling rate, how many samples do you get at 20khz?

And how do you think a complex waveform will be represented at that frequency?

Based on what? Where is any proof that you cannot accurately sample a frequency of half the sampling rate? If you bother to read you will see that it has been proven for YEARS that it can be done and is done. Its the math that all digital audio is based on. Just read. Implying that because there are less sample points at 20khz it cannot be accurately be captured/ recreated PERFECTLY with a 44.1khz sampling rate is simply wrong (any A/D, D/A imperfections aside). Flat out wrong. The math to do this has literally been around since the 1930s.

In case you somehow missed it the first time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem

[CoryBee]

The math to do this has literally been around since the 1930s.

Don't argue with fools.

also, don't stick your junk in crazy

[mytymaus007]

yap yap  anyway what does this guy do to afford 160 cabs/pins each at least $1000 each thats $160k thats seems like its more then his house is worth. I hope he has fire insurance

[Gray_Area]

yap yap  anyway what does this guy do to afford 160 cabs/pins each at least $1000 each thats $160k thats seems like its more then his house is worth.

Especially as he said he couldn't afford a Pac machine at the outset. Something changed. Also, that house didn't look as big as Hirshberg's arcade barn, which only has/had about 80 machines, so how does he fit them all?

[boardjunkie]

"As the frequency of an incoming signal increases, the shorter period will be represented by fewer samples, until, at 20 kHz, the reproduced waveform is represented as a square wave."

As quoted from this article:
http://jthz.com/mp3/CD-44100Hz.htm

[brad808]

"As the frequency of an incoming signal increases, the shorter period will be represented by fewer samples, until, at 20 kHz, the reproduced waveform is represented as a square wave."

As quoted from this article:
http://jthz.com/mp3/CD-44100Hz.htm

Your trying to prove something that you cannot prove. That one particular sentence is talking about sampling at 40khz. You linked to a dumbed down article that clearly states the exact same thing as the articles that I linked (which show you the proof using math).

---fudgesicle--- it, go on thinking that digital audio works by guessing sample points above 15khz.