April, 2002      Diablo Blue     Page 7

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and I realized the pizza was already gone. By the time I could drive down to San Ramon, even the dessert would be gone. Just not worth the attempt. Oh, and I would miss the important business part of the meeting, too. That usually occurs in the five minutes between pizza and dessert.

I sent off an email to Ron and Alan with my apologies and asking if I had missed anything exceptional, and was told by Alan that “We’re always exceptional”. In other words, no, I hadn’t…

Well, I didn’t have to be there to know the following was discussed:

New Business:

Elections: Elections are in April and the competition is raging for positions on the Board. One interesting rumor, so far unsubstantiated, is that Al Gore is considering tossing his hat into the fray and running for Board President. Apparently his staff has recommended that he slowly ease himself back into politics, aiming low and for a position that won’t require him to shave the beard he has been trying to grow for over a year. While it would be quite a coup to have as president of our group the person who invented the internet, the smart money is on Alan for yet another term.

Technical: Nick mentioned that the Sony S50's lens appears to be of fairly high quality, with rather low chromatic aberration (about a pixel of color at the edges of objects in the corners of the frame). It does have moderate geometric distortion though, showing 0.9% barrel distortion at wide angle, changing to 0.5% pincushion in telephoto mode.

Membership: Peggy said seven members renewed their membership at the meeting and one guest joined. She asked for ideas to improve the attraction and retention of new members.

Technical #2: Nick stated that the term dBm is often abused to signify a signal level of 0.775 Volts, but unless the load impedance is exactly 600 ohms, this is incorrect. Because exact load impedances are less of an issue in modern audio systems, the new term dBu (u meaning unloaded) was introduced to signify a voltage level of 0.775 Volts, regardless of the load impedance. In other words, while the dBm is a measure of power, the dBu is a measure only of voltage. The term dBv (lower case v) also means the same thing as dBu, though the term dBu

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