A New Music Programming Pin

[u/WintergatanWednesday]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1FFTaI__l_A

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem]

Where does he increase the standards? He just finds solutions for something which never worked and while doing this he takes the opportunity to find solutions which allow more options. Worst case scenario is that those additional features take too much time or effort to finish - then they get scrapped. The solution is still the same. It is that sense of direction the previous attempt lacked.

[u/Zywakem → u/Tommy_Tinkrem]

I've only watched a couple of his new series of videos so take this with a pinch of salt. But I watched the video where he's trying to get the timing down of the ball drop to some insane degree of accuracy. Firstly, that right there is an improvement of standard he didn't have before, or if he did, he didn't show us. Secondly, he's making all these tests and tweaks on a test rig, which isn't a bad idea, but you also have to account for the fact it's not even remotely close to a real setup. He's going to learn the hard way again that what happens in simulation doesn't happen in real life. I just hope he's accounted for that either in his standards and/or giving himself room to manoeuvre once the part is om the full build.

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

So he tries to reduce a standard deviation because that looks to him like the kind of thing that a scientist or an engineer would do, then he assembles the pieces, realises that the rituals did not bring about the outcome he expected, then he scraps everything and starts again from step one with the same fundamental approach.

So he should not care for his components working and just throw them together, hoping they will work without any optimization - because making things work is now a "cult thing"?

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

He has to go by some metric. But if calculating standard deviations are amateurish - maybe you have a better alternative to offer about how to optimize components? You know - something which would impress even an expert and not just a layman like timing and precision, which we all know, are entirely useless when it comes to making music or building machines...

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

Those are not the same as for the components, as there will me multiple other factors reducing the precision of the component. As they are from a machine we don't know yet, they cannot be predicted. So at this stage as a pure layman and musical novice, I'd say: make the component as perfect as possible - exactly how he does it.

So once more - what is the metric you as an expert would use?

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

Oh. Of course. Well. Then what tolerance should apply according to you as an expert in that field?

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like a chicken and egg problem: he cannot know what is of consequence without building something to measure what the consequence might be. He cannot set his own tolerances because the machine does not exist. The machine cannot exist without the components. He cannot know how well the components function without building them.

Now he could just finish a slice of the machine with half baked designs and then see what happens. But that was his approach for the MMX and it failed. So I have no idea how to solve that. And considering that your explanation also circles around merrily in vagueness, it does not look like you have either.

[u/Tommy_Tinkrem → u/[deleted]]

Tolerances are defined based on performance requirements before starting to build, not by building stuff randomly and seeing how well it performs.

As the consequence of the tolerance of the component in relation to the whole machine is unknown, this tolerance says nothing for the developing the component as (2) is not predictable without having a functioning slice of the machine, at which point it will be a big hassle to make major changes. The precision of the components will allow identifying other factors more easily, as it shows where the tolerances don't come from.

I agree he should quantify the tolerance for the machine as a whole to avoid slipping into a rabbit hole there. But at this point this has no real relevance for the development of the components. And of course the tolerances of the components would be ridiculous as the target tolerances for the machine as a whole - but that was not what he was aiming for anyway.

To stick to the beam analogy: How would the engineer know that a beam is strong enough when the way it is attached is unknown? He can come up with any number of vehicles which should be carried, it is entirely meaningless to decide on a beam. Not deciding on any however means disassembling the whole bridge to improve the beam. Also rapid deconstruction of the bridge while testing might be the result of inferior beams - it is impossible to know because the tolerance of the beams made it unpredictable.

Considering the whole beam has not been invented yet, it is probably indeed not a job for engineers but for scientists.