OT: Phoenix DRS1/2/Q4

[DominicPerry]

Anyone use one of these? Any opinions about what they are good / not good for? I've listened to loads of pre's on the 3d website, and I picked the DRS2 out from the rest as my favorite, but I can't try it anywhere round here.

Thanks

Dominic

[DominicPerry]

Thanks Mark. I wanted to avoid using 'warm' to describe what I heard. I think 'rich' covers it nicely. Looks like most 2 channel pres at that end of the market are about the same price. They're made in the UK so maybe I can get a reasonable deal. Whether I need them or not is another question, probably best left unanswered. Maybe my voice will improve with my recent electrocution.

Dominic

Petrol here is ***163;1.22 a litre. Makes it ***163;5.54 a gallon, or about $10. Of course you get 1.1 US gallons to one of ours, so you're laughing.

[John Hernandez]

Petrol here is £1.22 a litre. Makes it £5.54 a gallon, or about $10. Of course you get 1.1 US gallons to one of ours, so you're laughing.
OUCH!! Guess I won't moan so much about $4.59...

[John Hernandez]

...since Bush invaded Iraq...and crippling the economy....<self-control, John...must exercise self-control...>

[TotalSonic]

The sad fact is that the vast majority of oil prices increases are due to unbendable facts of geology and physics and the most basic part of economics 101: when supply doesn't keep up with demand prices start to increase.

Musicians and audio engineers generally don't pay attention to petroleum geology - but it's a simple fact that you can't pump out oil of an oil basin beyond a specific rate of extraction without risking permanently "damaging" it - where by forcing in too much water or gases at once in order to pressurize the resevoir to extract at a greater rate you actually force oil still in the basin to scatter to places where you won't ever be able to extract it.

Next - since the mid 1980's we've discovered only 1 new barrel in reserve for every 4 that we've used. In fact, discoveries of oil basins peaked back in the 1960's. Since then despite tons of investments and efforts and vastly improved technology we haven't been able to match previous discoveries.

SO: what happens in every field is you get a bell curve where production starts slow, gets faster as you increase well heads and development, and then drops its rate regardless of any efforts to increase production (by maintaining resevoir pressure by using inputs of water or gas, and by increasing drilling) after about 50***37; of the oil has been extracted . Generally once a field goes over its production peak the rate of extraction gets lower, that is it depletes, anywhere from 2% to 20% per year. To give an example to illustrate what percentages of depletion mean in a clearer way: at a 7% depletion per year rate you have half the rate of what you used to get out of a field in a decade.

Next: the bell curves that happens for a field's production can also be seen as the same bell curve for a country's oil production - the classic case being the USA. The USA used to be the world's greatest oil producer - but peaked back in 1971 (nearly exactly when Shell geologist M. King Hubbard using bell curve extrapolations estimated it would back in 1956). Since then despite having access to the best technology and resources available to man USA's production has been going down something like 3% every year while demand has continued to go up despite numerous improvements in efficiencies of petroleum using devices. So - at this point the USA imports over 2/3rd's of its petroleum - and this has been rising every year.

People should also be aware that the multinational "Big Oil" corporations such as ExxonMobil, TotalFinaElf, BP, Chevron, etc. actually only own about 10% of the earth's oil reserves at this point - the rest is owned by nationalized companies such as Saudi Arabia's Aramco, Nigeria's NNPC, Venezuela's PDVSA, Mexico's PEMEX, etc. When faced with the prospect of increasing production but actually diminishing the ultimate amount of extractable oil from a field - then the most intelligent decision in the self interests of these exporter nations is to choose lesser production (and less immediate returns) but ultimately greater economic reward over time - as even though they are selling less volume they are still selling it at a greater price. Many of these nationalized oil companies do not have complete control over their production rates though as in many cases they are dealing with steep depletion rates from their primary fields that have past their peak (i.e. Mexico's Cantarell, Kuwait's Bergan), or internal strife that shuts in production by strikes and sabotage (i.e. militants in Nigeria's Warri Delta, the continuing fiasco in Iraq), or are dealing with rotting infrastructures and lack of know how in field management due to politicized hirings/firings of key personnel (i.e. Chavez's Venezuela). A lot of these types of issues have all been coming to a head at this moment - leading to even further increases in prices.

Now the capper of this all is that depletion rates of fields means you have to speed up development of existing fields every year in order just to keep production levels flat. The next problem is that if you want to ever hope to keep being able to keep even flat production levels, let alone expand them, you need to ddiscover at least as much new supplies as you have developed - but as noted before we haven't discovered new reseves at even replacement levels of what was being used per year since the mid 1980's.

Finally - you can total up all the nations and all the fields and all the discoveries and plot all the nations that used to be exporters that have become importers and come to an obvious conclusion:

at some point the global production of oil will have a peak itself.

From every figure that seems to be available the unwanted conclusion is that this global oil production peak is happening NOW.

The huge difficulty is that our agriculture, manufacturing and transportation are all inextribly woven into petroleum.

With "modern" agriculture petroleum is the source of: fertilizer, fuel for farming machinery (tractors, plows, harvesters), and finally trucking of food to the place where it is consumed. It's been estimated that it currently takes around 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to create every single calorie of food we eat.

With transportation - there is an existing fleet of cars, trucks, ship, planes, even trains, that runs on gasoline and diesel. Replacing this with other means has numerous difficulties to get through - especially when you are reliant on newly developing technologies that are not in place and have flaws in their current implementations (i.e. hydrogen fuel cells), when some proposed solutions can not possibly begin to cover even a small part of current use even if they were implemented to the fullest of their potential (i.e. bio-diesel, ethanol), and that infrastructures for mass transit do not exist and for the most part are not even being proposed. Add into this mess the fact that their will be numerous individuals and businesses hit very hard in their pocket books by higher fuel (and food) costs that are supposed to be the ones able to afford to purchase replacement vehicles.

The USA - with a horrible mass transit system (for the most part non-existent except in a few cities) - and with large distances between most people's work, home and shopping - will be hit particularly hard by this. Basically: for the most part demand for petroleum in the USA is "inelastic" - meaning it's the one thing besides food people will always spend their cash on.

The other huge difficulty is that none of our alternative energy sources can be scaled to cover the amount of energy that petroleum supplies - and in general the alternates are not suitable as private transportation fuels (although mass transit which can be more easily powered by any source that can make electricity is another story).

Anyway - sorry to ramble on so long on what is surely very off topic here - but this is what's up whether we like it or not - and the issue will remain regardless of whether there is a Republican, Democratic or Independent holding the executive office.

I think it's time for us to get to work on it though!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[John Hernandez]

The sad fact is that the vast majority of oil prices increases are due to unbendable facts of geology and physics and the most basic part of economics 101: when supply doesn't keep up with demand prices start to increase.

<snip>

Anyway - sorry to ramble on so long on what is surely very off topic here - but this is what's up whether we like it or not - and the issue will remain regardless of whether there is a Republican, Democratic or Independent holding the executive office. It was quite an eyeful...but an informative read, nonetheless. I guess talking petro strikes your rambling nerve, eh Steve? It would be akin to talking Bible with me, I guess :p!

So there, Mark! ;)

[TotalSonic]

It was quite an eyeful...but an informative read, nonetheless. I guess talking petro strikes your rambling nerve, eh Steve?

Fossil fuel depletion to me is absolutely the most serious problem we face as a society. There's no easy or quick fixes available to an issue this complex - but I think if we don't start dealing with them now it's very possible that we could face a very serious crisis that could make the Great Depression look like a picnic.


So there, Mark!

Well - I got to agree with Mark that nearly any other leadership would have most likely gotten better results for the interests of this nation than what we've dealt with for the past 8 years. Frankly I can't understand why anyone who actually supports the cornerstones of traditional Republican policy platforms would have any support for the Bush administration at all - when they're in fact ultimately responsible for the largest government spending ever - and the largest expansion of government bureacracy as well. Anyway - the erosion of the dollars value (also contributing to increased petroleum & other commodity costs) can be directly traced to the fact that more US dollars have been "printed" during this administration than any other!



It would be akin to talking Bible with me, I guess :p!


I like talking about the Bible as well - and have been reading it much more regularly in the past couple years - and probably could ramble on even longer about this. I just learned long ago that it's sometimes dangerous to do this with even close friends if you don't want to cause some disturbances! - so I tend to keep my mouth shut on this. Got to say that a serious contemplation of the words in the Book of Job answers a ton of questions about the essence of life though.

Dominic -
I'm sorry for contributing to the kidnapping this thread!!!


Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Bud Johnson]

So how bout those Cubs!
:rolleyes:

[Leadfoot]

Sox turn.. about the oil crisis.. I don't think we could deplete the earth of anything, I don't believe in global warming, and I'm sure the earth will kill us before we could even begin to hurt it. What I do think is I don't believe anything our government tells us and they are all a bunch of morons. My six year old daughter could make better decisions than congress and all the huge corporations that actually run this country can kiss my a**. We the taxpayers pay for everything this retarded government does, and they are raping us right in front of our faces, and getting our kids murdered for nothing.
We the people my a**. Things are getting bad.. and fast. But I think bad actors from other countries make the best governors.. does it even matter anymore.

Tony

[DominicPerry]

So if I buy a Phoenix DRS2, will it fill my studio with mad political ranting? :p

Dominic

[Cary B. Cornett]

So if I buy a Phoenix DRS2, will it fill my studio with mad political ranting? :p

Dominic Only if it was previously used by one of the primary campaigns :eek::p:rolleyes::D

[Leadfoot]

I wonder if I could get that post I made deleted, that was dumbhttp://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/images/icons/icon11.gif I went to a fest last night (not working at for once) drank a little too much draft beer:)

Tony