Topic: Excellent Price on Great Amp !!!

[James]

Check this out:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-385

This is nothing but the good bits of that amp I paid $40 for.

There is no PS, but the one I got was crap anyway.

There's no plastic box either, but who cares?

If anyone wants to a great amp that takes 12 to 14.5VDC power supply at 2 to 3 amps, this thing is Da'-Bomb-Diggity. 

If I could afford it, I'd buy 6 or 8 of them and power shit-loads of little speakers in 6 ohm groups!

http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/forum/index.php/topic,240.0.html

EDIT: Keep reading... I found more, bigger, better, cheaper...

James. 

[no-esc]

The more and more I think about it..

I should comission you to make me some studio monitors...Self powered...

[James]

Well......

I have a few extra tweeters and mid-ranges laying around.  

Like about 2300 and 800!  

The expensive parts are the cabenet materials, the woofers and the power amps for the woofers.

I paid $220 for (16) 8 inch woofers.

There is a 10 inch version of the woofer I like that goes for about $100 for a box of (4).

A good 3-way active crossover is about $130. A mind-blowing digital multi-purpose crossover, EQ, effect unit is about $300.

I'd really like to sell the line source array speakers I have in my basement now..... But then I wouldn't have them!

I need to scrape together some funds to make a whole new system. Then I can sell these.

Maybe I could build two systems and sell one of them for the cost of materials of both.

James.  

PS. Don't expect me to make small speaker systems. It's not in my blood! I like the first octave too much to not have it.

[dtewksbury]

James, a man after my own heart, I have two large boxes that I build years ago, each with a 15" Altec Lansing bass driver, plus two 811B horns on the top, these things rock for bottom end outdoors, they are very efficient and don't require much power.

I use them at work now and have replaced them with some smaller but still large enough for great bottom end (without a dodgy peaky sub woofer) speakers from a local guy who designs speakers in Adelaide (AUS), they are VAF DCX http://www.vaf.com.au/specifications.asp?audio=dc&grunt=s200r26724 I really love them, they are time aligned and you can really hear that in percussion and sharp attack stuff.

Anyway, I also play music (keyboard player, used to play bass when younger).... Bass bass bass, it must be clean though.

[James]

Are you familiar with isobaric coupling?

That's when you put two woofers together physically in series. You can put them face to face, or back to back for best results. This has the effect of doubling the moving mass, the spring coefficient and the thermal power handling, while leaving the cone area the same. So it cuts the required box volume in half. It also has the added benefit of making the moving mechanism symmetrical, which almost completely eliminates even order harmonic distortion. You know how bad the second harminic (the octave) is with most woofers? 7 to 10% !!!

In my 8 inch woofer boxes, I have (4) woofers; two facing out and two facing in to a 7 cu. ft. tuned box. There are four of these boxes in total, two behind each line source panel, for a total of (16) 8 inch driven cones.

I can measure freq. vs. voltage (or impedance) with a sound card and some code I wrote a long time before LaserBoy. So each system is measured and tuned.

They are -3dB at 18Hz with very low second harmonic distortion.

On older recordings you can hear all of the sub harmonic information that comes from super position (natural sum of all of the waves). Even if you can't really hear it, you can feel it and it adds a lot to the illusion of being in the presence of the musicians while the recording was made. On newer recordings you can hear that a super steep high pass filter has been applied to screw all that good stuff up.

Also, when you have that many cones to deal with the signal, compression from over exertion is not an issue. Dynamics are incredible.... but only if they haven't been squashed to death by some crappy recording studio "audio enhancing" effect.

James. 

[dtewksbury]

Yes, one of the things I hate about todays recordings is that they over modulate the recording. I assume that they have discovered that modern DAC filters can easily cope with being clipped and the filters just reduce the harmonics created to below the Nyquist frequency. So the bastards crank it so that it is LOUD.... never mind the ugly distortion that is created. Have a look at the wave from a new recording and see it for yourself, bastards.

Anyway I guess not all new recording have that, but they do it to a lot of the new stuff I listen too. if you are interested have a listen to a song I wrote last year, it is on iTunes and I was very careful with the recording level so that it is not clipped. Just search for "Daryl Tewksbury Storm", or if you don't use iTunes it is on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Storm/dp/B001N0A9D4

You can preview it on Amazon I think. Yes I am a fan of the eighties, I try not to let that happen when I write music but it just ends up sounding like it anyway. 

Daryl.

PS: Your speakers sound awesome, literally I suspect. Mine don't go down that low.   

[meandean]

Dynamics are incredible.... but only if they haven't been squashed to death by some crappy recording studio "audio enhancing" effect.

  Yeah, that's also known as hard limiting- it's the work of the Devil, as the preacher might say. High resolution digital audio
recording goes back to the late 70's, and then it was all about reproducing natural wide dynamics and frequency content. Digital
audio in recent years has actually moved backward, thanks to 'technology'- let's up the hardware standard so we can boast 24bit
resolution at rediculous sample rates, only so that we can run it through the DSP hash bin and wind up with about 8bit resolution
(if even that)- because we all know that louder is better...

[dtewksbury]

Yeah apparently, I am surprised no one complains about his, although if you look at what the majority of people listen to it on it's no wonder. What about those crazy stupid car sub woofers some people use. A friend of mine came over one day boasting about his new car sub woofers, so we played some 'music' through them and wow, yes it was loud, and amazingly it turned every bass note into the same frequency, resonance is an amazing thing. It sounded shit and I told him, and he wasn't happy.

[meandean]

  You'd think that some bright engineer would put this DSP crap as an option in the playback device, rather than
defiling the recording itself, ruining it for everybody- I've even seen it on re-releases of old recordings. If I
were a musician or producer and they did that to my material, I would sue the record label!

[drlava]

Yes you've hit it.  They (music industry) did a study that found that the 'typical consumer' thinks loud music sounds better on their ibuds and can stereos, thus the compression.  There was a big article on it a few years ago, lamenting the lost dynamics.  I agree, they need to be found again!

[dtewksbury]

Bastards!

[James]

Never underestimate the quality of old recording technology!

Even stuff from the late 40s and 50s has way more life and listenability than a lot of the crap that comes out today!

Although, I would say that I enjoy good electronic music with notes in it well below bass guitar E at approximately 41Hz.

James. 

[James]

Does anyone know where I might get a couple of electrolytic capacitors for cheap?

I need a matched pair.

An exact replacement would be 15000uF @ 80V, 105°C, 40mm dia. 100mm tall.

Got any junk servo motor supplies or audio amps?

I've found them at Digi-Key for about $10 each, which I guess is pretty good.

What I don't understand is why they go from $10 to $20 or even $50. What's the diff?

Any suggestions, comments or warnings about what not to buy are welcome!

I took the cover off of an old Fischer 150W/ch. 8 ohm power amp and found two blown fuzes and one rather sad looking cap with a not so great one next to it.

James. 

[James]

WRT your music, that sounds really good!

Obviously you have a low B string!

I have a whole CD that I wrote, performed and recorded myself between about 1986 and 1990. It's way more raw, experimental and punk-ish. Of its time, I guess.

http://akrobiz.com/james/11-16-64/

James. 

[meandean]

  Why don't you just take a visit to Electronic Surplus in Cleveland?