[Onix]

Friends and fellow audio addicted humans: I present to you the following, asking for your assistance and commentary on this quest, wich according to calculations shall take me the whole of 2002. All is in order to increase my chances to ever become an audio freak

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Now that my baby is due sometime in November, probably the first week, it seems that my growth as an audiophile, at least one who not only listens to headphones all the time, is going to be slowed down. But after a talk with my wife we agreed that each one of us would be allowed $100.00 a month for our personal stuff. That's not a lot of money to expend on great audio, but I think it gives me a safe margin to do something interesting while at the same time not depleting the family treasury. Besides, I will probably use most of it to buy stuff for baby. In any case, with those small resources, which are going to remain small for some time, I plan to save money triying my hand at DIY and getting very specific stuff, while at the same time halting all my cd purchases for at least a year. The plan goes as follows:

1- Build a set of speakers. I plan to start with open an open baffle design, just to experiment with speakers and cables until I get a good set. I have found some really basic speakers and some with more complicated designs, using tweeters and two full range speakers, for example. I haven't decided yet on wich design to use, but I plan to keep the final product and use it until I can build my own Voigt pipes or horns (they seem a bit complicated). Afterwards, they can find a niche in the office (as soon as we move to a new building where I can have a real office for my own) or maybe at home, as front or back speakers for a home theater.

To get the speakers, I plan to browse on antique shops, to see if i can find an old console with good full rangers in order to rip them out. I plan to also check the local Fostex and Radioshacks, in case I can't find some interesting vintage speaker. If you now about a particular make of consoles that has good speakers, please let me know.

2- Get some Foreplay. And I mean the preamp kit made by Bottlehead. Seems very simple and the price is rigth ($149.00). I plan to hook it to a JMT for some time and then maybe get Joseph Lau's converter to use it with headphones.

3- Get a nice CD player. If you can help me on this, please do. I am partial to NAD HCDC player and their very cool L40 reciever. I think I can find them in Mexico for around the same price in the U.S. But if you have a recomendation, please let me know. In any case, I would rather not get a SACD, DVD-A or even a DVD player yet. Just a nice CD player with digital out.

4- Get a CAVIT from Yamaha or a very similar unit from another maker and a good tape deck. I have a bunch of tapes that I want to transfer to CD. Most of them are rare and very old, so I don't feel okay playing them in their present form. The external processor would have to be PC based, since I have a Pressario. As for the tape deck, I'll rather get a cheap one, since it's gonna be used on some tapes and then probably won't be touched again in a million years. Any recomendations are welcomed.

5- Ride the wave. Antique Sound Labs has a monoblock amp called The Wave AV-8. At $149.00 each, for the version with a protective case and detachable power cord, seems like a good deal, at least until I save $549 for the Paramour kits from Bottlehead, but according to my calculations that would probably have to wait till 2003, because I want to get....

6- The Allessandro MS-Pro. I plan to use them at home, keep my MS-1 for the office and my SR-60's for mobile use. Maybe I'll throw into the mix those SONY canalphones and then have a full choice of cans for different uses.
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So guys and gals, this is the basic plan. If you have any ideas to help me fine tune it, please let me know. Thanks and take care everyone.

Thanks

 

[neil]

Lets see -- in a year, that's $1200. Invest it month by month is a fly by night heavily VC funded company, or go to the casino on the first of each month and put it on the green double-zero on the roulette table closest to the entrance/exit.

BTW, pre-congratulations on your new baby.

 

[morphsci]

Quote:

Originally posted by Onix 5- Ride the wave. Antique Sound Labs has a monoblock amp called The Wave AV-8. At $149.00 each, for the version with a protective case and detachable power cord, seems like a good deal, at least until I save $549 for the Paramour kits from Bottlehead, but according to my calculations that would probably have to wait till 2003, because I want to get....

I have a pair of Waves. Just remember that they really need 8Ohm speakers with an efficiency of 90db or so. With that they sound very good to me in a small room. I actually run them with a set of biwired Wharfedale 7.2 anniversary editions ($83.00 shipped from eBay; I couldn't build an equivalent speaker for that). I would check out Audiogon for a pair of Waves. I haven't even tried any tube rolling yet. Yeah! Another Tweak!

 

[Onix]

Quote:

Originally posted by neil Lets see -- in a year, that's $1200. Invest it month by month is a fly by night heavily VC funded company, or go to the casino on the first of each month and put it on the green double-zero on the roulette table closest to the entrance/exit. BTW, pre-congratulations on your new baby.

Thank you for the pre-congrats. There are no casinos in Mexico yet. I guess I'll have to wait a while

 

[gerG]

I looked for a while (in my youth) for a console worth rebuilding. Gave up. Open back designs just sound terrible to me. I have had more luck searching out decent used speakers with solid cabinets and replacing the drivers with decent units. There are some amazingly good drivers out there, for reasonable sums of money. Most of the speaker builder places also sell cabinets pre-made and ready to finish. Madisound and Parts Express are good resources for this stuff.

The dual woofer formats are nice for the increased efficiency. For a first project it is tough to beat an 8" 2-way in a bass reflex alignment. Best compromise for deep bass and good mids.

Do you have any local friends who are into woodworking? 3/4" MDF is the most common cabinet material out there, mostly because it is cheap and easy to work with. The tough part is always finishing.

I hope everything is well with your growing family.


Later

 

[Onix]

Do you have any info on that alignement you mentioned? As for MDF, as soon as I figure out how they call it down here I'll get a few panels. I have been checking Parts Express and would probably use those drivers, If they can send them to Mexico. of course. Thanks for the best wishes. The baby is due next wednesday and my wife and I are just counting the hours 'till his ETA

. Take care Greg.

 

[gerG]

There is probably a ton of info out there on loudspeaker design types. Vance Dickenson's "Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" is a great reference. There is a lot of software (some free) around for calculating proper cabinet volume. A bass reflex design also requires a properly sized port to get the correct bass response. Not tough, but I know a couple of tricks that will make it easier.

The trick for a BR design is getting a driver with the right parameters. You want a low fs and a Qts in the .3 range. Lets see, I think that a ratio of fs/Qts > 50 is considered good for BR.

I can calculate some response curves if you find some drivers that you like. If I get a chance I will look around and see what looks good these days. I will be out of town for a couple of weeks, but I am guessing that you are going to be busy with another project in the very near future.

Have a good weekend.

Have a good weekend.

 

[Onix]

Thanks Greg. Yep, all those projects would have to wait until 2002, after I change lots and lots of diapers. I wonder if you can recycle them to use as accoustic dampers

. Enjoy your time out of town and be cool. Take care.

 

[kaiwei]

Maybe you could....but do you want to?

hehe congrats!

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Onix 1- Build a set of speakers. I plan to start with open an open baffle design, just to experiment with speakers and cables until I get a good set. I have found some really basic speakers and some with more complicated designs, using tweeters and two full range speakers, for example. I haven't decided yet on wich design to use, but I plan to keep the final product and use it until I can build my own Voigt pipes or horns (they seem a bit complicated). Afterwards, they can find a niche in the office (as soon as we move to a new building where I can have a real office for my own) or maybe at home, as front or back speakers for a home theater.

Look at the Nearfield Acoustics Pipedreams. I read an article recently (Audiophile Voice?) about it, and it's brilliant. One, instead of one or two drivers, they use a buttload. The point behind this is to keep the excursions down. Each driver contributes only a small fraction to the sound, so when they move, they only excurd (?) a little bit, keeping things ultra-linear (just like headphones! go figure...).

Two, it's set up as a line-source instead of a point-source -- much easier to attain.

I was thinking, since you are going to "take what you can get" -- you could sort of build a "Nearfield Acoustics Pipedreams Frankenstein". You just keep mounting drivers on a board, and whenever you see a gap in the frequency response, like in the bass, just look for another driver in that general area, which will leave a gap in the treble, so you get a tweeter, which will leave a gap in the midrange, etc. You could even throw electrostatics and ribbons at it. I bet it will sound a lot better than it does now.

 

[bootman]

Pipedream?

Gotta love the name.
Doesn't inspire much confidence though.

 

[BenG]

Why didn't they just build two skyscrapers? Subs would go under ground. Use a whole nuc power plant for the amps.

Seriously, someone's got to build the world's most powerfull setup using 'buildings' as speakers. The visceral impact could really blow you up, or atleast the soundstage could extend to the horizen. Ambient noise will be tuff though. Earthquake proofing would have to be used for damping.

Please don't look at this link:
Krell Master Reference Subwoofer
http://audioreview.com/reviews/Subwo...ct_69185.shtml

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, I love that Krell Master Reference Subwoofer -- I had a picture of it hanging on my board at my office under the heading, "The Latest Insanity".

http://www.krellonline.com/HTML/masterseries.html#MRS

"Weighing in at 420 pounds, with a footprint of less than four square feet, the massive yet compact ..."

No, that would be massive yet massive.

"One-inch solid billet chassis ..."

The thing is made of solid metal.

"Dual 15-inch woofers with three-inch front-to-back excursions..."

Read that again -- 3 inch excursions.

 

[BenG]

Description: 2,600 Watts of pure Class A power Dual 15-inch woofers with three-inch front-to-back excursions for hurricane-like air movement.

 

[Onix]

That thing is heavy as a really heavy thing.