Mars.inDiapers Posted August 20, 2018 Share Posted August 20, 2018 Any DIY Audio enthusiasts and/or HiFi maniacs in general in here? If you are out there, this is the place to flaunt your exquisite gear or whatever project of yours you're working on. I hear that diapers work as a good acoustic padding as well. Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted August 20, 2018 Share Posted August 20, 2018 Join the Music Producers club I have a hi-fi system but I am getting out of analog audio; not that I want to close the doors on anything. I do not have a turntable and only my 4-track cassette deck. I do have an old, brushed aluminum amp for my digitlal FM radio but it use it mostly for my SanDisk Fuze which is about 8 years old and won't die. The speakers are Radio Shcack Accurion subwoofer. Aiwas sitting on tables about 32" off the floor and Realistic high frequency horns mounted about 5'5" up. I cobbled the audio system together from components I could get my hands on, the only things I got new were the horns and sub For music production I have about 4 DAW's, LMMS and Audacity about 200 instruments and over 50 effects (reverbs compressors, EQ's.) I have left a link to a music gear page ant the club Fro analog instruments I own a Sequential Circuits Pro-ONe, Moog/Realistic MG-1 and Moog Opus 3 for digital instruments I have the Casio WKk-3500 and CZ-1000, Roland Lucina AX-09, and Voce V-3 and DMI-64 plua a Fender Starcaster Strat clone, Danelectro 1990's 6/12 doubleneck Pandora 12. Seagull acoustic 12 and an ancient 1935 mandolin I do not use a CD or DVD player, it is all SD card and I do use a VHS machine for specialized, small-market video cassette and TV tuner Link to comment
repetitivediaperwetter88 Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 well, I did take Audio Engineering and Radio Broadcasting in college. Have a couple of FM transmitters sitting around. I might be the only person left of my age group to still own a VCR and a Cassette player. I haven't even tested the cassette playing in my 98 tahoe to see if it works. hmmm... Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 Pretty much all production is now digital. The quality of music available to anyone is up to the professional standards of the 1980's T7, which was Tracktion's last pro DAW before they changed to "Waveform" is now freeware and it's about 3-4 years old LMMS which is a Linux-based DAW has been kept up for 30 years. It was written by and for musicians and, since it does not accept input, works with audacity. If you want tape or tube sauturation you can get any number of freeware affects. The "Channel strip" is an EQ, compressor, reverb (capable of creating any typoe you want) and a saurator/distortion program. I do not know if anyone uses hardware any more. REAPER is a current paid DAW that has an excellent reputation wihc, can be had for $60 US which if you're earning over $20,000 or like that, they charge $600 and you can do all kinds of things with it. YouTube it up and it get props all over the place from folks who use the big name pro DAW's The high-quality cheap started with the Tascam and Fostex 4-trackers back in the late '80's when they put compressors into the decks to create "headroom" and you could go 3 recording generations before you got any noticeable degradation of the sound. Via digital recording, you can go an infinite number. Pretty much all DAW's' final output is 44.1k/16 bit signed (CD) and most can work with 192k/24 bit, which is undetectable by humans but is used for processing and production. Join the Music Produccers club and you can get a gazillion of the, You will need a 3 GHz i5 or better and at least 8 Gb RAM (16 Gb is best. I remember when 16 Kb was pretty hot and 512 was the upper limit and mainframe territory. I have in my desk drawer and can put in my hand more memory than the entire world had 35 years ago- 400 Gb) but you can get that in a laptop for $800. Make sure it's FACTORY refurbished. Dell or Lenovo has them on Ebay I've got the Inspiron 15" 7579 3 Gb+, i7, 16 GB RAM. If you wnat to check out 80's tech go to YouTube's 8-bit guy and 8-bit keys. It is a HOOT!! Link to comment
dressupDV Posted August 22, 2018 Share Posted August 22, 2018 Im an audio girl, specializing in vacuum tube gear, vintage studio mics and tape recorders. Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted August 22, 2018 Share Posted August 22, 2018 The last vacuum tube anything I had was a Silvertone Twin-12 guitar amplifier Link to comment
dressupDV Posted August 23, 2018 Share Posted August 23, 2018 In the recording biz, we still use tubes cause they're more musical in the way the distort. Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted August 23, 2018 Share Posted August 23, 2018 That can be added as an effect. In fact it's the last digital channel strip effect after reverb. Many of these modules offer the choice of tape or tube saturation, some with the specific tube. Another nice thing now is that we have so much cheap memory that we can retain the file in lossless format like WAV Link to comment
dressupDV Posted August 24, 2018 Share Posted August 24, 2018 I'm fine with working in the box, but since my clients are into vintage analog gear and I can fix it, it's easier than getting a gig, lol! I do like recording and overdubbing in the analog for the dominatrix effect - the limitations imposed by analog can push creativity to be more clever. Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted August 26, 2018 Share Posted August 26, 2018 There is one thing that you cannot do in analog without a a treasure chesthttps://www.arturia.com/store/analog-classics https://www.arturia.com/products/keylab88/buy And just to be complete http://offtopic.sandralyn.net/vststuff.html Link to comment
dressupDV Posted August 26, 2018 Share Posted August 26, 2018 Yup, I have even repaired a few synths. Working on two ARP pro soloists now. Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 https://i.imgur.com/4JmO4PX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/IIQaVCY.jpg I find myself listening to music more often then not. I'm not on audio forums or anything like that, but appreciate a good sounding system. I've got a decent setup in the living room that I use daily. Nothing crazy, just two Klipsch RF-7ll's and a Klipsch R115SW subwoofer. I have a RC-64 II center, but I don't use it at my new house because I can't get it centered and it throws off the balance. Receiver is a Denon AVR-X4300. I'm very happy with the setup, but wanted to try for more once I bought my house. I found a very nice set of Klipsch Klipschorn's, but have yet to find an amp to make them sing. They sound muddy on the Denon so for now they are just furniture in my dining room. I was hoping I could expect decent sound out of them with the Denon and run them on zone two for a whole home audio setup, but that didn't happen. I've got other things to buy for the house before I sink some money into a proper amp for those. Link to comment
dressupDV Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 Hmm, those speakers don't need much of an amp to drive them - they are from the tube era. That said, if they are tubby, you'll want to keep your cables short. The issue I see - unless you auditioned them in the living room is that there is no acoustic treatment in the room. Get them off the floor, so that the horn (tweeter) is at ear level. Any amp with 25~50 watts of power should drive them pretty well. What gage cable were you using? Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 Not exactly sure of the gage. The positive and negative each concist of 4 smaller gage cables braded together. Probably equaling a 12 gage. They are a bit long. Probably around 15-20 feet. My problem is with bass response. That's what sounds hollow. The teeters sound fine. Link to comment
dressupDV Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 oh. Well, position with those speakers - and having enough space for them - is everything. I don't really think it's an amp issue. Here' plug your room's dimensions into this calculator... https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc and draw me a pic of your space with dimensions. Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 19, 2018 Share Posted September 19, 2018 On 9/17/2018 at 9:22 PM, dressupDV said: oh. Well, position with those speakers - and having enough space for them - is everything. I don't really think it's an amp issue. Here' plug your room's dimensions into this calculator... https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc and draw me a pic of your space with dimensions. It's a odd shaped room that spills into the main hall and additional room. Quick sketch. /Plyshttps://i.imgur.com/PlysbMO.jpg Link to comment
dressupDV Posted September 21, 2018 Share Posted September 21, 2018 the drawing. get them off the floor on milk crates till the horn is at ear level. area rug on the floor? velvet elvis on the side walls? Tapestries? you might make 2ft x 4 ft bass traps, two for each corner - also off the floor (although floor to ceiling would be better) plus a narrow 1 foot x 4 foot bass trap to triangulate Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 21, 2018 Share Posted September 21, 2018 Sounds like way to much work. I'll probably just sell the Khorns and get some more RF-7's to replace them. Link to comment
Bettypooh Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 Sometimes just moving them away from the wall can help bass response if the exact spacing is tending to cancel it out. If you double the distance you have now but hear no changes it's probably not going to work. If you've got distance close it up. Only the lowest bass (subwoofer) tends to be non-critical in speaker positioning. Bettypooh Link to comment
Mars.inDiapers Posted September 24, 2018 Author Share Posted September 24, 2018 There's also the possibility that the bass drivers in the Klipschorns are overdampened with your amplifier. The klipschorns, with their ridiculously high sensitivity, are well suited for vacuum tube amplifiers, which typically don't have a very high output power, especially if they are class A topology. Vacuum tube amplifiers also tend to have rather low damping factor, and if klipsch indeed designed the klipschorns to be used with tube amps and keep this attribute of tube amps in mind, they might use bass drivers with strong magnetic circuit and low Qes. In fact, to use a bass driver in a folded horn, low Qes is kind of necessary. Your Denon receiver, and with its discrete transistor class AB output stage, able to push out 125W into 8 ohms is quite the opposite of a low-power low-DF vacuum tube amp that were the standard around the time when klipschorns were introduced. Such is the theory, anyway. You'd need to test it with a vacuum tube amplifier to verify it, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if vintage speakers were to sound dry with modern solid state amplifier and start sounding properly with something more contemporary to the era they are from, and complementing the nature of the klipschorns. Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 4 hours ago, DiapersOfTheStorm said: There's also the possibility that the bass drivers in the Klipschorns are overdampened with your amplifier. The klipschorns, with their ridiculously high sensitivity, are well suited for vacuum tube amplifiers, which typically don't have a very high output power, especially if they are class A topology. Vacuum tube amplifiers also tend to have rather low damping factor, and if klipsch indeed designed the klipschorns to be used with tube amps and keep this attribute of tube amps in mind, they might use bass drivers with strong magnetic circuit and low Qes. In fact, to use a bass driver in a folded horn, low Qes is kind of necessary. Your Denon receiver, and with its discrete transistor class AB output stage, able to push out 125W into 8 ohms is quite the opposite of a low-power low-DF vacuum tube amp that were the standard around the time when klipschorns were introduced. Such is the theory, anyway. You'd need to test it with a vacuum tube amplifier to verify it, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if vintage speakers were to sound dry with modern solid state amplifier and start sounding properly with something more contemporary to the era they are from, and complementing the nature of the klipschorns. This has kinda been my thought process on the problem. Link to comment
Little BabyDoll Christine Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 I remember shortly before CD hit the market. The principles, engineering and physical structure of the digital "record" were being discussed and they said it would mean "the end of specifications". since there was no cartridge and needle and no things like wow and fllutter, wear or warping If anyone cares, New England Digital has a new Synclavier out in concert with Arturian Now, it seems everyone is going after what we were running away from so that we could get a sound closer to what was being generated by the instrument and voice propler I am wondering, given the way we consume music now, if the old-style twin-speakers monitor system is not dead, to be replaced by the N:1 system, What I wanted to do with quad in the '80's was use each instrument in it's own channel, with sub, front-center, front. L-R, rear L-R and rear-center To my way of thining, the biggest breakthrough in music was the EQ since it has both cut and boost, you can literally change the timbre of the output, then comes compression and then 'verb. The i reall do not recall any readily available stereo component units Vinyl is better for panties, not audio media Link to comment
dressupDV Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 On 9/24/2018 at 4:51 AM, DiapersOfTheStorm said: There's also the possibility that the bass drivers in the Klipschorns are overdampened with your amplifier. The klipschorns, with their ridiculously high sensitivity, are well suited for vacuum tube amplifiers, which typically don't have a very high output power, especially if they are class A topology. Vacuum tube amplifiers also tend to have rather low damping factor, and if klipsch indeed designed the klipschorns to be used with tube amps and keep this attribute of tube amps in mind, they might use bass drivers with strong magnetic circuit and low Qes. In fact, to use a bass driver in a folded horn, low Qes is kind of necessary. Your Denon receiver, and with its discrete transistor class AB output stage, able to push out 125W into 8 ohms is quite the opposite of a low-power low-DF vacuum tube amp that were the standard around the time when klipschorns were introduced. Such is the theory, anyway. You'd need to test it with a vacuum tube amplifier to verify it, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if vintage speakers were to sound dry with modern solid state amplifier and start sounding properly with something more contemporary to the era they are from, and complementing the nature of the klipschorns. Agreed, Damping factor can definitely be part of the issue. Link to comment
SoggySoCal Posted September 29, 2018 Share Posted September 29, 2018 I need a second amp anyway now that I've hooked up the Denon to the outdoor speakers. Had to go mono outside so zone two and three are now being used. Link to comment
Bettypooh Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 Well joy. It seems I've toasted half the output transistors in my amp. As if I needed any extra crap to worry about right now. At least it still plays but not happily. Looks like Mouser is going to be ripping me off once again- sigh. Bettypooh Link to comment
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