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In Reply to: RE: HA ! No lack of power.... posted by mqracing on May 17, 2008 at 11:03:11
Bravo! Now, take that 3 watt amp and outfit it with a REAL power supply: Low-DCR with plenty of speed, and a powerful set of chokes and a power transformer that have large gauge wiring in them. Then, do as Mikey has said before on his posts, and take a look at both iron and copper losses -- as long as you're doing this.Then, lay the whole thing out so that no wire can lose its signal into something else-- float everything in 3 dimensions. Lay it out so that everything is very close to what is using it, but is not close to anything else and make all wiring heavy gauge multistrand silver, or carbon-granulated copper.
We're not done. NOW, operate each part-- including all the tubes at about 5/8 "normal" current and voltage ratings. Keep on going..... Now, we're going to take a look at mechanical parts. All bolts are brass. All chassis metal is steel-- HEAVY steel.. All magnetics are "stood-off" on brass posts so as not to interfere magnetically with the steel chassis-- which is, by the way THE BEST sounding chassis material IF you use brass to isolate magnetic flows from getting into it.
Don't ever allow any ground "loops" or currents to flow thru your steel chassis either. Make all grounds into systems that eliminate cross-flows of unwanted A.C. Don't try to "balance" A.C. problems-- DESIGN THEM OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Now, make your power supply about 200 watts. Make your output tube about 4 watts. Choose your driver tube to give a MAXIMUM output of one half watt--- to the speaker.
We're not done yet. LOOK at your speaker. If it's under about 98db/watt-- it is poorly machined and loosely fitted together. This IS NOT a matter of efficiency. It IS a matter of ASSEMBLY and MACHINING QUALITY.
And that is very important! We are going to want most of the 1/2 watt power to turn into MUSIC-- NOT HEAT-- in the speaker. Wasted watts CUT DOWN on dynamic and acoustical output-- they BUCK-OUT musical signals inside the speaker drivers.
So now you know why we want "efficient" drivers. It isn't to use less watts, it's to produce more music. This is done by excellent, precise machining and assembly-- which makes the driver efficient by its nature. QUALITY.
OK, what next? Got the amp. Got the speaker drivers. Cabinet design must allow the speaker to reach its true potential at making music instead of acoustical losses due to unwanted heat generation. These cabinets will ALWAYS be large physically. Get used to it. Such is the art of musical reproduction.
What else? Wires to the speaker. We don't want to lose it here! Go with double runs of 12ga. wire to your crossover network. Big budget-- use silver multistrand. El-cheapo? Get down to Home Depot and buy some nice, Carol (R) brand 4/12 cables, and live very happily! Make these exactly 114 1/4 inches long. I don't have time for the physics here-- trust me, darn it!
Wire-up your drivers with single runs of multistrand silver (12-to-13 ga.) on your tweeter. Sorry, no other metals allowed here. Run those woofers with 60/40 copper/silver, 13ga. multistrand-- Siltech calls it LS-25. There are others.
Cheap again? You'll have to try different combos of copper leads in parallel-- everything from 33 ga. down to about 16ga. It usually takes about 4 or 5 wires-- each of a different size-- carefully chosen to get the whole musical range right-- and not get giant "skews" or "homogenizing" due to the wrong wire being tossed into the mix. All this for the woofer? Of course.
Those of us who are short on money must be long on experimentation. All others can buy Kimber, Siltech, or Ensemble and just swoon to the music-----.
I know these are just a few of the things you can do, but what we can get is 1/2 watt that DESTROYS ALL larger amplifiers, and BADLY. The 1/2 watter has power and dynamics that other amps can't even hint at.
Don't believe it? Sorry, it's accomplished fact. Mikey knows his stuff. Don't WANT to believe it? That's kinda like trying to get 50 MPG out of your 1950 pickup at 75 mph. Isn't going to happen! BUT-- the latest diesel Direct-Fuel-Injected, turbocharged and intercooled high efficiency engine in a nice smooth auto? It's a piece of cake!
----Dennis----
Edits: 05/17/08 05/17/08 05/17/08 05/17/08Follow Ups:
Hi,
> So now you know why we want "efficient" drivers. It isn't to use less watts,
> it's to produce more music. This is done by excellent, precise machining and
> assembly-- which makes the driver efficient by its nature. QUALITY.
Didn't read the rest of the post but if it is of the same quality it aint worth a lot actually.
There aint no idea to bother with the last 1/20th until one gor the first 19/20th right…
mvh /Pär
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Me fail english, thats unpossible!
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Hi Par,
I looked up your system on Inmate's Systems. Is it true you use a tri-amped system with the amps supplied by the speaker manufacturer, located IN the speaker? It says, 150, or 200 watts for the woofer, 100 watts for the mids, and 50 watts for the tweeter.
Why, this must be all solid state I would surmise.
No wonder you didn't read but ten percent of Dennis' post!!
If I were you, it would have turned my stomach!!
Are you posting on the right A.A.Forum, or have I misread who you are and what you use / and from your comment "almost there" think is ideal??
Jeff Medwin
Is Siltech LS-25 any good to be used for chassis wiring?
VERY good. Use it all over the place..... and.... smile-- a LOT!
For B+ runs, be sure to use the whole 2-conductor cable. (2 13ga. leads parallelled). For your tweeter, use the cable as the single cord to the tweeter--only one 13ga. conductor on each side. (I am only guessing at 13ga.-- this is Metric., but it's close to 13ga.).
----Dennis----
All chassis metal is steel-- HEAVY steel.. All magnetics are "stood-off" on brass posts so as not to interfere magnetically with the steel chassis-- which is, by the way THE BEST sounding chassis material IF you use brass to isolate magnetic flows from getting into it.
Don't ever allow any ground "loops" or currents to flow thru your steel chassis either.
Can you elaborate what is the reasoning behind using steel? If you want heavy and no current flow, wouldn't MDF and thick hardwood be a better choice?
What about mounting transformers on a suspended teflon platform, using something like a vibration damping mount or standoff?
I'm not going to have time to give you all the tech. involved here. Let's just say I understand materials pretty well.
Anytime you try to dampen something that is reproducing music, you will also dampen the musical performance. For this reason, I set tube sockets right into the steel chassis as a very tight fit. I cannot stand to listen to insulating, dampening, or suspension devices. It's like stuffing a pillow inside your speaker.
MDF is just horrible-- for speakers especially, and for anything else.
In reproducing music, you NEVER "kill" what you do not want. You ALWAYS "bring-out" what you DO want. To me, that is anything and everything that was recorded.
So, the best sounding material has not much sound of its own (THICK steel), but much more importantly-- it doesn't dull anything. Now, THAT is VERY important!
Steel is magnetic, of course, and for this reason, you can't let it get influenced by transformers, chokes, and wires laying inside the chassis, close to it. You simply suspend everything unless you have a concrete reason for not doing so.
Again,, NEVER dampen vibrations-- in anything. Instead, use the right design and materials so that-- inherently-- you don't have the vibes you don't want-- in the first place. That way, the real vibes that are in music can still get through.
This is how I can give you a performance that is powerful and dynamic--but much more importantly, it sounds VERY REAL.
Think of dampening as unwanted negative feedback. All right! Now, it makes some sense.
Remember also, that ALL metals are influenced by magnetic fields. It's what the metal does with it that you are interested in.
You won't find me using wood, plastic, aluminum, copper, mu-metal or anything else for a chassis.... except steel. Steel sounds so much better-- IF it's used right-- that there's just every reason to learn to use it properly.
----Dennis----
Dennis, Thanks for sharing these tips.
What size steel chassis qualifies as heavy? I haven't used steel for a long while since aluminum is much easier to work with. I am wondering whether the thickness of steel you're recommending is feasible for us home builders.
Second, do your comments about not using damping materials apply to tube damping accessories such as Herbie's damping rings?
Third, what are your views regarding Teflon tube sockets? I'm not sure whether they are intended to reduce vibrations or whether their alleged advantage is due to the Teflon dielectric characteristics.
Dave
Hello, Dave.I think you can get by with anything from 16ga. up to 12 ga. 14 ga. will work on smaller (physically) projects.
Bolting metal parts of a chassis together, or trying to make one out of wood or plastic and then using a metal plate is basically a breadboard-- it can never even approach what the circuit can do if housed properly.
I have found that a really good chassis is a single piece. To that end-- at least commercially, I have used a facility that can do CNC/laser cutting, trimming and laser-welding. I can thus obtain a chassis that is the right vertical depth as well as having the horizontal dimensions in place-- I now have a single piece of welded, formed, and polished steel.
Powder-coat this thing inside and outside, and you have a work of art that PERFORMS.
The bottom plate IS screwed on, since the laser facility installs PEM nuts for me to do this right. The bottom plate, however, is NOT considered as a part of the chassis because it can't be welded into the whole.
Since this is true, then-- we can make the bottom plate into an (acoustically) detached, but physically connected, (to the chassis) plate.
So, now the bottom plate has become an isolation platform-- supported on brass stand-off studs and brass washers. This really rocks!
Please understand that I'm not trying to discourage you by talking about Laser cutting and welding. I am doing that now in Montana because High-Tech is all around me. It is easy and delightfully RIGHT!BUT-- we're talking about your needs, not mine. Anyway, I used to build the SAME THING out in the woods in Southern California-- with No CNC tools or lasers.
What I did was go out to a guy on a farm who was a really good welder, and he had a sheet metal "brake"-- a bender. We just cut the steel into the right pattern, used the "bench brake" to fold it, and then he simply TIG-Welded the corners top-to bottom. Since we had folded lips underneath the box, we also TIG-welded-in those short corners. Now, all we had to do was take a polisher/grinder and smooth all the welds. Since we had used 12 ga. steel, I did not HAVE to install PEM nuts. I just threaded the steel at home.
A bicycle shop in Bakersfield was doing powder-coatings for the bikers and Skate-Boarders parts, etc., so they got to do my chassis after I did all the holes in them at home with ordinary shop tools. So you can build anything you want with low-tech. also.
Yes, tube damping rings do severely limit musical expression-- because they are damping-out not only unwanted vibrations-- but they are also damping out any part of a musical signal that the rings tuning affects. I have tried them, but would never use one today. Interestingly, the most microphonic tubes are the ones that can reproduce music the best!Teflon is a terrific insulator and a really good dielectric for capacitors, AND for wiring-- especially for power cords, etc.
When you use a BLOCK of Teflon for a tube socket, then you run into two problems: (1) The Teflon BLOCK absorbs too much energy from the tube-- just like your damper-ring does. This isn't thrilling to the music. (2) SOMETIMES certain companies using these blocks have inserted SOFT copper, etc., into these blocks as tube pins. I would have used Phosphor-Bronze because you MUST HAVE a strong spring-like grip onto the tube pins-- you can't use something that "relaxes" after 10 or more times that you plugged a tube into there-- or when the lug relaxes due to heat stress over time, anyhow.
The old ceramic sockets (Johnson, etc.) were good, and certain CINCH (Jones) products worked well, as did certain NOS "Amphenol".
Sometimes, an old bakelite socket with tin-plated steel pins just plain outperforms the new stuff. I have old Amphenols with Phosphor-Bronze pins in them that I still use today for my driver tube.
Are they the best possible? NO. Are they the best AVAILABLE? Absolutely.
----Dennis----
Thanks for the detailed reply. I'll look into a steel chassis for my next amp project.
My experience with tube damping rings, while limited, is consistent with your comments. The sound with the rings becomes squeaky clean but less natural. The music somehow doesn't have the same ebb and flow with the rings. Hard to describe but it's real.
Dave
Hi Dennis:When are you headed out to VSAC? What room are you going to be in? And what other equipment\vendors are you showing with? Curious minds would like to know.
MSL
Hi Mike!
VSAC is at the Vancouver, Washington (near Portland, Oregon), HILTON hotel. May 24-26.
I'll be in the ASH room-- on the 2nd floor with my amps, speakers, and attenuators. It's just a friendly get together-- sort of a "geeks" convention. (I heard that one in Denver in an elevator). Some nice teenagers were describing what they THOUGHT was taking place at RMAF 2005--a "geeks convention". These dudes were carrying Skateboards and had come into the Hotel to eat lunch! I liked them and had a lot of fun explaining RMAF to them. Who knows? Future geeks? That wasn't all. One had a really great Skateboard he had built himself. Genius! He was in the right Hotel after all.
The ASH room is for Serious Stereo alone. There are to be about 35 different rooms at VSAC. This will make it easy to visit everybody, and will make it possible for each of us to visit the other guys rooms. Expect a lot of fun and good folks.
I think Denvers RMAF had about 300 exhibitors last time-- perhaps a few more. I really love that show and intend to be there this October as usual.
You can still get to see most of the rooms there. You can just ask people in the hallways as you go, and use your maps.
VSAC is different. Just go DIRECTLY to the room you want. See them all.
----Dennis----
Are you bringing your Paragon?
(hope, hope, haven't heard one in years, never heard a good one...)
That would be great to hear a great pair of amps through!
Robert
That's quite a question, Robert!I think the Paragon is a bit--- shall we say--- non-portable? I think it weighs in at about 900 pounds when you consider my base/stage that I place it upon. Paragons won't work if you just set them in the living room-- unless you intend to listen while lying down on the sofa, etc.
Mine has a small stage that elevates it about 17 inches. Then, it does what it should do. The stage is about 14 feet long and is 36 inches built-out from the back wall. 17 inches tall. 2 X 14 inch studs are located all along the front of the stage at 10 inch centers-- these go to the back wall and are anchored to the back wall. The front plate is also 2 inch Douglas Fir-- glued and screwed to the studs. The whole thing has two top plates-- each is 1 1/8 inch marine plywood. The two decks are screwed together, giving 2 1/4 inch lift, and a very solid deck. This deck is also grooved into the studs beneath it.
Thin carpeting is on top of this, and is also applied all along the front of the stage.
Go to the JBL Heritage website, and find some of the pictures of celebrities putting them on top of oak tables! (LARGE Oak tables).
At VSAC I am bringing my MLTL speaker with 1 1/8 inch EuroBirch Marine Plywood cabinet. This mass-loaded transmission line was the first ever MLTL designed around the Great Plains (Altec) 15 inch Duplex Engine compound driver. I had help in designing this MLTL cabinets internal volume from several contributors, but it was my insistence that the "704" should be used-- and why not a MLTL, as I like them a lot. A wonderful guy-- Mr. Jay Fisher fron Santa Monica, California also thought that a MLTL would be "killer".
I was after a point source that would cover the entire musical range and do it with high efficiency and absolute power, grace and authority. I wanted total clarity and effortless ease across the whole audio bandwidth. I wanted it to be able to reproduce what a really great amplifier can do... that is something that about 3 other speakers ever made can do. (If you get the time, look up "Klangfilm" German Theatre speakers, and get in on some other great speaker designs).
Until now (with the new MLTL), only the Paragon ever satisfied me completely-- day-in and day-out-- always, every time, all the time. I wanted all of what was recorded to sound VERY REAL.
The "704" uses the old ALTEC "Mantaray" horn outlet for the midrange/tweeter. This allows coverage angles that will match a rectangular room (most are). The Paragon does this by using an integrator panel placed across two channels of musical information-- mixing both sides into a whole that closely resembles musical reality.
By using the "Mantaray" horn, you can make the midrange/tweeter in the Duplex Engine do this by correct spread-angle, and then letting the room do the rest.
The real trick is how do you get the BASS of a stereo speaker PAIR to do what the SINGLE Stereo Paragon does with its tunnel-ports woofer system-- both focus bass correctly AND cover the entire room evenly, combining both channels of information.
I had learned from building movie theatres that BASS had to be treated EXACTLY like the mids and the highs-- directionally. One reason is that a good woofer cone (Altec "515", or JBLs latest 18-inch unit) will stay relatively "flat" response-wise right up to about 2000 HZ. Even if your crossover cuts-off the bass well below this area, you are getting a lot more than just "bass" from a good woofer. But even the "lows" also have directional cues-- even though some people don't think so.
The challenge to get the MLTL to do what the Paragon does with everything-- including the bass-- was a design requirement for the MLTL.
Accordingly, a sort of floor-integrator for the bass was devised by yours truly to go underneath the MLTLs stand-- and extend up into its cabinet. This would spread the bass across the room properly, and yet would still locate its source. Another benefit is that the woofers cone would be loaded more evenly and more effortlessly-- resulting in much lower bass distortion, and even better low-end fundamental response.
I love this thing so much that I now prefer it to the Paragon! My brother says it's very close-- but he still thinks the Paragon is the King of all speakers if you really love music. Paragons need some mods since they are not up to the best modern wiring and crossover parts standards. The old JBL drivers ARE superb-- very much so.... that means you re-wire everything in the Paragon or Metragon, including what's inside the drivers and crossovers. The crossovers also get better capacitors.... with short, multistrand heavy silver leads.
If you ever get one of these JBL gems, or a used JBL Metragon, contact me, and you can have a wonderful time with it.
Be forewarned: if you get one of these things right, most amps will sound just as bad as they really are-- on them. These speakers don't hide anything, and they don't make it sound "nice". They speak the whole truth.
---Dennis---
Makes me long for the Metregons that I had about ten years ago. Though I never got them dialed in like you apparently have your Paragons dialed in.And a fine endorsement indeed from you on the Great Plains 704's. I currently have a pair of Gallante Audio Buckinghams (altec 604-8G's) in cabinets that were designed by Walt Bender. And I have some 604 E's, 515's, and 288's in my stash along with the relatively rare 329A horn assemblies.
How large is your listening room? The best I ever heard Altec's (A7's in this case) was in a very large room (40 by 100 feet0--- it sounded so wonderful--- did not overpower the room--- and had a chance to "breathe" and integrate the sound field--- it was nearly magical. So... I've always wondered and thought that these large drivers really work best in large rooms. What's your thoughts?
MSL
Hi Mike! When a large speaker requires a large room to "breathe"-- the system is probably designed to use a room that huge (theatre stuff) for correct imaging. In a small (normal) room, stacking drivers vertically or horizontally results in severe anomalies that people who love nusic can hear as a form of distortion in the complex wave sets that the ears hear. You can't necessarily measure this... and in any case, it will vary in different parts of the room-- something you DO NOT want to occur.
Then, why does the large Altec sound so wonderful? Well, LOW distortion is one of its design traits-- really low across WHAT COUNTS MOST in musics bandwidth.
IF this were a point-source, it would really be better yet. BUT-- in the movie theatre-- it almost IS a point-source. That is because it is easy to aim both drivers at the center of the audience and get point-source lock-in there. The wide dispersion of the H.F. unit (which is adjustable for "lock-in"), combined with the partial-curve in the bass bin provides a good "lock" on the audience at MOST seats in the auditorium. (Not all seats, however!).
In the home, we need an ACTUAL point-source, yet we also want the truly low distortion, wide bandwidth, and just plain guts and glory of the big Theatre drivers. They just sound like Caterpillar VS Yugo! (Yugo we don't want!!!).
How to get great "big speaker" sound into a small room? Use BIG, efficient speakers! I claim that I can put the MLTL into a bathroom, and it will outperform any smaller speaker in that small room. And it will-- in spades.
How is that possible? (1) It disperses evenly in the room-- since it has wide, even dispersion in both bass and H.F. units, there are no "hotspots". (2) It is ultra-low distortion, and effortlessly dynamic. In the small room, you can listen close-up as well as away from it. Distance doesn't matter a lot because either way, you're getting solid, clean, well dispersed coverage of whatever listening area you want to listen to, use, or place the speaker into.
The practical limits of that design are reached when the room gets TOO LARGE. Anything over about 40 x 50 feet (horizontally), assuming 10 foot ceilings, would run the drivers into "maxed-out" mode at high SPLs. Since this is the opposite of clean and low-distortion, we would opt for a different design-- probably a way to utilize two of the drivers in each cabinet.... and yet get both drivers to disperse into the same area with no horizontal or vertical separation occurring.
We would have to find a way to get this complex to operate as a point-source in the room. That would require a bit of thinking---- and re-arranging. Hmmmmmmmmm!
In the real world where we have normal living rooms, the problems are solved by the Paragon, Metragon, and the MLTL "704".
----Dennis----
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