Beyond the Ariel

Show us pics of your setup! I'm interested in seeing if this will fit in my living room.

I'm just using beat-up PA cabinets for now (google JBL 4648, or look here) with the bottom 15" driver hole covered, and one port sealed. Nothing pretty about it! But if you want to figure out if it fits, you can figure a braced box of ~6 cu ft internal volume is going to be something like 18-20" x 24" x 36" exterior, and the compression driver on top...

Here's a very pretty cabinet for a TD-15X, with large tractrix horn on top:

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Not that tall or imposing without the big horn on top...
 
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Hi Graaf. No world record. Have a look at the latest John Curl Blowtorch thread. It's up above 11400 posts - and still going.
Yes, this is a big thread, but I have no trouble finding any search term I try. Maybe you hit the server when it was undergoing maintenance? I don't know.

FYI, Metatron was one of the angel Ariel's buddies in the group of 7 archangels. Thought it would make a nice speaker name.
 
Gary Dahl has some pic's in this thread as well.

GregOH1 also has his horn in here, and here it is with the 12" AE mid-bass and 12" GR servo:

Sealed /sand filled/ and High WAF

I helped a little with the design of the cabinets, and what you can't see (thankfully) is the massive steel plate the drivers are connected to, or all the sand surrounding the "box within a box" construction. ..and I believe the forklift required to place them is -just- out of picture.
 
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Sorry for the long delay in posting. I've been steering the good ship SS Retirement in heavy seas, and it has taken my full attention. Here are some items I've come across that shine a little light on what's been happening:

The End of Wall Street
A real eye-opener - I didn't know, for example, that the securities-ratings firms were engaged in massive fraud, routinely re-rating junk-grade mortgages from BBB up to AAA, re-packaging and re-selling them to unwary institutional investors, and clouding the paper trail back to their real origins. This article, although dense, is a must-read for background on what's happened in deregulated financial markets over the last twenty years.

The CDO ratings were changed because the security included a credit default swap contract. The credit default swap contract provides insurance on the CDO, and raises it's credit worthiness.

This is a fairly straightforward way to hedge an investment.

From Wikipedia:

"Not all collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are credit derivatives. For example a CDO made up of loans is merely a securitizing of loans that is then tranched based on its credit rating. This particular securitization is known as a collateralized loan obligation (CLO) and the investor receives the cash flow that accompanies the paying of the debtor to the creditor. Essentially, a CDO is held up by a pool of assets that generate cash. A CDO only becomes a derivative when it is used in conjunction with credit default swaps (CDS), in which case it becomes a Synthetic CDO. The main difference between CDO's and derivatives is that a derivative is essentially a bilateral agreement in which the payout occurs during a specific event which is tied to the underlying asset.
 
I spoke with Lynn a month ago. He called to tell me how happy he was with the Litz wire cables I had provided a few years earlier and that he was finally getting enough of a system back together to listen to. His accident while shoveling snow took a heavy toll, just as a shattered leg will, even to a young man.

Bud
 
I spoke with Lynn a month ago. He called to tell me how happy he was with the Litz wire cables I had provided a few years earlier and that he was finally getting enough of a system back together to listen to. His accident while shoveling snow took a heavy toll, just as a shattered leg will, even to a young man.

Bud

Hi Bud,

I'm glad Lynn's doing better.

I'd also like to thank you for reminding those of us that are still young, that accidents can happen, even to us.
:D

Best Regards,
TerryO
 
I apologize if it's pointless to post here, but if any [more] of you knowledgeable folks that helped analyze the TD15 measurements 50 pages back in this thread are still around, I'm trying to measure the TD15M-4. I could use some help isolating the same issues that came up here from other problems. Once there's nowhere left to go with measurement, I could also use some advice on which portion of the measurements I should call the "real" response for use in crossover design. http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/205875-has-anyone-here-measured-td15m-i-have-them-4.html

I am generally able to try anything suggested and post any data requested the same day.
 
Hi Bud,

I'm glad Lynn's doing better.

I'd also like to thank you for reminding those of us that are still young, that accidents can happen, even to us.
:D

Best Regards,
TerryO

Yes, I'm all better these days, thanks to a superb personal trainer at the Erie Recreation Center. I can even run and jog again, and have lost about 20~25 lbs thanks to my workouts. The accident did take a huge chunk of time - a year or two, and I didn't really get back into hifi until last year's RMAF show, when I finally got my big Ariel/Karna system up and running in time for the show.

The other news is I'm finally getting back into vinyl again - after a 25-year hiatus - with the purchase of one of the very last Technics SL1210 Mk5's. (B&H Photovideo still has a few of new-in-box Technics turntables, and rather than take my chances on Craigslist or Audiogon, I went for the new product, complete with factory warranty.)

The three SL1200 models are very similar: the SL1200 MkII is the basic model (silver or black), the SL1210 Mk5 (silver or black) is the same except it has a dedicated switch to select between quartz-lock or the pitch slider, and the SL1210 Mk5G has a fancy metalflake gloss finish, "digital" pitch slider with extended range, and somewhat better tonearm wiring. (The stock arm wire on the other two models is basically Radio Shack grade, with captive RCA leads.) Since I planned to replace the tonearm wiring with Cardas, or just get another arm altogether (possibly a Jelco 750D), I didn't see any point to the SL1210 Mk5G. But a pitch slider on/off switch made sense; one less thing to go wrong with the pitch slider.

Yes, there was the temptation of the legendary Technics SP10, but replacement parts for this long-discontinued turntable bothered me; direct-drive TT's all use specialized LSI chips that are specific to that model turntable, and when those chips are no longer available, designing a new motor controller is a major project. With a 30-year production history and 3 million SL1200's out there, getting replacement parts should not be a problem. Getting replacement parts for some of the modern boutique high-end turntables, though, ought to be interesting.

The Brit website The Art of Sound has plenty of information on upgrading the SL1200, so I'll be looking into better mats, main bearings, tonearms, etc. No interest in commercial preamps, of course - I'll be building my own this time around.
 
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As for current projects, I'll be at the Lone Star Audio Festival in Dallas, Texas on May 4, 5, and 6, and of course, the Rocky Mountain Audio Festival in Denver this October. See you there!

Here's a photo of the system right after the last RMAF in 2011. The Ariels have been moved away from their usual locations to show the Karna PP300B amplifiers and their isolated B+ supplies, the silver Monarchy DAC above them, and the Denon DV2900 transport/DVD player to the right of the Monarchy DAC. A Behringer ASRC sits on top of the transport/DVD player, upsampling from 44.1 to 88.2, and adding dither at the 24-bit level (the Monarchy accepts 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz inputs).

The tape deck is a Technics RS1520 I bought from the Tektronix Calibration Lab about 15 years ago, so it is very lightly used. For now, it is sitting on top of the REL Strata II subwoofer, but I'll be getting a new stand for the TT and the tape deck.

The video side of the system is the Panasonic P58VT25 display, Comcast HDMI DVR, Marantz AV8003 and MM8003 pre/pro and amplifier, MacMini with HDMI output, and an Xbox360 with Kinect (for entertaining guests not into hifi).

The MacMini may have a USB-to-S/PDIF converter in the future, so it can be used as a music server for the "real" hifi system. Right now, it's a convenient way to watch the Web on television, since Comcast doesn't see fit to carry non-US television stations in their 600+ channel lineup.

There is no electrical interconnection between the TV and 2-channel systems; if I use the MacMini as a music server, I'll be sure to maintain use a USB-to-S/PDIF converter with transformer isolation between USB and S/PDIF.
 

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Yes, and the optical-out from the MacMini has lots and lots of jitter, thanks to the switching power supply and all the other digital noise sources inside the computer. The better-quality asynchronous USB-to-S/PDIF converters effectively become the "master clock" for the entire digital system, sending commands to the computer when to speed up or slow down the data flow. Although S/PDIF is hardly perfect - far from it - at least the S/PDIF source no longer has to contend with jitter from motor noise and laser servo-correction circuits.

Unfortunately, every DAC I've heard in my system is sensitive to jitter - including the Berkeley Alpha DAC, which probably has the most advanced jitter-reduction circuits out there. Yet you can still hear what the transport and cable are doing to the DAC.

The more exotic tweaks for the MacMini include replacing the spinning disc drive with SSD, which probably quiets down the jitter quite a lot, although optical S/PDIF is the lowest-quality transmission protocol thanks to optical scatter in the fiber.

I'm currently looking at the Audiophilleo and Halide Designs converters, which both claim impressively low jitter specs, as well as garnering good reviews on sites like Computer Audiophile and elsewhere.

Part of the reason I'm kind of a bug about jitter is the Monarchy DAC was dramatically improved - to the point of sounding like a completely different DAC - when I switched from my cheapo Pioneer DVD player/transport to the heavily tweaked and SuperClock II modified Denon 2900. The system went from being thin and bass-light to subterranean bass, along with a much sweeter overall presentation. All from changing transports, which is quite a comment on jitter.

There's still lots of controversy out there on the relative merits of old-school CD/DVD transports versus music servers, and I admit I have been pretty underwhelmed by the music servers I've heard at hifi shows. Since most folks on the Net have different musical tastes than I do - and are listening on transistor amps, which have a completely different presentation than direct-heated-triode amplifiers, I am moving kind of slowly.

The attraction of "convenience" is not a big draw, but if the MacMini can actually outperform the modified Denon, well, that's a good reason to move forward. Then again, the Panasonic plasma TV is not entirely silent when operating - high-illumination images make it buzz just a little - so using it as a primary display when using the Mac Mini as a server may not prove ideal for serious, music-only listening. I have almost no MP3 or AAC compressed music, since it sounds like caca even on the iPod Touch with Sennheiser HD580 phones, much less the big system. High-rez downloads? Well, maybe, but the audiophile releases aren't usually the kind of music I listen to.

It's entirely possible I'll get the phonograph going before I decide on the music server. I've got 300 records from the Sixties and Seventies that haven't been played in a long, long time, and I'd really like to listen to them again. They sounded great on my college-days TD-125 and Dual 1229 turntables, and I expect good things from the tweaked SL1200.
 
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Lynn. you might want to take a look at the new Anedio D2 Dac. The designer James Kang, has paid special attention to jitter reduction. I just receieved mine after owning his D1 for a year. His website has a white paper on jitter reduction that makes for interesting reading. I have corrresponed with him. He really knows his stuff. BTW they offer a free 30 day evaluation so you can see for yourself. I have no relationship to the company, just an extremely satisfied customer. Regards Dr. John Dozier BTW I tore up my back last year and your comments about a trainer are spot on. Glad you are better