diyAudio - Blogs - planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/ A community dedicated to helping everyone learn the art of audio. Projects by fanatics, for fanatics! en Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:34:17 GMT vBulletin 60 http://cdn1.dastatic.com/forums/images/diy/misc/rss.jpg diyAudio - Blogs - planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/ FALL Listening Space http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/493-fall-listening-space.html Mon, 03 Jan 2011 06:53:22 GMT How many posts, describing the sound of something, have the caveat, "...in my room"?

My listening space/room is a subset of the upper floor of my house. All the volume of this space is fairly open and interconnected acoustically.



The space is nominally 24'x36' (houses in Canada are still built in imperial units) surrounded by deck on 3 sides. The peak of the roof is at 2/3 and rises 17' at the highest. It slopes down over 24' to ~6.5' over the main room. An 8' x 12' section is divided off for kitchen with the bedroom above.



The rest of the space is 12'x24', raised 42" above the main floor and has a roof (mostly) that vaults from 8' to the same peak (just over 12'). The main space & this space are connected by 2 -- 3.5x7' openings and 5 -- 16"x2.5' openings along the roof peak.

The connected volume is about 8560 ft^3 (242 m^3).

Construction is fairly typical Canadian timber-frame construction. Guproc walls & ceiling, wood & ceramic tile floors.

Lightly furnished, Record or bookshelves & a bit less than half the wall space.



HiFi lives at the short end of the ceiling in the 16x24' space.

The space was sketched with audio in mind, and the space works really well for living & listening.

dave

]]> planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/493-fall-listening-space.html 26-sep-09 Floyd Toole speaks http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/60-26-sep-09-floyd-toole-speaks.html Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:30:24 GMT Thursday i took the ferry over to Canada to attend a lecture by Floyd Toole at an AES presentation. The lecture covered off a summary of the... Thursday i took the ferry over to Canada to attend a lecture by Floyd Toole at an AES presentation.

The lecture covered off a summary of the contents of his book. It probably was more enlightening for those that haven't read the book, but i was able to get a few details added.

He also signed my book, and really liked my title - Frugal-phile(tm) -- he said we need more of them :)

I have added this to my absolutely required audio reading list along with Leviton's "This is your brain on music" Very complentary books.

Floyd's book summarizes the 40 years of work he has done on loudspeakers & rooms.

The 3 most interesting things in the book are
1/ under well controlled & designed blind listening tests there is a very high level of consistency in what listeners consider best sounding
2/ a FR metric has been developed which has a high correlation with what people prefer. Unfortunately this metric is not really available to the diyer -- it consists of 70 measures made in an anechoic chamber that reaches down to at least the transition frequency.
3/ a very good explanation of how multiple subs can be used to minimize bass FR deviations caused by the room.

The book is very approachable & understandable. That it aligned with and largely reinforced much of my audio philosophy didn't hurt.

The most valuable snippet i found in the book (where it is repeated over & over again) is that 2 ears + a brain is much more capable than a mic plus an analyzer.

dave ]]> planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/60-26-sep-09-floyd-toole-speaks.html 04-sep-09 µFonkens arrive in UK http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/26-04-sep-09-ufonkens-arrive-uk.html Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:39:06 GMT We work closely with Scott Lindgren in the UK. To help facilitate communation, we sent him a set of uFonken with FF85KeN so that we would have a... We work closely with Scott Lindgren in the UK. To help facilitate communation, we sent him a set of uFonken with FF85KeN so that we would have a common reference. He got them earlier today and had these initial impressions:

Quote:
Speaking of small speakers, got the uFonken's etc. about 1.30pm & been throwing different albums at them ever since. They haven't batted an eyelid. Christopher Lee reading Dracula on an audiobook? Check. June Tabor? Check. Yo Yo Ma? Check. Loreena McKennitt? Check. Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Check. Mike Oldfield? Check. This is actually bloody annoying. They've no business to work this well. I figured I'd catch them out just before I started typing this by introducing them to PJ Harvey's albums To Bring You My Love & Is This Desire? (officially the eeriest / most disturbing records ever made). Bugger. They haven't keeled over. (Highly recommended albums BTW.) OK, compressed on some of the synth bass (everything short of multiple 15in HE woofers per channel compresses on these albums, so they're in good company), but everything else is magic. Ride cymbal in particular -decay is as good as I've heard from FR units.

I haven't got them properly set up yet, but even way off axis, imaging's very impressive. I won't try making any real assessment until I get them on the end of my B1 / F2 & sitting on decent stands away from boudaries. One thing I'm really impressed with is their LF extension though. It might be faint under 100Hz, but they go down quite a ways. Sod the ultimate computer speaker; you're not pitching these things right. Point them at the hi-fi monitor market. Even with only a few hours listening, I'd say they'd take most of those things to the cleaners with the added benefit of not needing one million watts rammed up their terminals. TBH, I think they're more impressive in their way than the Fonken Primes. Many thanks for sending them. :^) Oh yes -and not least, hat off to Chris; build & finish is excellent. Love the veneer. Nice detail touch too, painting the vents black & the brass screws.

I'm off to listen some more... ;^)

....

Spent another hour listening to them; they really are very nice little micro-monitors indeed. General 'criticism' thus far: they're not as neutral as, say, the A6 with that upward-skewed balance & they certainly do compress more. But they're much cleaner than anything I've heard to date with the FE83/7E, or any of the 3in Visatons the Germans rave over (and which I think are chronically over-rated). I like them. Lots.


Scott's are the ones on the right.

The 1st of the critisms can be largely dealt with by adding a woofer (as in Tysen) -- we did send Scott a pair of woofers too.

The rising top end above 15k is something we are still working to minimize (for us old guys it isn't a real big issue)

dave ]]> planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/26-04-sep-09-ufonkens-arrive-uk.html 21-aug-09 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/5-21-aug-09.html Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:52:12 GMT This Weekend is the 6th Annual Vancouver Island diyFEST (http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/clubs-events/139005-6th-annual-vancouver-island-diyfest-2009-a.html) which we host so i am busy getting... This Weekend is the 6th Annual Vancouver Island diyFEST which we host so i am busy getting ready for that. It will be the official roll-out of some designs for the new Planet10-HiFi EL70eN, a new paper cone driver from Mark Audio that has factory support. Also sold without our special touches as an EL70 by Bob at Creative Sound (Mark & Bob have their own new forums as well).

Prepping for this is a lot of work, but we get further along each year... sort of like an annual spring cleaning. Thanx to Jeff, Chris, Gregg the Geek, Jesse, Daniel, and Tysen for the help. Of course it wouldn't have been possible without Ruth taking care of the feeding and more.


This year we added a small listening room in the back of the lab which will allow more demonstration versatility all year round.

dave ]]> planet10 http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/planet10/5-21-aug-09.html