Antonio, I guess what I'm emphasising is trying to understand why the sound isn't up to scratch in certain areas, rather than willy nilly just changing things in the hope that that will set things right. Of course the latter approach may solve it, but I have always never replaced a part with a "better" part, this may give marginal changes at times but what I'm after has always been achieved through significant redoing of the "engineering" or the implementation of the component.
As a very, very rough rule of thumb, unless what I'm doing is going to make something 10 times better in some way, I wouldn't really worry about it.
I tend not to rush at things - I take my time, play with the ideas in my mind for a while, fiddle at length until a clear, almost certainty about some issue or procedure takes shape - and then I do what's needed, with minimum fuss. Each of us will have their own ways, but I find this works very well for me ...
Edit: ... or, put it this way - in the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, I'm most definitely in the former slot - and just recall the ending ...
As a very, very rough rule of thumb, unless what I'm doing is going to make something 10 times better in some way, I wouldn't really worry about it.
I tend not to rush at things - I take my time, play with the ideas in my mind for a while, fiddle at length until a clear, almost certainty about some issue or procedure takes shape - and then I do what's needed, with minimum fuss. Each of us will have their own ways, but I find this works very well for me ...
Edit: ... or, put it this way - in the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, I'm most definitely in the former slot - and just recall the ending ...
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Frank,
Wise words from the man with experience, now I’m hesitant to what needs to be done besides maybe the PS, let me splain.
Last night was a long one in front of the pc and music was in order, so called Sara Brightman to play (from youtube) RARE a performance collection by Micky Sandoval in 2 CD’s for more than 4 hours and the reproduction from the speakers was almost impeccable, no peak at mids from the soprano, and no overload perceived over this type of music played at normal level.
All this seems to bring me to the conclusion that a precondition is needed for a more serious listening session even thou the system remains ON 24/7 - I recall you mentioned something on this regard before?
In the other hand the speakers have remain boxed most of the time since they were bought about 3 years ago so they must have about a 100 hours of real use so they could need some more break-in time.
Antonio
Wise words from the man with experience, now I’m hesitant to what needs to be done besides maybe the PS, let me splain.
Last night was a long one in front of the pc and music was in order, so called Sara Brightman to play (from youtube) RARE a performance collection by Micky Sandoval in 2 CD’s for more than 4 hours and the reproduction from the speakers was almost impeccable, no peak at mids from the soprano, and no overload perceived over this type of music played at normal level.
All this seems to bring me to the conclusion that a precondition is needed for a more serious listening session even thou the system remains ON 24/7 - I recall you mentioned something on this regard before?
In the other hand the speakers have remain boxed most of the time since they were bought about 3 years ago so they must have about a 100 hours of real use so they could need some more break-in time.
Antonio
Yes, you've nailed it - preconditioning is the key, especially with relatively cheap gear it should be considered an essential. What I would expect from expensive equipment, in fact I would demand it, is that say 5 minutes after turn on it's working close to optimum - otherwise, what am I paying the money for?! .
At the moment I'm doing that very thing, going to try for a recording - and the trick is to drive the system as hard as you're game, with as raucous as a waveform as you feel up to, for an hour or two - every time you want to seriously listen. The drivers need to be hammered hard, if they're half reasonable they'll steadily lift their game the longer you do this, you're stretching the 'sinews' of the suspensions - and you're forcing the chip amp, PS and all cap's to work under stress, bringing them to life. I use hard driving rock, blues, piano jazz - Oscar Petersen on at the moment - or a classic piece that takes no prisoners, anything with lots of very strong treble content is ideal. Typically the treble will steadily improve, and soundstaging and depth will constantly expand.
The idea is not to have things obviously distorting during this, but to be just under that level - if it works well, you should be able to steadily increase the volume without problems, in fact, you'll want to ...
.At the moment I'm doing that very thing, going to try for a recording - and the trick is to drive the system as hard as you're game, with as raucous as a waveform as you feel up to, for an hour or two - every time you want to seriously listen. The drivers need to be hammered hard, if they're half reasonable they'll steadily lift their game the longer you do this, you're stretching the 'sinews' of the suspensions - and you're forcing the chip amp, PS and all cap's to work under stress, bringing them to life. I use hard driving rock, blues, piano jazz - Oscar Petersen on at the moment - or a classic piece that takes no prisoners, anything with lots of very strong treble content is ideal. Typically the treble will steadily improve, and soundstaging and depth will constantly expand.
The idea is not to have things obviously distorting during this, but to be just under that level - if it works well, you should be able to steadily increase the volume without problems, in fact, you'll want to
...
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Antonio, you might be interested - I did some dummy recording runs on my PC setup, links are here, last comment in http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/fas42/1080-fix-time-pc-monitor-speakers.html. They do a reasonable job of conveying some of the sense of the sound - sorry, but they're pop, classical in the next round ... .
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Timing is everything, Pavel! I tried this morning and stupid software problems got in the way, ran out of time - however, as mentioned in my previous post here, I've got some pop recordings up, to give an idea. Caveats: recording device is very basic, I have zero recording technique - see if you get anything out of them!
Got it.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y918d183rtqegx8/AADtXci7xEGk3yuKiCRTndI1a/SamButera.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y918d183rtqegx8/AABO81Qt9tqQfkdqhy91VLYma/Henrix-MachineGun.wav
You must be joking, Frankie .....
The resulting sound is like 6 - transistor pocket Japanese radio from sixties
A mix of PC speaker sound + mediocre microphone technique. It is difficult to consider your post seriously.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y918d183rtqegx8/AADtXci7xEGk3yuKiCRTndI1a/SamButera.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y918d183rtqegx8/AABO81Qt9tqQfkdqhy91VLYma/Henrix-MachineGun.wav
You must be joking, Frankie .....
The resulting sound is like 6 - transistor pocket Japanese radio from sixties
A mix of PC speaker sound + mediocre microphone technique. It is difficult to consider your post seriously.
Had a look at the spec sheet on these since I was curious. There must be a large amount of EQ going on for the front speakers to claim 100hz from a 2.5 inch speaker in such a tiny enclosure. You may find that no matter how many upgrades you do the overall tonal response simply will not change because of the "sound shaping" that has been built into the design.
In your experience then using CLC filtering on rails on non-class A chipamps is a safe arrangement?
Antonio
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Nico,
Haven’t heard from you since the LazyCat project hope things are working well for you.
Seems a bit involved for me at this point to try a battery supply it’s simpler for me to try bettering the actual PS but haven’t decided yet how.
I misuse the term grunge before, speakers are ok.
Thanks for the advice, Antonio
Sorry it didn't work for you, Pavel, you were probably expecting something very different in those from what I'm listening for - a decent way of getting an idea is to listen to the original through the system, then play the mic recorded copy through the same speakers. For me, in the areas that matter, it was doing things right.The resulting sound is like 6 - transistor pocket Japanese radio from sixties
A mix of PC speaker sound + mediocre microphone technique. It is difficult to consider your post seriously.
I have a whole thread in my Blog here where I talk about what I'm using to record with - it has severe limitations too, like being unable to handle high SPLs, hence the funny way of recording, directly in front of the speakers will provoke major glitching in the result. I can listen around those, sorry for the disappointment ...
Edit: still on track to do the organ piece, might get there this morning ...
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Extremely so. The point is, sound is sound is sound, if interference is degrading the sound in a super refined, super expensive setup then exactly the same thing will happen for a low end system. Why normally one wouldn't bother is that other distortion problems are usually so bad, that those sort of subtle issues are completely swamped by the 'biggies'. It's a sign that one is really getting somewhere, that doing the fiddly things does make a difference ...
Worrying about altering the physical characteristics of the speakers is missing the point, this is all about the electronics - if your hear an audible problem it's because the circuit is misbehaving in some way. With the cheap equipment cabinet rattles is the worst of it normally, and often it's other items nearby that are vibrating.
Yes - CLCLC is not the classic 'choke fed' supply as the choke values are much smaller (I've used under 220uH) and there's that first cap to keep the first choke always conducting.
I did a good stuffing on the monitors with fiberfill and does help to have cleaner mids but those cases need much more work, they are made of a thin plastic with no ribbings on the inside so a coating of some sort of material like undercoat is needed to minimize the vibration. I’ve done something like this on bigger monitors and helps too.
If you know of some material that’s easily applied I will appreciate since undercoat materials take forever to dry.
Thanks for calling this sometimes neglected applications.
Antonio
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