Any advice by those in the know...?
Well I wouldn't use the headphone out on the mobile pre. I have my old one in front of me and looking at it I would use the outputs on the back and the XLR input without the phantom power turned on. You want to use the exact same outputs and inputs you plan on using.
Hmm so solder joints will migrate on you? Guess that's something I should remember since it's so humid around here. Will certain solder do this more than others? I was always taught to stay away from silver solder and just stick with 60/40 but it seemed more like a superstition or an anti-audiophile pov. I had seen some overly expensive speakers that use mechanical crimping throughout the crossover and wondered if it was somehow more reliable. And I do like to keep things as modular as possible.
My license is a 309A. An Interprovincial Commerical/Maintenance ticket. Residential (resi) is not in the same league as Commerical work. Your friends in the commerical sector will completely agree with me.
I'll wager a drink on it. ...and yes I'll make the drive to make sure you get it
edit: Sorry MJL. After rereading your reply, I grasped what you were getting at. I've done my fair share of ditch digging as well. I meant the term as a reference to the level of aptitude in the trade an electrician needs to do resi work. I'll still honour that drink though.
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I understand where you are coming from Ged but blanket statements are simply a bad idea.
I work in a high voltage, high current background (1-100MVA) and what you claim is not totally true. Crimps ARE used for high current, but are bolted THRU the terminal connections they are to be used for, the most inportant wire on a HT cable, the screen earth, which in case of insulation failure can see the same current and potential as the main conductor, ARE SOLDERED. This is for precisely the opposite reason you say they should not be soldered. LONGEIVITY of the braided earth screen, as it is brought out of the cable. besides should a cable see enough current to melt the solder, the copper would most likely melt within a crimp a few seconds later anyway. I have seen this happen to a generator...AND it wasnt my fault lol
personally i would love to see screw type connectors on loudspeakers as the usual LUCAR crimp on style connections are just plain rubbish, and hangover from the bad era of car connectors. And we all know how reliable Fords electric USED to be a couple of decades ago.....not to mention most other cars that used these connectors. soldering is by far the easiest and best way to solder, especially if alu or silver solder is used, full on copper braizing would be even better but i suspect the heat may be detrimental...
besides electrons are carried (current) and without an electrolyte no IONS are moved, at least not below the ionising breakdown voltages required to ionise air.....so i doubt this presents a problem to anyone but those ESL users among us. and even a very small problem that likely would take many many years to accumulate.
suffice to say, if a 2000amp 15kV cable with soldered joints can withstand 15 years of oil soaked dusty conditions without failing and without the mysterious metal migration you claim, then im sure a poxy 10 amp 50v speaker cable can.....after all some of the high current high potential SOLDERED connections i see here at work everyday, have survived for more than 70 years, without needing maintenance.
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Are you talking about cadwelding mondo?
I remember prepping a grid in a plant for that once, way back in the beginning of my apprenticeship, but never saw it done. The bare copper was being welded to the structural steel columns if I recall correctly.
My license is a 309A. An Interprovincial Commerical/Maintenance ticket. Residential (resi) is not in the same league as Commerical work. Your friends in the commerical sector will completely agree with me.
I'll wager a drink on it. ...and yes I'll make the drive to make sure you get it
Hell! I agree with you...working in an MVA environment is much more skilled than fitting a shower! As i work testing generators, induction motors, AVR gear, frequency converters and such like i appreciate the work the guys digging the ditches do. I actually have been lucky enough to be involved in the testing of the motors, during fabrication, for the newest US navy carrier, due in 2012 for commisioning.
so yeah///
respect is due to the HT electrical, domestic work doesnt touch it
i have no idea of the name of the technique, but yes that is the technique i mean, except here it is welded or braized maybe to copper busbars. on newer installs a crimp IS used though, and fixed through the busbar. However the old machine earths have never failed so i fail to understand the need for crimps, besides speed of assembly. And in fact the only reason i believe busbars within generators are bolted together is due to the high vibrations the joint may encounter, >10mm/s in bad cases. however the earth, (and speakers) dont suffer the same level of vibration, as the wires are flexible in comparison to a solid bar. this being said, i have seen vibration shear the bolts from a generator main neutral busbar and cause quite a bit of a mess to the chassis!
IMHO FR nuts who take it upon themselves to use solid core cable(cat5) may be better off with crimp lugars, but everyone else in the stranded cable camp shouldnt have a good reason to bother unless theyre impatient, or building commercially down to a budget and trying to save time.
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What if it's 30 degrees in your garage and you suck at soldering?
laughing cause I just made 2 cables under these conditions and am about to try them out. I tested them but who knows how long they will last lol.
A bit tongue-in-cheek on my part - the commercial guys moan about how easy the residential wire monkeys have it during the worst times: standing on a 10 foot step ladder on the second floor of wide open building, wind howling in -20*C running pipe on the core slab or trenching through the mud to run the pipe for light standards or endlessly pulling wire, soap up to the elbows.
When they get past that, into the finishing their superiority comes back, blazing!
What if it's 30 degrees in your garage and you suck at soldering?
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......30F? not sure what that is in metric lol
i wouldve tried to make them indoors, and i would also avoid like the plague the 'new' lead free solder....ol'fashioned lead tin solder and not soldering inside and igloo might be a good idea....
the commercial guys moan about how easy the residential wire monkeys have it during the worst times: standing on a 10 foot step ladder on the second floor of wide open building, wind howling in -20*C running pipe on the core slab or trenching through the mud to run the pipe for light standards or endlessly pulling wire, soap up to the elbows.
When they get past that, into the finishing their superiority comes back, blazing!
The above is exactly why I got into Industrial work, and then slid into maintenance. If they think resi guys have it made. Tell them about the maintenance guy from diyaudio that gets to play online for hours at a time
The millwright on my shift keeps telling me to put the company logo on my current speaker project lol
A bit tongue-in-cheek on my part - the commercial guys moan about how easy the residential wire monkeys have it during the worst times: standing on a 10 foot step ladder on the second floor of wide open building, wind howling in -20*C running pipe on the core slab or trenching through the mud to run the pipe for light standards or endlessly pulling wire, soap up to the elbows.
When they get past that, into the finishing their superiority comes back, blazing!
that and crawling through the mess left by a leaky sump on a deisel ship motor, to squeeze into the generator housing, just stopped, to take insulation resistances, with the inside temp at about 50C -120C(120F? to 250F?)
The above is exactly why I got into Industrial work, and then slid into maintenance. If they think resi guys have it made. Tell them about the maintenance guy from diyaudio that gets to play online for hours at a time
The millwright on my shift keeps telling me to put the company logo on my current speaker project lol
haha i couldnt do that to mine, what a travesty!
can you imagine.....GEC machines, no now were changing to GEC alsthom, sh*t now its just ALstom......now changed to converteam........
nah nor can i
Is that like those new fire retardant cigarettes where they are technically "safe" but now they don't work worth a damn -
damn you FSC!@#*$Of course after I make the remark about the cables I make a user error and forget to disable the bass management on the output I was using. Of course before I did the logical thing and swap the cables I convinced myself I somehow made a lowpass filter with some RS shielded twisted pair. It was long but not that long. So far so good now.
Tyson you probably need a 1/4" TS > Male XLR cable for the loopback calibration. After that I would just follow Earl Geddes around and ask him a bunch of questions lol - no I think he wrote a pretty good runthrough of how to measure speakers though I forget which thread it was. - is it this one? I honestly don't know it's somewhere around here.....
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Hi Mondo
Thanks for the alternate point of view. I think that solder can be reliable when done correctly (formulation and application), I know it can, but so can mechanical connections. And both can be done wrong.
The material migration issue that I talked about was the way it was explained to me from the materials experts at Ford. The solder DID fail, that was certain, but "why" was a big issue, and all of a sudden. The fix was a different composition of the solder for the application, one with a lot more silver. I was told that the silver mitigated the "migration" within the joint which was the "root cause" of the bonds failure. I can't argue the point beyond that, because I am not the expert. But I do know that solder was frowned on if a mechanical bond was possible in a high current situation.
And I was never refering to crimps as in "wire crimping". I use all screw terminals. And if you are going to try and argue that solder is more reliable than that, or, God forbid, "sounds better" then I will take exception.
Thanks for the alternate point of view. I think that solder can be reliable when done correctly (formulation and application), I know it can, but so can mechanical connections. And both can be done wrong.
The material migration issue that I talked about was the way it was explained to me from the materials experts at Ford. The solder DID fail, that was certain, but "why" was a big issue, and all of a sudden. The fix was a different composition of the solder for the application, one with a lot more silver. I was told that the silver mitigated the "migration" within the joint which was the "root cause" of the bonds failure. I can't argue the point beyond that, because I am not the expert. But I do know that solder was frowned on if a mechanical bond was possible in a high current situation.
And I was never refering to crimps as in "wire crimping". I use all screw terminals. And if you are going to try and argue that solder is more reliable than that, or, God forbid, "sounds better" then I will take exception.
I'm in Florida we are wimps lol. But to be fair the humidity stays really high so the perceived temp is much lower. My best friend is from B.C. and grew up in Winnepeg and I remember him pulling that "Oh 50 degrees is warm where I'm from" not considering the humidity. I'd laugh my *** off seeing him with shorts on freezing to death at the bus stop in high school.
You might be surprised. I am at the number of times measured low level harmonic grunge clears up by reflowing what are to all visual appearances good solders.
I'm not sure if the Ford case has a similar root cause, but it sounds very similar to electromigration in microelectronics. One of the benefits of switching from Al to Cu interconnects in integrated circuits is that with small features, current density can be quite high, and so the electron drift velocity is also very high. These fast electrons impart momentum on the metal ion, and cause voids in parts of the wire, and hillocks (accumulations) in others.
Dang!! And after going through all that trouble you realize that you forgot to slide the heat shrink tubing over the cable BEFORE you soldered them together...
~Tom
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