John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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Me too. What was the last CD you bought? Mine was Mingus, Let My Children Hear Music

London Grammar 'If you Wait' and some Steve Gadd before that.

I try to buy once a week - mostly on Amazon. I think I have about 600 or 700 CD's and maybe 200 LP's. I have a premium Spotify account as well for casual listening.

I buy vinyl too - especially jazz. But Amazon can be dangerous for vinyl - I've sent a few back.
 
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Of course I like Shallco switches best, but it will be interesting what you find Ed, with the bifurcated relays. The problem with Shallco switches is that they can tarnish and have to be wiped occasionally just to be sure. Then, of course, there is the remote control problem. Relays are much easier, obviously.

You forgot to add that (decent) relays are also an altogether better performing solution than a Shalco switch which tarnishes and is exposed to the elements.

:Popworm:

:D
 
Thanks for the link. However, it addresses DC offset, not high frequency.
So the question still remains, how does very high frequency content cause a DC offset of any coil? There would have to be rectification after the tweet crossover.

Surely even if the driver cannot reproduce it, the HF currents still flow through the voice coil = I^2.R losses?

Agreed. Unanswered is how much very hf current will there be given the tweeter inductance. But IR loss is to be worried about.

A friend, at his church they used a snake cable to bring the mikes to a mix board, and used two of the same snake lines to bring the speaker signal back to the stage instead of line level to a stage monitor amp.. I'm sure it wasn't a really high bw amp, but the tweeters and the tweet crossover were totally fried even though they heard nothing..so it would have to be 20+Khz oscillation.

jn
 
This said, as Mr. Marsh has the luck to own a rare JBL M2, may-be he will think to spend some hours to make and publish extensive measurements of those speakers.

One thing to remember about JBL M2 is the stock configuration uses two Crown class-D power amps with internal DSP. The DSP handles crossover and speaker FR corrections. It also digitizes analog inputs to the DSP, then converts the digital back to analog before sending it to the power amp stage. So, everything that comes out of it is played back through its DAC, and possibly gone through ASRC if it were digitally input at the wrong sample rate. Listening tests with test subjects sitting in the middle of some room perhaps with curtains hanging in front of the speakers may not be the same thing someone would hear in the near field and lower volume levels. Also, the horns do have a sound, IMHO, but it is pretty neutral, nothing to complain about.
 
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And on a totally different subject, relays for audio...

First picture is of a typical small relay. It has silver plated copper contacts. The idea is that if you use it for small signals the silver will give good low level performance. When used for larger signals and currents the silver plating will burn off and the copper contacts will handle higher current. So a used relay probably is not a good idea to re-purpose it for audio.

Second issue is to note the moving contact is attached to the steel magnetic armature. This will introduce distortion by passing your pristine audio signal coupled with the magnetic hysteresis distortion of the supporting armature.

The second relay if you look closely has bifurcated crossbar contacts that are silver or gold plated. More importantly the moving armature is off to the side and there is no parallel signal and magnetic path. (AGQ26012) This is a relay that is designed for low level signals and will fail if used for switching more than two amperes! It is rated to switch 10 uA or 10mV.

FYI!

I use Panasonic AGN mini relays. They are rated for 50 million mechanical operations at no load - which is as near as dammit to what a line level audio signal is into a 10k Ohm load. Best of all, the distortion measures at about 2ppm - I cannot measure lower than that with my test gear (Quant Asylum 401).


For speaker switching, I think a mosfet relay is the way to go.
 
A question to all:

Has anybody ever tried to record ultrasonics using a cell phone?

If so, did the phone react by simply reducing it's gain, did it create subharmonics due to undersampling, did it do nothing?

Do all cell phones use the same mems unit for a mike, or are vendors all over the place?

Do different phones use the same sampling rate or are they also different?

jn
 
Burn them in at moderate volume for at least a month before listening.
I used mono FM with the (out of phase) speakers face to face.
Why not use a mix of very low frequency (for the boomer) at higher level, and a 20KHz for the tweeter ? Just to break the suspensions and avoid neighbors complains ?
At my age, it seems not reasonable to wait one month ;-)
 
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Why not use a mix of very low frequency (for the boomer) at higher level, and a 20KHz for the tweeter ? Just to break the suspensions.
At my age, it seems not reasonable to wait one month ;-)

Use a pink noise source. I hope you enjoy yours. They are not very efficient, so you will need a bit of power to drive them.
 
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lol..... I hate anything emech...


You mean like a CD player? :p


I could simplify things but then I would have to replug things when I wanted to change which turntable I was using, which is annoying. I just wanted to make something that was easy enough for anyone to use unlike my usual constructions where I never actually get around to labelling anything and even I forget what random knob 3 does.



Time constraints means that phase one WILL end up being the replugging method of course. I requested a patchbay and that was refused by the planning committee...
 
London Grammar 'If you Wait' and some Steve Gadd before that.
I try to buy once a week - mostly on Amazon. I think I have about 600 or 700 CD's and maybe 200 LP's. I have a premium Spotify account as well for casual listening.
I buy vinyl too - especially jazz. But Amazon can be dangerous for vinyl - I've sent a few back.
Amazon is great for CD's, lots of bargains. I haven't got any paid for accounts but I use Deezer's free site which is great for discovering stuff and their selection is growing all the time, they've recently included Of Human Feelings by Ornette Coleman which I could only find odd tracks on YouTube and is otherwise like rocking horse s***
 
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