Yes, the wire nuts quick connects are great for experimenting.I’ve been called a lot of things but genius isn’t one of themI tried soldering the same setup and it was quite dull sounding, I couldn’t figure out why and asking on another forum resulted in the typical bs or ‘it must be wrong’......wire nuts are easier than soldering anyhow!
Yup, that's what I find with tin/lead solder, dull sounding and wrong sounding. When soldering is required, I find 96%Tin/4%Copper sounds good, maybe slightly dull but not 'wrong' sounding like tin/lead and especially tin/lead/silver alloys which IMO sound plain nasty. I have also swapped out solder at driver flex lead connections and found this to be nicely beneficial. IMO many speakers especially with complex crossover on pcb with many tin/lead solder joints sound all wrong. Avoiding solder joints altogether and using wire wrap joints as is usual in Bose speakers is preferable, and is Bose 'secret sauce'.
Dan.
It's the radiation pattern of a driver, it's like an OB speaker. The front side sends out a "positive" wave, and the back sends out a "negative" or polarity-inverted wave (when facing the driver)*. These cancel out in (approximately) the mounting plane of the speaker.
This should help:
Dipole speaker - Wikipedia
* This is often but incorrectly described as "180 degrees out of phase."
This has gone a little too far. Soldering is a compromise, like everything else, but to condemn SN62 solder is going too far! Our consensus of making cables, speaker xovers, as well as circuit boards that are composed of discrete devices with leads is that silver solder (SN62) is one of the best compromises out there for audio. It is eutectic, melts at a lower temperature than 60-40 or SN63, and certainly SN96, and therefore tends to not damage sensitive active or passive components in most situations with hand soldering.
It has been claimed that the silver (2-3%) in the lead-tin majority may offer a convenient parallel signal path at very low level signals, by some experts in metal interface. I would not be surprised, but mainly it is the eutectic (look it up) and the lower temperature properties that make the most difference. Now, there are many brands of SN62 solder. Some are better than others, I prefer ERSIN or Cardas, but some others 'may' be as good, or even better, yet others, like Radio Shack, worse.
Perhaps, with modern automation of the soldering process, something better has been found, as well as EU regulations require removal of lead from solder, but usually this leads to real problems with amateurs and students, just learning to solder. One associate actually removes lead-free solder from a college student electronics lab, just to avoid having to fix such problems with his students' projects.
Dan, sometimes you go too far with your opinions.
It has been claimed that the silver (2-3%) in the lead-tin majority may offer a convenient parallel signal path at very low level signals, by some experts in metal interface. I would not be surprised, but mainly it is the eutectic (look it up) and the lower temperature properties that make the most difference. Now, there are many brands of SN62 solder. Some are better than others, I prefer ERSIN or Cardas, but some others 'may' be as good, or even better, yet others, like Radio Shack, worse.
Perhaps, with modern automation of the soldering process, something better has been found, as well as EU regulations require removal of lead from solder, but usually this leads to real problems with amateurs and students, just learning to solder. One associate actually removes lead-free solder from a college student electronics lab, just to avoid having to fix such problems with his students' projects.
Dan, sometimes you go too far with your opinions.
Last edited:
Anyone who claims that would be incorrect, and certainly not an expert.
That said, the entire balance of your post is well put.
Jn
Dan, I can't find any reference to a solder with 4% copper content, can you share a link / brand?
T
Joe, keep up your work, I believe your son is a good man. It was great to see him getting benefit and enjoyment from playing a musical instrument.
Slowly there appears to be progress in mental health, one of the areas being the strong relationship between gut health and various mental related issues.
T
Ooops, I was posting on another thread and got numbers mixed up, sorry about that. I meant this Jaycar lead free solder 97.3% Tin/0.7% Copper. I find this stuff to solder very nicely and sound good and subjectively much prefer it to Lead containing solders.
Cheers.
Sorry for the following rant.
Now that drug addiction has become a mental illness ( although my psych nurse wife and most of her colleagues disagree) the mental health money , here at least , is mostly going there and the truly mentally ill, schizophrenics, clinically depressed , etc are getting lost in the cracks. And to add insult to injury most of these junkies are self entitled aholes who just abuse the system, and the people, trying to help them.
Hi John, perhaps you misunderstand, I do not condemn lead solder outright of course but I do find a particular lead free solder to be subjectively nicer IME. Lead free speakers I do recommend due to experience and it seems that the closer to the final transducer the greater the subjective differences observed, food for thought.
I have compared a 99.3 Tin/0,7 Cu lead free with std 60/40 in numerous applications like power supplies, final output stages, output connections, interconnect cables, speaker crossovers and driver flex lead connections. I find this lead free to solder nicely and easily, to look good (if that matters) and to sound preferable to lead/tin and lead/tin/silver solders through AB comparison experience. As Bob mentioned lead solder in loudspeaker xover sounds dull and with a wrong sounding decay characteristic, IME adding silver into the solder alloy ends up adding a really wrong brightness and again with a wrong decay. IME initially the silver containing alloy will sound preferable to standard lead/tin because of the 'restored' missing brightness but to my ear with prolonged listening it becomes all wrong especially when compared to the tin/copper alloy. I understand novice students having difficulty but this is just lack of experience and in time they will gain skills to master using lead free solder as is required of industry. I find solder composition is more important than we give credit for and is one factor in achieving good and pleasing sound quality.
For loudspeakers it's ideal especially the likes of Bose 802/901, I have seen drivers with a third park terminal for mounting series components in 'free air'.Point to point wiring, wire wrapping, free air components location - what an open minded thinking!
There are plenty of historical amplifiers with internal wire wrap connections for power level and line level cabling and adding solder to these connections changes the sound IME.
Good luck Joe.
Wrong gut bacteria is effectively a drug, a bad drug but that can be cured holistically starting with diet, mineral supplements and reduction of toxin inputs but of course once cured the patient is cured and there is no psychiatric industry ongoing supply chain revenue stream.
.There is argument that some 'addicts' are self medicating to relieve traumas, of course this is not universal.
Does the 'approved industry' really know how to cure or want to cure anybody ?.....Most people I have met who are on 'meds' aren't cured, they're just stoned 24/7 to badly addictive stuff that causes grief when they try to go off it, using some Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, violence and homicide at all ages
.
Hi Dan,
I can speak to part of what you said from personal experience.
I am on pain killers that are highly addictive and they don't solve anything. What they do is take enough of the edge of the pain to allow me to function at some level. The drug is Oxycontin, and while is isn't a good option, it is the only option (or some other drug like a morphine or similar). I do not walk around stoned, I am still in constant pain.
I don't understand the reports of people stealing the Oxycontin in order to "get high" or enjoy a buzz. They don't have that effect with me at all. Looks like I can't even catch any breaks! I have been told that if you need the drug, it doesn't affect you the same way as it will people who don't need the drug.
And that is the cost of a car accident caused by a driver who wasn't looking out his bloody windshield handed to me.
So you can't make assumptions about what a class of drug does to people. You have to ask to find this out. I hope my experience helps to shed some light on a very poorly reported subject.
-Chris
I can speak to part of what you said from personal experience.
I am on pain killers that are highly addictive and they don't solve anything. What they do is take enough of the edge of the pain to allow me to function at some level. The drug is Oxycontin, and while is isn't a good option, it is the only option (or some other drug like a morphine or similar). I do not walk around stoned, I am still in constant pain.
Yes, they do.
The first antidepressants I was put on were the wrong drugs for me. They did in fact push me into becoming suicidal. After that episode, I was weaned off the fist drug and put on the second that I'm still on after a decade or so. They don't cure anything, but as a mood stabilizer, they also help me function normally. If they could cure the pain and other aspects, I wouldn't need the drugs. Its an expensive on-going treatment that only allows me to function partially normally.
I don't understand the reports of people stealing the Oxycontin in order to "get high" or enjoy a buzz. They don't have that effect with me at all. Looks like I can't even catch any breaks! I have been told that if you need the drug, it doesn't affect you the same way as it will people who don't need the drug.
And that is the cost of a car accident caused by a driver who wasn't looking out his bloody windshield handed to me.
So you can't make assumptions about what a class of drug does to people. You have to ask to find this out. I hope my experience helps to shed some light on a very poorly reported subject.
-Chris
You have to measure both the fundamental (response) and the levels of the harmonics to make this measurement. So my view is that you can't measure distortion without measuring response. And measuring distortion of loudspeakers is still in fashion, nothing to it.
There is no reason to measure distortion at the listening position. As to anechoic rooms, silence is your friend with these kinds of measurements. Fortunately, there are a couple of anechoic rooms for hire in the Netherlands.
Another issue with in room measurements are sympathetic resonances. These will show up as spikes.
Acoustic short circuit between front and rear. The harmonics will be higher in frequency and there will be less or no acoustic short circuit.
If you like it, it is a good idea for you. But in general, it is not. Around the cross over frequency, you will get some severe beaming. There will be a strong central lobe, with a couple of weak side lobes
As you climb through the frequencies, the number of lobes will increase, and they will become closer in space together. This pattern resembles a comb, but you will only see it at higher frequencies.
Your remark about distortion is astute. By doubling the number of drivers, you will double their apparent efficiency (inside the lobe). In other words, for the same output, your drivers will only need 1/4 of the electrical power input as compared to singles. Since driver distortion is highly correlated to output level, there might definitely be an effect.
Because the beaming prevents acoustic short circuiting of the harmonics, it may give you a rough idea. Obviously only works to the extent that the fundamental gets effectively suppressed.
Yes, I wasn't thinking of distortion at the listening position. Some only talk about measuring frequency response at the listening position, I'm not sure how helpful that is when it comes to crossover design and interaction with the room
Thank you, I have become aware just how widespread it is, just scary.
Let's resume normal audio hostilities.
Is there a difference between voices in ones head and those hearing unmeasurable artifacts in audio equipment?
Yes and no. I was surprised to find that distortion doesn't necessarily correlate to level as much as one might think, SL did some interesting measurements in this regard, I've been having trouble finding them, but they're on his site somewhere.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.