Could it be that you now have better equipment than when you was young? I can remember as a kid having a gramophone that needed a weight on the headshell to prevent it from jumping groove and I could never understand much of what I was playing. Also later on all the UK pirate station was on AM and very restricted in terms of frequency. My father was deaf as a post in old age and being a vain sod refused to wear his hearing aid and was completely out of the loop in family gatherings. I could not watch TV with my mother in the end, she needed the volume up so loud because she also would not wear her hearing aid. Those NHS aids do not look too sexy. One of my friend at the pub who is in his eighties, wears 2 tiny invisible hearing aids, but he once played professional rugby in the UK and has cauliflower ears, could make a difference? How many seniors do you see with hearing aids compared to youngsters?
On topic!!!
I decided to build a blowtorch like preamp.
As for details, hogging out a block of aluminum for the case is really not a problem for me as I have a mid-size milling machine with a five horsepower motor. Getting a blank piece of aluminum large enough is also easy as I live in the Pittsburgh area and have a regular distributer who stocks plate aluminum.
As a side story, once I built an entire loudspeaker array out of structural aluminum. As the standard length of the beams was about three feet different than what I needed, the local mill just made them to my length. (About a ten thousand pound order.)
I have in the past made for fun a diamond circuit buffer and it seems to work well. I now have a circuit board option to get silver plated PC Cards, but not gold, so I will have to suffer a bit.
I am still considering to either use Zung's recommended Mouser provided Alps potentiometer or doing a relay based stepper.
For input selection I have Russian heavy silver plated rotary switches or again can do relays.
I have a nice batch of Panasonic silver button DIP style low voltage relays and also some of the Meder reed ones.
Silver wire is not a problem, have a small bit around and am open to buy in quantity. Cyro treatment also not much of an issue as I actually have a good source for that.
I think I have all the bases covered. So what am I forgetting?
I decided to build a blowtorch like preamp.
As for details, hogging out a block of aluminum for the case is really not a problem for me as I have a mid-size milling machine with a five horsepower motor. Getting a blank piece of aluminum large enough is also easy as I live in the Pittsburgh area and have a regular distributer who stocks plate aluminum.
As a side story, once I built an entire loudspeaker array out of structural aluminum. As the standard length of the beams was about three feet different than what I needed, the local mill just made them to my length. (About a ten thousand pound order.)
I have in the past made for fun a diamond circuit buffer and it seems to work well. I now have a circuit board option to get silver plated PC Cards, but not gold, so I will have to suffer a bit.
I am still considering to either use Zung's recommended Mouser provided Alps potentiometer or doing a relay based stepper.
For input selection I have Russian heavy silver plated rotary switches or again can do relays.
I have a nice batch of Panasonic silver button DIP style low voltage relays and also some of the Meder reed ones.
Silver wire is not a problem, have a small bit around and am open to buy in quantity. Cyro treatment also not much of an issue as I actually have a good source for that.
I think I have all the bases covered. So what am I forgetting?
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At least one of the main announcer mics at the Superbowl had gross sibilance, at the multi-million$ budget for a one off show you would think hey could do better. At least they "had bass".
Oh, BTW the circuit inside the box might matter.
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Party time.
Hi Ed. The Dididesign Venue Live desks that I have worked on have fully silver plated pcb's and show no corrosion/tarnish issues (use silicone conformal coating). Silver plating will cause different sound to gold plating....I say silver is good/better and so do users of Venue live desks. PCB substrates cause sound/signature also, JC recommended some new stuff to me, I forget the details, JC ?.
Build it so you can swap out and compare (in all that spare time you have !). Avoid pots/switches etc with Phenolic pcb substrate, this sounds plain bad/toxic.
Go for pure silver and watch out for teflon sleeving/insulation imparting a faint 'bright/hard/crackly' sound. White PVC (and the like) insulations with white (titanium dioxide) pigment sound clean and damped, blacks and other colours will sound off with resonances/emphasises/signature.
What are your experiences with cryo so far ?.
You forgot to mention solder....MUST be lead free and not just because of ROHS regulations. Lead introduces a 'wrong' dynamic quality/signature that sounds bad and is actually unhealthy to listen to long term I believe (try swapping out speaker driver flex lead solder connections, and crossover connections too). There is a huge choice in solders...I use Tin 99.3%, Copper 0.7% because I can get it locally easily and I find it sounds good/pleasing long term, perhaps very slightly dull but clear/clean/controlled sounding.
I have experimented in the past with solders including LMP (Sn62, Pb38, Ag2) and 96S (Sn96, Ag4)....LMP sounds bad, really bad (initially sounds 'clear' and bright) long term due I believe Lead and Silver not 'playing nice' together. The 96S sounded good long term (maybe slightly 'bright') and may be optimal for use with Silver plated boards.
You are bound to have some fun with this, good luck with the result, PM me for more tips/observations.
Dan.
IMO, the only thing unhealthy here is the level of delusion that is displayed in this post.
I believe when ACDC payed the old Sydney Entertainment Center, the FOH guy didn't have much guitar in the mix.... it was mostly off stage.
Guitar cabs, especially quads really project sound and guitar speakers are very efficient = loud for a long way.
But even these guys were succumbing to (slightly) lower volumes, last gear check of Angus's showed he was using master volumes in some Marshalls. Heaven forbid.
Old age hypersensitivity?
T
You could try the experiment of desolder/resolder driver flex lead connections with known lead free solder and compare, while you are at it change out the solder in the crossover section too after a first listen to the changed driver solder connections.
Do it one loudspeaker at a time so you can preserve 'factory' reference, you might be surprised at the result.
Of course reasons can be better new solder joints, different electrical/thermal conductivity of solder alloys etc....maybe that's not all the reasons.
Dan.
Max, this is is not any criticism of you or Zung, but one person's opinion, not tested against the entire world of audio, is not always totally accurate.
First, let's talk about Alps pots. They came on the scene perhaps 40 years ago, they MEASURED really good! They sounded acceptable too! BUT, not perfect, not as good as TKD or Penny and Giles, or perhaps a quality resistor relay based attenuator. Now, how do I know? Well, first I tried the Radio Shack Alps pots with their open frames, and found that they measured great. I used several in an early Vendetta Research xover product for both frequency selection and volume. Never got very far with the product, so I can't necessarily blame the pots for this.
Next, in 1985, I designed a quality preamp for Lineage, a company with Saul Marantz at the top. I was VP Engineering. We chose Alps midrange pots for that design (successfully) and we struggled to get the top of the line, Black series that could only be gotten with personal contact with Alps. Our company did not survive the 1987 stock crash, but the prototypes sounded pretty good. But only a few examples were ever made. Now, moving on to 1992, I purchased a STAX tube driven system that has a dual 50K Alps (big and black) pot. probably its best. In listening, I kept noticing that the pot had a colored sound (very slight) but to test this, I put in front of the STAX a dual, 10 turn wirewound pot that I found to be really good. Then I just turned the Alps on full and that is how I use it, even today. What a hassle, more cabling, more solder joints etc. BUT it was obviously better with the wirewound, and still is.
Moving to the CTC Blowtorch, we selected two individual TKD pots (the big expensive ones) and we never really looked back. They are still my reference in my Blowtorch.
Yet more years passed, and I was assigned to design the Parasound JC-2. Of course, this new design was to be as close to the Blowtorch as possible, but reality intruded. The very first prototype used a quad TKD (smaller version) and it was OK, BUT then we could not get any more TKD pots, so I was FORCED to use a quad motorized Alps, and I held my breath. The unit was released with great fanfare, and we had a pretty good run with it, but it never became my reference, or anybody else's I should think. Is it the Alps that was the most serious compromised component? Could be.
Personally Alps is good, but not great! Try harder Ed!
First, let's talk about Alps pots. They came on the scene perhaps 40 years ago, they MEASURED really good! They sounded acceptable too! BUT, not perfect, not as good as TKD or Penny and Giles, or perhaps a quality resistor relay based attenuator. Now, how do I know? Well, first I tried the Radio Shack Alps pots with their open frames, and found that they measured great. I used several in an early Vendetta Research xover product for both frequency selection and volume. Never got very far with the product, so I can't necessarily blame the pots for this.
Next, in 1985, I designed a quality preamp for Lineage, a company with Saul Marantz at the top. I was VP Engineering. We chose Alps midrange pots for that design (successfully) and we struggled to get the top of the line, Black series that could only be gotten with personal contact with Alps. Our company did not survive the 1987 stock crash, but the prototypes sounded pretty good. But only a few examples were ever made. Now, moving on to 1992, I purchased a STAX tube driven system that has a dual 50K Alps (big and black) pot. probably its best. In listening, I kept noticing that the pot had a colored sound (very slight) but to test this, I put in front of the STAX a dual, 10 turn wirewound pot that I found to be really good. Then I just turned the Alps on full and that is how I use it, even today. What a hassle, more cabling, more solder joints etc. BUT it was obviously better with the wirewound, and still is.
Moving to the CTC Blowtorch, we selected two individual TKD pots (the big expensive ones) and we never really looked back. They are still my reference in my Blowtorch.
Yet more years passed, and I was assigned to design the Parasound JC-2. Of course, this new design was to be as close to the Blowtorch as possible, but reality intruded. The very first prototype used a quad TKD (smaller version) and it was OK, BUT then we could not get any more TKD pots, so I was FORCED to use a quad motorized Alps, and I held my breath. The unit was released with great fanfare, and we had a pretty good run with it, but it never became my reference, or anybody else's I should think. Is it the Alps that was the most serious compromised component? Could be.
Personally Alps is good, but not great! Try harder Ed!
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Of course they do, I am sure Ed has something interesting in mind.Good to know the actual circuit and active devices don't matter much.
Dan.
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