John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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Anyone here know how to 'solder' mu-metal? I am also under the impression - but probably wrong - that overheating it can damage its shielding properties.

I have a piece (from my transformer supplier) that I would like to use for a GOSS band, but joining it seems to be a problem.

I also have some toroid strip laminate I could use.

Any workable ideas would be appreciated
 
... I could never stand to listen to NS-10's for long no matter what was connected to them.

Haha! Agree it can be easy to have a bad memory of those speakers, but they do respond pretty well to the right power amp and other measures. If anyone ever comes over for a listen, I think they will tell you NS-10m can actually sound surprising good, or as least not so awful as you may remember.
 
Chris, you do not have a great system, IMHO. In fact you have a rather mediocre one, at best. I'm not trying to pick on you, but I think Richard raised an interesting point. In his case, audio and related electronics are his primary hobby (besides his semi-adopted girl now in college). Same here, although its been other things in the past. Maybe its simply that we have a statistical distribution of people interested in audio, not primarily a collection of uber-enthusiasts. Easy to imagine something like that being the case. Blowtorch is a unique place for engineer types to hang out and chat.

Mark, what's the actual improvement, in hard numbers and graphs between your " high end system" and Chris's? If you want hang out with engineers, maybe a technical analysis is in order? Or better yet a blinded comparison? Biggest difference I see is in cubic dollars. When on Earth is a hd800 plus a competent ak4396 implementation not high end in terms of the goods produced?! There's plenty of room to argue comfort of headphones if you'd like, they're certainly a nice headphone, and the emu behaves very well.

You've had your shtick as claiming all these audible difference between products that have absolutely minute differences in performance, and not just the thd+n boilerplate number, making claims of regularly outperforming the literature by a factor of 100 or more. Even a 10x is hard to swallow given how close we humans really are in our distribution of talent. Every once in a while is likely expected, especially if you find an edge case where there are differences far more substantial than nominal. But honestly your claims fall closer to Dan/Max's than you would like. Maybe a step back, pull off your horse blinders and have a look around. You like to quote me when I make points about the fallibility of human beings, especially in terms of perception, but seem entirely incapable of looking outside your own n=1 experience, which culminates in writing garbage like this. Do you ever ask yourself, "am I making all this up in my head?", acknowledge that you can't truly tell in most cases and then temper your opinion towards your experience knowing full well it isn't wholly objective? It's like the grasp on reality is totally lost.

I expect several members of this thread to write, perhaps more tersely than you did, the equivalent. John did, in fact. But you at least make an attempt to be reasonable.
 
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@DPH, I am not equipped with a $40,000 top of the line AP analyzer to measure small but audible differences, much less have money to fund professional research into hearing, which could cost much more than the AP.

So, tell you what. If you want to see for yourself, then I will pay for your plane ticket to fly here for a visit. That, I could manage.
 
Anyone here know how to 'solder' mu-metal? ...
Best option for thin strip is to spot weld, a capacitor discharge is probably the simplest.

Years ago I used to work with shielded TV tuners. Provided you have flux that works with nickel alloy, soldering is also a valid option, I used discarded batteries, austenitic cheapo stainless steel or nickel sheet scrap to verify. Regular tin solder melts at around 190C, not so bad but you want to keep both time and area of heat exposure to a minimum, use plenty of flux. Whenever applicable, low temperature solder < 140C is much better. However, you should look up the datasheet of the mu metal and seek advice from people with more expertise for critical application.
 
Anyone here know how to 'solder' mu-metal? I am also under the impression - but probably wrong - that overheating it can damage its shielding properties.

I have a piece (from my transformer supplier) that I would like to use for a GOSS band, but joining it seems to be a problem.

I also have some toroid strip laminate I could use.

Any workable ideas would be appreciated

To my experience, mu-metal can be Sn/Pb + rosin soldered without any issues, no degrading to the shielding properties. I would be more concerned about degrading the shielding properties due to mechanical forming (bending, etc...). You could not heat treat the mu-metal after soldering, anyway, since the required temperature is much higher than the Sn/Pb melting point.
 
Ed: Relative to someone who, due to some self inflicted mistakes has 6 kids and 2 loads of alimony to pay M2s are expensive. Just checking and you can get them without the DSP and power amps so yes I could get a pair new for £11000 (which is $15000). Not silly and I have DSP and lots of amplifiers, but still more than my total life spend on audio so far (not music I hasten to add).

I though one ex-wife or are you recently at two?

I have been doing projects in NY state where it seems the normal markup is twice cost. On large projects I can work at 1.35 times cost. So a recent project where I require 2,000 Harman PZM microphones might just be a bit profitable.

Perhaps I should consider a project nearer to you as it seems the markup may be a bit higher.
 
Anyone here know how to 'solder' mu-metal? I am also under the impression - but probably wrong - that overheating it can damage its shielding properties.

I have a piece (from my transformer supplier) that I would like to use for a GOSS band, but joining it seems to be a problem.

I also have some toroid strip laminate I could use.

Any workable ideas would be appreciated

The magnetic properties are normally weakened/damaged by mechanical stress like bending, drilling and similar.
Overheating is used to restore the magnetic properties after the machining (mechanical transformation).

Solderability is quite good (some surface conditioning might be needed though) if using addition flux, lead free solder works as well.
 
There are three low cost tweaks that will improve almost any sound system.

First is the application every full moon of DeOxit contact cleaner.
Amazon.com: DeoxIT Contact Cleaner and Rejuvenator Bottle with Brush Applicator, 7.4 ml: Industrial & Scientific Both measures and sounds better. However it does not work instantly so if you want to do a test just apply it to all the connectors for one channel.

The second item that has been one of my secrets for large scale installations is foam tape that to remove you pull it from the side and it comes off cleanly. This is placed everywhere! The bottom of any furniture feet, loudspeakers, equipment feet etc. On any large panel that vibrates (think top of CD player etc.) an X will do and you leave on the non-stick film where it is open air. That way you don't use it as fly paper. The idea is anyplace two surfaces contact place the tape. Any large panels that can vibrate including windows if you can. This eliminates vibration absorption of specific frequencies, extended resonances of other frequencies and most importantly buzzes.

The third one is free. Every season change, take your loudspeaker cables and swap the loudspeaker and amplifier end. Treat it with DeOxit if you have it. (This really works and not for the silly reason some folks come up with.)
 
Ed: only one I actually married, the other I have to pay for the daughter. Long story and too gory for this forum. I am back on the rails now though :)
And as for costs in UK, don't forget the dreaded 20% tax I have to pay as a private individual.

Darn good thing you don't do sound for a band. Ugly as I am (Second only to Scott or is it JN?) even sitting next to the mixing console I get notes with phone numbers...
 
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Even a 10x is hard to swallow given how close we humans really are in our distribution of talent.

<snip>

Can´t agree on that so easily; actually overall wrt multidimensional evaluation it is quite hard to say, but for single threshold parameters that were in fact examined in large scale experiments, it was common to find a distribution where 1% did better than 20 dB below the mean (of course 20 dB worse as well).
Based on the numbers from experiments done in the USA during the 1940s, for example single tone at ~880 Hz absolute hearing threshold; number of participants 35,589.
Licklider printed the graph in his contribution to the Stevenson Handbook of Psychology in 1951, page 997.

Obviously there are a lot more doing worse than doing better as a lower bound must exist due to physiological reasons.
 
Darn good thing you don't do sound for a band. Ugly as I am (Second only to Scott or is it JN?) even sitting next to the mixing console I get notes with phone numbers...
Being the DJ in a nightclub back in 78 /79 did present many opportunities. A fellow DJ in a nearby club would take advantage of the opportunities every night.
Not sure if he is still alive, or if he even made it to the 90's. It was the HIV period after all.
Jn

Now waitacottonpicking minute there. Did you just state that scott and I are much uglier than you???
 
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