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10-02-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 41
Post ID: 23435
Reply to: 23434
I am happy with them
Thanks Romy.  To be honest they look better in the flesh than I had thought they would so I am very happy with them.  I think I'll make the steel order today so I can finish them at my leisure.

If I end up with 8 drivers a side, which is what I am planning, I have the option to mix serial and parallel wiring to get to the ideal impedance load for the Bass OPT.  It will be very easy to change the wiring on a whim.  

My room is 406 sq feet, so quite a bit smaller than yours and I am sure 8 drivers a side will be plenty to load the room.  My main concern is whether my dac has enough output (about 1.5Vrms I think) to drive the DSET to the required volume.  If it does not then I will have to investigate a gain stage.
10-02-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 42
Post ID: 23436
Reply to: 23435
The time will show.
 anthony wrote:
Thanks Romy.  To be honest they look better in the flesh than I had thought they would so I am very happy with them.  I think I'll make the steel order today so I can finish them at my leisure.

If I end up with 8 drivers a side, which is what I am planning, I have the option to mix serial and parallel wiring to get to the ideal impedance load for the Bass OPT.  It will be very easy to change the wiring on a whim.  

My room is 406 sq feet, so quite a bit smaller than yours and I am sure 8 drivers a side will be plenty to load the room.  My main concern is whether my dac has enough output (about 1.5Vrms I think) to drive the DSET to the required volume.  If it does not then I will have to investigate a gain stage.
  
Yes, they do look in flesh distinctly different and frankly quite beautiful. Somebody who is looking a commercial venture out it should take notice. With a room of 400 sq feet you should be able to go away with 6 drivers in case you have not completely open floor plan and the room has as least some walls. 8 drivers still will be better, 44 drivers will be even more better… About the DAC. The 1.5Vrms is relatedly high voltage, most of the line level devises have 500mV. No one knows of you have enough gain for your room, it is depending from so many factors. In worse case you can always get a preamp with gain, there are tone of them out there you just need one with VERY low output impedances and preferably a direct coupled. The Milq has 4.5V at the grid of first tube and it is swallow any voltage with no need to inject a feedback to rise the bias and Lamm does for instance. The first stage has ~33dB gain, the second stage 4 time gain if I am not mistaken, so figure out how much you have burned in your output transformer. To calculate gain is not hard to figure out how much gain your room need is much more difficult. With very good recording that has a very low compression you would need MUCH more gain but “thankfully” we do not has a lot of ultra-low compression recordings…


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-02-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 43
Post ID: 23437
Reply to: 23436
Speaker cables
I've been thinking about how I am going to wire these Bass Cannons as well as the horns on the horn stack.  For some time now I have preferred ribbon/foil speaker cables for the relatively low sensitivity speakers I have been using.  The reason I believe is that the particularly low inductance of copper foils "helps" flesh out the bass so nicely, but I am wondering if they are particularly suited to my application with Macondo and in particular the Bass Cannons.

By their nature, foils are low R, high C and very low L.  Two foils 0.05mm apart are able to reduce inductance to vanishingly low levels, but this closeness boosts capacitance.  Each Cannon will need a metre of wire to get to the back of the tube, and then an average of about 75cm to get to the "junction box" (this is where the wires are starred to their individual Cannons in series/parallel or any combination thereof).  That is 14m of speaker wire or 28m of copper foil that would normally be considered internal to the speaker.  From the amplifier to Junction Box would be no more than a 1m run so this is very simple.  With paralleled drivers, another way of thinking about it is that each driver has a 2.75m speaker cable to it once you go 1m from the amp to Junction Box and 1.75m on average from Junction Box to each individual driver.  That is a lot of foil!  More importantly that is a lot of capacitance for the amplifier to see and I don't know if it will be a problem.

Foil cable capacitance is in the order of 1nF per metre.  14m of foil cable = 14nF of capacitance that the Melquiades Bass Channel will see.  Most speaker cables would be around one-third of that capacitance (but 10 times the inductance).  On one hand long speaker cable runs are where you would expect to experience differences in sound due to different speaker cable electrical properties, and this is certainly a lot of speaker cable (14 metres or 46 feet) but is there any way to know if it will be too much capacitance without trial and error? 

The other channels are fine.  The RAALs will have B+ taken to them so no speaker cables are required.  The 3 horns are quite close so I can make foils for them, if that is really required considering the sub 1m lengths required for the Upperbass and MF channels.

All input welcomed.
10-03-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 44
Post ID: 23439
Reply to: 23437
You will always have a chance to do it in future
Anthony, it might be a reasonable question but I will not put myself in a position to pretend that I know the answer. In my past I spent a LOT of time to deal with cables and I know that any rationalization you apply to it is faulty as the cables sound in the way how they sound. I think the demands in DSET setup is slightly different. For you MF channel you do not need the cable that do “good bass”. There us alternative to this view and I also support it: the cable that do “good bass” frequently does better job with MF channel lower knee. Then there is question what does it mean “better”? Volume, noise, transients, harmonics, masking effects, etc, etc, etc? There are so many things in the entire system that do the same! It takes some really familiarity with you own playback, really deep and thoughtful listening and thinking and really high performance of the entire playback to identify the very minor contribution of individual cable. Warn you that this “contribution” might be non-permanent, so it is a relay mess to deal with. 
 
So, if I were in your shoes I would not worry about it at all. Use any generic “speaker wire” that you might buy for $15 for 100 feet at Amazon, cut them to the length you need and do not worry about the cables. As your playback will be up and you will address any other major problem with sound you will send the kids to college wand will have time to audition cable and to dial in exactly what your individual channels will need, or what you think they need. The exemption would be RAAL, what the cable between transformer and foil in the tweeter mush be super short and must be two foils stack together. Alex should be taking care about it for you as the cable after a transformer with 175 transforming ratio is a very different beast. 
 
One more aspect that you might not consider now. You might like your copper foils now but you looks like are building a very “neat” looking architectural assembly. As you will be done you might not like the look and feel of 12 copper foils running from your amps to your drivers. Moreover, if you decided to run the copper foils across your metal frame you might recognize that the sound of your copper foils will changed when they are “glued” to a metal surface. So, you might go for more manageable black and flexible cable, perhaps something that you might hide in some kind of nice decorative cable housing. You will always have a chance to do it in future….


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-03-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 45
Post ID: 23441
Reply to: 23439
It may not be the right time...
...to obsess about speaker wire.  Thinking about this a little more I realise that my preference for foil cables has always been in relation to speakers with passive crossovers.  DSET is much more simple, the amplifier is driving the transducer directly without any other reactive components in the way so in theory should have a much easier time of it.  

I've just done some calculations for power loss versus cable gauge and I think that with that length of cable that I would be best off with as low a resistance as possible.  It seems to be an absolutely overriding factor.  If my calcs are correct an 18 gauge speaker cable would burn 4dB or 5.5watts and into 1R the 6C33C grid clips at about 9watts...that's half my power gone just by using an undersized cable plus it really destroys the damping factor.  6 gauge wire on the other hand will burn 0.64 watts or about 0.32dB and keeps the damping factor largely intact.  I was missing the forest for the trees!

So super low resistance is my way forward.  There is some Belden 6AWG wire that I have found which might just be the ticket.

EDIT:  It gets even worse...I just realised my numbers above are with a one way  and not return trip from speaker to amplifier.
10-03-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 46
Post ID: 23442
Reply to: 23441
I do not think so....
 anthony wrote:
I've just done some calculations for power loss versus cable gauge and I think that with that length of cable that I would be best off with as low a resistance as possible.  It seems to be an absolutely overriding factor.  If my calcs are correct an 18 gauge speaker cable would burn 4dB or 5.5watts and into 1R the 6C33C grid clips at about 9watts...that's half my power gone just by using an undersized cable plus it really destroys the damping factor.  6 gauge wire on the other hand will burn 0.64 watts or about 0.32dB and keeps the damping factor largely intact.

I am sorry. I am not familiar with this calculation but I think your number a bit ridicules. You are saying that a speaker cable burn 4dB of a signal? A typical wire of 18ga has around 5R resistance but it is per 1000 feet. If you have 3 feet of cable then the resistance of your cable truly negligible. I never factor in the “cable burn” in whatever I do. Perhaps I was wrong …



"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-03-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 47
Post ID: 23443
Reply to: 23442
The loss is related to speaker impedance
I think I am correct, but the problem is directly related to loudspeaker impedance.  I did the first round of calculations by hand and when I got the results I searched the web for a calculator that someone has made so that I did not have to write it into a spreadsheet.  This is the calculator I just found:

http://www.electrovoice.com/cableloss.php?

It more or less agrees with my calculations.

With higher speaker impedances there is no issue with smaller speaker wires, but as load impedance drops a fair amount of amplifier power is lost in the cable and low resistance becomes more important.  So if I have 92 ft (28m) of speaker wire that meets a 1R speaker impedance I basically cannot have too little resistance.  

But...

The bit that is doing my head in at the moment is whether I have modelled it correctly.  I have 1m of speaker cable from the amp to the Junction Box which will see 1R representing the entire stack of Cannons.  From the Junction Box I'll have 1.75m of speaker wire to each individual driver that will see 7R (not 1R as I have modelled earlier) so perhaps the wire gauge does not matter so much here.  You are most likely right and I've created a storm in a teacup!




10-03-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 48
Post ID: 23444
Reply to: 23443
For my own clarity
Just in case I loose the envelope this is written on, below are the SPL losses for a full 8 driver Bass Cannon stack with different gauge speaker wires modelled with 1R amp to speaker and 7R for each driver:

18 awg = 2.16dB loss
16 awg = 1.37dB loss
10 awg = 0.34dB loss
6 awg = 0.12dB loss

I have some nice 18awg wire here but it is too lossy for this application and the foils would be 15.5 awg equivalent so they are of no use either.  10awg looks to be the sweet spot because it is much more available than 6awg wire.
10-04-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 49
Post ID: 23445
Reply to: 23444
Ok, I got your point.
Hm, ended, I have learned something. I did use fat wired only once where I was running cable to my midbass horn at my old house. In there I had 75 feed and I went with 2Ga welding wire, I cat them off and I still have them. I did not think about it otherwise as I did not have any long cable runs. I still do not think it is should be a big deal with you as your is very close to speaker. Sill, be my guess and do use 10ga wire for internal wiring. 


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-05-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 50
Post ID: 23446
Reply to: 23445
I decided to test the maths...
...so I measured Vac at the Junction Box for a -12dB 120Hz sine.  And I measured a DC-200Hz sweep in REW.

Then I added 8m of 14AWG wire between the amp and the Junction Box and measured the same things.

By adding the 8m of 14awg Vac at the Junction Box dropped 12% and the SPL sweep show a SPL drop between about 1dB and 0.2dB across the spectrum, average if I had to guess was about 0.5dB.

Then I did the maths to determine what the drops should have been:  11.5% and 0.55dB.  That is very close!  I think that I am on the right track and so that I don't burn too much amplifier power I really do need very low resistance cables.
10-05-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #: 51
Post ID: 23447
Reply to: 23446
Water pipe size works well :)
Hi Anthony 
Agree, waste is waste. The bigger the better. If you care bout sound too, i recommend the RG213 radio cable. Its perfect for that purpose. First, its coaxial which eliminates the inductance. Second its very hard so that during vibration the distance between both poles doesn’t vary (and such the L/C values vary!) and that makes the sound more calm and stable (subtle though). Its got good awg and id recommend to use multiple. At least 1 per meter. 
I got 3 meter so i use 3 of them. Gives very low resistance. 
CheersJosh
10-06-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 52
Post ID: 23452
Reply to: 23446
So for ruining your weekend.
Anthony, in a way what you do it correct and I do appreciate your anal retentiveness. However, be advised that your sense of causality might not be working properly. For sure, to have less DCR lost in the cable is good thing and to have more gauge is a logical result, right? Well, it is depending of what you do. If you build a playground for testing audio concepts then lower CR is good. If you built a better sound then the best cable would be the one that sound good not the one that have less DCR. So, my question is: what will you do if your 14ga cable sounds belter in bass then your 6ga cable despite ta the 14ga cable has 1dB less output? Sorry for ruining your weekend… :-)


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-07-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 53
Post ID: 23453
Reply to: 23452
You do not have to worry about it
Romy, my weekend is excellent, truly excellent.  

I was sitting at the cricket watching my son play this morning and I had one of those "eureka" moments.  I realised that when paralleled, the DC resistance of the voice coils (as measured) reduced and that I should have been applying the same "reduction" to the resistance of the paralleled speaker cables, whereas I had been adding them.  This realisation changes everything because all that I really have to worry about now is the amount of current the wire can efficiently transfer, not so much it's DCR, so 16awg is perfectly fine, so is 20awg most likely.  

It also takes ribbon cables completely off the table because when paralleled capacitance increases and I am sure it would get out of hand.

So while having a pleasant morning, talking to friends, the stresses of the world draining slowly away, I was able to realise where I had been going wrong conceptually with this cannon project, and the results are superb.  It's funny how it works sometimes.
10-07-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #: 54
Post ID: 23454
Reply to: 23453
Resistance with no load
hi Anthony 
Im not saying to use ribbons (really not) but why you’re afraid of high capacitance that kind of shortens the resistance in high frequencies while you’re not playing the woofers in those (>10k) ?It’s purely AC issue that only appears when using. As long as the amp doesnt have to play highs, it shouldn’t matter to him. Well im not overly familiar with tubes and their circumstances of load after the transformer, maybe i dont get the point?
Cheers Josh 
10-07-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 55
Post ID: 23455
Reply to: 23453
The point is well taken
Well, the wire paralleling is a common thing. This is where the idea or Litz wire come from when they use many isolated wires for less them skin depth. It doe serve theoretical purpose but not always server sonic purpose. I have a friend of my who made for me very cool Litz cables use so very expensive 450 lead wire. He uses natural cotton fabric jacket and the whole cable feels very high-endish. The problem is that the cable sound like shit and never use it. Anyhow, everyone use in speakers internally 10-12ga wire. I do not say that speaker interconnect not important. After all I am the person what have the whole system wired with vintage Dominos and I have good reasons for it. I however found "my" cables before I made Macondo. So, I did not experiment with it a lot. Your point about resistance is well taken but I personally would go for sound quality intend then going for lower DCR.


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
10-07-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 56
Post ID: 23456
Reply to: 23455
A misunderstanding
 Romy the Cat wrote:
Well, the wire paralleling is a common thing. This is where the idea or Litz wire come from when they use many isolated wires for less them skin depth. It doe serve theoretical purpose but not always server sonic purpose. I have a friend of my who made for me very cool Litz cables use so very expensive 450 lead wire. He uses natural cotton fabric jacket and the whole cable feels very high-endish. The problem is that the cable sound like shit and never use it. Anyhow, everyone use in speakers internally 10-12ga wire. I do not say that speaker interconnect not important. After all I am the person what have the whole system wired with vintage Dominos and I have good reasons for it. I however found "my" cables before I made Macondo. So, I did not experiment with it a lot. Your point about resistance is well taken but I personally would go for sound quality intend then going for lower DCR.


Romy, what I said in my earlier post was that I had made a mistake with calculation of the DCR losses for parallel speaker cables i.e. the 8 parallel sets in my Bass Cannons.  I was adding the DCR to the amplifier load when in fact the DCR should have been diminishing because of the parallel driver wiring.  The end result is that I really do not need the huge fat cables and that something as small as 18awg is going to be just fine.
10-07-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 57
Post ID: 23457
Reply to: 23454
It's a lot of capacitance
 martinshorn wrote:
hi Anthony 
Im not saying to use ribbons (really not) but why you’re afraid of high capacitance that kind of shortens the resistance in high frequencies while you’re not playing the woofers in those (>10k) ?It’s purely AC issue that only appears when using. As long as the amp doesnt have to play highs, it shouldn’t matter to him. Well im not overly familiar with tubes and their circumstances of load after the transformer, maybe i dont get the point?
Cheers Josh 


I see your points, but I also do not know the answers.  I suppose I could connect a small cap in series with the speaker wires, set up an line level crossover at the input to the amp and then measure to see if the amplifier oscillates at all.  With all ribbon cables the amp will see about 20nF of capacitance plus whatever capacitance is present in the woofers.  With speaker wire the capacitance would be about 1.5nF plus woofers.
11-23-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-27-2004

Post #: 58
Post ID: 24572
Reply to: 23434
Some psychological stories and tips.
Anthony, I visited you thread and glance the progress you are going with Milq DSET. I do not exactly how you feel, I went over it myself. Let me to tell you how I dealt with what your experience. I am not sure that my dealing with the problem is a model for imitation but and was what it was and I bring it up only for sake of illustration. 
 
Before I “designed” the Melquíades I did not have a lot of DIY audio experience or knowledge.  I have electro-mechanical degree, if it means anything. I was playing, fixing and improving my reel machines since I was 8 year old. Since my childhood I feel comfortable with soldering and feel fine with periodic electrocution. At my 10-11 year I was dissecting reel machines and vintage radios, taking from there driver, aps and building my ridicules playbacks. Honestly, it was all horrible and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I am listening, no different from mostly other DIYers. Still, all my life I enjoyed mingling with different aspects of “audio”, had a few amplifiers speakers and felt that it make some difference or purpose. 
 
In 1992 I came to US, there was not a lot of time or money to play with audio but in 1995 I had a few amps and few speakers in in my apartment there was more wires then it should be. When I moved to Boston from Philadelphia in 1996 I sod all y furniture and a half of my residual possessions were audio things. Somewhere in 1996 I discovered a world of high-end audio. It was a local friend of my why was working for pro audio company who introduced me to high-end audio and for the next few years I got really into it. I owned a few expensive brands of speakers and electronics and had a very respectable installation that would make the editors of audio publication to be very proud about me. That was co-existed with my period of general positive outlook society.  I was very non-critical. I was making a LOT of money during a day. I was teaching in a private college at evenings. I was wearing suits and spoke polite English. I was befriended with Feudality Investment stock analysts. I was dating two girls at the same time. I was a quintessential yuppee with all my believes, views and behaviors.  Good, I so hate now what I was in end 90s!… 
 
Then, in 1999-2000 I felt some disassociation with what is going on around me, surprisingly the election of Bush the son really hit me hard and it is despite that I hardly ever followed politics before. In the end of 1998 a friend of mine from NY introduced me to Vladimir Lamm. I quickly become a friend of the family and 1999-2000 a spent a lot of time with them. Vladimir was very interesting person regarding audio subject and conversations with him tough me a lot and to a degree is responsible for many of my audio views now. Vladimir did not teach me anything technically, in fact I had no interest in that aspect of audio at that time. Still, juts taking with him I learn how to questions things, not to think about audio differently, how to doubt, how to listen music. There were a few other peoples at that time who help me to revise my views from obedient and institutionalized audio-yuppee to a free thinking individual but Vladimir was at very initiation of it. It is no surprise that Lamm electronics very fast replaced everything that I had at that time. In very beginning of 2000, at CES I was first introduced to Avant-garde Horns that very much picked my interest and in the end of 2000 I was running customized Trio, double-amped with two pairs of ML2.0 and Dunlavy’s line array.  I need to do some custom work with my ML2, Lamm refused that make me to look somewhere else and speak with other designers. Approximately at that time, around 2001, inspired by the folks around me, I began to develop interest in technical aspect of audio, looking in topologies, design solutions, correlation of results, listening analyses… etc.. Somewhere in 2002 I felt disappointment in my relationship with Lamm. Vladimir as a person was perfectly fine but Vladimir as high-end audio entity, as a manufacturer who scared about own status-quo was an ugly seen to bear and in 2002-2003 I terminated my relationship with Lamms. I still use all Lamm’s amps and it was very good. In 2004, accumulating some my own understanding how amps make sound and socializing with a few amp thinkers I picked queasily if it is possible to make an amp that will be performing at the same level as Lamm ML2. I needed to make some custom modifications of ML2 but I did not want to butcher the Lamm’s amp, instead I wanted to have another 6C33C amp that will be purely mine and that I will be able to customize. So, the Melquíades is started as a pure competition with ML2.0. The whole 2004 where zillion experiments with amp and sound and somewhere in the end of 2004 the first Milq was made that compete very well against ML2. I built it myself and it was not so hard, even though I made many stupid mistakes but I learned. 
 
I very fast developed a notion of Super Melquíades and in beginning of 2005 I started to build it. I need to admit that I was a bit overwhelming, took a LOT of time and progressed not as fast as I wanted. I decided to quit my job and to dedicate my full time to build the Melquíades. I was doing software consulting at that time, billing $125 with unlimited overtimes, so giving up $17K cash inflow a month was a bit unwise. I was working on Melquíades from 7Am to Midnight, each day, and the rational was that the faster I go the sooner I return back to my normal life. When I said “normal life” I really mean it as I did not date, I did not even go out too much and I full time was building the thing. It took for me 3-4 months. Not that it was just 4 months of building but I did teach myself a lot at that time. Ai was working very hard with Macondo at that time as well, experimenting and listening a lot, accommodating Macondo for multi-amping. As both Super Milqs and new Macondo were ready I opened myself back to the world but I do remember that there was 3-4 months when I do not think about anything but Sound and how to get in there. 
 
So, in my view the DIY experience means very little. The clarity of what you do is much more important as to make all experiments with Sound and convince yourself that you do  is right this and that you listening right things is the most costly thing of all. If I build the Super Melquíades again from scratch I would probably take a week or two off and would do it. The key would be the planning, to prepare all parts, to order of components and to organize everything. BTW, many things that you Anthony do might be outscored but I am not sure that it is what you want. In the end it is a labor of love, you undertake this project once a life. I am very much assure you that in many year you will be looking at your amps and will be wondering if it is true that you did them yourself. 

Rgs, 
Romy The Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
11-23-2017 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 59
Post ID: 24573
Reply to: 24572
Not such a dissimilar story
Romy, thanks for taking the time to write a little about your history with Melquiades and diy.  In some ways our stories are quite similar.  My background is agriculture.  My family breed cattle and grow crops and I am a large part in that business.  I have a science degree and a consultancy that is almost entirely based in agriculture.  The land and livestock is "in my blood" and I have been brought up on a "do-it-yourself" or "fix-it-yourself" philosophy.  Never really with electronics though, although I did setup some solar powered telemetry to monitor stock-watering points several years ago.  There is nothing I want more right now than to take a month off work to get the project making noise so that I can take my time with the tuning process, but I need to keep my clients happy.

Fortunately, my wife is very understanding and can tolerate my dedication to the project.  It would be impossible otherwise.  Summer holidays are coming up here soon and if everything goes well I may get a week or two just doing my audio while the kids are farmed out to grand-parents and get to ride horses and motorbikes, chase cows and are spoilt with lunch pudding and the like.

Although I do tremendously enjoy the diy aspect of this project, it is not something that I envision doing continuously as part of my hobby.  I see it more as a "skills enhancer" (I have now fixed several household things that previously would have been discarded to the rubbish tip) and will benefit other parts of my life.  I think that it is very important for my children to see me doing something not only in my work time but also in my spare time rather than lounging around watching the tv.  They learn more by what they see than what I tell them to do.    

 Romy the Cat wrote:

So, in my view the DIY experience means very little. The clarity of what you do is much more important as to make all experiments with Sound and convince yourself that you do  is right this and that you listening right things is the most costly thing of all. 


I am not yet to the stage of having sound, but am reasonably close.  Perhaps being this close and having all the parts at hand and just needing to put them together is the real driver for my motivation at the moment.  I don't know.  Our true motivations are sometimes difficult to reveal.


 Romy the Cat wrote:

If I build the Super Melquíades again from scratch I would probably take a week or two off and would do it. The key would be the planning, to prepare all parts, to order of components and to organize everything. BTW, many things that you Anthony do might be outscored but I am not sure that it is what you want. In the end it is a labor of love, you undertake this project once a life. I am very much assure you that in many year you will be looking at your amps and will be wondering if it is true that you did them yourself. 

Rgs, 
Romy The Cat


Yep, you have nailed it with that paragraph Romy.  I don't intend to move onto the next audio project...I intend to get this one working just how I would like.

02-19-2018 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 335
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #: 60
Post ID: 24699
Reply to: 24573
First Bass Cannon is up
...and it's size has shocked me, even though I designed and built it.

Bass Cannon 2.jpg


Bass Cannon 3.jpg

Bass Cannon 4.jpg

Bass Cannon 5.jpg


...and from the sweet spot...

Bass Cannon 1.jpg



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