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Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
A lot of modern amps are garbage compared to good poo poo from the past

my main 2ch amp, a yamaha m700:

quote:

Power output: 100 watts per channel into 8Ω (stereo)

Frequency response: 20Hz to 20kHz

Total harmonic distortion: 0.005%

1983

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echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
speakers tho

Beeftweeter
Jun 28, 2005

a medium-format picture of beeftweeter staring silently at the camera, a quizzical expression on his face
smaller speakers these days definitely outperform smaller speakers from pretty much any decade. they're not magical though, they still sound like small speakers. they just suck less

atmz
Jan 5, 2005

lurk lurk lurk

Hed posted:

drat that looks awesome. How is that knobfeel

so nice
I opened it up and the knob to actual stuff connection is very convoluted but it feels lovely

I love big analog knobs

post hole digger posted:

that technics one ^^ looks really cool too. i like the lighting on it
ty
I just replaced some of the bulbs, it’s a bunch of tiny incandescents

jesus WEP
Oct 17, 2004


afen posted:

proper stereos have wood panelling



that’s right

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
yeah modern materials mean that the speakers are flatter within their frequency range and can handle higher power, but you still can't beat just a big cone

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Ive got a 12" dual voice coil stable down to 2ohm if connected in parallel

it's fuckin massive and defo not designed to be in a house.

it definitely Does Bass

it used to be in my car but I used insufficient wiring to the amp and melted the wires and blew fuses and it's really time I worked out how to install it in my car in a way that is also easily removable

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
i had such a setup for my old sub box. just had the amp bolted to the box and

i used Powerpole connectors, common for ham usage



they snap together so you can make multi pin connectors. so i did a 5 pin setup with 12v, ground, + and - speaker level to the amp, and switched 12v.

then i installed harnesses in all my vehicles. Just unplug one thing and move the box to the other car

they'll handle about 30 amps continuously and a bit more intermittent so it'd be fine for just about anything

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
thanks bro that’s exactly the kind of thing I imagined probably existed but didn’t know what to look for

EIDE Van Hagar
Dec 8, 2000

Beep Boop
i have a set of kef q550 floor speakers with 6.5” drivers they’re pretty good but i still have a 10” subwoofer too. newer speakers like that are very adequate for watching movies tho.

EIDE Van Hagar
Dec 8, 2000

Beep Boop

echinopsis posted:

thanks bro that’s exactly the kind of thing I imagined probably existed but didn’t know what to look for

just search for “molex”

echinopsis
Apr 13, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
i already ordered some :grin:

Roosevelt
Jul 18, 2009

I'm looking for the man who shot my paw.

you're phone doesn't have big knobs and switches to twiddle with. that's really the only difference.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

EIDE Van Hagar posted:

i have a set of kef q550 floor speakers with 6.5” drivers they’re pretty good but i still have a 10” subwoofer too. newer speakers like that are very adequate for watching movies tho.

This is the sweet spot yeah. my mains are 8" three ways, and i got a modest 10" sub. then a bunch of 3" surrounds and a pretty good center channel. like -6db on the volume knob and its terrifyingly loud, and the thing goes to +13.5

Raluek
Nov 3, 2006

WUT.

Jonny 290 posted:

i had such a setup for my old sub box. just had the amp bolted to the box and

i used Powerpole connectors, common for ham usage



they snap together so you can make multi pin connectors. so i did a 5 pin setup with 12v, ground, + and - speaker level to the amp, and switched 12v.

then i installed harnesses in all my vehicles. Just unplug one thing and move the box to the other car

they'll handle about 30 amps continuously and a bit more intermittent so it'd be fine for just about anything

CPC series 3 is probably a decent choice for this too, and would look a little less rinky-dink than a giant wad of power poles

re: old speakers, the great thing about those is that what used to be high end is now super affordable, or at least was pre-pandemic. i have about a grand into my whole sound system, and half that is the modern sub. due to using cheap old stuff for the rest of it, it outperforms anything you could get for that price if you were buying all new, imo

rotor posted:

i just assume any speaker smaller than like 2 cubic feet is trash

bookshelfs are fine for computer speakers imo

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

i have some early 2000s flagship denon that weighs a million pounds but its pre-hdmi so the dump was selling it for like $30

i use an hdmi breakout box to send spdif to it and it just sits on the same input all the time

afen
Sep 23, 2003

nemo saltat sobrius
most of my hifi stuff is from the 80s and 90s, and they still do the job.



https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ruwcodDpZD1a4kan9_720.mp4

eschaton
Mar 7, 2007

Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

Volmarias posted:

On the subject of stupid computer tricks, the X-Men game for Sega Genesis told you at a certain point to "reset the computer," but required you to press the physical reset button on your console. I'm honestly curious whether the reset button actually (briefly) generated an interrupt of some kind that they hooked into, or they discovered some quirk of the manufacturing that could be detected at run time before the reset fully happened.

if you don’t do anything special in your hardware, pulsing RESET# on a 68000 will set A7 to whatever’s at 0x00000000, set the PC to whatever’s at 0x00000004, set the SR to 0x2700, and start executing

so you could totally just have that be how you get to the next scene/stage in a game that takes over the system and runs in supervisor mode, right after reconfiguring the also-reset peripherals

(most 68K systems swap ROM to 0 when RESET# is pulsed specifically to avoid this and ensure a reset is as close to a cold boot as possible, but if the Genesis didn’t it wouldn’t surprise me)

Tankakern
Jul 25, 2007

love the furupanel, the extremely norwegian peis and the fact that the 2006 era lcd tv is obscured by the hifi stack

Tankakern
Jul 25, 2007

and you still haven't removed the sticker from the tv

fins
May 31, 2011

Floss Finder
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-31-woofers/fostex-fw800hs-31.5-super-woofer/

gonna need a bigger bookshelf

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
I respect your Denon commitment. Nice looking stuff. are those monoblocks lower left/right?

EIDE Van Hagar
Dec 8, 2000

Beep Boop

i do like how it only goes up to 1.5 khz

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
At the point that you're considering that for your california woods mansion, you're just doing one of the active subwoofer setups thats literally a big air compressor feeding a bunch of under floor chambers

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003


i remember that avsforum thread

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Tankakern posted:

love the furupanel, the extremely norwegian peis

the whaT? :pwn:

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

My stepdad was a partner in a tiny, short-lived audiophile company in the 1980s, initially called Symmetry but then called Athena. I think it survived about four years. His partner, Bruce Brisson, had invented a device they called a "polyphasor" (US Patent 6,658,119), which adjusted the phase of a sound signal, to correct for phase misalignment that can occur in between components. I know that probably sounds like gibberish but it's apparently a bit more of a real thing than a lot of audiophile horseshit?

quote:

it is a network for altering the audio output of a system which comprises at least one series RC or RLC circuit coupled between the positive and ground conductor of a cable that is suitable for connecting an electrical musical instrument, or similar source, to an amplifier or other load. The components of the RC or RLC circuit are selected by determining the frequency at which the positive conductor's natural phase angle is 45°. Each of the RC or RLC circuits is selected to have a phase angle of -45° at a frequency equal to or different from the frequency at which the positive conductor has a phase angle of 45° depending upon the audio effect desired.
This is electronics magic above my beginner level of understanding, but the things did actually do something. They also made a crossover. Anyway polyphasers were costly, they demoed them at audiophile conventions, got some writeups in various audiophile magazines, and for about a year they sold a few to high-end customers. But the company eventually went under, and nowadays phase adjustments may be handled by electronics in high-end components I think, I'm not really sure.

I've got a pair of polyphasors, which means I have some of the rarest audiophile equipment in the world. They came in brushed metal or wood, the components inside are solid-state and they encased them with this thick plasticy tar-looking goo to prevent people from reverse-engineering them:

These aren't mine, just a pic I found online showing both types:

That wooden one has been banged up a bit, shameful.

The ML-10 had knobs which let you adjust the phase, so you basically just turned on your music and twiddled the knobs until it "sounded right" lol
I've got the wooden ones which don't have knobs, you just accept the -45° phase change if you like it.

My stepdad still has, in his garage, about a dozen unbuilt ones - the cases and innards, ready for assembly. He insists that one of these days he's gonna put them together and sell 'em.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Naw that makes perfect sense. Any prole tier equalization circuit is going to induce some phase delay that's frequency dependent, and it kind of does blur the signal a bit. "phase accurate EQs" exist to solve this and they're very expensive

Now, are you going to hear it? Probably not. Are you going to see on an oscilloscope? Absolutely

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Bruce Brisson went on to found MIT Cable, and he used his patent there as well, I think they made more inline boxes, special cable, etc. to address phase problems.

I can attest that if you have decent setup, use one of the boxes with the knobs on, and twiddle the knobs, something changes that you can detect with your ears. I have not been able to develop a strong preference for one setting over another, and I am highly skeptical of audiophiles in general and their use of invented language for things ("image", "stage", etc.) in particular. I've stood around with my stepdad's buddies and had to hold my tongue while one of them described things that improved digital signals between devices. Yeah. It's totally massaging those ones and zeros so they sound better, yeah. But in this case, at least, while even with your explanation I don't really understand... yeah the box does something you can hear. Like $2k in 1980s money per box, and we're trying to get you to buy four? No loving way, haha.

Beeftweeter
Jun 28, 2005

a medium-format picture of beeftweeter staring silently at the camera, a quizzical expression on his face
there is no way someone can realistically hear phase delay using regular speakers. extremely lovely loudspeakers maybe, headphones possibly

e: not saying that box doesn't actually do anything but i doubt anyone listening to music would be able to point out a couple ms difference at a distance

Beeftweeter fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jun 8, 2023

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Eh, i agree and also disagree

90 degrees phase offset at 40 hz is 6ish ms offset, which i've grown to be able to discern because i've spent dozens of hours tweaking ASIO latency numbers

but yeah, for ordinary use, it's nbd

The big thing is that most music has harmonic content, so if a trumpet honks, it's got like five overtones and if the lower ones get shifted by a few ms it all sounds a bit mud

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Yeah that's the sort of difference, it's hard to describe because it's not like you can notice the bass is off slightly from the treble or something. But the harmonic in a very high frequency signal like the sound a cymbal makes are affected by very small degrees of difference so the, uh, tone? maybe that's the right word? can change.

And yeah they would demo and promote these devices on $10k+ sound systems. $100k+ at conventions. We had a huge pair of electrostatic speakers in my living room when I was a kid, plus vandersteen subwoofers.

Oh yeah my stepdad also knows Mike Yee, so he got me a Mike Yee DAC for xmas a few years ago. Another rare piece of kit. It's just a silver box though. And I can't tell the difference it makes. Whatever. It makes my stepdad happy.

e. this is what his electrostats looked like


He gave them to some movers as a tip, when they moved house in 2004, and I was kinda pissed because I wanted them if he didn't want them any more. They were just a big hassle to deal with, apparently, but drat what a nice tip.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jun 8, 2023

afen
Sep 23, 2003

nemo saltat sobrius

Jonny 290 posted:

I respect your Denon commitment. Nice looking stuff. are those monoblocks lower left/right?

Yeah, they're 6600A monoblocks.

I bought a couple more for cheap, one of them wasn't working.

After replacing every broken component and then some I got it working for a couple of minutes before it all went to poo poo again. I suspect there's something funky with the opamps, but as these blocks are relatively cheap I feel I've spent enough on this basketcase.


Kids, don't buy transistors from aliexpress.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp
Oh i'll share my story about how i learned to respect documentation. i was talking about this the other day

so when i was 19-20 or so i was the radio dork electronics nerd in our cohort. One time i was over at one of my richer buddies' houses, and his stepdad overheard us talking and said "hey <jonny> i got somethin for you" and went back into the garage.

He came back with this three ring binder and said "You'll probably find this interesting, this is a notebook from one of my college buddies"

I thought little of it, said thank-you and paged through it, then i moved out on my own shortly after and threw it into storage.

And i forgot to pay the bill on the storage unit, and it got auctioned off

and that, my friends, is how i had one of Paul Klipsch's personal engineering notebooks slip through my fingers. I was so ungrateful and didn't realize any sort of gravity at all.

That's why whenever I get a paper manual for a ham radio now, I throw it into a dessicant-loaded gallon freezer bag in my designated Manuals Box.

afen
Sep 23, 2003

nemo saltat sobrius

Tankakern posted:

love the furupanel, the extremely norwegian peis and the fact that the 2006 era lcd tv is obscured by the hifi stack

Need to have some hygge while you're listening to music!

well-read undead
Dec 13, 2022

Jonny 290 posted:

Oh i'll share my story about how i learned to respect documentation. i was talking about this the other day

so when i was 19-20 or so i was the radio dork electronics nerd in our cohort. One time i was over at one of my richer buddies' houses, and his stepdad overheard us talking and said "hey <jonny> i got somethin for you" and went back into the garage.

He came back with this three ring binder and said "You'll probably find this interesting, this is a notebook from one of my college buddies"

I thought little of it, said thank-you and paged through it, then i moved out on my own shortly after and threw it into storage.

And i forgot to pay the bill on the storage unit, and it got auctioned off

and that, my friends, is how i had one of Paul Klipsch's personal engineering notebooks slip through my fingers. I was so ungrateful and didn't realize any sort of gravity at all.

That's why whenever I get a paper manual for a ham radio now, I throw it into a dessicant-loaded gallon freezer bag in my designated Manuals Box.

but think of the joy you brought to the heart of the collector that picked up that relic on the cheap

or the money you brought to their wallet when they flipped it, whichever

Kitfox88
Aug 21, 2007

Anybody lose their glasses?

with great power comes great responsibility

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



i don't know anything about anything, but i think the word you're looking for to describe the audible qualities of a sound or instrument is 'timbre.' at least, when you're talking about muddying the 'character' of hats and trumpets, i think "that's timbre."

play a sin wave - without harmonics - through it, and i'm betting you can't tell one setting from the other. this is not really related to whether or not 'timbre' is the right word, i just want to do an experiment

rotor
Jun 11, 2001

classic case of pineapple derangement syndrome

Achmed Jones posted:

play a sin wave

way ahead of you

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Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
well yeah, that "phase-shifted" sine wave will be literally identical to if you had the machine turned off but pressed the button on the tone generator a quarter of a wavelength later.

the contention is that you can hear the relative phase between two harmonics, which honestly i would consider to be plausible. hell, you can hear the difference in phase just by moving your head around when you have two speakers playing the same tone.

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