Dipping a toe into the world of Hi-Fi

[Norgarth]

I've still got a load of CDs and cassettes that I occasionally listen to, Never bought an Ipod or MP3 player.

[nocarename]

I have a collection of CDs and cassettes and records.

I don't listen to them enough and, frankly, most of the time the weak point in my audio chain right now is the speakers. But before I migrate off listening to podcasts on my phone and music off youtube I'm going to need a job to fund better gear and more space to put it in.

[Dartz]

Most of this stuff is found on ebay for pennies. Nobody wants these old receivers because they've no HDMI ---- getting modern HD stuff to run them is a pig, but as an audio amplifier they're fine.

Doesn't even need to be good speakers --- just something you don't have to max the volume on so you don't feel attacked by the music. You can hear it even with the volume down.

[Dartz]

The next addition. Not much. A Bluetooth hookup to Alexa/Laptop/Phone. Also a 3.5mm jack connector for the phone - once I bolt a cradle to it.

Also tidied shit a little bit and re-arranged the room to give more space for it. The cables are fused in multiple ways so it's not going to burn despite looking a bit funky

I've 2 spare modes left to assign on this thing and I'm sort of at a loss for what to add. It already has a built-in FM tuner. At this point I'm just adding curios for shits and giggles. I can handle Analogue inputs, or SPDIF as needed. I'm out of Toslink inputs.

So anyway, I've got two ideas off the top of my head:
A DAT deck
A Minidisc deck


Also - because Alexa's hooked to it I can open the Spotify and rattle the absolute fuck out of people while I'm at work.

I also might need to build a proper power bus. There're twelve plugs and a USB needed to power this thing - most drawing less than an Amp.

[Dartz]

Bought a load of blank cassettes.





This is kinda fun and they sound good.

[Dartz]

Spend Sunday rewiring everything with proper banana-plugs, and good quality cable.

-----

Speaker cable is one of those things that can get rediculously expensive really quickly. How about more than I spent on this entire system, and the CD's and records I play on it for one 2 metre cable. There's snake oil, and there's high Octane, leaded and mixed with 1,4 dioxane snake-oil

And of course, above a certain point, you're getting well into diminishing returns. Copper, after all, is copper.

But more than that - you get into things like Bi-Amping and Bi-Wiring, where you either run two sets of cables to the speaker (For high and low frequencies, respectively), or even have a dedicated amp for the highs and lows. Speakers set up for it will have two pairs of terminals on them, like below:



The tweeter in the speaker will have a high-pass filter on it
The driver will have a low-pass filter.
And properly set up, they sort of meet in the middle and everything's okay.

The idea with bi-wiring is that you run two sets of cables from the amplifier to the speaker. One set of cables is only every carrying the high frequencies. One set is only ever carrying the low frequencies.

I think I just changed the impedance characteristics of the speaker a little. Less current flow in each leg means less power lost in the cable itself. Some people thick there's less interference between the high and low frequency side of things as they're effectively now seperate from each other. I can't tell the difference.

There're other effects like capacitance of the cable and inductance that might be affecting its frequency response - but probably not at audio frequencies, and not over such short runs. (I had to consider them running an M-bus network over maybe 4 kilometres of cable in a building----)

Dropping the impedance a bit it does make *some* difference. Half the system was run off old alarm cable which is pretty thin stuff - maybe .25mm2 if even. It's about 1.5 ohms over the full length of the circuit. A fair bit when the speaker itself is 8ohms

The newer cable is 0.1 ohm over the same distance. And it's doubled up - to use both sets of posts on the speaker, so the actual resistance will be about half that again. Which is within the margin of error of the meter I'm using. (Sorry - not a Fluke - just an automotive multimeter that I spilled coffee on....)

A former McIntosh engineer seems to agree that this is the thing that actually matters with speaker wire. (Not Macintosh) . Just drop the resitance and none of the other quantities matter over domestic runs.

----

So, what difference did a few hours fucking around make?

The cabling is neater.
The banana plugs make it easier to break down and rebuild. Or swap out speakers
The amp runs less hot (But in no way cool), so there's some physics happening.
I'm getting fine strand of copper in my feet.

[robkelk]

I'm getting fine strand of copper in my feet.

They keep telling me that pain is good for the soul.