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I'm not an audiophile. I found the bare minimum that would make me happy a long time ago and it's not expensive (basically a decent amp that doesn't add a lot
by dekhn 3y ago
I'm not an audiophile. I found the bare minimum that would make me happy a long time ago and it's not expensive (basically a decent amp that doesn't add a lot of hiss, and live lossless recordings from groups like Phish). I get more out of reducing sources of artifacts (hiss from poor amps, cover walls with sound-absorbing panels) than I do maximizing the performance of the components (like minimizing THD). I'm actually more interested in getting a good sound image (like the article mentions, if you set things up right, it sounds like the band is "in the room" with you).
For fun and pedagogy, I did build some speakers recently and it was educational. I bought full-spectrum speakers (IE, a speaker that handles both highs and lows, rather than using tweets and woofers and a crossover) and a simple stereo amplifier breakout board from Adafruit. 3D printed some speakers, and did all the soldering/wiring/enclosing myself.
What did I learn? That building good speakers is hard! There definitely are parts of the spectrum the speakers don't handle well (low frequencies; I can't hear above 15khz any more). But what I really noticed is that because I didn't do any isolation (no padding inside the speaker enclosure, the speakers are directly on my wooden desk) I can hear a lot of artifacts. I'm actually glad I can notice them, because in some sense it validates my own sense of hearing, as well as my understanding on how to improve sound.
If I were to do it again, I'd add a crossover, subwoofer, tweeters, and a ton of physical isolation (replace the 3d printed speakers with wood, add padding, and a mount under the speakers to reduce the table vibration.
One of the best speaker systems ever was an absurdly simple system: the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. Because large auditoriums with PAs had terrible sound, they did something nobody else tried: a huge array of speakers, each band member with their own subset of speakers (no mixing). It was absurdly expensive but it had a very high quality sound field even at low volumes (very clear 1/4 mile away).
- amanzi 3y agoI think you are an audiophile, in the same way I am - you're enthusiastic about audio. I don't like the term only referring to those that pursue the foolish end of high-end audio. I love buying budget audiophile gear and trying to get a nice, clean sound out of equipment. On my desk now I have a couple of dongle DACs, a Topping DAC/amp, some cheap Micca speakers and a bunch of headphones, ranging from budget Sennheisers up to my most expensive purchase ever - a pair of Focal Clear headphones, which I bought on sale with a further discount due to a damaged box. :-)
- dekhn 3y agoI expect to buy the same Sennheiser HD280 (possibly a clone) headphones over and over (the earcups eventually wear out). The only thing that made a big difference was getting a headphone amp because some audio is mixed really quiet.
- archi42 3y ago1. Fullrange speakers are great, don't underestimate them! The ones I looked at need some help at the low end, but you get away with a much lower crossover frequency compared to a tweeter. Since they can have a relatively big diameter (compared to tweeters) they have a stronger "beam"/focus; annoying when moving or having multiple listeners (off-axis sound is horrible), but for solo listening the stage/imaging gains a lot from not being disturbed by those pesky reflections. 2. Don't add a crossover if you don't have to. They mess with the phase at the crossover point and are hard to get right anyway. Just do it all in a DSP and have an amp for each speaker. You can actually combine room correction (often via parametric equalizer) and the crossover itself into one big FIR, if your DSP is big enough. You can also play with crossover frequencies, slope, sacrificing headroom for a deeper frequency response etc. - in the analog domain, the costs for the passive components quickly add up. That's why MiniDSP + array of amps can have a huge impact. 3. While I'd go with MDF any day, most designs will sound terrible without padding (or too much!). For your 3D printed design I'd expect proper padding to be the lower hanging fruit. Anecdata: My 4" full range speakers are fully active stereo speakers: 4" FR + 4" woofer per cabinet (based on "Double Four", but with a different FR), 4 amps and an ADAU145x DSP for crossover & room correction (Beocreate 4). They play down to IIRC 40Hz (-3dB, or was it 0dB?) with ultra precise voice/instrument locations. (Not all that glitters is gold: IIRC they're limited to 92 or 95dB and I still need to redo the DRC since we moved). Edit: For prototyping, there is the free Windows "Equalizer APO" I used to output the four channels using the onboard sound card and fed them into an older 5.1 receiver (with 5 integrated amps) connected to the speakers. That way I could rapidly swap the FIR filters and compare them to insanely large filters. This is nice for experimenting, and with a decent sound card can eliminate the need for a DSP when used to build dedicated PC speakers.
- isolli 3y ago> I'm actually more interested in getting a good sound image. This is the goal. The best image I've ever heard was from a pair of Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 [0], set up in their shop (due to their acoustic lens, I suspect). I have a pair of JBL LSR305 (bought for 1% of the price of the B&O pair) [1]. They feature an "Image Control Wave Guide" inherited from a more expensive JBL line. The image can be stunning, but you have to sit in the right place. [0] https://www.beoworld.org/prod_details.asp?pid=800 https://www.beoworld.org/prod_details.asp?pid=800 [1] https://jblpro.com/products/lsr305 https://jblpro.com/products/lsr305