DirtyErnie

Out of curiosity, have you tried JJ's?

1. Know that the thing can kill you if you complete the circuit with your body. 2. Probe with one hand only, keep the other behind your back. Long-sleeve shirts can also help, cover that skin. 3. Have respect for the pixies, they're angry and looking to get out. 4. Engage braincase, move smoothly, don't ***k it up. Easy, no?

Try it all, parallel, crossed behind you, at your head, in front... That's the fun with this hobby; small changes may have big effects. CF2's in my house have a 'head in a vice' tiny sweet spot when they're parallel/straight ahead. I have mine toed-in so they cover almost the whole sofa area and am finding the sound to be very even everywhere.

Looking to upgrade the home theater system, the goal is to multi-amp the speakers. To do that, I'll need some sort of HDMI a/v preamp to hook up the Blue Ray & tv. Anyone have a recommendation on something fairly affordable? Probably going to have to be used, and as I upgrade the TV to something 4K, I'm willing to get an outboard box to handle that much data, so standard 1080 HD limit may be just fine. Thanks!

On my KG 2.5's I did a one-step-at-a-time, one speaker at a time thing when I rebuilt the crossovers. Step 1 on speaker A, Steps 1 & 2 on speaker B, et.c. Wanted to hear the improvements on each step. Swapped out the NPE's for Erse Pulse X. Both speakers sounded kinda midrange-hashy before. This definitely tightened up the frequency response and improved clarity by a LOT. suddenly, all the treble was available and very clear out of the updated crossover. Added Crite's white caps (can't remember which offhand), series caps for the tweeter. Cleaned up the treble by quite a bit. Crite's titanium tweeters: definitely smoother and more extended than the stock phenolic. Everybody who says that swapping crossover caps makes no difference either had really good stuff to begin with or has never done this kind of direct comparison. It was NOT subtle on these. On my CF2's, I've had one crossover re-built for a while and haven't done the second yet. The difference on these is a lot more subtle, but still better with the updated crossover (however, I'm using some oddball non-standard audio stuff.)

Mid 30's Hz is pretty deep bass for a full-range speaker cabinet. But, you're looking at a ported cabinet 24db/octave roll-off below the lowest impedance dip. On the blue trace, that would put 20Hz at somewhere around 20dB down from the port tuning. 'Minimum useful' frequency is (from what I've ever seen) about -10dB, probably in the neighborhood of 25Hz. The 12" JBL sub I have only goes down to about 25Hz, so I'm getting along just fine without a sub until I get some sort of serious thing that doesn't roll off until below 20hz. bass sweep Ran this again, Definitely comes on good at 35Hz, and then a little shallow until almost 60Hz, but my room, my mess, my problem.

Just 'cuz I could, same graphs on a logarithmic scale, 'cuz octaves and stuff.

I really can't tell much of a difference in just casual listening, but most of the stuff I'm listening to doesn't get down that deep anyways. The extensions are mostly an "ehhhh.... I made 'em, so they're staying in there" thing at this point. My bass test track is "Dare" by Gorillaz, and everything fails that 20Hz synth tone except for serious home theater subs. I don't yet have a serious home theater sub. Maybe the shorter ports would have a little less IM distortion from the 40-60hz signal, but I'm probably not ever playing loud enough to notice. Haven't done any REW type sweeps, since I'm not yet set up for it, but a multi-amp set-up is in the future plans.

Took an hour and measured my CF2's, Serial #'s 2335970xx Low Frequencies: Blue line is the later-series port (shorter), red line is with a construction paper tube to extend that port to first-series length, ~5" if I remember. Pretty typical for a ported cabinet. Looks like the shorter port tunes at around 38Hz, longer port is around 32Hz. Impedance peaks shuffle around a bit, but the lower peak is always lower than the upper peak indicating they're maybe both tuned a bit 'low' for the drivers in the box. High Frequencies: Definitely seeing the effect of the Constant-Directivity crossover attenuating lower horn frequencies to give the horn a 'rising slope'. Surprised to see the impedance settle out to around 4 ohms at the top, considering the 8-ohm driver used, and the 8-ohm nominal impedance of the cabinet.

Took an hour and measured my CF2's, Serial #'s 2335970xx Low Frequencies: Blue line is the later-series port (shorter), red line is with a construction paper tube to extend that port to first-series length, ~5" if I remember. Pretty typical for a ported cabinet. Looks like the shorter port tunes at around 38Hz, longer port is around 32Hz. Impedance peaks shuffle around a bit, but the lower peak is always lower than the upper peak indicating they're maybe both tuned a bit 'low' for the drivers in the box. High Frequencies: Definitely seeing the effect of the Constant-Directivity crossover attenuating lower horn frequencies to give the horn a 'rising slope'. Surprised to see the impedance settle out to around 4 ohms at the top, considering the 8-ohm driver used, and the 8-ohm nominal impedance of the cabinet.

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1. No. I'm not going to show you my bench, because 2. Looking at this thread, I"m realizing I need a LOT more of the little drawer cabinets. Nice work(benches), guys!

I have a 5-valve CC Miraphone, but you're talking about a speaker. 😄

Friend had a '58 Bassman with a pair of mercury vapor recs in it. Those things would light up brighter the more current you pulled through them. Was a super-fun lightshow on stage, especially when he was doing punchy rhythm stuff.

I could use spec for a 222c cabinet, please.

Taking me back to some recording studio fun a few years ago.... The short version of this is the farther away from being mathematically related your room dimensions are to each other, the less issue you should have with room modes. The 'Golden Ratio' dimensions are pretty good at achieving this. There are a few other sets of 'pretty good' ratios out there with some searching. In our situation, we had a 16' x 16' x 8' room (1/2 of a cube) with a suspended ceiling. It was Gawd-Awful for attempting to record music. Then I remembered some tricks from practicing tuba in small rooms with suspended ceilings: Open up some of the ceiling tiles. We pulled tiles out of the corners, and a few in the center. Somehow, that got the volume in the ceiling above the tiles resonating out-of-phase with the main room and cleared up a LOT of the mud. Buddy had his head in a mix, trying to make it better, when I pulled the first corner tile out. He almost broke his neck, that head snapped around so fast "WHAT DID YOU DO!??!?" , it made that big of a difference. something for the forum to file away in their collective memory banks.

What's the driver arrangement in those bookshelves? WTW type can get a bit 'beamy' on their sides and are better mounted vertically.

Very nice, that looks much better.

My question is how would the AmbiSonic mic be better than an Omni-Directional mic? Once you're spherical, aren't you spherical?

"If it measures good, and sounds good, it is good. If it measures good, but sounds bad, you've measured the wrong thing." H.H. Scott.

What I would like to see, more than anything, is the whole recording and reproduction industry getting together and agreeing that all recordings will be full-range and not manipulated, and playback devices engineered to protect themselves if need be. If it could be agreed on for overall compression, loudness, dynamic range, and frequency response, and then the devices can add whatever emphasis they want, great. Home A/V receivers with room compensation routines & microphones can get most people close enough. And then there's "us"...

16 bit = 65.536 24 bit = 16,777,215 These are the available positions in a single sample. 24 bit has vastly more resolution than a 16 bit sample has. Bit Rate: Yes, someone mentioned that you need 2x sample rate of your highest audio frequency. The problem there is that digital sound forms a brickwall filter at that maximum audio frequency; sound just SHUTS OFF above that frequency. This is something that is abhorrent to nature, and the first octave or so below that brickwall filter has some pretty severe artifacts as far as phase response and frequency response go. I've played around with the variations between the sample depths above, and 48khz vs 96KHz in the recording studio. Every time we went up in either of those numbers, quality was noticibly better. 24 bit definitely sounded better than 16, but 24bit/48K still sounded like it was behind a scratchy wool blanket. 24b/96K was very very nice. I don't think we had the capability of going farther at the time... Metaphor, it's like going to Black-n-white at 12 frames/second to iMax HD at 60 frames/second. Big difference in quality. Now, can your ears hear it?

Had you run a frequency sweep on your speakers before you started? Sometimes that can help narrow down problems. There's a few good ones on YouTube if you have that capability in your H/T setup. My standard advice applies; dont feed ported speakers any frequencies below their design low cut-off point. Run a sub and use a crossover to the mains.

Yes, the capacitance has its fundamental roll-off breakpoint, but below that point it drops off at 6dB per octave. 400hz break? 200Hz is at -6db from that point. Even more fun, that break-point is at -3db already. Crossover capacitors are such a hot topic because of what happens above the breakpoint, and how the capacitor handles that. Like any other component in the audio chain, they have their own imprefections and distortions that will be colored over the top of the sound signals. The higher into the audible frequency band you go, the more important this seems to be, and the more difficult it is for some capacitors to pass. And the more subjective it all becomes. Ultimately, "Opinions and A$$holes".