Deaf Row!

[Macca]

Like with NAD, their older amps (1980s) were better.

[walpurgis]

Like with NAD, their older amps (1980s) were better.

I think you may be right.

[southall-1998_mk2]

Do you still use a turntable, Geoff?

If yes, which one? And what arm/cart/stage?

S.

[walpurgis]

I have a turntable Shane, but it's stored at the moment.

A few years ago I treated myself to an old favourite, a mint Thorens TD150 Mk,II complete with TP13a tonearm and the now very rare original lid.

A simple old deck that always surprises me with how good they can sound.

I also have a selection of decent cartridges.

[walpurgis]

Did a tone test on the homebuilt speakers. Started with 100 Hz, then 75Hz and 50Hz, all sounded well defined. As did 45 Hz and I even got a solid output at 40Hz. 35Hz was audible but reduced and doubling was evident. No clear bass output at 30Hz.

A decent showing for a speaker with a 3.5 inch wide cone.

I did find that I can still hear up to 13kHz. Surprised me.

The 1/8 wavelength acoustic line is tuned to 40Hz and the driver resonance is quoted at 45Hz, so the port resonance falls slightly within the driver roll-off, which is OK.



(yes, I know the ancient carpet is horrible! )

[Pigmy Pony]

Look like very respectable figures Geoff. Can you tell me a bit about the tone test and what's involved, I'm curious.

[walpurgis]

Quite simple. Use an online tone generator and hook up your PC or whatever device and take your pick of which tones you need.

You definitely want to go very easy on volume levels to start off. Only use sine waves, square waves and other can destroy speakers.

I used this: https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

There are loads of sites for tone signals.

[Pigmy Pony]

Thanks for that Geoff. I was mostly just curious about how bad my hearing was these days. I think you could probably hear pretty much any frequency if it's loud enough, so I just set the volume at 50% on my laptop and plugged my headphones in. Got to about 10kHz before it all went quiet, which was better than I was expecting.

Also I found that my puretone tinnitus is around 7kHz fwiw. I suppose I'd need to go for a proper hearing test to see if anything can be done about that. Might enquire about hearing aids anyway.

Sorry to be banging on about my hearing, but then you did name your thread 'Deaf row', so...

Very nice speaker build btw, they look shop-bought. With those diffusers, was that based on an existing design, or was it something you just thought you'd try out and see what happens? Either way it looks proper... and for 3 quid? I wish I had those kind of skills.

[walpurgis]

Very nice speaker build btw, they look shop-bought. With those diffusers, was that based on an existing design, or was it something you just thought you'd try out and see what happens? Either way it looks proper... and for 3 quid? I wish I had those kind of skills.

Well the diffusers cost around three quid and materials for the whole speaker build was probably somewhere a bit over £100.

Just a thought, perhaps your headphones lack output much above 10kHz. Some headphones don't extend up as far as you might expect, not that many might notice.