I feel for you

@richardbrand Ah Latin, did my required minimums there… 2 years… My essential conclusion was there were way more girls in the romance language classes. ….

Best in music to you 

Good thread.

I kinda knew Carl’s skillset from years here and other sites. Well respected by me having worked in science and technology myself for 4 decades.

@awise1961 We may have dabbled in some of the same aircraft.

My dad was a tinsmith by training because his dad worked in a malleable iron factory across the street and sold copper moonshine stills on the side for extra cash. It was a prerequisite to be skilled at soldering at an early age as my dad and I would put copper snow flashing on house roofs for his own extra cash side hustle. The man knew copper and was awarded 2 patents for his R&D efforts. He used his skills to become the team leader patching the skins of B-24’s after bombing raids in the big one before returning to work in the copper industry.

Everything growing up was either fix it yourself or DIY that from the ground up with your own take on it. While only a measly mechanical engineer in the world of electronics I wasn’t designing the PCB’s, but hardening them against vibration, EMI/RFI or extracting their heat while packaging them into structurally sound "black boxes" replete with the necessary connectors and filters. With lots of help from experienced mentors I put my stamp on the V-22 Osprey fuel system black boxes in the 80’s, a few B-2 bomber devices, General Motors next generation airbag systems in the 90’s, Oshkosh and John Deere active tire inflation systems, and animatronic figures for Universal/Disney (say a 10,000 lb.,45 foot T-Rex with full body motions mounted on a class 7 truck chassis rolling forward into a show for 60 feet at 5 mph and not crush little Jimmy in the front row by breaking through the light curtains).

Like you folks, I love music and electronics. I was working hard as a teenager to buy a set of speakers to bypass my Dad’s Utah’s built into the living room system. He had the turntable mounted in a drawer(!) and the tube amp mounted in the wall so we could spin albums by Mitch Miller or the Carpenters! I was hooked and dove head first once I graduated college into buying my own system; bi-amped JBL’s and DIY subs in maple plywood racks and stands my dad and I made with his ancient cast iron Craftsman table saw. The same table saw he cut 16 foot strips of redwood to make a canoe and guess who was on the other end of those redwood pieces at the table saw!

One of my hobbies I sunk ridiculous dough into for 25 years was racing R/C boats throughout the Midwest. 2-cycle motors burning nitromethane and alcohol at 25,000 RPM’s running 60 MPH on 1/3 mile ovals 6-abreast. Lots of mechanical and electrical elements in that hobby. Build a wood or fiberglass hull, paint it, set it up, tune the motor and then have some jackass run over your deck and watch your $1500 boat get destroyed, all while standing in the blazing sun or pouring rain. Stereo gear is tame in comparison. ha

I love gear, room design, frequency sweeps, and flavoring with cables! My wife let’s me roam in this hobby as much as I want because she knows, together, we can put my DIY skills and her decorating skills to work remodeling a kitchen, putting up a fence, making planter boxes, adding a lighting circuit, or building some shelves when many others have to hire those activities out to contractors. I don’t golf because my L3 and L4 are in bad shape, so I’m home building crap  she wants on weekends. And if I want to build/rebuild a stereo or HT room, the boss is okay with it since her contractor is a live-in.

It is encouraging to hang out with folks who have skills and the rest who respect us with skills. I can’t design the circuits some of you can, but I can recognize good design when I see it. I’ve done plenty of work with friends over the years who cannot swing a hammer but have the vision of what they want, so away we go. In another life I would have been an EE or a professional drummer. Regardless, I work to fund my hobbies and this is pretty much my remaining dance.

Happy listening.

Had a KT77 go out last night, so will be horkin’ the 75 lb. monoblock onto it’s transformers this morning to replace the sacrificial resistor on that socket’s bias circuit...part of the price for great sound...I’m grateful for the opportunity to pay it.

@carlsbad2 

Jerry,

How’s Carp book?  As he is a very interesting character, I was thinking about getting the book, but didn’t want to waste my time or money if it was all inflated ego stories of how great he is.

Thanks in advance for your book review.

EECS PhD, babysat the engineering hordes all through a past life in tech corporations...before I got real tired of corpo politics and went my own way/started my own business.

Perhaps a higher priority area for the tinkerers to expend energy is... start fixing the trash recordings out there. I am sure you could do a better job than the mastering tech on crack.

but didn’t want to waste my time or money if it was all inflated ego stories of how great he is.

It’s  good that no one would do that here.

There is such a thing called standing on the shoulders of giants to prevent unnecessary work for yourself. There are some giants who apparently don't have a name that's "audiophile enough" though they know everything there is to know about sound (not the guy building crap in his garage after a year's wait to make audiophiles feel elusive) This may be a decent starting point, if you want to read books...Pioneer has some neat papers as well.

After that, try and hang out with dudes who do venue installations or read up on acoustics, stuff like that...guys who are in field doing the grunt work. You could learn more tricks that way than looking at some theorycrafter who sat around chasing sinad or whatever. At the end of the day, all the sound has to come to your ears through a room.

How’s Carp book?  As he is a very interesting character, I was thinking about getting the book, but didn’t want to waste my time or money if it was all inflated ego stories of how great he is.

Thanks in advance for your book review.

Great and well considered post by you under-the-hood technology wiz kids. Thanks. I don’t have the aptitude as you folks do to make or modify many things (except simple wiring) and the last auto work I did was rebuilding a carborator fifty (gulp) years or so ago. Crazy glue is my go to.

(I worked as an adverting photographer and early on did some work for Polaroid having to take apart a SX70 camera and used a very large and heavy screw driver to discharge the petite capacitor. The discharge took a real bite out of the metal! Lesson learned.  Anther time I was on a shoot in a large grocery store and a kid spilled a bucket of fish blood on a 2000W power pack and the eight capacitors blew up sounding like a gun getting fired. People screamed and briefly mayhem ensued.)

However not all of us hanging around sharing and gleaning audio asks and advice have an innate aptitude for circuits, soldering and schematic diagrams or points timing (Ok, I could do that). Recall it’s called the arts and sciences. It could be just one and not necessarily both. Did James Oscar Smith know how to make or modify a Hammond B-3 organ? Could Stevie Ray Vaughan modify or build a guitar pickup?

There are many forms of a Renaissance man/person and more importantly being a good person. I feel for you too. Judge not lest ye be judged for I know not what I do. But I do know something you don’t and vise versa.  If I could remember where I put my reading glasses all would the well.

How about taking on a more challenging task? Swap the passive crossover with an active crossover or build a switch to compare the sound. Wouldn't this be a more interesting, exciting and achievement fulfilling project than soldering?

@lanx0003 not sure how one precludes the other? Also, the former will most likely involve the latter.

@devinplombier It is a system setup using a DSP processor like this: the digital signal from the source is processed (RC/EQ) in the DSP, converted into multiway (frequency band-specific) analog signals, then fed into amplifiers, amplified and connected to multiway drivers (tweeters, midranges, woofers, and subwoofers).

(taken from MiniDSP website)

I can’t imagine not having a deep understanding of science and engineering. How empty the mind

Only if you define "mind" exclusively in terms of the left brain!

@lanx0003 I am well familiar with the concept, and I am a fan actually. 

My point was that, unless your speakers are purpose-built, you're going to have to yank out the crossovers and direct-wire each driver to a dedicated pair of binding posts, and that will involve soldering.

Good, we are on the same page, @devinplombier. I thought you were referring to active and passive for the latter and former. Of course, soldering is involved, but my point is that building the whole system is a much more fun and fulfilling project than just the act of soldering itself.

BTW, I am thinking about buying a open baffle speakers with the passive xover module / box so I could conveniently swap and plug in the active part of cables. Do you have any suggestion?  something like these (the Duet15 but too pricy)

@lanx0003 are you saying you want to be able to swap your speakers between passive and active? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Funny thing, the crossovers in the Duet15 allow for... resistor rolling. That's a new one :)

@devinplombier Yes, simply de-solder the original passive crossover connection and solder new cables from amplifiers directly to each driver of both channels once the active speaker system is built. Spatial Sapphire older / discontinued models are cheaper but most of them are two-way.  I prefer three-way.

Also thinking about the Vandersteen 2Ce Signature—easier access to each driver compartment, although not as convenient as panel-style open baffle (OB), but relatively more affordable and good-sounding.

You are reminding me that I still have my cast iron CNC table which used to make intricately sculpted 3D chair parts for my woodworking business. Every time I walk by it in the shop I think how tempted I would be to make speaker cabinet parts with it though it would require that I renew my Surfcam license which ain’t cheap. Together with a brilliant mechanical engineer and close friend we built single purpose machines and fixtures for somewhat complex tasks that needed to be streamlined. He was also a "sparky," so I didn’t have to trouble my mind with the electronics; but now I wish I had that skill set. At age 71 the signs are not propitious for undertaking that adventure, nor are they so for making speaker cabinets to sell. It would be fun though to muck about with cabinet designs on the computer and translate them to the CNC coding and just play around with it using higher end drivers, capacitors, etc. than my Cornwall 4’s have. The shop also has many thousands of board feet of high grade walnut and cherry that I sawed from veneer logs on my portable band mill way back in the day and then dried in a DIY kiln, so there would be no challenges there.

I am afraid though that I am now too old to get frisky enough for such a revival and may just be better off learning the intricacies of electronics and stay with the part of the hobby that does not require heavy lifting.

On the contrary, the beauty of a cohesive understanding stimulates both hemispheres. "Science is the poetry of reality.” – Richard Dawkins. 

Only if you define "mind" exclusively in terms of the left brain!