7 Jan
2012
7 Jan
'12
1:34 p.m.
On Sat, 2012-01-07 at 12:00 +0000,
linux-audio-user-request(a)lists.linuxaudio.org wrote:
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:03:22 -0500
From: Al Thompson <althompson58(a)gmail.com>
On 01/06/2012 12:17 PM, Brendan Jones wrote:
> I was thinking of rolling my own studio monitors
> is it possible to do this oneself?
It's "possible." I wouldn't really
recommend it though.
+1 I also won't recommend to do it. It's time consuming and costs lot of
money, good luck and perhaps some knowledge.
OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of money, you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how people
from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1 microphone
is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is all you need.
You even don't need knowledge that much.
7 Jan
7 Jan
9:02 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 01:34:15PM +0100, Ralf Madorf wrote:
OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of money,
you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how people
from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1 microphone
is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is all you need.
You even don't need knowledge that much.
The last sentence made my day when reading it during lunch.
Sure, if you have plenty of money you can hire someone with the
required knowledge. And if you have plenty of time you can re-
invent and rediscover all the design theory, psycho-acoustics,
material science and measurement techniques accumulated over
the past 80 years or so, and everything else it takes to create
a good studio monitor or mic.
There are probably some good speaker designs available on the
net, and building one of those may be a rewarding exercise.
But even in that case you're just doing maybe 5% of the work,
the rest has been done by the designers of the components you
use. It's like building your own car using an existing engine,
gearbox, etc. and just putting in your own pair of seats and
adding a layer of paint. Nice if you enjoy doing that, but a
waste of time otherwise.
Ciao,
--
FA
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal, die Sonne scheint - ein Glitzerstrahl.
9:44 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 1/7/12, Fons Adriaensen <fons(a)linuxaudio.org> wrote:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 01:34:15PM +0100, Ralf Madorf
wrote:
Fons' comment got me looking - and I found this:
http://www.speakerbuilding.com/content/1022/index.php
Could be what you are looking for?
James
OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of
money, you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how people
from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1 microphone
is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is all you need.
You even don't need knowledge that much.
The last sentence made my day when reading it during lunch.
Sure, if you have plenty of money you can hire someone with the
required knowledge. And if you have plenty of time you can re-
invent and rediscover all the design theory, psycho-acoustics,
material science and measurement techniques accumulated over
the past 80 years or so, and everything else it takes to create
a good studio monitor or mic.
There are probably some good speaker designs available on the
net, and building one of those may be a rewarding exercise.
But even in that case you're just doing maybe 5% of the work,
the rest has been done by the designers of the components you
use. It's like building your own car using an existing engine,
gearbox, etc. and just putting in your own pair of seats and
adding a layer of paint. Nice if you enjoy doing that, but a
waste of time otherwise. 
8 Jan
8 Jan
2:01 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 01/07/2012 09:44 PM, James Stone wrote:
Fons' comment got me looking - and I found this:
http://www.speakerbuilding.com/content/1022/index.php
Could be what you are looking for?
James
That looks really interesting - thanks !
4:51 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 8 January 2012 13:01, Brendan Jones <brendan.jones.it(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
http://www.speakerbuilding.com/content/1022/index.php
> Could be what you are looking for?
Sometimes a decent budget off-the-shelf
monitor will actually save you
money and giev you decent performance, especially if you can get a
deal from somewhere or a well-looked-after 2nd hand one. My brother
has a pair of Genelecs and for one of his friends he was ordering a
B-stock Alesis M1 510s (effectively they were as good as new but the
box was damaged). They arrived a day late and missed him flying out to
his friend and meanwhile his friend got fed up from waiting and got
himself something else for more and I ended up with the monitors and I
have been using them since '07 pretty happily. My ears can't hear the
difference between these £100 monitors and the ~£1000 Genelecs (on the
other hand I spent my youth playing guitar in very loud bands so Mitra
knows how much I lost the edge of my hearing by now). On the other
hand they are perfectly usable and have a decent writeup in SoS
(http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug06/articles/alesism1.htm).
Even though I like the DIY approach, I am hugely sceptical about all
of these pseudo-scientific claims most of the builders have.
7 Jan
7 Jan
9:49 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Saturday, January 07, 2012 03:26:46 PM Fons Adriaensen did opine:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 01:34:15PM +0100, Ralf Madorf
wrote:
Fons, are you perchance old enough to remember the "Karlson" speaker
cabinet designs from back in the late 50's?
This was an attempt to take the Electrovoice corner horn and fold it all up
into a more normal looking box that actually took nearly 2 sheets of 3/4"
plywood to build. As a late teenager I built the 12" sized version of it,
and while I can't say it didn't "color" the sound, the thing I can
recall
was that it was extremely efficient with a University 6201 12" coax speaker
in it. 5 watts could loosen the putty in the rooms windows. The 12" sized
version also seemed to have an LF cutoff in the 45hz range but that was
probably the speakers blame as it cone wasn't exactly softly suspended.
If any of those survive today, what do the experts think of them now,
nearly 60 years later?
Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
-- Dylan Thomas
OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of
money, you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how
people from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1
microphone is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is
all you need. You even don't need knowledge that much.
The last sentence made my day when reading it during lunch.
Sure, if you have plenty of money you can hire someone with the
required knowledge. And if you have plenty of time you can re-
invent and rediscover all the design theory, psycho-acoustics,
material science and measurement techniques accumulated over
the past 80 years or so, and everything else it takes to create
a good studio monitor or mic.
There are probably some good speaker designs available on the
net, and building one of those may be a rewarding exercise.
But even in that case you're just doing maybe 5% of the work,
the rest has been done by the designers of the components you
use. It's like building your own car using an existing engine,
gearbox, etc. and just putting in your own pair of seats and
adding a layer of paint. Nice if you enjoy doing that, but a
waste of time otherwise.
Ciao,
10:09 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 03:49:25PM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
Fons, are you perchance old enough to remember the
"Karlson" speaker
cabinet designs from back in the late 50's?
No :-) During the very late 50s I was playing my first notes
on the piano and my father introduced me to the existence of
prime numbers.
But some time in the late 70s, together with my prof of audio
technology at the Brussels broadcasting and media academy, I
constructed some very large linear horns using glass fibre
sheets and epoxy resin. One day we were testing outdoors using
sine sweeps and actually destroyed a window of a neighbour at
25 meters distance. It was a big floor to ceiling one which
turned out to be quite expensive :-)
Ciao,
--
FA
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal, die Sonne scheint - ein Glitzerstrahl.
8 Jan
8 Jan
2:37 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Saturday, January 07, 2012 08:07:12 PM Fons Adriaensen did opine:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 03:49:25PM -0500, gene heskett
wrote:
This was a few years after my mother gave up on teaching me how to play the
piano, mainly because I have such short fingered but wide hands (I can't
reach an octave on a std keyboard, but it takes an XXXL glove to be able to
get into it, with nominally 1.5" of surplus, empty finger sticking out &
getting in the way) plus I was bored out of my skull at the time, far more
interested in things electronic.
Fons, are you perchance old enough to remember
the "Karlson" speaker
cabinet designs from back in the late 50's?
No :-) During the very late 50s I was playing my first notes
on the piano and my father introduced me to the existence of
prime numbers. But some time in the late 70s, together with my prof
of audio
technology at the Brussels broadcasting and media academy, I
constructed some very large linear horns using glass fibre
sheets and epoxy resin. One day we were testing outdoors using
sine sweeps and actually destroyed a window of a neighbour at
25 meters distance. It was a big floor to ceiling one which
turned out to be quite expensive :-)
Ciao,
I think by now its safe to ROTF & L? It sure makes an interesting story to
tell ones great grandchildren as they come of age in a world we never
imagined... ;-)
One fellow who worked at Electrovoice in Chicago relates the story that
they were testing a new PA driver horn at the factory, had it hung on the
corner of the building at 222 Hart-Rey Avenue there in Chi-town, by having
someone with a decent voice sitting inside the room behind the speaker,
reading the morning paper. The person telling the story said he was still
3 blocks away, walking to work when the el train passed above & 50 feet in
front of him. That was when he understood how loud that single PA horn
really was, because he could not hear the el's passing, just the guy
reading the paper.
One of my employees at the tv station once cast in concrete, his version of
the Altec Voice of the Theater cabinet. Made 2 of them at the time. Today
they look something like 50 miles of bad road behind a runaway 4 horse
team, it takes a full set of pall-bearers to get them into a half-ton
pickup & one of them is all the pickup can carry at a time, but 35 years
later they still sound at least as good as the Voices did in their heyday.
He guesses they probably have logged at least 10k miles in the back of a
pickup & never been more than 75 miles from home.
Personally, I think we did a good job at doing decent sound reproduction 60
some years ago with nothing but a pair of KT-66's and some decent acoustic
engineering. We do it now in smaller boxes with phenomenal specs, but is
it really 'better'. Too subjective to make a blanket statement one way or
the other.
Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
Long life is in store for you.
5:32 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 01/07/2012 04:09 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
But some time in the late 70s, together with my prof of audio
technology at the Brussels broadcasting and media academy, I
constructed some very large linear horns using glass fibre
sheets and epoxy resin. One day we were testing outdoors using
You were making linear versions of the Levi cabinets?? How did they sound?
--
---
http://lateralforce.no-ip.org
My blog, with commentary on a variety of things, including audio,
mixing, equipment, etc, is at:
http://audioandmore.wordpress.com
Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch;
und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.'
- [Friedrich Nietzsche]
11:38 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 11:32:21PM -0500, Al Thompson wrote:
On 01/07/2012 04:09 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
They were not based on any existing cabinet design. Some time
before Wireless World (which was a great magazine at that time)
had published an article discussing the relative merits of
various horn profiles - exponential, catenary, hyperbolic -
and this had tickled my curiosity.
To build the horns, we first cut the profile in a piece of
plywood (hyperbolic IIRC), then used this to make a plaster
mould. This in turn was covered with several layers of the
glass fiber sheets and epoxy resin - a very messy affair.
They sounded very well, and were incredibly efficient.
Ciao,
--
FA
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal, die Sonne scheint - ein Glitzerstrahl.
But some time in the late 70s, together with my prof of audio
technology at the Brussels broadcasting and media academy, I
constructed some very large linear horns using glass fibre
sheets and epoxy resin. One day we were testing outdoors using
You were making linear versions of the Levi cabinets?? How did they sound? 
5:04 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
My understanding is that you actually only need .1 watt RMS for a sound to be audible ...
but could be wrong on that.
--
david
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
---- gene heskett <gheskett(a)wdtv.com> wrote:
On Saturday, January 07, 2012 03:26:46 PM Fons
Adriaensen did opine:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 01:34:15PM +0100, Ralf
Madorf wrote:
Fons, are you perchance old enough to remember the "Karlson" speaker
cabinet designs from back in the late 50's?
This was an attempt to take the Electrovoice corner horn and fold it all up
into a more normal looking box that actually took nearly 2 sheets of 3/4"
plywood to build. As a late teenager I built the 12" sized version of it,
and while I can't say it didn't "color" the sound, the thing I can
recall
was that it was extremely efficient with a University 6201 12" coax speaker
in it. 5 watts could loosen the putty in the rooms windows. The 12" sized
version also seemed to have an LF cutoff in the 45hz range but that was
probably the speakers blame as it cone wasn't exactly softly suspended.
If any of those survive today, what do the experts think of them now,
nearly 60 years later?
Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
-- Dylan Thomas
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of
money, you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how
people from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1
microphone is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is
all you need. You even don't need knowledge that much.
The last sentence made my day when reading it during lunch.
Sure, if you have plenty of money you can hire someone with the
required knowledge. And if you have plenty of time you can re-
invent and rediscover all the design theory, psycho-acoustics,
material science and measurement techniques accumulated over
the past 80 years or so, and everything else it takes to create
a good studio monitor or mic.
There are probably some good speaker designs available on the
net, and building one of those may be a rewarding exercise.
But even in that case you're just doing maybe 5% of the work,
the rest has been done by the designers of the components you
use. It's like building your own car using an existing engine,
gearbox, etc. and just putting in your own pair of seats and
adding a layer of paint. Nice if you enjoy doing that, but a
waste of time otherwise.
Ciao,
5:54 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 01/07/2012 11:04 PM, gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com wrote:
My understanding is that you actually only need .1
watt RMS for a sound to be audible ... but could be wrong on that.
Much less than that!! Consider that a Fender Champ is 4 watts, and if
it's CRANKED, is actually quite loud (louder than you can use in an
apartment, certainly). Exactly how loud it is depends on speaker
efficiency. Most guitar type speakers are typically 95dB @ 1W/1M. 10dB
less than that would take 1/10th the power, so .1W in that speaker would
be 85dB (at 1 meter).
11:17 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 04:04:38AM +0000, gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com wrote:
My understanding is that you actually only need .1
watt RMS for a sound to be audible ... but could be wrong on that.
Much less. If you have a 100% efficient speaker radiating equally
in all directions then 1 watt will produce an SPL of 109 dB at 1
meter distance.
Most speakers have very low efficiency. Assume 1%, that still means
89 dB at 1 meter.
Ciao,
--
FA
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal, die Sonne scheint - ein Glitzerstrahl.
11:31 a.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 01/08/2012 12:17 AM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 04:04:38AM +0000,
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com wrote:
Thanks. Wow!
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
My understanding is that you actually only need
.1 watt RMS for a
sound to be audible ... but could be wrong on that.
Much less. If you have a 100% efficient speaker radiating equally in
all directions then 1 watt will produce an SPL of 109 dB at 1 meter
distance.
Most speakers have very low efficiency. Assume 1%, that still means
89 dB at 1 meter.
1:58 p.m.
New subject: monitor specifications
On 01/07/2012 09:02 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 01:34:15PM +0100, Ralf Madorf
wrote:
Hmm, not very promising responses thus far. I guess, I was leaner
towards the latter part of your response Fons: mainly putting the
cabinets together and fitting with some good quality existing components.
Looks like I have some more research to do in the feasibility of this
or perhaps there are something more rewarding jobs I could get my wiz of
a father-in-law to help out with in the Studio...
thanks everyone for the replies, I'll keep looking ino this
Brendan
OTOH, if you've got much time and a lot of
money, you might build a
better monitor than there's on the market. Trail and error is how people
from rich families build some good pro-audio gear. The VM-1 microphone
is such an example. Patience and money in the beginning is all you need.
You even don't need knowledge that much.
The last sentence made my day when reading it during lunch.
Sure, if you have plenty of money you can hire someone with the
required knowledge. And if you have plenty of time you can re-
invent and rediscover all the design theory, psycho-acoustics,
material science and measurement techniques accumulated over
the past 80 years or so, and everything else it takes to create
a good studio monitor or mic.
There are probably some good speaker designs available on the
net, and building one of those may be a rewarding exercise.
But even in that case you're just doing maybe 5% of the work,
the rest has been done by the designers of the components you
use. It's like building your own car using an existing engine,
gearbox, etc. and just putting in your own pair of seats and
adding a layer of paint. Nice if you enjoy doing that, but a
waste of time otherwise.
Ciao,
4777
days inactive
4778
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
14 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Al Thompson -
Brendan Jones -
david -
Fons Adriaensen -
gene heskett -
gnome＠hawaii.rr.com
-
Hakan Koseoglu -
James Stone -
Ralf Madorf