Time for another Austin meet! (1 Viewer)

[Mark Hayenga]

Well, now we know the "kid's" favorite speaker manufacturer!

Actually, I just picked B&W because they're big and well established. As for my true fav, you'll have to email me about that - don't want to post it to the forums
Seriously, it has to be Audio Physic (http://www.immediasound.com/AudioPhysic.html). Not because I've ever heard them (I haven't) or think they're good (no idea), but because I can respect their thinking - absolutely NO rhyme or reason to their product line - it looks like some speakerbuilder was too busy thinking if he 'could' and not if he 'should'. My type of company.
Thinking along those lines, I'm presently planning for my senior EE design project to be... (drumroll).... active 3-way floorstanders with DSP crossovers. It's scary how close I can get to it (from a knowledge standpoint) today. I'm going to try and get my potential senior lab partner to the meet (Blake, he's specializing in DSP/telecom). If we can get Matlab installed on Jonathan's computer we could even do a little DSP primer about IIR, FIR filter basics and potential audio apps.
I think saying Thomas and I got off on the wrong foot is a fair (if nice) way of putting it. I'm sure my ego had a fair amount to do with that too. I'll be interested to hear what he had to say at the meet (can't garauntee I'll agree, though)

 

[Evelio Figueroa]

Y'all have realy upset me this time. I live an hour from your city..wich is 1/3 the size..and sounds like your going to have a great "meeting"...while I...in a city of a million cant even get one response? Sad...so sad

Yes, it would be nice if San Antonio had a meeting of its own. :frowning:

 

[Steve Stogel]

Hey, Thomas and Evelio, as Thomas pointed out, San Antonio is only an hour away. I don't think the Austinites would mind a visit from any San Antonians (or San Antonioites?). Of course, I've never been to one, so I could be speaking out of line .
Steve

 

[Evelio Figueroa]

Hey, Thomas and Evelio, as Thomas pointed out, San Antonio is only an hour away. I don't think the Austinites would mind a visit from any San Antonians (or San Antonioites?). Of course, I've never been to one, so I could be speaking out of line

Actually, Austin is more than an hour away. It depends on the time of day. With all that construction on IH35 and the rush hour traffic, you're looking at almost a 2 hour drive.
I sometimes drive up there in a tanker to haul fuel for the 7-11's up there. (Sure wish they stayed in San Antonio.)
I also noticed the meet will be on a weekend. I'm on a rotating schedule and I won't be able to make this one. I won't see a weekend off for more than a month. :frowning: Maybe next time.

 

[Colin Dunn]

I just sent directions to the first bunch of people to RSVP. If you're planning on coming to the meet, please E-mail Jonathan Atkins or myself to get directions to his place.

We'll be getting started around 1:00PM on Saturday, March 16.

 

[Scott Oliver]

Some questions:

How many people do we have attending thus far, meaning those that have rsvp'd?

Are we going to have enough seating? It sounds like this meet will be somewhat seminar like, and with what looks to be a large amount of attendees should we plan to bring a portable chair for ourselves along with BYOA.

What amps will be on hand to power the demo speakers?

What does it take to get your speaker's frequency response and all of that measured? Must the speaker be playing, thus in need of an amp, and the results then measured with a microphone?

Does anyone have any DIY amps or preamps? I have seen speakers and cable mentioned, but nothing of the these other two vital links in the audio chain.

Should we plan sometype of an agenda for this meet?

For example, we could start with some listening sessions of a couple speakers, then measure their response curve's etc.

Follow this up with maybe a step by step explanation of putting a loudspeaker together. Jonathan could talk about cabinet design. Mark could then talk about matching the proper drivers with the cabinet. Then someone talk about the crossover and internal wiring side of things, and finally Hank could cover finishing the cabinet with stains and laminates.

If we threw in a hands on demonstration of how to solder that would be really nice as well.

Basically, I would love to attend this meet and come away with at least enough courage and knowledge to attempt putting together a speaker kit by myself.

 

[ScottHinson]

Hey Scott,

Okay, let's see if I can answer all of these questions...

1. Yes, it may very well be necessary for people to bring a chair with them. Jonathan doesn't have all that many (and neither do I).

2. We will have several receivers, a Hafler TA-1100, and a Mackie M1400i at the very least. If you have an amplifier or source equipment you'd like to bring, by all means bring it!

3. The measurement system is Liberty Audiosuite. We should have a system working and present. The equipment needed is an amplifier (the above mentioned Hafler works GREAT) a microphone and a signal conditioning box. (Mark are you still bringing yours?) The test signal is a combination of gated sine waves and pseudo random noise generated by a gold code or Maximum Length Sequence (MLS) generator internal to the program.

4. If Mark wants to talk about driver matching he's more than welcome. I'll tell you this now though...it's as much a matter of experience as it is theoretical knowledge. For instance, I've worked with woofers and mids from Audax, Seas, Vifa, Peerless, Focal, Hi-Vi and Adire. I've worked with tweeters from Seas, Vifa, Morel, and Stryke. After a while you gain a sense of what drivers will work with each other and what won't. Ocasionally you'll get stumped...but it gets less often as time goes on.

5. As someone who solders surface mount parts on a daily basis and speaker parts almost every weekend, I can run through a basic soldering demonstration if desired. So a kit shouldn't be a problem.

Does that cover it all?

Scott Hinson

 

[Colin Dunn]

Everyone who RSVPed should have received directions to the meet by now. If you did RSVP and haven't gotten directions yet, please let me know and I'll re-send it. That happened to at least one person, but I may have E-mailed an old address.

 

[Mark Hayenga]

Let's just start a list of rooms (to figure out equipment needs) and projects/demonstrations. Jonathan and I talked about this last time so I'll go ahead and post what we started talking about, but definitely need to leave final say on this up to J (since it's his place and all )
ROOMS:
Main living room - 2ch setup. I can provide Adcom 555mkII for amp, still need 2ch Pre and Source (CDP).
Upstairs Loft - 2/5?ch setup and Laud,Matlab+Projector. I can provide Projector,Laud computer + monitor + mic + input box. We'll need a Laptop to put Matlab on and plug into the Projector. Scott, I'll also need to borrow your mic stand and Hafler for the Laud setup (I'm not sure my HK is too great below 20Hz if we want to do any subwoofer T/S params). Also a DMM might be good for measuring DCR's (my Laud seems to consistently get DCR 0.2-0.3ohms too high.... stupid contact resistance).
Upstairs Computer Room - LspCAD Pro Demo + nearfield setup (need to talk to Jonathan about what's needed here)
Downstairs Bedroom - (also totally up to Jonathan what goes here).
DEOMONSTRATIONS:
Soldering - I'll have the boards built (but not wired) for the Stryke MTM's by the 16th. We can solder those up and listen to them both as a soldering demo and just to have two more speakers I think Scott is probably the best among us at soldering.
Room Acoustics - This one's up to Scott and Jonathan.
Computer-based audio measurements - This one is Scott's since he knows Laud best (don't fry my card ).
Crossover design - This will probably be REAL informal since I'm sure we'll all want to jump in on it.
Cabinet finishing - HANK!
DSP Filter Demo w/Matlab: Myself and my partner-in-crime Blake Dumas. IIR, FIR Filters, Z-plane poles and zeroes, frequency response, phase response, impulse response.
I also plan on bringing as many drivers from around here as I can round up (Tempest, Shiva, Seas Excels, Morel tweets, etc). Since there's a couple guys here contemplating DIY we might as well drag along what we have so they can start pondering future projects....

 

[Jonathan DA]

Some room details:
Main living room (17x24, vaulted ceiling): This is a perfect home theater room, unfortunately I decide to put a pool table in it! So basically all we have room for down there is a two channel setup with the speakers flanking the pool table. It'll look weird but it should sound fine. If the pool table causes any reflections we can pile some blankets over it to absorb them. Mark's Adcom can go here, need a cd player and preamp. I think Scott can bring an active crossover and a sub amp.
Loft (11x17x8, open rear wall): Good imaging for such a narrow room, finicky bass response. We can setup a 5.1 system here as well as two two-channel setups, one against the wall, one against the open-air railing. Flexible space. I can provide a 5.1 receiver and a dvd changer. An extra amp would be helpful for sub duty.
Computer room (10x13x8): Small room, but good acoustics for the size. A two-channel setup here would work fine in a quasi-near field setup. I can provide a receiver and cd player.
Downstairs bedroom (12x16x8): Another option for a theater setup. Good bass, but there's a slap echo I don't have under control. I don't have enough equipment to do anything with this room, so we'll need a source and some amplification.
One thing I know we need are SPEAKER STANDS! If anyone is willing to bring a pair or two, please do. Otherwise we may be using other speakers as stands for the ones currently in use.
Jonathan

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Hi guys - okay, I'll bring a piece of veneer and MDF - may contact cement 'em before hand. Also, Danish oil and other supplies so I can demo the labor-intensive finish process. I can bring a couple of quick and dirty stands, but we should really have some solid, heavy spiked stands. Let me know a day before if you haven't come up with good stands.

 

[Christopher Collins]

Hello all. Im in the Austin area and would like to be added to the list for future events. I will be out of town next weekend so I can’t make this meet. I am really bummed too; sounds like you guys are going to have a blast...
I have access to allot of computer hardware, laptops too, for future meets. I'll also fix pretty much anything computer related, help you recover from viruses, or do performance tuning for beer . So in the future if anyone needs any computer help, parts installed etc., just drop me a line and Ill help ya out. If you have OS or software questions I can usually answer those in a quick email. I would also be happy to do a HTPC build / setup demo at the next meet if anyone is interested.

 

[Colin Dunn]

Christopher -

I'll add you to my mailing list right now. Too bad you can't make this meet, but we'll have another one a month or two later...

Everyone -

JeffTodd and Rodney McNeel RSVPed in the last couple of days. Looks like this will be the biggest HTF meet yet! Our meet also has been mentioned over on the AVS Forum, though no one who hangs out there (and not here) has contacted me yet...

 

[Steve Stogel]

I may drag my brother-in-law with me as well, so it's actually one more than we're thinking .
Steve

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Hey guys, Danny Richie (GR Research) sent me a note - he's planning to drive down for the meet AND he will "...bring some speakers" Looks like I need to buy a couple of folding camp chairs and bring 'em along. This is going to be major fun!

 

[Jeff Blair]

I might have to bring my speaker stands for all of the speakers we are going to have. This is going to be fun.

 

[Scott Oliver]

That is great news that Danny Richie will be coming, our club's first industry guest!

If you don't know anything about GR Research speakers, do a search on audio asylum. A lot of happy owners often talk about them there, known to be great bang for the buck speaker kits.

Along the line of speakers, my new JMR Offrande's are absolutley spectacular. I would love to bring them to the meet, but the things are just too much hefty to be lugging around.

I have listened to quite a few installations over the past couple of years at different stores, and I am truly in love for nothing else has put a smile so easily on my face. If anyone would like to hear the Reynaud's, feel free to contact me. Up and down their line, they are known for great timbral accuracy and musicality.

To the meet, I wil be bringing my H/K 5ch amp., a couple folding camp chairs and some good CD's. I might also unplug my Bag End Infrasub. Mark, do your computer frequency programs rate down to 8hz, I would be interesting to see if your program amps out a freq. response curve that matches what Bag End has plotted.

Lastly, we should definately talk about plans for the next meet after this one. Maybe that way we could work on getting another special guest or some type of demo setup.

Scott

P.S. Other Scott, thnaks for taking the time to answer all of my questions above.

 

[JeffTodd]

I don't have jack for equipment to provide for this meet, but I can offer chairs if needed. I have some of those plastic lawn furniture chairs. So if they are needed I will toss them in the truck along with the Shiner when I head over.

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Jeff: Please bring 'em. Some of us may not have vehicle space for chairs.

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

BTW, COLIN: be sure to bring your digital camera and spare batteries/memory cards!