MINIRIG

After quite a bit of work finishing the cabinets and the rack enclosures V8 makes it’s debut at the Sydney Road Festival (click pic for description of the system)

Also, there are some photos of the party here.

This is pretty much a “brain dump” of my Audiokarma posts on phase III of the Econowave project (now more likely to be called the big read speakers then “cheapowaves”)… post will get edited down over time, but if the article is disjointed it’s due to being a bunch of seperate posts appended together.

upgrading woofer in my econowaves : adding the Eminence Delta 12LFA and documenting the resultant crossover redesign.. plus some tweaks (more…)

I recently got a YuanJing brand low cost TDA8920 based board from ebay. This is a fairly basic low frills build but worth documenting for those interested.

I’d already wired up the case for my second ConnexElectronics TDA8920 board when I managed to fry the board. Out of curiousity I decided to check out this lower cost board that was going cheap cheap ($19USD + $9USD postage), as I could use the transformer I’d already mounted in the case as they are similar units.

This is the board on ebay:
TDA8920 Class D Amplifier board/ audio Power AMP 2X100W - eBay Power Amplifiers, Amplifiers, Home Audio, Electronics. (end time 19-Jul-10 02:14:45 AEST)

It has a smaller heatsink than the connex module, and smaller PSU 4700uF caps.

Initially it sounded OK, but not as good as the Connex module, quite a bit more grainy.. also interestingly it uses 5W power even when silent, and hence (with the smaller heatsink) runs a lot hotter.
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1.6kg, 100W per channel, Class-T with SMPS.

Just finished this amp that some may find interesting. I wanted to build a 19″ 1RU (rack unit) Class-D power amp that would be light and compact. Using the ConnexElectronic TA2022 amp module, the SMPS250 PSU and the speaker protection module. It was a bit fiddly as I had to cut 5mm off the heatsinks and replace all the big caps with 35mm ones. (click pic)

I recently got some Dick Smith Electronics A2667 bookshelf speakers cheapish ($20AUD) off Ebay. For a bit of fun I thought I’d see how much better I could make these low cost “made in china” (though not quite white van) speakers sound.

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I recently ordered one of these modules after being very impressed with the sound of an earlier version of this module I borrowed from Col. It’s an amp module using the Tripath TA3020 IC, which can do up to 110W at 8Ω, with max. 0.1% THD, though I’m more interested in the 50W per channel it can do with just 0.02% THD.

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An amazing concert. Very lucky to be able to see Orbital live in such a small venue.Iv’e put up a few photos taken by Bunny from the show and added a few extra of the Orbital live rig (click pic)

This one has been on the back burner for a while as Iv’e assembled it a few times and then discovered ground loops. Now all cured (click-pic)

Recently, I have been busy working on a new minirig PA which was going to be called v7 and was almost compleated as a 3 way active. Now Iv’e decided to skip v7 altogether and move straight to V8.

Minirig V8 will be a 4 way active. Over the Australia Day weekend I finished retro-fitting this pair of 4 way mono crossovers which will be at the heart of the system. (click pic)

After experimenting with various combos of crossover values, although the MK I cheapowave using the Pyle PDS221 compression driver sounded OK.. the high end was never really impressing me.
Note: this post continues on from cheapowave MK I postwhich documents building the cabinets etc

After reviewing the Econowave thread on Audiokarma yet again I ordered in a  Selenium D220Ti-8 from Parts Express in the USA. The shipping cost almost as much as the drivers themselves.. but although I could probably find a more than acceptable replacement from the P.Audio drivers from Cannon Online, I decided to go with a combination that already has shown so many good results for others, plus the hard yards on the crossover circuit has already been done by people with way more expertise than myself.

The Selenium drivers arrived, and the immediate impression is that they are bigger then the Pyles.

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