MINIRIG

Goals:

Learn about making speakers by building some 2 way speakers using some low cost drivers using ideas borrowed from the AudioKarma Econowave project. And make some full sounding floor standing speakers by virtue of big cabinets and large drivers.
Results:

BASS!!

And knowing a hell of a lot more about speakers than I did 6 months ago. Thanks to Col for all the help and hints in getting this off the ground.
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I got one of these kits from Col for the  Elliot Sound Products Project88 preamp and soldered it up.. a relatively easy build after the ALIEN DAC.

Definately has a bit of the DIY kit feel about the unit, but, it sounds great.

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Been playing around with a couple of new SiliconChip kits.  The Multi-Function Active Filter KC4580 and the Bridge Adapter for Stereo Amps KC4569.

After a friend mentioned that he wanted to run his subs using his amps in bridge mode I thought I would try it myself. This is what I built (click pic).

A quick and simple Sure Electronics 2 X 100W amp build using an old 1RU rack case and a laptop power supply.

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I have had an ART SLA-1 (aka the Unika MT1000) amplifier for nearly two years now.. I got it after Col showed me it was heaps better at driving my Alesis Monitor One speakers than my old faithful Rotel 30 watt amp. This is not that the Rotel was a bad amplifier, it just didn’t have the headroom to drive the relatively low efficiency Alesis speakers, they really do need a 100W power amp to get the best from them.

Here I’ll document some minor tweaks and random info on the ART SLA-1 amplifier for future reference..

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Well recently I made an Alien Dac kit purchased from Glass Jar Audio. This was to free up my Behringer USB sound cards for use in my laptop with MIXXX.

In short: the kit works and sounds amazing!.. Though the purity of it’s signal path (no output op amp to buffer) means it’s a lot quiter than my other sound cards. Interesting that playing my wife one of her favourite tracks she was asking about an instrument (snare drum brush) she hadn’t heard in the mix before.
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Very basic, quick build TA2022 amp.

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You can get a Lepai TA2020 amp off Ebay very cheaply. They sound good straight out of the box but to get the full potential a little hot rodding goes along way

Marked on the PCB are all the component values. When I started to look at the components they didn’t match up, i began measuring with my multimeter… Then I started replacing things……… (click pic).

Finally finished my TA3020. A few hurdles in the build. Had some grounding issues and managed to drill through one of the electrolytic capacitors Is all done and powering my compression drivers now in my tri-amp system, sounding sweet as. (clic pic)

It’s not often I get to put up some photos of someone elses DIY project but when I saw this my first thought was “Thats a gawd damn Minirig if I have ever seen one!” Presenting the Buckapound BoomBox.(click pic)