These speakers have been a favourite of mine for ages. I got them over a decade ago second hand for $600. Given they are now at least 12 years old and probably more I decided to replace the capacitors in them. As stock they are KSC 50V non polar electrolytics.
Author Archives: ZOG
minor tweak : re-capping the JPW Sonata bookshelf speakers
I while back I got some JPW Sonata speakers from EBAY for $67 AUD. They are nice “entry level” English bookshelf speakers of reasonable quality…
Laurie Anderson is sitting on my bed singing to me this evening. Earlier Tom Waits popped in.
I’m not quite as impressed as the above reviewer, but they are very nice little speakers for the size and price, especially for acoustic music.
And the sealed enclosure means they mate very well with a subwoofer.
cheapowave speaker build, MK I
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.
Continue reading
simple build of an Elliot Sound Products P88(b) premplifier kit
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.
minor tweaks and some miscellaneous information regarding the ART SLA-1 amplifier
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.
ART SLA-1 with no volume control
Here I’ll document some minor tweaks and random info on the ART SLA-1 amplifier for future reference..
Alien USB DAC with Wanfai Lau passive pre kit
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.
Continue reading
minihub team on World Community Grid
Minihub team on WORLDCOMMUNITYGRID.ORG
World Community Grid’s mission is to create the world’s largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.
Inside the Behringer MS20 20 watt stereo near field monitor: reviewed and dismantled
I have had a pair of Behringer MS20 monitors speakers. I’ve had them for a about 6 months or so. They have a fairly thin, but detailed sound for the price point. One thing with them is a good mix sounds VERY good, while a bad mix, or a badly encoded mp3, sounds woeful. I would ot call them mega accurate, but they do seem to show up bad mixes very well.
Note that I dont use these for writing music on, mainly just general music listening.. in fact more as a high end set of 2:1 PC speakers than anything, which they are great for.
TX105 stereo input switcher from Jaycar
Well here is the guts of a TX105 model RCA stereo input switcher from Jaycar.. minimal “audiophile” pre-amp goodness (and shag pile carpet) at it’s cheapest:
Though not on the Jaycar web site any more they still appear to be in stock in the shops – the manufucturer Parada Company of Hong Kong also has a page on them.
Inside the Behringer UCA-202 USB sound card
Well, in a previous blog post on the ZOG blog I noted the Behringer UCA-202 USB sound card works fine with Linux and has quite good sound for the price point. After using it for a while quite happily, I got curious and opened it up to see what is inside. Essentially, not a lot but you can see the guts of the system is pretty much the Burr Brown PCM2902E chip.
Top of the board:
Bottom of the board: