The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I would consider myself somewhat of an audiophile. I highly value good sound in anything I'm doing. The Logitech X-530s are fantastic and great quality for PC gaming, but lack the power to really fill a room. I use two 100W sound reflectors, two 20W Panasonic thrusters, 2 Fisher 80W mids for the rear speakers, all powered quite adequately by a Yamaha R-10 130W stereo receiver. Would be willing to look for a more powerful setup but these fulfill my needs quite well

I have some rather large speaker boxes that need new drivers. I could stuff quite a bit into them

 

Well at least you have a decent amp in that R10 I can't really get behind you on the Thrusters or the Fishers, not that they are horrible but they aren't great from my point of view. I will say though that for today's audiophiles your system is OK and better then probably most of your friends if not all of them I would guess.

If you look at filling the old cabinets with some better drivers check out Parts Express. For Home audio drivers (SPL 84db range) look at Dayton Reference/Designer series, Tang Band, Peerless, HiVi, Dynavox, and Vifa. Morel can be OK but is expensive and tends to be a bit mushy for the money, they are also power eaters. Stay away from Goldwood, Aurum Cantus.

If you want better efficiency drivers (SPL 100+db) then look into the pro lines of drivers, for woofers/subs I tend to like Eminence, Dayton,B&C, BEYMA, JBL, Electra Voice (not made any more), and CIARE 12NDH-4. For compression drivers I like Selenium, B&C, JBL, EAW, and some Celestion. Ribbon transducers are also good for home audio drivers.

I'm building a 3-way system right now, 12in woofer, with a horn mid and horn tweeter in a bass reflex tower enclosure. The woofers are not as efficient as I need so I will be replacing them with a pro driver, you lose low end when you do that so I may add subs to the cabinets with a amplifier in the cabinet for the sub. However I can tune the pro woofers and may be able to get them down to a acceptable frequency.

 

The great trick to everything is that nearly every single piece is from a dumpster dive or previously damaged from friends. Like I've mentioned in previous posts, I hate seeing potentially useful equipment thrown away.

At the risk of seeming like the other braindead youth of this generation, I'd like to post a certain song as an example of my philosophy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes

I relate to the singer very well, as I highly enjoy turning others' trash into my new toys

The Panasonic Thrusters admittedly aren't great or even good speakers but I am able to use them to add mid-range, power, and especially voice reproduction which they do quite well. They came from a last minute rummage through a deceased relatives home.

The Fishers are from a friend who was moving out of a badly abused apartment, and wanted to throw away as much of their junk as possible. He cleared out and told me I could go scavenge whatever I wanted from the leftovers. They were buried in a brand new box in the back closet.They had barely been used as the wires had been wrenched from the back of them. Had to break the back of the cabinets open and re-solder the connections, but otherwise they work like new and sound quite decent.

The 100W Teac sound reflectors are a real gem. They came from a dumpster directly. The support stands were broken off entirely and they had a popped capacitor so they needed some major structural and minor electrical repair. It was worth it though as they sound damn fine. The current lack of a subwoofer is made up for by the power and clarity these provide. Really nice units.

The Yamaha R-10 was also a dumpster dive. It had a large capacitor blown in the power supply. Otherwise all it needed was some clean-up and functions like a spinning top. Very proud of this find. One of my first truly profitable electronics salvages at the young age of 16 It had belonged to a friend who passed away ad the family was just going to chuck it. I thought it was an excellent way to keep his memory alive. Many good memories listening to anything and everything through this unit. Video games, movies, music. It's all the sound I need.

Most subwoofers have the option of hooking up with this method:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57579269-47/how-to-hook-up-a-subwoofer-to-a-stereo-system/

I will be doing this in the not too distant future which will allow me to tune my receiver much differently and hopefully get MUCH better sound than I currently have. Most of my tuning goes into bringing out the low end.

The large cabinets are going to be a distant project. I'm going to clean them up, sand and refinish them, then do some research into getting the best sound possible out of them. I would like to use them to entirely replace the fronts and use the 100W reflectors as rear speakers, which is what they're intended for.

Also remember that proper speaker placement and tuning count for a lot more than equipment quality. I make this cheap setup embarrass much more expensive systems.

 

Indeed, moving back into a much smaller room where there isn't room to space the speakers properly has had a considerable detrimental impact on sound. I'm ashamed to say I'm much the polar opposite. When things break I usually don't have the time/patience to repair them, so they end up getting thrown away. Still, it's usually stuff like motherboards that I wouldn't have the skill to repair anyway. Not with my hands at least.

 

Sounds like christmas morning to me

 

Jeff,

Good job on retrieving audio gear of course the TEAC is going to be your gem of what you have. I use to do that too myself when I was younger and I still hold on to stuff for use like what you are doing. I am trying though to move away from being a pack rat as I just don't have the time, effort, or space to keep everything under the moon, but hey if you can it can pay off.

CAUTION: It's not a good idea to parallel your drivers unless you know what you are doing, you can damage your amp. Although the Yamaha R10 can handle 2 ohm loads that is an old receiver and it will put too much stress on the amp. Paralleling a sub will drop you down in that range as they typically are 4 ohms and I've known some to be 2 ohms. Plus you don't need to do that as your R10 has a PRE out for a sub or you can use Zone 3's terminals to drive a set (of 2 qty) subs.

I had your R10 receiver and actually gave it to a friend in 2004 if I remember correctly when I jumped up to my RX-V2400, the R10 still works great for my friend although I need to clean the volume POTs on it. I may be jumping up to the 3010 shortly here so I'll give him my 2400 which will be a big upgrade for him.

 

Not only is that spam... I think it's a quote from one of my own posts a couple years back. Not even kidding.

 

Ha ha, I've had spammers quote me word for word.

 

Pretty sure I have as well. Not sure what was quoted though...

 

No doubt he'll update his signature, to reflect his quota!

 

The one in the other thread is stranger. Still plainly spam, but...

 

The AMD thread? His english is lacking, but I'm not sure where you'd get that idea.

 

Well, it's the same guy, and think about it - he wants upgrade "advice" on that build - which is basically a list of the current typical 'top end build' using AMD hardware.
You wouldn't go anywhere from there really - and more to the point, the system is likely to have only very recently been built (if it does in fact exist in the first place). Were it a different username, I'd call them out on why they want it upgrading so soon. Given it's the same username as our spammer here? I think it's best just to ignore it, that's my personal opinion anyway.

 

Ah man! Usually I notice things like that. Thanks for pointing that out LOL! :S

 

True, I had a bit of a struggle with that one as well. The post in the AMD thread could almost be legit.

 

man the mother of all Windows update today huh! took 20 mins