My current bedroom corner

R

Roumelio

Active Member
The space I'm allowed to occupy at the moment. Not the space I want to occupy but anyway, it's the space I currently have. Currently pictured. Mostly at $0 cost neutral to me so far with bits and pieces I've scavenged from previous setups here. It doesn't look like much but most of the capability is hidden within the facts.

The Apple TV takes over all of the digital communication if I really want to play a CD or listen to Spotify. Having a decent subwoofer actually masks the small size of the Wharfedales which have a surprising dynamic range for their size.

On top:

Onkyo TX-SR602.
Technics SL-D2.
Wharfedale Modus Vivendi 2 way Cubes (17 kHz - 100hz) 87 dB sensitivity stated 75watt @6 ohm. But I do doubt that.
Focal Spirit headphones.

Not pictured/under desk:

Apple TV3.
Onkyo SKW-320 dual 8inch subwoofer (25Hz - 200Hz) 100watt @6ohm
Behringer PP400 preamp.
Macbook Pro 13."

On the way:

Ortofon OM-10 stylus/cartridge.


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I am enjoying this, but its sparked a bug where I am starting to spend money on vinyl and parts for my turntable I should be spending on other things first. It's the habit though. Once you start actually building something you start to also think about how you can improve upon what you're building at the same time. Eventually I'll probably end up buying a better preamp, or borrowing one of the many vintage receivers that my dad has hoarded away. Being in his 60s now he's had a lot longer to start hoarding vintage audio equipment than I have.

To be honest this unit started its life as a 5.1 receiver. It's not the perfect base for what I want to do because it doesn't have a phono stage. But it will make do until I really get the bug and swap in something more suitable.
 
Choose a wood stain color that you like, and then I'd suggest a spray on "varnish" - I think they are usually urethane based. You can use that on the inside as well as the outside, but it's hard to spray down inside a cylinder. Spray gives you less brush streaks or bubbles in the finish. You can get glossy or satin finishes.

That's a heck of a big power unit to run through those speakers, but I'd bet it works fine with the pre-amp to feed the TT through. Sounds like the price was right! Subwoofers really do help small speakers fill a room - just have to pay attention to getting the balance right.

Kind of an odd corner, isn't it? Some kind of alcove or a dormer?
 
It's an alcove which lets me get away with what I'm doing without taking up the precious space of "other parties" in the room. I can have my corner, you see?

It's a heck of an amplifier off the top of my head I believe its somewhere in the 85watt RMS range per channel but, you can't really "under power" speakers and at the same time with high efficiency speakers rated at 87db you also want an efficient source of power to run them... so... Efficiency is the order of the day and it came to being "it is what it is," and I was "allowed" to build a bedroom Hi-Fi system and these were some of the components I had left laying around at the time... So I built this to what it is now.

The subwoofer does help and the other good thing with a modern amplifier is that you can use a passive crossover so that you can tune the bass appropriately for the rest of the system which really does make the whole concept together sound pretty damn good even for the person that is more discerning about sound quality. The Woofer is an Onkyo so its quite good.

The drivers are Wharfedales, so although they are component cubes you could have picked up off the shelf, they're not just the basic slap and dash you would walk out of your Hi-Fi shop with... Such as a basic 5.1 satellite or worse "sound bar." They are also component speakers after all, the tweeter on top is not just for show.

I was looking at that new wood stain that actually comes in a spray can. The last time I tried to paint something with a wood stain I ended up with runs. I can manage a spray can though so I may well go down that route with something that will look nicer in the long run. The inside of what I'm building doesn't matter as much as the outside, really the whole purpose if I'm going to sand fill them is to stop wood rot from occurring. its more so the outside which matters most and I think I can manage that with a spray can, I just never managed the paint brush thing going through school and doing woodwork.
 
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Well, its a start. I destacked my turntable today and moved things around. I want to get the layout a bit nicer, but that's a process of finding the right bits and pieces to make it nicer. I need to get a new desk to be honest, but this will do for now
 
Bits and pieces, and bits and pieces, and pieces, and bits and pieces:

Apparently a half inch end cap and some non-scuff, no-movement furniture pads can make for some useful gear. I picked up a set of four today. The pads were about the same diameter as the thread hole on the PVC cap. I'm testing this out at the moment, I will work out a better way to securely fasten them eventually but probably just double sided tape so they can come back off, so this so far is just a test run. What are they?

The ultimate cheapskates isolation pads:

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The half-inch end cap came from the plumbing section of my local hardware/DIY store. You can probably find them at your local Bunnings/Home Depot/Homebase/Whatever. What I then did is grabbed some cotton wool buds and proceeded to filled the hole in the middle of the end cap. If it's good enough to have wool insulation in your roof its good enough for my end cap right? After that I super glued the foot on on the bottom of it. You can get the sorbothane ones from the same place you'll likely find the stick on wall hooks, framing hooks and other things such as this.

As a result of my efforts I now have four isolation pads that cost all of around $8. They didn't break the bank and probably sonically as good as anything else. I've also now isolated my turntable from my desk. Skill requirement? 3/10. Just remember not to super glue your fingers together while you're working. They may not come back apart afterwards.

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That's what its about. My prime listening space in bed is about 4feet apart so its well accounted for. I will have it fully optimised by the middle of the week. I'm just waiting on a few more things. Then I can think about where to from next. A better preamp would be high on my agenda if I'm going to get more serious with this. I want to keep the receiver in the current setup so that I don't have to worry about messing about with passive crossovers.

The aim is to keep everything pretty much as is in terms of keeping the modern equipment out of sight and out of mind. my only gripe at the moment is that the receiver sits about 6inches higher than the turntable which is causing my OCD to kick in. I need to get myself a butchers block or something to sit my table on to fix that issue also. Less is more though. I think I'm just going to have to put the dust cover back on for now so I don't drive myself crazy with OCD.

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I was a little bored today so this happened.

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following by this happening

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and then this happened.

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About the specification of this "thing" then, what Behringer says:

Input stage:

Type RCA connector
Impedance approx. 47 kΩ
Max. input level -23.5 dBV @ 1kHz

Output stage:

Type RCA and ¼" TRS,
stereo connectors
Impedance approx. 50 Ω
Max. output level +11.5 dBV @ 1 kHz

System:

Frequency response RIAA
THD 0.06% typ. @ -40 dBu/1 kHz
Gain 35 dB
Signal-to-noise ratio 68 dBu @ 0 dBu, A-weighted
Input sensitivity 5.3 mV @ 1 kHz

It's very Chinese inside. But the build quality is surprisingly not bad. I couldn't actually build something better myself for the money and overall the wiring seems to be of a high standard with nothing unusual looking from a circuitry specification. Nothing on the PCB says its explicitly cheap. Inside we find V4580 opamp, Behringer uses it in this and other slightly more expensive models. The amp is not the greatest piece of hardware you can get your hands on. For the money I would call it OK if you just have a turntable on your desk and you want to see that it functions as per specifications.

There are better things available but you jump up to $100 and then many hundreds of dollars more to get to something that I would truly call better in all senses of the word. It does what it says in the specifications so no real complaints on my behalf.

As a conclusion:

+ Will not electrocute you or set your house on fire.
+ Price (everyone can afford this) at $30
+ Size (yes, it's very small)
+ RIAA compliance
+ Value (You get more than you'd expect for your money)
- Low output level.
- Slightly thin sound.
- No power or on/off toggle switches, its either on or unplugged.
- Does not come with any cables other than the power brick.
 
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Out with the old in with the new. I've decided to ditch the AVR it has more Watts than a small family heater, and its just not really the right thing to go next to a vintage turntable. I'm overhauling everything as we speak. Some surprises to come and I'll let you all know how I go in the next couple of days. I have another amplifier but I can't spill the beans on exactly what yet.
 
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Rogers BBC Export monitors. Late 1970s model with the British Dalesford drivers. I had to buy a replacement Dalesford driver though which cost me $100. But where else do you find a vintage set of speakers for under $100? Especially vintage English studio monitors.

They'd been in storage after typical mixing duties in his studio a driver failed. I managed to find a like for like replacement on fleebay/crackbaby. I will have a fully restored set of £1000 reference monitors on my desk soon (or that's the going rate on fleebay.) They're an interesting speaker design with a poly cone which is something you don't generally see from speakers in the 1970s dominated by paper cones.

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The biggest problem with these guys is that they don't go particularly low...

Overall Frequency Response: 40 - 25,000 Hz
Power handling capacity: 35 watts, speech and music
Impedance: suitable for 8 - 16 Ω matching amplifiers

Although I'll leave leave the bass extension to the Onkyo drivers. Of which there is two of them, and they're 8inch a piece which should do fine. They go pretty high though, so well, it's the limits of physics. You can either have a really good full range speaker that does 40 - 25,000 Hz, or you can have maybe one instead that does 20 - 16,000hz but not both at the same time unless you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money.


Anyway, with my Onkyo driver. I'll just have to set the crossover at 40hz. Easy done, there is a passive crossover built into my sub, the fun part is tuning it by ear and then tuning it so the neighbours don't complain. It goes quite loud. Being an Onkyo its actually quite a musical subwoofer also with full extension. It's hard to get it exactly right sometimes.

Frequency response: 25Hz - 200Hz

Power rating: 100W @6ohm.

I don't really need to get down below 25hz anymore, as I have changed from this originally being 5.1 gear to finding a good happy medium for listening to stereophile music. I'm more worried at this point about getting a good wide extension which is what this sub woofer delivers. and I'm not going to get a full extension down to 16hz in a 6foot bedroom anyway, save for using headphones. But, I've got the headphones covered also anyway.

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It will be in due course, I still have to wait for them to arrive. I have another thing to add in also. I'm currently rebuilding a National Panasonic SA-420 for PHONO duties... Possibly one of the better PHONO stages that you can get for the money. It's in the shop also at the moment getting a recap. So... Much ado about waiting games. But when you are doing things with next to no money good things have to wait.

Unfortunately recapping is beyond my ability so I had to find a suitable technician to do that.
 
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So I found a photo I didn't realise I took. I've had this amp out before at a certain point. It's also a freebie. It needs to be recapped though. I'm not sure what's wrong with it at the moment. It works, but the electrolytics on one of the amp stages is not playing as it should. It's a bit spotty. But I like the mix of silver and black face.

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So this just happened anyway. I've been looking for a valve amplifier for a few months now and I found a genuine barn find one owner, Pioneer SA-400. The guy who owned it before me was 80 years old. It was never pushed hard in its life and the guy listened to classical music.
 
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Pioneer SA-400 11watt per channel. Circa 1967 3x12AX7 4x6BM8s. Quite a complex little amplification stage, this time round I did spend some money. But what do they say. Third time is a charm? Yes that. These are a really charming little amp with enough power for even some bigger spaces let alone the space I intend to place this amp in. Some remodeling will be required. It's pretty much watch this space at the moment.

Where am I right now? Complete ground up rebuild. Give me a month or so... I'm still waiting for my speaker to come from England.

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