Well that certainly looks interesting. The design quality certainly looks like a whole new company making shit compared back to when I had their uh...shit I don't even remember what it was anymore. I'd try it if I was interested in individual unites anymore. Too much a damn mess with cables running all over. If I ever upgrade from my Peachtree I'm getting the Schiit Ragnarok. Being able to have a multi source dac + headphone amp + speaker amp all in one is just too damn convenient.
On another note, finally upgraded from the Sony A45 Walkman I'd been using forever.
Got the FiiO M11. Thing is absolutely awesome. Runs a dual DAC in it, dual sum cards, has just about every god damn bluetooth codec tech you can possibly need if you need it. Runs a semi custom Android OS so you're not stuck on the usual bullshit half assed music apps most of the manufactures make. So can finally use Power Amp on a DAP which I've been wanting for years. The recently got google play working on it so can run Bandcamp and shit on it too.
Dac on this thing pulls details out of the background that no other dac/amp I've used so far has done. Usually with everything else, including my peachtree, you can hear bass lines, but they always sound faint and like they're playing on a single string. This thing you can hear the different notes, can hear the different strings being used, you can actually distinguish the god damn bass lines for once.
Really digging that I don't have to break up img files anymore, this thing just reads them natively.
Managed to cut a deal with someone in Head-Fi for it so got it for damn near nothing after I sold the Sony.
I am planing on adding 2 speakers to my 5.1, just upgraded my receiver recently from my old Yamaha 5.1 to Denon 2700h which can support up to 7.2 setup.
I don't want more wires, but sadly the receiver doesn't support additional surround speakers to 7.1 wirelessly, only stereo speakers wirelessly.
I read there is adapters that reduce the number of wires, I am planing connecting the adapter to the surround speakers terminals and send the audio to the seround speakers.
Any setup that recommend doing what I need? Thanks.
"Fuck Denuvo"
Your personal opinions != the rest of the forum
Last edited by JackQ on Tue, 15th Dec 2020 21:38; edited 1 time in total
Oof. The only ones I'm aware of are for running subwoofers wirelessly.
Seems like it would still be messy unless you're going to run active speakers. Which is certainly doable.
But if you're running passive? You're going to need that adapter to go into a smaller amp to power each speaker. So now you have even more wires involved, and extra devices needing to be powered.
So I guess it comes down to what speakers you're planning on using.
Got links to the adapters you were talking about or were you asking for adapters that would work.
I have to disagree with some of his assessments on this. Now while I do not think he does not know what he is talking about, and the DB rating change is correct (its just changing variables in two same-same formulas to get better results based on the consumer not knowing the doubling of wattage in the formula tweak).
I feel he is ignoring the actual underlying Electrical Theory in favor of how speaker specs lead to incorrect results. Which in fact ARE correct, just not correct for what the label on the amplifiers VA/Wattage says. (He is a bit misleading in implying the math is wrong..its not, the setup premise he puts forth is.)
First the "Some amplifiers in the 70's worked/was made where 1/2 the ohms = twice the wattage".
All non load balancing outputs must follow this law regardless of what the VA or wattage is. Its the fundamental underlying law of A = V/R. When resistance halves/amps double. There is no way around this its a law of physics.
You do not need to make an amplifier 'to do' this. it does it as a fundamental property of the laws of electricity as in an example using Kirchhoff’s law: the sum of the potential differences across all the components in a closed loop equals zero.
So if ohms 1/2's unless the amp is somehow 'eating' the extra wattage with a false load, the loop would not equal zero and the load would double its wattage intake to create that zero sum.
And his explanation of 16/8/4 ohm leads on an amplifiers is correct only in the context of using those exact loads on that lead.
They are setup for using his example 100 watts at each at that specified load. (Each upping voltage of the last based on number of transformer windings that lead is tagged to..but also doubling the resistance so canceling out to the same wattage at a higher amperage.)
With 16 and 8 ohms as examples..IE:
8 ohm load on 28 volt rail pulls 3.5 amps (100 watts)
16 ohm load on 40 volt rail pulls 2.5 amps (100 watts)
OR to do apples to apples:
[As in most all electrical situations, voltage is set at/modulated at values and amperes are a result of that combined with resistance that create the wattage. Your volume knob modulates the voltage to the amplifier. max volume is full voltage off that particular transformer rail]
16 ohm load on 28 volt rail only pulls 1.75 amps (50 watts) [double the resistance, half the wattage..the inverse of the double/double]
BUT if you put 8 ohm speaker on that 16 ohm lead. You get 200 watts and 5 amps (doubled the amps for a given voltage @ a resistance remember)..not LESS watts. As its still a 40volt lead and the math naturally follows.
Now this is not a good thing, many amplifiers will kick off a safety short warning (if newer by detecting max current expected) and some will just run at that until something 'pops'.
Granted this is not accounting for dynamic resistance based on moving alternating current thru a coil based on voltage frequency: in this case the speakers coil and the frequency of the sound, but its a very rough moving average of 200 watts across the spectrum, the actual resistance of the coil changes a slight bit based on that..but its usually negligible for speaker purposes.
Speakers and stereos have to obey the same laws of physics that all things in the physical world must of electrical engineering and magnetism.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Last edited by DXWarlock on Wed, 16th Dec 2020 05:45; edited 1 time in total
All that electrical shit has always kinda gone over my head. Like understanding the dB per watt makes certain sense at a certain distance. What fucks me up is adding in more distance and how uh...was it moving up 1dB like doubles the wattage or something? Like my Focals are 890dB @1w but to get it 90 was like 2watts?, then 91 was 4? I forget how that math worked out.
Yea, realized once I typed it, it was another one of my walls of text
I'm not so much a true audiohphile as fascinated by how it works. I spent too many years working in a car audio shop in my teens 8 hours a day testing SPL, and construction in my 20's, add to that a way too loud set of 15" in my car to hear high freq well enough anymore, to be able to be an audiophile..haha
(And this is another rambling of mine..lol Read if you like, wont hurt my feelings if you dont. Maybe it will help someone..I like geeking out over the science behind electrical equipment and sound).
For the wattage: The rule is that to increase by 3 dB’s; you must double the power wattage. So a 87dB speaker needs 2 watts to sound as loud as a 90dB speaker at 1 watt.
So yours would be:
1 watt 87 dB
2 watts 90 dB
4 watts 93 dB
8 watts 96 dB
16 watts 99 dB
And it sounds (no pun intended) like a big difference, but the dB scale is logarithmic. Like dropping two ping pong balls, vs one. It sounds roughly twice as loud. But 1000 vs 1001 you cant tell the difference, much less if it was 'as much a sound increase' as two vs one was. Both only added one more ball to the total.
A rule of thumb that is useful is that if you want twice as loud you need 10 dB increase, and that is a power ratio increase of 10 also (and only doubling of how loud it is).
So any time dB is increased by 10dB it needs 10x the power to do it (In our case electrical watts) a 200W power amplifier will put out 10 dB more than a 20W amplifier. So the 180watt difference only gets you 10dB more at max volume or twice as loud (logarithmic scale). You would need 2000 watts to sound twice as loud again (assuming you are using the same speakers on all).
It's why when you have one speaker plugged in, and then plug in the other it doesn't 'sound' twice as loud. You don't add logarithmic scales to make new total. A speaker playing 100db, with a second added at also 100db wouldn't be 200dB, it would output 103dB together. Doubling of wattage equals 3db, like above remember? So one speaker at say 40 watts, plus one more at 40watts, double wattage..3dB.
So that's not the 10dB more needed to sound twice as loud. (It's technically twice as loud pressure wise, but we dont 'hear' it as twice as loud.)
That's because if you want to get into dB vs dBA, that's a whole other can of worms.
https://www.softdb.com/difference-between-db-dba/
On sound pressure vs human perceived. Say how 50dB of 100 hz sounds MUCH quieter than 50dB of 1000hz to us. They both are the same sound pressure.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Last edited by DXWarlock on Wed, 16th Dec 2020 05:39; edited 1 time in total
I'm going to screen shot this so I always have it for reference lol. Thanks for the run down.
Speaker amp is easier to follow but if only headphone power requirements made any fucking sense. These #ohm headphones have an impedence of # and this amp puts out #mV of power
I never got into the low/high impedance headphones stuff. Main reason they do it is because headphones can be a huge range of ohms. Where speakers are 99% of the time 4/8 or such. They cannot tell you the wattage it outputs, because its depends on your headphones resistance.
But if you want to figure out how many watts its pushing to them use:
W = v2 / R.
Where W is power, v is voltage, and R is impedance (resistance).
So say:
5.6v RMS from amp into 32 ohm headphones (This is a random number, I have no idea what voltages most use, I just picked one to get close to 1000 milliwatts):
W = 5.6*5.6/32; 0.98 watts [about 1 watt, at around 170 milliamps].
if your headphones are 98 dBSPL @ 1 milliwatt. You'd be pushing roughing 98dB out of them.
(Or you can get it this way..if you want to for some reason, but its twice the work)
Amps = Volts/Resistance = 5.6V/32Ω = 0.175A
Watts = Volts*Amps = 5.6V×0.175A = 0.98W
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
I do not understand electricity well either. Now I gathered that sensitivity specified at 2.83V/1m does not necessarily equal sensitivity at 1W/1m. The latter seems more useful when it comes to efficiency and how much power from amps I need in the end. But when it comes down to it, I need to know the actual impedance of a speaker to determine if a specific amp can handle it well right?
And what about the actual frequency-dependent impedance of speakers? Is V a more stable unit in that case, because for W one basically feeds frequency-dependent voltage into the system? This just confuses me.
As a dumb rule, I kind of assume that I want to keep a speaker above ~3 Ohms... and hope for the best, while measuring the system response.
And just in case someone has not seen this yet, but is interested in the science of things. Presentation by Dr. Floyd Toole on sound reproduction. Contains results from scientific studies double blind tests) and objective measures to determine a speakers quality (at least partially).
But when it comes down to it, I need to know the actual impedance of a speaker to determine if a specific amp can handle it well right?
And what about the actual frequency-dependent impedance of speakers? Is V a more stable unit in that case, because for W one basically feeds frequency-dependent voltage into the system? This just confuses me.
As a dumb rule, I kind of assume that I want to keep a speaker above ~3 Ohms... and hope for the best, while measuring the system response.
Sort of, for all practical purposes and to be safe, that's true you need to run speakers at least the minimum for the ohm rating of the amp.
BUT its not an all or nothing thing. For example I have an old Onkyo in the garage that's 4ohm nominal output, running both channels on 1 ohm (its only an old 2 channel and I got 8 speakers in the garage).
It works because its an older amp that doesn't try to be smarter than me and prematurely try to save me from too low an ohm load, and I never run it at max volume, I'm pretty sure anything over 1/3 or 1/4 volume would pop and let the smoke out, but even close to that is damn loud, as since its at 1 ohm its craving more wattage from the amp at 1/3 than a 4 ohm load would at over 3/4 volume.
Long as I don't get near it's max amps/volts down the line to the speakers, it will be fine. Super simplified 'good enough for explaining' reason is:
I am running it at one ohm not four. And say amp is rated at 200 watts at 4 ohms max volume, so max volume would be 800 watts at 1 ohm(it even trying to produce 800 watts would fry it). So Long as I don't push out more than 200 watts into that one ohm load, the amp doesn't 'care'. It really only cares if the load [speakers] are trying to draw more than it can do stressing the components, because its trying to do more than it can after a certain point.
(This is way over simplified, and not quite 'correct' but close enough for simplicity of understanding the basic concept.)
And I wouldn't suggest it as a OK thing to do for everyone, I just do it because its a free old school beast of an amp I got that's so old and only 2 channel, I don't care if I accidently pop it down the road turning it up too loud.
And for speaker impedance based on frequency you can mostly ignore it, unless you are really trying to get the absolute max out of a speaker...for example SPL subwoofer tests, you want to find the lowest ohm it has within the subwoofer freq and use that freq to test as it gives you a handful more watts (and it only varies a little bit) for all practice purposes the amount it changes is within the same amount a speaker can vary itself on its own.
Like a '4 ohm' speaker could be 3.6 or 4.3 out of the box just meter checking it. So really a 4ohm speaker usually means "roughly around 4 ohms give or take some". So unless you are just really geeking out about it for your own enjoyment, you can mostly pretend a 4ohm is 4ohm at any frequency for system setup purposes. (or setting up a super elaborate home theater that uses seperate active crossovers for 6+ overlapping ranged drivers per speaker setups..but even then its diminishing returns to your ear).
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Last edited by DXWarlock on Wed, 16th Dec 2020 22:26; edited 10 times in total
Today I was looking at more reliable sources for headphone evaluations and thought to post about my results this time. For good measure, I include a small speaker section as well. Just in case someone here is interested in scientifically sound sound (hehe).
Floyd Toole and Sean Olive from Harmann did very notable work of actual scientific inquiries into what sounds good to humans in domestric environments and I still recommend the video I linked to above.
Speakers
As mentioned in the video above, they have developed a measurement system, often called spinorama, where speakers are measured inside an anechoic chamber at many horizontal and vertical angles in full 360 degrees. They demonstrated, that this is necessary to predict subjective ratings of speakers objectively. Correlation between their predictions and subjective ratings are very good. The verifications were done with double blind tests. They also demonstrated that sighted reviews of speakers are simply unreliable.
Here is a github page containing a good number of such speaker measurements and calculated ratings.
Spinorama measurements. The Score Table also includes a column for adjusted ratings, for when you integrate a subwoofer.
Headphones
In recent years Harmann conducted studies on headphones and what a good frequency curve looks like. Its not flat and measuring headphones and is also hard to do, so you cant just do it or trust all measurements, unfortunately. They also developed a tool to predict subjective ratings of headphones based on measurements. The most annoying find (imo), is that the results showed some subjective differences in preference for headphones. Speakers seem to be much less subjective, probably because they interface very differently with our ears.
Slides by Sean Olive
And here is a repository full of measurements including a rating provided by the tool above and EQ settings. Not sure how much one can trust the EQ settings, due to sample variance, though.
AutoEQ github repo
Quote:
Over-ear table includes headphones measured by oratory1990 and Crinacle using GRAS systems. Measurements from other databases and systems are not included because they are not compatible with measurements, targets and preference scoring developed by Sean Olive et al.
oratory1990 apparently works in a relevant industry (I forgot what exactly, and ill refrain from making stuff up), that explains his access to this GRAS system. The idea is to have a measurement system, that behaves similar to a human ear. I say this as a (imo valid) appeal to authority.
Link to some products: Gras Products
These ratings may not be perfect or perfectly match you, but might be a much better reference than reviews by some people.
These ratings may not be perfect or perfectly match you, but might be a much better reference than reviews by some people.
In fact, this is based on frequency response but not much else. The Shure srh440 at <100$ are in the 2nd place on this list. On the speaker list, there are much more expensive products at the top, and that is how I would expect things to be.
@ DXWarlock
The W vs V thing made me take another look at driver sensitivity and I just looked at predictions made by hornresp and required Power for a complete speaker (including box) is very frequency dependent. My lack of knowledge in electrics hurts
Code:
20 Hz 95.2 dB 0.69 W
30 Hz 100.3 dB 0.19 W
80 Hz 103.9 dB 2.11 W
I believe this is with constant 2.83 V. But this is how the sub should behave, because amps do not provide constant Power, right?
these past posts remind me of the fact, that this forum software is subpar!
Also, I will shut up now, unless someone actually responds. Sad enough as it is
(This turned into another long ramble..sorry trying to cover all I know. I dont even pretend to know everything about it, just a good bit about particular parts from both taking electronics in school and working in car audio for a few years, and where the two areas that overlap.)
You mean 'Power' as in Amps? (Amperage not Amplifier..always perturbed me the short nickname term for an amplifier is the same term for defining 'current', makes talking about it confusing at times )
Depends on the amplifier some are Controlled Voltage (voltage amplifier) some are Controlled Current (transconductance amplifier).
If yours says 2.83V then its probably a Controlled Voltage type. In the end it doesn't 'matter' as its still boils down to "Volts*Amps=Watts" its just which V or A its changing. Each has pros/cons for the situation it's used it. But at the end of the day to the 'user' it doesn't matter really.
And for the dB @ X freq, the ohms will change, but for general use assume its rated impedance as the 'number to do the math with'. As the nominal rated impedance is listed as 'nominal' just for that reason. It is sort of an average impedance over the usable frequency range of the speaker.
You can have a 8 ohm speaker that is as low as say, 5.1 if you put a meter on it. But listed as '8' ohm. Because from 20-20k hertz the average would be roughly 8 ohms Impedance.
Resistance and Impedance refer to the same thing really. Just resistance is if its driven by DC current, impedance is if its driven by AC current. And all sound equipment is AC waves, its what makes the speaker move..why speakers always list as impedance and not resistance, both are measured in 'ohms' and measure the same thing. Just in AC impedance will have not only magnitude, but also phase. Longer way to say in DC ohms dont change, in AC they can/do..so two terms for the exact same 'thing'. (Not important for you to care about, just "The more you know" thing..lol)
(Bear with me here, explaining a lot of stuff, to point out why it doesn't matter in the end..mostly to 99% of us, unless you want to super nerd out and design a 'perfect' [subjective] speaker box and driver configuration from scratch ) Then depending on if its a sealed box, vs ported, and the port size and length..the 'rated' response can be different than what's listed, like in your example. I assuming that is free air response.
Because in a box the air resistance and resonant frequency and all that jazz can make the speaker work harder or easier at some freq ranges because its either 'helping' itself or 'hindering' itself move.
For example every box setup regardless if its sealed or ported has two frequency ranges for each: one it realllly likes, and one it totally hates. One is the resonant frequency where the air moving and bouncing around is in 'tune' the with the speaker at the same speed and direction as the speaker. The other is the one its bouncing and pushing back on the speaker the exact opposite phase as the speaker meaning by the time the air bounces off walls and comes back its pushing in a different direction than the speaker is trying to move..(in to out, out to in..whatever).
Depending on how reactive the speaker system is, the phase angle will differ on value. The phase angle will have 0 degrees at the resonant frequency; and at the point where the impedance starts to rise due to voice coil inductance of fighting air pressure going one way and trying to follow the way the magnet is telling the coil to move.
Long winded way to say if you have decent speakers/drivers that have a relatively flat acoustic sound curve across the range they produce, unless you want to go way down the rabbit hole of breaking out phase/impedance charts and each driver's Q factors and all that. Speaker impedance and frequency response range from 20 to 20k of your speakers as a whole is all you 'really' need to care about.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Didn't even think about the possible confusion regarding amp-lifier and amp/current
Dont know if my amp is a voltage or current source. Either way though, Power is not constant.
Dont worry I dont really care about some of the fine details. It just seems, that there are significant differences in efficiency or dB SPL per V and dB SPL per W depending on the exact frequency. The only thing I actually care about is, that I actually picked a driver that has reasonable properties regarding distortion (no clue actually), efficiency and price, and that I have an amplifier with sufficient power to drive it for my needs. And efficiency seems harder to determine, than I initially thought. But Ill guess I will just gloss over a lot of nuance. Since it is frequency dependent it also becomes material dependent and I'm not going down that hole. I have enough holes to crawl through already
If anything comes to fruition, my speakers will be EQ'ed, so they will be made fla(-ish at least)
It's complicated, there is parts that make my head hurt I dont even pretend to understand..like the math for port tuning vs box size vs port length and speaker displacement values at X freq..to work out box resonant freq vs port tuned freq. We just used a program..punch in the numbers and let it do the math, haha.
and it's also subjective, why there is 1001 high end speaker manufactures that claim theirs is the best compared to the others. As there is no 'perfect' speaker unit design. You always give something to get something else. So you get 1001 variations of "We gave up 1% of this, for 1% more of this, as we think that's what is important and makes a better speaker"
...unless your Bose, then its just "Crank up the bass and treble response to unnatural levels to make people think it sounds expensive"
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
There is a lot of nonsense in the audio world. And there are clearly better and worse design, objectively. I'm looking into people like floyd toole to find some objective criteria to remove some subjective noise, that just isn't true.
Too often in a product you will only find claims to some benefit of whatever feature a manufacturer instilled into a particular speaker, but no verification.
And even if there are real benefits, as you said, there might be trade-offs, but what are they and how do they factor into subjective quality?
If you forced me to buy a speaker at gun point I think I know what I would pick. But I wouldn't be certain if I picked wisely. I would have to test multiple options at the same time and that isn't easy either and could be pretty expensive. And I am no fan of returning stuff
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