S6 Open Baffle Loudspeakers

The goal of this design is low-distortion. This means operating drivers within their pistonic range. This range can be determined by rule-of-thumb of 1/2 wavelength of drivers' diameter.

20-300Hz: Eminence Alpha 15"
300-1500Hz: Vifa P13WH
1500-20kHz: tbd (Vifa DX25, XT25, or DX27)

Actively crossed and tri-amped.

Follow this design tread at DIYAudio.

Update 20/1

This design had reached a plateau of performance when trying to equalize the midrange from 300Hz and above. Large baffle caused undesirable peak and dip which resulted in rough midrange. Baffle size should be no more than 2x cone diameter for smooth response. Refer to S7 for the final design to fix this issue.

S4 Open Baffle Loudspeaker

These prototypes are further continuation of Stealth 2. Where is #3 you may ask? Well it was a prototype failure and skipped.

Eminence Alpha15A crossed 24db at 1kHz. Good tonality was achieved but both drivers especially the vurnerable TC20 are strained.

What I gained from these prototypes are 1) Excellent bass using the Eminence with correct shelving lowpass filters, 2) Eminence peaks and their appropriate notches, 3) The Alphas have surprisingly good upper frequency extension.




This measurement was taken from listening position, in-room. Ignore the SPL numbers as I did not calibrate them.

DIY Audiophile Media Center

Update 22/9/11

Audacious 2.5
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/audacious-250-released-with-option-to.html


To Install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacious

and if encountering error:
rm -r ~/.config/audacious

For slow computers like mine (PIII running Ubuntu Lucid via USB 1 !!):
- Choose Output-Only (not Duplex) from Ubuntu Preference->Sound
- Select PulseAudio, 10000 buffer, and 16 bits from Audacious.


.oOo.


My music collection has been growing, and in a good way. About 250GB of which 70% are native 16/96kHz and 24/96kHz recording in lossless FLAC format. Mostly sourced from Vinyl/LP rips. They are superior than normal CDs which are recorded at 16/44.1kHz.

As on-the-shelf audiophile media center or server is very expensive (read: Linn DS is $15,000!) I want to have a media center to allow me sit back and enjoy the music without fiddling with laptop keyboard as now.

I tried many Linux implementation of media center and finally settled on MyMediaSystem. It is pretty, fast, and useful with little non-needed gimmicks. There are additional 'bonus' such as movie player, TV player, internet radio, and photo viewer.



This is what I did. The hardware are:

IBM Thinkpad T23
DAC: SoundBlaster 24 bit Live!
Ubuntu 10.04 or above
Remote:
TBA

Resources:
Ubuntu
MMS installation how-to
  • Install Ubuntu then run updates.
  • Install Ubuntu Restricted extra (to be able to play mp3 etc.)
  • Add the following lines from Accessories > Terminal

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mms-prodeia
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install mms
    sudo apt-get install mms-plugin-audio
  • Edit the AudioConfig file in /etc/mms/. From Terminal type:

    sudo gedit /etc/mms/AudioConfig

    edit this line (after mapping a drive as explained here)

    audio_dir_no_watch = /media/wdtv/04. MEDIA/01. MUSIC
    audio_player = AlsaPlayer

    If the collection is on network drive like the example above, one needs to use smbmount as in this article here or here
That's it.

Note: The SoundBlaster Live needs to be selected as default from System >Preference > Sound. In the past, this was done using asoundconf (retired now)

The above option installs a minimalist version of the Media Center basically audio player and Internet radio.

My collection of 24/192kHz recording :)
note that this was old screenshot using Ubuntu 7.10

To share directory
Install smbfs: sudo apt-get install smbfs

Create mydriveconnect.sh and make it executable

#!/bin/bash
sudo mkdir /media/mydrive
# unmount previously-mounted drive
sudo umount /media/mydrive

sudo smbmount "//192.168.1.11/wdtv_data/04. MEDIA/01. MUSIC" /media/mydrive -o username=defaults,password=defaults
#sudo smbmount "//192.168.1.10/sh_widhibrata/_backup/04. MEDIA/01. MUSIC" /media/mydrive -o username=widhibrata,password=password

in case RW is desired, use uid and gid option:
sudo smbmount "//192.168.1.11/wdtv_data" /media/mydrive -o username=default,password=default,uid=999,gid=999

find out the uid using "id" command from terminal



With Lubuntu, install xfce4mixer to select sound card:



sudo apt-get install xfce4-mixer gstreamer0.10-alsa

to run

type xfce4-mixer in a lxterminal

Slightly more heavyweight - you could install pulseaudio and thus use the pulseaudio packages such aspavucontrol




sudo apt-get install pulseaudio pavucontrol

to run

type pavucontrol in a lxterminal