Nor Cal DIY 2009

[Æ]

Well, we had about 18 or 19 people show up at the event in Davis. Some familiar faces and some new faces too. A couple of guys drove up from Orange County in Southern Calif.
It was a warm beautiful California day, I should have worn shorts. The meeting room at the Stonegate Country Club was clean, friendly and spacious, easy to get to and easy to park. The supposed bar-b-que never happened. Food, what food? Chips, dips and sodas was the fare.
The acoustics were a tad bit hard, lots of glass and reflective surfaces. I liked the natural light, except for later in the afternoon we had this incredibly bright low angle sunlight interspersed with very long shadows.
We really cut it close with time and could have used another hour or two. It takes a lot of time to carry in and set up everything. Then you have to dismantle it all and carry it out again. Pete had this really large pair of loudspeakers on casters, easily rolled them in and out of the room. Charlie's unfinished MDF 3 way, 4 driver system with custom amp(s) really kicked as*. I liked the bass of the Dayton's he is using, tight, but not too tight.
If I got the count correct, there were 15 different pairs of loudspeakers delivered and demoed. MarkK's were probably the absolute best sounding of all, but I didn't get to hear his playing any voices, so I can't be absolutely sure. It was fun listening to, watching Bill Mennuti do frequency response sweeps/graphs. John Busch had a finished pair of his open back (dipoles) this time, really nice sounding too. Barry Waldron was there and so was Zilch who showed off some of those EconoWave tweeter lenses. (Horns?) Good music selections this time, I enjoyed most of the music. Someone forgot, left behind a RUSH CD. Good ole Chas was there with various freebies, I got a disc of music.
I brought along a pair of budget full rangers that I had just started working on only a week previous. I still have a ways to go with them, but they do seem promising. Efficiency in a reasonably sized package was my primary goal when building them.

I could write a lot more, well maybe a little bit at a time. I took more than 80 pictures. Charlie will be posting his write up and pics soon.
Thanks Charlie.

[Ludo]

The people were friendly, the venue was scenic, the speakers sounded great and LOUD, the time was short and the food.... well, we had not time for food . I did manage to inhale one can of Sprite, however.

Many thanks to Charlie and everyone for a superb gathering; really looking forward to future events and more pics.

Louis

[Æ]

!

[charlielaub]

The pics are up!
http://ncdiyaudio.claub.net/Meet-Fall09.html

Please send EMail to: picinfo@claub.net if you have additional text or want to submit additional pictures.

-Charlie

[Æ]

Originally Posted by charlielaub

The pics are up!
http://ncdiyaudio.claub.net/Meet-Fall09.html

Please send EMail to: picinfo@claub.net if you have additional text or want to submit additional pictures.

-Charlie

Hi Charlie,
Apparently I didn't get any (good) pictures of ZILCH projects. Maybe you can contact Barry Waldron, he took a lot of pictures too.
Alan

[Ludo]

Originally Posted by Æ

Hi Charlie,
Apparently I didn't get any (good) pictures of ZILCH projects. Maybe you can contact Barry Waldron, he took a lot of pictures too.
Alan

Alen and Charlie,

There was also the gentleman (unfortunately forgot his name) who brought the gorgeous towers that were played first and the low budget, in-wall, HT speakers. I see the speakers in the pics, but did anyone take note of the drivers, at least for the towers?

Louis

[Æ]

Originally Posted by Ludo

Alen and Charlie,

There was also the gentleman (unfortunately forgot his name) who brought the gorgeous towers that were played first and the low budget, in-wall, HT speakers. I see the speakers in the pics, but did anyone take note of the drivers, at least for the towers?

Louis

Dave had the two way MTMs with the nice finish. They were a bit flabby or too full in the bass. I took pictures of his enclosures.
Scan Speak midwoofs.

[charlielaub]

Originally Posted by Ludo

Alen and Charlie,

There was also the gentleman (unfortunately forgot his name) who brought the gorgeous towers that were played first and the low budget, in-wall, HT speakers. I see the speakers in the pics, but did anyone take note of the drivers, at least for the towers?

Louis

That was Dave Price. I forgot the drivers too. I will send him a note so that I can add the info to the writeup.

Charlie

[markk]

Originally Posted by Æ

Well, we had about 18 or 19 people show up at the event in Davis. Some familiar faces and some new faces too. A couple of guys drove up from Orange County in Southern Calif.
It was a warm beautiful California day, I should have worn shorts. The meeting room at the Stonegate Country Club was clean, friendly and spacious, easy to get to and easy to park. The supposed bar-b-que never happened. Food, what food? Chips, dips and sodas was the fare.
The acoustics were a tad bit hard, lots of glass and reflective surfaces. I liked the natural light, except for later in the afternoon we had this incredibly bright low angle sunlight interspersed with very long shadows.
We really cut it close with time and could have used another hour or two. It takes a lot of time to carry in and set up everything. Then you have to dismantle it all and carry it out again. Pete had this really large pair of loudspeakers on casters, easily rolled them in and out of the room. Charlie's unfinished MDF 3 way, 4 driver system with custom amp(s) really kicked as*. I liked the bass of the Dayton's he is using, tight, but not too tight.
If I got the count correct, there were 15 different pairs of loudspeakers delivered and demoed. MarkK's were probably the absolute best sounding of all, but I didn't get to hear his playing any voices, so I can't be absolutely sure. It was fun listening to, watching Bill Mennuti do frequency response sweeps/graphs. John Busch had a finished pair of his open back (dipoles) this time, really nice sounding too. Barry Waldron was there and so was Zilch who showed off some of those EconoWave tweeter lenses. (Horns?) Good music selections this time, I enjoyed most of the music. Someone forgot, left behind a RUSH CD. Good ole Chas was there with various freebies, I got a disc of music.
I brought along a pair of budget full rangers that I had just started working on only a week previous. I still have a ways to go with them, but they do seem promising. Efficiency in a reasonably sized package was my primary goal when building them.

I could write a lot more, well maybe a little bit at a time. I took more than 80 pictures. Charlie will be posting his write up and pics soon.
Thanks Charlie.

I second that-Thanks Charlie!

And thanks for the kind words about the ER18DXT. It did very well in that room! I did have 3 vocal cuts, sorry you must have wandered away.

For the next DIY, I think I'll work on a demo with ~10 30-60 second cuts. That one was just a quick pilfering of demo cuts from some Iowa DIY's. (Thanks for the Iowa cuts...) The cuts themselves are excellent, but it could use a dynamic choral piece, and a flat out rock clip, as well as 1-2 live clips.

I'd been very busy as of late, but I wouldn't mind trying to get a spring warmup going in May. We'll see how much interest there is in a Spring get together. Maybe I'll pull out the measurement gear for that. And maybe we can get free use of the church in Roseville again. That was actually a pretty good set of rooms.

[Ludo]

Originally Posted by markk

I second that-Thanks Charlie!

And thanks for the kind words about the ER18DXT. It did very well in that room! I did have 3 vocal cuts, sorry you must have wandered away.

For the next DIY, I think I'll work on a demo with ~10 30-60 second cuts. That one was just a quick pilfering of demo cuts from some Iowa DIY's. (Thanks for the Iowa cuts...) The cuts themselves are excellent, but it could use a dynamic choral piece, and a flat out rock clip, as well as 1-2 live clips.

I'd been very busy as of late, but I wouldn't mind trying to get a spring warmup going in May. We'll see how much interest there is in a Spring get together. Maybe I'll pull out the measurement gear for that. And maybe we can get free use of the church in Roseville again. That was actually a pretty good set of rooms.

I like the idea of using a reference selection of music with all the systems for better comparison. I found it difficult to sort out what sounds were due to the speakers, the room or the mix. The selection should also include cuts which demonstrate the transient response of the system as well as its ability to maintain good signal separation on content with a lot of simultaneous complexity.

Looking forward to the next event in spring.

Louis

[Æ]

Originally Posted by Ludo

I like the idea of using a reference selection of music with all the systems for better comparison. I found it difficult to sort out what sounds were due to the speakers, the room or the mix. The selection should also include cuts which demonstrate the transient response of the system as well as its ability to maintain good signal separation on content with a lot of simultaneous complexity.

Looking forward to the next event in spring.

Louis

There is no guarantee we will be having another DIY get together in the Spring. Though it would be nice. One year it was held at Dan Carroll's house, another year at MarkK's house. And another time a small gathering at Steve O'Toole's house. It kind of depends. Somebody has to arrange for a venue.
I hope to have a couple of other projects done before then. Show and Tell.

Music is so subjective, it's hard to get everyone to agree on what we should listen to. I generally prefer familiar selections, contemporary Jazz and Rock.

One of the STEREOPHILE discs (#2 or #3) would certainly meet your criteria.

[charlielaub]

Originally Posted by Æ

There is no guarantee we will be having another DIY get together in the Spring.

I talked on the phone last night for a while with Steve O'Toole. Because it is still months away, he thought that the church venue would be wide open in terms of availability. I sent out an EMail to the Membership list asking for people to identify conflicts in the late March - late April time frame. Once I know that the date would not conflict with some other audio event I will give Steve a couple of potential dates, most likely on a Saturday, and we will start to make firm plans.

So, Æ, an event in the Spring is looking definite and only the exact date is TBD.

-Charlie

[markk]

I'm happy to make the demo section a collaborative effort.

I think there should be something like

1 male vocalist
2 female vocalists
1 choral
2 classical-one being full orchestra
1 drum/percussion
1-2 diy fav's-bela fleck etc
2 live cuts
1 jazz
1 rock

I can use Audacity to neatly trim clips from any part of any song and make a nice demo stream. Should be able to have 10-12 different streamlined cuts in an 8-10 minute section.

Everyone could have a <5m clip of their own choosing. (I guess it depends on how many speakers/how much time folks have.)

If you guys want to email me the reference to a particular cut I'll try to collect as many of the recordings as possible.

It probably works better if everything is demo'd in the same location. You just have to accept that smaller speakers may not have the same low end.
(Still, the ER18's seem to have lot's of low end. They come pretty close to scans in terms of low end output...)

[charlielaub]

Mark,

Thanks for taking the lead on the clips. I like the idea of forcing everyone to run the same set of 30s-60s clips through their speakers before doing 1-2 selections of their own. How could the short clips be made available to people before the event?

-Charlie

[daver]

Nice DIY event.

I recently came to the same conclusion that a demo disc was in order. I like your idea of editing down to 30-60 seconds, which is something I didn't take time to do.

Here's a list of stuff I put together on 2 discs, if anyone is interested. Choral is one thing not included.

[Zilch]

Originally Posted by charlielaub

How could the short clips be made available to people before the event?

The list should be good enough; it's not as if we're going to be able to tweak anything for such a variety. Having it be secret 'til the event would be fun, too.

We apparently did 15 systems in four hours, which is 16 minutes per, with swapping and setup taking some of that.

I was anticipating there would be a standardized demo program, plus opportunity for each presenter to play a couple of their own. Owing to earlier comments that hearing the same cuts 15 times gets old mighty quickly, I brought material I thought nobody else would play to add variety. I was surprised to be the only one with Patricia Barber at hand; she can cut to the quick of most systems.

Other than one request, I don't recall playing anything all the way through. I'd suggest the standardized demo be no more than five minutes, i.e., ten 30-second clips; I'd also like the opportunity to hear what each presenter would like me to hear highlighting their system features.

I agree that standardized placement is important, but source and amp are, as well. I enjoyed what I understood to be high-resolution presentations, but it wasn't apples and apples in this respect. Loved demoing with the big-knob amp up front....

[Chas]

Hi All!

I just want to thank Charlie and everyone else for the opportunity to attend, listen to some great speakers, and to introduce my friend Bill to the group.

We had a blast- I can't wait until Spring for the next one.

I've been asked to detail the material on the Linn Music sampler discs I gave out at the meeting:

1. Claire Martin: He Never Mentioned Love
2. Judith Owen: Painting by Numbers
3. Barb Jungr: Beautiful Life
4. Carol Kidd: Yes I Know When I've Had It
5. Claire Martin: Love At Last
6. Ian Shaw: A Case of You
7. George E. Lazaridis: III Grande Etude de Paganini (Liszt)
8. Scottish Chamber Orch.: March K.189 (Mozart)
9. Arthur Pizarro: Capriccio Espagnol (Rimsky Korsakov)
10. James Gilchrist: When I Was One and Twenty (Gurney)
11. Dunedin Consort: Glory of the Lord (Handels Messiah)
12. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood: A Chloris (Hahn)
13. Capella Nova: Missa Brevis (MacMillan)
14. Maximilliano Martin: Sonata for Clarinet & Piano (Poulenc)
15. La Serenissima: Sonata No.3 (Vivaldi)
16. William Carter: Cumbees (De Murcia)

I hope to bring a DIY amp next time...

Thanks again!

-Chas

[Æ]

I already obtained the play list. I popped the CD into my MacBook and iTunes did the rest.
I never heard of any of those musicians or their music before. Anyway, I did listen to the CD today.

Originally Posted by Chas

Hi All!

I just want to thank Charlie and everyone else for the opportunity to attend, listen to some great speakers, and to introduce my friend Bill to the group.

We had a blast- I can't wait until Spring for the next one.

I've been asked to detail the material on the Linn Music sampler discs I gave out at the meeting:

1. Claire Martin: He Never Mentioned Love
2. Judith Owen: Painting by Numbers
3. Barb Jungr: Beautiful Life
4. Carol Kidd: Yes I Know When I've Had It
5. Claire Martin: Love At Last
6. Ian Shaw: A Case of You
7. George E. Lazaridis: III Grande Etude de Paganini (Liszt)
8. Scottish Chamber Orch.: March K.189 (Mozart)
9. Arthur Pizarro: Capriccio Espagnol (Rimsky Korsakov)
10. James Gilchrist: When I Was One and Twenty (Gurney)
11. Dunedin Consort: Glory of the Lord (Handels Messiah)
12. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood: A Chloris (Hahn)
13. Capella Nova: Missa Brevis (MacMillan)
14. Maximilliano Martin: Sonata for Clarinet & Piano (Poulenc)
15. La Serenissima: Sonata No.3 (Vivaldi)
16. William Carter: Cumbees (De Murcia)

I hope to bring a DIY amp next time...

Thanks again!

-Chas

[Æ]

Bela Fleck? Says who? I'd rather listen to "Dueling Banjo's"
Female, easy; Diana Krall.

Originally Posted by markk

I'm happy to make the demo section a collaborative effort.

I think there should be something like

1 male vocalist
2 female vocalists
1 choral
2 classical-one being full orchestra
1 drum/percussion
1-2 diy fav's-bela fleck etc
2 live cuts
1 jazz
1 rock

I can use Audacity to neatly trim clips from any part of any song and make a nice demo stream. Should be able to have 10-12 different streamlined cuts in an 8-10 minute section.

Everyone could have a <5m clip of their own choosing. (I guess it depends on how many speakers/how much time folks have.)

If you guys want to email me the reference to a particular cut I'll try to collect as many of the recordings as possible.

It probably works better if everything is demo'd in the same location. You just have to accept that smaller speakers may not have the same low end.
(Still, the ER18's seem to have lot's of low end. They come pretty close to scans in terms of low end output...)

[Ludo]

Originally Posted by markk

I'm happy to make the demo section a collaborative effort.

I think there should be something like

1 male vocalist
2 female vocalists
1 choral
2 classical-one being full orchestra
1 drum/percussion
1-2 diy fav's-bela fleck etc
2 live cuts
1 jazz
1 rock

For drums I'd like to suggest Santana, Abraxus, Se a Cabo; good variety of drums and percussion.

For male vocals I'd like to suggest Van Morrison, Moondance, Caravan; some tricky upper midrange that can sound shouty when using a 2 to 4kHz x-over that is not tuned optimally.

Louis

Edit: Also for drums check out, Fleetwood Mac, Tusk, Brown Eyes; more delicate.