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...literally. CD player direct into my old Crown Power Base 1 right into the Theater 4 pis. No controls. I walked around the room with earmuffs on looking for places that might rattle or boom, and happened to look at the surround of the woofer during a female vocal passage (Bjork). The internally mounted crossover was lighting up bright enough to see in daylight through the surround! Way too loud to be safe in the house, but now I understand why I had to put in those gawdawful big resistors. Knowing also that they're clear and dynamic below a watt gives me great respect for the design. Sorry for the gush, had to share. I wonder what kind of power level at what freq is required to incandesce those lamps? John
Now that's funny. Grant.
My magnum ear protectors STAY in the living room. How else are you going to "proof test" the acoustic output power in a meaningfull way? 1 watt/100dB. With muffs, ears get 70dB. 100 watts/120dB. Ears get 90, loud but not too bad. Naked ears at 120dB? No way for this guy... Even freq. response testing at lower SPL's is much more enjoyable(?) without being drilled by 12kHz. sine waves. Keeping ear protection handy means I am much more likely to wear them when mowing the yard, operating power tools, or power tuning the KZ1000 out in the garage. When you defend against all the high SPL's you can avoid, your sound system will sound consistently better. When "hammered" by spl's, the muscles in the inner ear respond protectively by tightening up. How long they take to fully relax is not clearly understood. This is why after "blasting a song or two" and then listening at a lower level, the system will sound like crap for a while, to your ears. Till they readjust and relax to the lower sound level again...Sam
I use a pair of aviation headphones I bought for flying - those old David Clarks are great an reducing outside noise!
I wore foam plugs one way, and had no ear discomfort or stuffy feeling afterwards at all. Coming home I forgot the plugs, and was deaf for half the evening when I got home. I really wished I had taken my SPL with me, maybe next time, but unlikely. Pre 9/11, the last time I flew, they never batted an eye at all the "hardware" in my carry-on bag, voltmeter, wire leads, a kitchen digital clock timer, leatherman tool, black boxes. No way I'm putting up with "sock inspections" and all the new hassles, this guy will walk there first...Sam
Actually felt like I should have doubled up
with the little foam plugs inside the muffs, but I wasn't at it that long. Unbelievable how loud those speakers can go, especially since my prior (and concurrent) speakers are 4" single driver backhorns that start to compress above about 5 watts input, maybe 98-99 db. BTW there's a hearing protector set hanging from the steering wheel of my lawn tractor, one in the shop, and I wear a lightweight set around my neck at work just because I like to be able to listen to stuff of my own choosing. John
Hi John! Glad to hear you're running! Super!!! You wrote: >> I wonder what kind of power level at what freq is required to >> incandesce those lamps? About 250 watts RMS. Take care! Wayne
You rock. Bjork! (what song was it?) cooool. I'm in the proccess of making my four Pi's and will definately have to test em with my Carver PM600(200W RMS/channel with 8 ohms). It has LED meters on the front, and the lowest they go is -12db which is about 8Wrms, quite loud. Anyway, thats rad. I'll be doing that soon.
When I first thought I saw a flash from within I think she was just chucking the car parts and cutlery off the cliff. She's got a pretty good scream on the same disc (why can't I remember the name of it - Post maybe?) that could make you spill your beer. John