New Telly!

[dogshome]

My 10 year old Samsung 42" finally bit the dust in the 35C heat recently. Still got SCART and AVI input so getting on a bit.

Enter new 50" Hisense LED. Because I'm a cheapskate, it was £280 delivered and is the 2020 model (new). I have cable, netflix, an SBC video storage/NAS and Alexa, so no big deal. A 53" was only £20 more, but I really couldn't put it anywhere. I'd have to evict a family member and drop down to one armchair. It was a close call 

I didn't realise UK cable had 2K content and 4K on some packaged channels. Also proper 5.1 audio. My amp is only a year or two old so talks "ARC", "5.1/7.1" and "THX". Some tweaking of the cable receiver to pass the (new tech to me) through to the amp and screen and away we go. Spiderman cartoon into the spiderverse happened to be on and sounds great. All sorts of silly things going on in terms of sound now (I just had flat stereo to 5.1 upcoding before). The mix on the film is definitely in the silly class   

Greyhound (Tom Hanks) was a real dissapointment, but in terms of explosions and "Left standard rudder!" it made up for it. Awaiting season 5 of Stranger Things now.


Now busy making a better pair of rear speakers. The current ones are Morel tweeters and some unknown 100mm woofers and weigh a ton. I'll ebay the tweeters as they have had little use and are overkill for this. The new ones are going to be smaller and use a pair of the 3 1/2" Peerless GBS domes and 3/4" matching tweeters. I've got a pair of the 5 1/4" domes on centre and like them. They seem quite open and realistic for speech. I have a few sheets of Burl Walnut veneer and have two small MDF boxes under some pressure sticking it on as we speak.

[Justin B.]

Pics, pics, and more pics!!!

[dogshome]

Build currently in "MDF dust" phase!

These rears are going to be (not in fashion this week) Bipole. My lounge isn't huge and I can't get speakers behind. The existing ones are quite directional in the midrange, high up and flat to the wall. These are going on little ball mounts so they can be placed better. Crossovers at 3.5KHz - The tweeter is probably not going to be doing much in this application and the impedances / wattages add up for the crossover parts I happen to have!

[dogshome]

Still glueing...

That's a railway line cutoff, topped with my biggest lump hammer (out of shot) to get the walnut veneer to lie flat. No1 is nearly finished. 12mm MDF and 0.6mm Walnut. At this size is very rigid and inert. The 5 1/4" ones are going in something similar, but doubled fronts and a few braces chucked in. All over Walnut should look nice.

[dogshome]

Bipolar speakers are up!

I can tell what is stereo and what is 5.1 encoded now. Some calibration of the levels has helped - 'Engineer' level is not ideal unless you like your telly LOUD! Flat is more sensible for general watching.

Taking the old ones apart, I have some hi-po Morel MDT20 tweeters with some very cheap 20 year old Audax woofers and the nastiest 1st order crossover complete with ferrite inductor and electrolytic cap 

Tweeters are up for sale on Ebay (I got them before the internet knew what they were!) and the rest has been disposed of. The bipolars have a proper 2nd order crossover and Zobel filters on the bass now. Unsurprisingly, they sound similar to the centre on test tone (which is also Peerless GBS). Speakers are so variable, a switched pink noise signal shows it very clearly. Having it switched around a 'HIFI' store would be interesting!

Fronts are going GBS way with genuine Motorola Piezo tweeter like the centre. They currently have an 8" Audax driver which isn't too bad, but not special.

[Justin B.]

Sounding like the center speaker is a good thing!  My sound system is a 57 Heinz...   JBL S38 for L&R, Bose VCs-10 for center, JBL PB-10 for subwoofer, and a Bose Acoustimass 5 "system" for the rear channels.  I used the Bose Acoustimass 5 for the rear just because I had it and the little cubes don't stick out like a sore thumb and it does a surprisingly good job.