Nothing In Particular

[Nick]

Btw, despite the rest of the world disagreeing its Longdog. No camel case.

[JamesD]

Interesting to see the cost ramp up... At, say, £6000 for parts and the usual ballpark commercial multiple of six times for consumer cost compared to cost of production they should be close to £36.000 - which is getting a little expensive so say that a commercial production cost was £4000 compared to your full blown consumer part cost - then using the same multiple they would be £24000 ... looking at the cost of other High End loudspeakers at the Munich show this year - this seems about right!!!

Longdog it s then - sorry to repeat the error...

BTW as an historical reference my Quasars cost me €4,500 back in 2002!

James

[IslandPink]

I'm still shocked at how many unimpressive two-way floor standers cost £15,000 , these days.
Given that it's about the same as what I payed for a nice Audi A1 with 16,000 miles on the clock.

[Nick]

Yep, but despite the cost of things, I am very happy with them. In the hour or so of listening we did with Mark on the Saturday night I was pleased they did the "system disappears and you are listening to the sounds" which was the target I wanted after hearing the originals do that.

All I need to do now is get my workshop rebuilt so I can have a permanent listening space to use then. They are in storage again now.

[ed]

after James wrote the post about the projected ommercial price being a bit cheap I did some sums....

that plastic sure is pricey..snigger.
I had originally priced in GMF units but even if you'd used EXC units the price of the acrylic would still be a bit scary(for me at least).
Does it really bring that much to the party in SQ terms?...I do appreciate the cosmetic look of the acrylic though...awesome sex appeal.

[vinylnvalves]

Fantastic to see the LongDog pics - love the Quasars getting there usual good reception

Surely the price is too low though for commercial pricing?

James

Probably, I have just added up the parts cost, and it comes to £5663.20. Maybe add a bit more for some wire, and even more for packing cases. That was based on list price for everything, and $350 of transformer attenuators for the tweeters that you could probably use a lpad for. It also includes about £440 of fancy Mundorf inductors for the xover that still have not arrived, and the acrylic case for the xovers that did arrive but is waiting on the inductors.

But given all that, as its just an evening job putting all the bits someone else has built together, and soldering the xover together, it would do for me.

It did make me smile though when someone described them as a bit home made, I did point out that most of the things in the room were made at home. I do wonder what some folk think is the magic dust that is only available to "factory made" things.

From my visits around a few audio manufacturers local to me providing high end stuff, some consumers would be shocked at the low tech equipment used to make amps, cables and turntables for example, its the expertise and experience and a lot of failed attempts before getting it right that your generally paying for.

[JamesD]

The perspex is pricey in the thickness required to be acoustically transparent and it is very difficult to bend in that thickness without producing stress marks in the material- all too visible. I ruined the best part of €4000 worth of material before I saw the light and got the baffles made professionally ( three failed attempts... its easy on paper...)

James

[Nick]

Yep, I cut straight to the getting them made by someone who could. And I suspect they had more than one go. They are not perfect, but they are close enough to me. And to be honest, while I have not done an A/B with them in wood, I think yes, its worth it in terms of sound. In terms of not visually dominating the room I think its a no brainer as well.

[IslandPink]

It is worth it for the sound quality yes. There's a level of upper-mid and HF 'chatter' that you get from wood, especially MDF, that disappears when you use acrylic. However, you get most of the sonic benefit from just doing the front panel, as I did.

[vinylnvalves]

What’s the property’s of acrylic that make it sound better, as it’s not a great engineering plastic, so it’s not pure stiffness. I didn’t think much of the Ferguson Horns, the only acrylic speakers I have heard, they rang like bells.

[IslandPink]

I don't know in any detail, but it's well damped above a certain frequency. You can tell that just by banging your knuckles on it, comparing that against wood. I think it's only the primary modes that would be reduced by high stiffness.

[vinylnvalves]

I will have to look up it’s frequency v loss curves. Carbon fibre sheet has very good internal damping, due to its construction.
It interesting as Nottingham Analogue use Delrin a loaded nylon for arm boards and such like, as it sounds better. As it’s a lot more expensive than acrylic- nobody has ever made a speaker baffle from it yet, as far as I know.

[Ali Tait]

Nice day at the Pyramid yesterday.

[Ant]

Had to have a new electrickery meter fitted on monday.
Went to put my weekly top up on it and the meter was completely dead although the supply was still on.
Rang british gas who arranged to book an engineer to come look at it, got a text later to give the appointment .......in august...

Rang them back, asked how exactly i was supposed to pay for my electric between now and august, and what would happen if and when the supply went off.

When money was mentioned there was an engineer out within an hour.

The engineer didnt have a meter the same as the one in there already, they had pulled him off fitting smart meters, so i got a smart meter again. The meter that had packed up had replaced a very early smart meter that packed up, so this is the second time ive had one. This one is a completely different one, the remote monitor is quite different too.

Ive been able to compare the energy consumption of the pass b1/f5 amp and the nva a20/p20 amp.

The f5 pings the meter into the orange band, the a20 hardly makes it twitch.

Using the cole phono stage pings it up to the top of the green band, so the valve phono stage seems to consume more than the a20 does......

The modded a20/p20 compared to the b1/f5 is interesting.
I prefer the pass amps. The pass amps are like a measurement instrument, the a20/p20 is more expressive but looser, not as detailed, clear, and whatever other reviewer speak i could spout. It has a character. The f5 doesnt.

I could get more reviewer speak out if the a20 if i care to start buggering about with it, power supply in it is simply a weedy 50va transformer, a rectifier and a cap on the positive and negative rail, and thats it. There are jumpers to split the supply on the board so a separate one for each section could be added.
As it is, its perfectly listenable, it has some nice engaging qualities, so i cant see any point.

The entire reason for swapping the amps out is to save some money on running costs, the a20 uses much less juice so im quite happy to accept the differences in the sound. The smart meter has shown just how much more expensive the f5 really is. I dread to think what eds sv811 amp costs to run. Its still sat there on its bread board because i havent had the time to start it

There is an issue in that i cant use this system as a test bed for preamp builds any more because of the fact that the p20 has had to have a potential divider on the output to make the amp useable with the big fanes.
So i am going to have to set the f5 up somewhere with some speakers so that i can test pre builds.

Not sure if i have any spare speakers so ill have to go piking about in the loft.
Hmm

[ed]

You may have muddied the waters a bit there Ant.....

in my head:
pike is a noun, name for a fish
pikey is also a noun which I wont elaborate on for PC reasons...
pike might be stretched into a verb to describe what some course anglers do at the weekend... Fred's gone piking, he can't come to the phone.

but piking about in the attic..mmmm no water, no fish.....

please explain our Ant...