Chienmortbb

Brands like Behringer get a lit of stick for their lack of innovation and reletively inept marketing but frankly looking at some Boutique products. I am wondering whether some of the boutique manifacturers just use better smoke and shinier mirrors? I am not suggesting that the products are not great products but: Is a Glockengang Blue Sky twice as good (or is it evan as good as) an Ashdown Rootmaster 800? Why do Jule Amp copy a vintage Roberts radio then charge a lot of money for a preamp? Yes I know it has valves. So did the first computers and car radios, I don't see many of those about now. Compressor looks gorgeous but £200 for a stompbox compressor? I thought the Finns had no sense of humour. At least Darkglass is a cool name. As I said I am not having a pop specifically at those manufacturers, others are just as guilty (if there is any guilt).

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1442849164' post='2869976'] Your nearest One10 demo unit is in Bishops Stortford... sorry, this isn't helpful is it? [/quote]It may be small and light but carrying it all of 10 miles could be a problem,

I should add that the reason I heard the Sontronics was I was in Absolute Music. However at te time I did not know their HQ was less than a mile from my house. Incidenty the have a great live sound stage to try things on. All the is missing is the audience.

The SM series are a blast from the past and although still good mics there are many better mics available. In fact there is an Utban Myth that some BBC sound techs prefer Behringer Mics to Shure, I must ask my friend Uli who told him that story. I love AKG Headphones but never found their mics that good for live work. A femial singer got rid of hers about 10 years ago as she was never happy with it. I must confess it was not a D5. To be serious the best vocal mic I have heard recently is the Sontronics ST-C80. it is almost as good as the firm's condenser mics. It is available for under £80 from Absolute Music. For value actually the Behringer XM8500 with a foam windshield/screen takes some beating.

The Line 6 mics use 2.4GHz so should not be affectd by 4G phones. The Sennheiser system work on so called Channel 70 and is right next to some 4G transmission.

Has anyone had any problems with 4G moblie phones interfering with wireless mics? It was flagged up by Ofcom as a possible problem but I thing we may have had is a coupe of times recently. Is anyone still using VHF mics? I was wondering whether the move to UHF has improved VHF.

Of course I forgot Duke Le Jeune of Audio Kinetics, some really innovative designs coming from him. Passinwind knows more about Duke's new designs.

I doubt whether a 100W amp will blow a 1000W Speaker. On the Gain issue. It s simple. Gain is the control of the amount of gain a circuit has and has nothing to do with Overdive (WTF is that). Volume is more woolly but in general is an attenuator at the end of a stage or pre-amp. A gain control is part of the circuit and a volume control is after a circuit. The trouble is that these are semantics for the people and for marketing department, just the job for fooling the punters.

It is interesting that we have supporters of both Barefaced and TKS on here. Sometimes it is like Everton and Liverpool supporters arguing the toss,. However They both make great products from Europe and we don't have to rely on aiir shipped form North America and the Far East. I worked for Panasonic (Technics and Ramsa) for many years and there was one golden rule about manufacturing. You don't ship air. That means speaker cabinets as freight is cosed on both weight and volume (size not loudness). So your boutique cab from the good ole USA or your MDF cab from China will be expensive because the shipping costs are high, attracting both VAT and DUTY. Then they are then marked uo several times before your long suffering renditions of Mustang Sally have paid for them. So we should salute both TKS and Barefaced and give credit to both Bill F and Greenboy for pushing the boundaries of what Bass cabinet design can be. Keep them on their toes, if something goes wrong, tell themso they can get a handle* on it (sorry Alex). Then come back here and tell us of your experience. While I am in temporary (I hope) retirement I will dream of owning either or both and hope that the [url="http://dansette.com/#for-sale"]"Dansette*[/url] look dissappears and a new Logo* appears that is not designed by Lego. *Jokes so don't flame me.

[attachment=199859:2015-09-01 19.33.48.jpg]Looking good?

Thanks Phil. If it is OK with you I will send the amp to you when it is finished so you can tell mewhat you think. With my eye and my wife's illness I will not be gigging for a while. It would be great to get some feedback especially as I decided on the power output based on your 1x12 cab design. Don't hold you breath though it will be a month or more.

Tomorrow is my eye operation so another delay. However I powered up the amp and power supplies today all work well.

OK back on track. If the baffle size is reduced will the baffle step not also rise in frequency? Also with the slot pots will the driver be relocated for optimum baffle step reduction?

We should really wait till the 2x10 thread is running but.,,which 10" Beymas are you using?

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1440105974' post='2848426'] Yes, I've wondered about that with regard to the signal most magnetic pickups produce. I was reading Erno Zwaan's book (the Q-tuners guy), and it would appear that most high impedance pickups start to roll off above their resonant peak, which is much lower than 18KHz. So presumably anything going on up there is likely to be either distortion artifacts or noise. Do we really want to hear that? [/quote]On a passive bass the traditional Volume and Tone controls limit the higher frequencies quite a lot and although I am willing to be corrected, there is little or no output at 18KHz. Even an active bass that uses volume or blend before the preamp will kill the real highs. The only reason to go to 50KHz is to listen to interference from TV remotes or unshielded CD players.I have to agree with Bill that there is little musical sound either above 8-10KHz, or on a Kanye West song, except hiss and interference.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1439996791' post='2847409'] Well the Streamliner sounded amazing through the 2x10 design I have here. I recorded the sound on a little Olympus recorder I have here, if they are any good I'll put them up. [/quote]Not to complicate things, what 2x10 design?

[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1439683016' post='2845028'] I thought that's what I said: "the peak-to-peak voltage of a sine wave is 1.414 times its RMS value, hence its peak-to-peak power is twice its RMS power" Power = V^2 / R [/quote]Sorry to hijack the thread buy. Peak is 1.414 * RMS in voltage or current. Most people multiply the two together to get RMS watt (slightly wrong but hehe). So at 100W into 8R (R is the correct abbreviation for Ohms) the voltage is 28.25V and current is 3.54A. Multiply each by 1.414 and we get a Voltage of 39.94V and a current of 5.0A. multiply one by the other and you get just shy ot 200W so double. Peak to Peak is twice peak so gives gives 80V * !0A and so 800Watts. Easy to see how the marketing department can get excited.

tauzero is correct on most things but 1.414 is the peak (not peak to peak) of RMS. However if you are working peak power then it is twice RMS as both the voltage and current peaks are 1.414 time the voltage and current of RMS. So. 500 Watts RMS is 1000 Watts peak. I think Bergera have missed a trick here because had they marketed this premium range as 500 Watt amps, people would probably rave about them rather than dispute the rather vague specs. For what its worth I think they are beautiful looking amps. .

I once spoke to the man that designed the cabinets at Trace and he swore that MDF sounded best of all. Of course HH were one oif the few manufacturers that made their own drivers so they probably also knew a bit about cab designs too.

Of course if you talk to the transformer manufacturers, they will claim (and do) that the valve sound is mostly down to the way the output transformer behaves. I am not conforming that but is does seem to question the value of valve preamps. As for the look pf the amp, I was trained in the late 60's and all test equipment looked like that. So I suppose I am suffering nostalgia.

Warning boring technical content. From memory (not too good nowadays) the ABM and MAG range use Class AB output stages using power FETs similar to the old Trace designs (can't remember whether they are VFets or Mosfets. Advantages over bipolar transistor output stages are that the the transfer charateristic is closer to valve than transistor so clipping is less harsh, and they do not suffer from thermal runaway (if the heatsink is too small or ambient temerature is too high). Disadvantages are that they give out less power (fewer watts) for a given power supply voltage so transformers are bigger (hence heavier). Incidentally it is a lovely looking amp. Looks like it means business.

Is this the marketing dept. using what they copnsiser a musical adjective?

Seems like two steps forward and one step back at the moment. I was doing a parts order and added some tiny 9mm pots from AlphaTaiwan. One was for the FX return level control. Unfortunately I did not read the spec carefully enough and I got a PCB mounted pot with a knurled shaft. It is not chassis mount. So as I did not want a big knob on the back panel that was proud of the back of the case, I set about mounting the pot on some stripboard with the idea to mount it on pillars, it worked quite well as you can see in the pictures attached. As I was tightening the slotted screws that held the stripboard and pot, the screwdriver slipped and gouged the back panel. I did a test spot of brush applied varnish and it seemed to work well but over a larger it looked terrible. So I disassembled the panel, rubbed it down then applied the last of the spray lacquer I had. Not great but just about passes muster.

post 349 gives the dimensions

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1438501882' post='2834879'] There are essentially three limits to an amplifiers power output. The voltage it can swing, the current it can provide and the heat it can dissipate. In any given amp one of these will be the important limiting element. (I'm ignoring any protection circuits or DSP here) There are lots of ways to measure and calculate an amps output even if you stick to rms. they range from just measuring the voltage swing and calculating the power that voltage would drive through 8ohms to connecting the amp to a dummy resistor and running sine waves through it for a week and measuring the temperature rise. Different amps work differently so can scre better in some tests than others. It's relatively easy to switch huge voltages so class D amps score well here. Since in most applications the power is only needed for a fraction of a second it makes no sense to put in a huge power supply so this is often the limit. With transistor amps high voltage devices are more expensive and the transistors are prone to thermal runaway so heat is the problem even if the power supply is big enough. Valve amps were usually limited by current, not least because all the power would go out through the output transformer. So, a watt is still a watt but there is a lot of room for confusion and even when standard tests and rms watts are used there will be amps that seem louder than others. The other aspect of this though is the speaker. There is no single drive unit that can handle 1000W continuously at all frequencies, and if you use 1000W through multiple drivers then the sound levels developed are going to be so high as to be unusable on stage. These sorts of powers are only useful for PA arrays safely suspended way above the band and audiences heads. To answer one of your questions. A 3000W rated amp limited by heat and power supply to1600W continuous could be treated as a 1600W amp except it could also put 3000W through your speakers for long enough to damage them. In fact real world speakers rated at, say, 800W rms 1600W peak probably can't handle 200W at some frequencies. We are are all going to have to get used to class D amp ratings. Affordable power is now effectively unlimited, there are a few problems with power supplies but we are going to have to decide to be careful about what powers we wish for. [/quote]Very good points Phil. To add my two pence worth, Valves or Bipolar or Mosfet amps can all be made in Class A, B, AB or D (Class C are radio/tv transmitter power amps and E,G and H are all variations on Class B IMHO). Firstly why do valve amps sound louder. Well to some extent it is a limitation of Valves that they need a transformer to drive low impedance speakers. It is easy to Tap a transformer to match the power output of the amp to the loudspeakers. So a 100W valve amp will give 100W into 4,8 and 16 Ohms of the trasformer is tapped at those impedances. An amplifier without a transformer will suppy different powers into different loads (speakers). A perfect Solid State amplifier might give 50W into 16 Ohms, 100W intp 8 Ohms and 200W into 4 Ohms (It might even give 400W into 2 ohms. No marketing department would dream of calling this a 50W amp. It would be called a 200W amp. So do a test with the 100W Valve V the 200W SS into 8 Ohms and guess what. They sound the same UNTIL the amps are pushed hard the soft clipping or self compression of a valve ourput stage kicks in. The valve amp will sound louder. If the 200W amp has a good compressor the differences will be subtle. Coming on to the power supply this is a big limiting factor. The biggest single cost component in an SS amp, Whether Class AB or Class D is either the transformer or Switch Mode Power Supply. So an amp that can output 250W into ohms may be limited to a much lower level into 4 Ohms. Take a very good amp like the Hartke HA3500, an amp you know well. It is specified as 240W into 8 Ohms and 350W into 4 Ohms. Almost certaily the 4 Ohm figure is power supply limited. Marketing departments are also guilty of using bogus ratings. A number of makers use the Anaview [b]Class D ALC0300, [/b]one manufacturer has used it for amps with a claimed outputs of 640, 420 and 320 watts. It is rated as 200W into 8 ohms and a recent change uprated the 4ohm output from 320 to 350 watts. So clearly 640 is twice 320, and 420 is the peak output specified by Anaview. All these are specifies at 1% distortin figures but some makers quote at 10% distortion that can give a figure almost 40% higher but would be unuseable in real world use. The giggest problem for me is that hardly anyone gives a true technical specification for their amps. so it really makes it hard to compare amp to amp even from the same make. Many amps are quoted at their maximum output assumimg that heatsinking or fans are at the optimum level. Then use pathetic heat management that means the amp cannot possible reach its quoted output for more than a few seconds. There are lies. damn lies and specifications. So how do we compare amps? I would suggest always compare at 8 Ohms. So halve the output of a Solid State Class A/B or Class D Amps when comparing with a Valve amp. After that listen but remember that although the ear has no memory and is influenced by the eye. A big SVT looks louder than a small Class D amp but is it? How much is down to the "voice" of the amps being compared. Don"t compare a sound with the one you remember, it will be innacurate. The only valid comparisons are blind A/B test that happen at the same time and place.