pnichols wrote:
Just a bit more morphing:
You can't even drive decent speakers with low amperage - never mind the quality of the analog music storage (I can't believe I mentioned analog) or the lack of compression (ever heard of no compression) digital music storage going to the speakers.
My two front spacial side speakers (I stopped at 3-channel audio) are almost as large as my RV refrigerator ... and take a lot of amps to drive ... preferrably with Class A waveform amps instead of Class B or Class C (heaven forbid) waveforms - which I can't afford. Has anyone here priced triodes or high power solid state output stage (Krell) hardware lately?
True to some extent but you must have come out of the cryogenic state mentioned earlier about the time Class D amplification hit the market.
I too, have speakers the size of residential refrigerators, driven by Class A solid state.
The intention here, though, is a small speaker system capable of good nearfield reproduction.
On this, it more relies on the efficiency of the transducer and using a 12V powered amplifier. No other options need apply. The Texas Instruments Tripath chip amps were discovered, early on, by audio geeks to present a fairly good signal, albeit low powered. That they need 12v at 2 amps was/is a happenstance rather than a sought design feature for a typical user. The Dayton amp Mex linked to earlier would be a good start. IMO, the naked amp board is a better value and may work out as good if a bit of cobbling could be done. The Lepai amps are also a good choice, market share and competition are pushing improvements from Asian makers. There are also an increasing number of T-amps with Bluetooth interface so that's a happy deal for phone- centric folks.
I'm an advocate of single, full-range coned speakers. I have some here that are really good but beyond the budget and scope of this project. There are others, though, that are worthy and will present a better sound than a cheap woofer/tweeter combination in cheap boxes. One has to hear the single point source sound to really get it.
FWIW, I built a pair of speakers using 4" full range drivers and was powering them with a T-amp, using my laptop as source. My then, teenage kids had friends over and I enlisted them as auditioners as their hearing is much better than mine. All of them couldn't believe the sound was not emanating from the laptop's screen, a couple of them even looking behind the screen for the source of the audio voodoo. I knew then what a single full-range driver was capable of doing.
If anyone is in the neighborhood of Mpls/St. Paul and wants to hear what Nora Jones or Miles Davis sounds like with only 12V in the mix, stop on over.
