the 'sound is in your ears' effect

[Goatman]

I have an aiwa jax-n88 which has this kind of effect.
I originally thought this is purely a signal processing thing inside the amp.
recently i bought a hitachi HA-1800 amp for $5 at a garage sale.
i hooked the am to the aiwa speakers and i'm getting almost thesame effect.
so i take it this is a speaker design thing?
anyone have any info on this, as i'm designing my own speakers for this amp.
my guess is it may be the type material the speakers are lined with on the inside... or some weird crossover ****!

BTW, HA-1800 is a stereo amplifier from 1981.
looks exactly like this one

LOL i was plaing on using a series inductor for the woofer and a series capacitor for the tweeter and get them to roll off at 2.5KHz. nice and simple.

the tweeter i'm buying is rated at 1.5KHz to 20KHz, woofer i'm buying is rated at 38Hz to 3.5KHz so i think i'll meet them half way. I'd get a midrange speaker but i'm kinda short for money ATM, lol.
any advice would be apreciated.

 

[gregz]

Hey Goatman,

When I was playing with my speaker setup a couple of years ago, I ended up with the music sounding like it was coming out of my own head. It turns out I had mixed the polarity of the left and right speaker so they were operating out of phase. It could be that your speakers are wired backwards from each other inside - you might try reversing the + and - on just one of them and see what the sound is like.

As for the crossover, there's nothing wrong with two way. However, getting them to match can be tricky, so as long as you have patience and the ability to buy more parts to tinker you'll be fine. It sounds like you're planning a simple crossover (1st order), which rolls off at 6dB per octave. If so, you'll want to leave a gap between the two crossover points because the slow rolloff will provide quite a bit of overlap that will fill in the gap.

You'll still likely have to balance the power between the tweeter (efficient) and sub (inefficient), which means you'll probably have to stick a 4 ohm or 8 ohm resistor on the tweeter inline with the capacitor - better yet an L-pad fader so you can adjust it just right.

If you're interested in really getting into it, we can spew out more information.

Enjoy!

 

[Goatman]

Hey Goatman,

When I was playing with my speaker setup a couple of years ago, I ended up with the music sounding like it was coming out of my own head. It turns out I had mixed the polarity of the left and right speaker so they were operating out of phase. It could be that your speakers are wired backwards from each other inside - you might try reversing the + and - on just one of them and see what the sound is like.

As for the crossover, there's nothing wrong with two way. However, getting them to match can be tricky, so as long as you have patience and the ability to buy more parts to tinker you'll be fine. It sounds like you're planning a simple crossover (1st order), which rolls off at 6dB per octave. If so, you'll want to leave a gap between the two crossover points because the slow rolloff will provide quite a bit of overlap that will fill in the gap.

You'll still likely have to balance the power between the tweeter (efficient) and sub (inefficient), which means you'll probably have to stick a 4 ohm or 8 ohm resistor on the tweeter inline with the capacitor - better yet an L-pad fader so you can adjust it just right.

If you're interested in really getting into it, we can spew out more information.

Enjoy!

so this out of phase thing is done on purpuse.
the tweeter is 8 ohm, the woofer is 4 ohm so i'll have more power through the woofer anyways, but i'll see how i'll go
correct me if i'm wrong but if i set the woofer's cut off at 2.5KHz, that will be at 3db - midband level so it will be at half power. The tweeter wil be the same. Both woofer and tweeter will work at half power at the cut-off points.
so i should get a smooth overall responce then. am i wrong?
I have plenty of resistors and capacitors so i'll have no problems playing with it.
so, the cut off frequency for the sub will be when XL = Z(sub). If the inductor is in series with the sub that will be half power. same with the tweeter right (but with capacitor)?

and by all means spew as much info as u can

 

[Goatman]

BTW the sub i'm looking at is the soundstorm SCW100.
specs
* 10 inch Subwoofer
* 400 Watts Max
* SPL = 91 dB
* Voice Coil = 1.5 inches
* Magnet = 40 oz.
* Silvered Spring Loaded Push Terminals
* Metallic Injected Cones
* Chromed & Vented Backplate
* Butyl Rubber Surround
* 4 Ohm
* Rubber Magnet Boot

That's all the info u get

for the tweeter:

Specifications:
- System power: 200watts rms (with correct crossover).
- Power Handling: 40WRMS
- Freq. Range: 1.5kHz-20kHz
- Resonance: 1200 Hz.
- VC former: Aluminium.
- VC Diam: 25mm
- Suggested crossover point: 4kHz at 12dB/oct
- Sensitivity: 94 dB 1W/1M
- Component list: 3.3uf in series and 0.47mH in parallel,
- Nom Impedance: 8 ohms.
- Dim: A 99, B 89 , C 74mm.

damn! shouldn't have crossposted!!

the tweeter has dimensions given, but the woofer remains a mystery. I live in australia, so good hardware is hard to get.

I also have the choice of getting this sub
http://www1.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=CS2274&CATID=&keywords=woofer&SPECIAL=&form=KEYWORD&ProdCodeOnly=&Keyword1=&Keyword2=&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=&SUBCATID=
it's reccomended for a 48 litre box, would it matter too much if i used it in a 54 litre?
I havn't built the boxes yet so any advice would be greatly apreciated

 

[Francious70]

The sound is "in your ears"?? Take the headphones off, duh!! Hahahaha.

Paul