John Heisz - Speakers and Audio Projects | Putting the Amp Boards Together and testing / measuring them @IBuildIt | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 11 minutes ago
Time to put the amp boards together and get them tested and measured. Since I started with a properly made prototype, I know these will work (providing I don't make any mistakes), but the testing and measuring just confirms that they are working correctly.
If you want a look at the schematic for this amp, you can see that in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=Qe9H07JlT6w
Putting 10 of these together took several hours, and then several more hours to run the measurements. You need to be in this for the challenge and because you love it, because you aren't going to save much money and you are certainly not going to save time doing it yourself.
That said, it's hard to beat the level of satisfaction that comes from designing and building something complex from the ground up and having it work exactly like it was designed to.
The measurements I made are limited by the test equipment. Using a computer and sound card / audio interface isn't the same as a $50,000 Audio Precision spectrum analyzer, but it will tell you whether the amp is "good enough". THD, noise and IMD are all well below audibility and that's all that matters. Also the harmonic distortions are declining from the 2nd out, and the higher order harmonics are extremely low.
What does it sound like? It sounds like an amp! Amps that are competently designed that don't inject harmonic distortion intentionally all sound the same. If you want to hear this one, there's a short sound clip at the end of this video:
youtu.be/fg5CEx_l0aE
Much of how the amp will perform is dependant on the power supply that feeds it. In particular, you need plenty of power on tap to deal with transients. These amps will typically run in the 10 to 80 watt range, but are capable of putting out 150 watts each for brief intervals. That gives dynamic overhead so that the signal is never clipped, even at higher volumes.
While this is a 10 channel amp, 8 of those channels will be used to power just 2 speakers - my active 4-ways. So in reality, a better way to view it is like a 4 channel amp, since ultimately it will power just 4 speakers.
That means that the output power is spread out over 4 of these amp boards for each 4-way speaker.
You can help support the work I do in making these videos:
Project plans for sale: ibuildit.ca/plans
Join the ibuildit community on Loacals: ibuildit.locals.com
Support this channel on Patreon:
patreon.com/user?u=865843&ty=h
#diyspeakers
#johnheisz
#audio
My "Scrap bin" channel:
youtube.com/c/IBuildItScrapBin
My main channel:
youtube.com/user/jpheisz
Website: ibuildit.ca
Facebook: facebook.com/I-Build-It-258048014240900
Instagram: instagram.com/i_build_it.ca
Time to put the amp boards together and get them tested and measured. Since I started with a properly made prototype, I know these will work (providing I don't make any mistakes), but the testing and measuring just confirms that they are working correctly.
If you want a look at the schematic for this amp, you can see that in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=Qe9H07JlT6w
Putting 10 of these together took several hours, and then several more hours to run the measurements. You need to be in this for the challenge and because you love it, because you aren't going to save much money and you are certainly not going to save time doing it yourself.
That said, it's hard to beat the level of satisfaction that comes from designing and building something complex from the ground up and having it work exactly like it was designed to.
The measurements I made are limited by the test equipment. Using a computer and sound card / audio interface isn't the same as a $50,000 Audio Precision spectrum analyzer, but it will tell you whether the amp is "good enough". THD, noise and IMD are all well below audibility and that's all that matters. Also the harmonic distortions are declining from the 2nd out, and the higher order harmonics are extremely low.
What does it sound like? It sounds like an amp! Amps that are competently designed that don't inject harmonic distortion intentionally all sound the same. If you want to hear this one, there's a short sound clip at the end of this video:
youtu.be/fg5CEx_l0aE
Much of how the amp will perform is dependant on the power supply that feeds it. In particular, you need plenty of power on tap to deal with transients. These amps will typically run in the 10 to 80 watt range, but are capable of putting out 150 watts each for brief intervals. That gives dynamic overhead so that the signal is never clipped, even at higher volumes.
While this is a 10 channel amp, 8 of those channels will be used to power just 2 speakers - my active 4-ways. So in reality, a better way to view it is like a 4 channel amp, since ultimately it will power just 4 speakers.
That means that the output power is spread out over 4 of these amp boards for each 4-way speaker.
You can help support the work I do in making these videos:
Project plans for sale: ibuildit.ca/plans
Join the ibuildit community on Loacals: ibuildit.locals.com
Support this channel on Patreon:
patreon.com/user?u=865843&ty=h
#diyspeakers
#johnheisz
#audio
My "Scrap bin" channel:
youtube.com/c/IBuildItScrapBin
My main channel:
youtube.com/user/jpheisz
Website: ibuildit.ca
Facebook: facebook.com/I-Build-It-258048014240900
Instagram: instagram.com/i_build_it.ca
