Good stuff.

My assessment of my system varies from day to day. Some days outstanding, some days not so much.

When it's not good I usually end up swapping valves in the Lampizator until all seems well. It's a super addictive activity that usually ends with a smile. Like having many different DACs in one box. The possible rectifier and valve combinations are almost infinite.

The Amazon Music library is obviously larger than TIDALs. I think TIDAL is heading for the sack! No BS MQA either.

Not been doing much apart from listening a lot!

I finally bit the bullet, some 5 years after talking about it! House move and total garden landscape from scratch got in the way.

I made the throat adapters to enable the use of Eminence Kappa 12A drivers, in place of the JBL 2220A 15" drivers.

Modelling the throat / new horn that would be, gave;







I made the throat adapters out of 11 rings of 21mm birch plywood, bonded and screwed together.
Fit was very good to the 20cm big throat of the short horn (as was).

Hornresp (thanks David), gave the cutting angles and it all fitted nicely - okay a little two pack filler and sanding needed [emoji846]

Initial listening was positive. More texture and pressure on some of the upper bass. Lost a bit lower down though!

I dusted off the measuring equipment and saw the problem!
Bass rolling off too soon.
That'll be the volume of the back box then! I was prepared for this.
The total volume of the back box is 31lts.
Driver takes up some.
Hornresp said 14 odd lts for the JBLs.
Only 7 for the Kappa 12As.
I'd made some hard non-porous foam inserts for this you'll recall.
So, I set about adding to them to account for the smaller 12" driver basket and half the volume.
Soon done!

Measurement showed an improvement down to meet the tapped horns nicely.

Listening again it's all there!

The correct compression ratio driver to mouth gives more horniness! It's around 4:1 now.
For some reason the Hornresp prescribed ratio never worked with the JBLs!

There is now a stepped throat of 8" down to the 5" one now of course (21mm long). That actually models better for the 12" drivers than without. It's bevelled in Hornresp.
I've yet to try that mod.

So, finally moved from 15 to 12" on mid bass.

I put the JBLs up for sale, and they sold quickly. They are going to a good home[emoji106]

Good bit of experimental work there, Steve. Having DSP allows you to fix all manner of gremlins.

I'm going to be modding a ChromeCastAudio ethernet / PSU unit for a pal. It will have 5v linear power.

First of all I had a listen to the standard unit - Ethernet in plugged into the integrated wall plug..

Not used CCA for ages!
Was never an end game.
I'm using Qobuz for the first time with CCA!
Didn't have Qobuz sub last time.

Hmm, yuck. Not very dynamic, highs / cymbals etc, are down right messy and fatiguing!

Then I used my quickly converted one. You'll remember I cut it open and ripped out the nasty switch mode PSU built in.

The difference is night and day.
Actually very listenable!
Qobuz into CCA / optical in, is well ahead of Spotify!

One bonus is I get to use the Qobuz App and cast to CCA.
This avoiding the woefully clunky Volumio interface 😀

Here's a recap of the mod from much earlier

---------------

This evening's fiddling was to cut the Google Chromecast Audio Ethernet / power thing open and extract the mains to 5Vdc module. Put that in the recycling bin and give it some decent quality connecting pins to fit on my linear PSU.

I checked that the output really was 5V and indeed it was so should be all good for this evening's listening test of Ethernet connected Chromecast Audio and linear 5V supply.
Should be a match made in heaven..

See pics below.

Striking fear into every Audio modders heart. Seeing HF stamped on a PSU



What's left the power input and Ethernet to usb module.



Power lines in added and strain relief tie wrap added.
This plugs straight into my linear PSU.

Yeah. Thing is though, I'm pretty sure you can use them on ChromeCast TV too - if you have poor WiFi but Ethernet!

I put RPi/Kali back on.
Umm ; Kali multi armed Goddess of music serving reclocking, just times everything so much better than what's in CCA!

So whilst CCA is good, it's not at the grown-ups table by a long way!

I'll keep liking Volumio😂

Does it have one of the Sony style optical transceivers in the middle of a 3.5mm jack socket? My Minidisc player had one of those. What brand is the optical cable?

Nothing special, just that Sony wanted to save space so they designed the 3.5mm dual connector design for optical or electrical connection.

The Cinnamons are all good products.

I'm back on the 400Hz upper mid horns (the smallest of the 3 in the shot below).
It's probably a change is as good as a rest thing!😀



One of the 550Hz horns can be seen on the floor to the left.

I also been messing about with the X/O between the tapped horn subs and mid bass horns.

Previous playing around had them at 8th order low pass on the tapped horns and 4th order upper pass on the mid bass.
I changed this to 6th order on the tapped horns.
Still on Linkwitz Riley.
This allows more prominence to the upper range of the tapped horns to be heard a little more, effectively utilising the rear cone movement more as it fills in usual front loaded bass horn hole.

Here's how the settings look in Najda DSP.

Tapped horns (only one channel shown)



Mid bass



I also loaded in the same but with Bessel filters.

After listening I could not in general hack the Bessel filter. It's just too much.
Sounds great on some tracks but L-R is just a so much more rounded performer, versatile and 'right' sounding across all music types.

Note also the green light on Najda.
That indicates optical input from the pimped Chromecast Audio.

Very pleased with the changes.

Give it a try. The digital chain is very sensitive to noise so it stands a good chance of improving SQ.