Welcome to Craig Starks DIY Audio pages (old copy)
This is a copy of Craig Starks DIY Audio pages extracted from the
Web Archive as of 23rd October 1999.
All text found below the twin line is written by Craig Stark.
3/11/99: It's been several months since again the last update. I know many
of you have sent me links to add & I appologize for the delay. Unfortunately,
maintaining the page is low-down on an increasingly long to-do list. In
fact, I have thought of pulling the plug on the page a number of times, and
were it not for the amount of positive feedback I've gotten (and the fact
that I just found out we're at 400 hits/day) I might have dropped it instead
of putting in this update. Anyway, I've weeded out some old links and
will put in a number of new ones in the next few days. Enjoy!
As you might have guessed from the title, this page is meant to be a
reference for the DIY audio community. Currently, it consists of a large
number of useful links that I've compiled as well as a section dedicated to project materials you can download.
If you've got links or projects to contribute, or if you have some feedback
for me, please e-mail me and
let me know so the page can grow and become more useful. And now, on with
the show...
Index
Loudspeaker parts dealers
-
ACI speaker kits
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Audio X-Treme sells the
Clearview active crossover and has a number of goodies for the Carver Ribbons.
-
Human Speakers
manufactures a line of small drivers and performs speaker repair.
-
Madisound sells Audax, Vifa,
Dynaudio, Scan-Speak, Eton, Peerless & Madisound drivers and has driver
info on-line. Kits and crossover components too!
-
Meniscus Audio has put up
a site with driver parameters for the lines they sell (Audax, Audio Concepts,
Eton and Eclipse)
-
Newform Research sells 8",
15" and 30" ribbon drivers (as well as entire systems).
-
Orange County Speaker Inc specializes
in stocking speaker repair and replacement parts by the truckload. Reconing,
replacing, refoaming, or otherwise repairing.
-
Parts Express sells a wide
range of drivers and electronic components at discount prices. Their site
features secure on-line ordering as well.
-
SCH, The Sound Clearing house,
deals in very low-cost woofers designed by the same folk who OEM for a
number of large makers.
-
Solen is a Canadian manufacturer
and dealer of high-end crossover parts and drivers.
-
Speaker City USA is another large
distributor and has a full catalog on-line. They cover, Access, Acculine,
Audax, Dynaudio, Focal, McCauley, Pioneer, Raven, Scan Speak, Speco, Versa-Tronics,
& Vifa
-
The Ultimate Speaker Enclosure
Company specializes in oddball (round, egg, etc) shaped enclosures
-
Vaf, an Australian firm deals in a
number of high-end speaker kits.
-
Zalytron, sells Cabasse, Focal, Morel,
Raven, Seas, & Audax as well as parts and kits. Their catalog is not yet
on-line, though a price sheet is.
Loudspeaker info
-
Audax has a Web presence with data
on their drivers and plans for their Vance Dickason designed kits.
-
Data and specs on the Carver
ribbon drivers available to amateurs at ~$450US apiece
-
Tom Danley has provided scans of an information packet on Intersonic's
ContraBass Servo sub. Click on the link to download a .zip file of
the TIFF scans. For a preview, click
here to see a half-sized GIF of the first page
-
The DIY Loudspeakers
mailing list (formerly known of as the Bass and DIY Loudspeaker list) has
a new homepage w/lots of good stuff.
-
Dynaudio manufactures high-end drivers
and kits
-
Juha Hartikaninen has put up a site that lets you search
by driver name for a listing of basic specs. Reportedly contains 1500
drivers.
-
The Speaker Building Page
is an excellent source for the amateur speaker builder. It includes driver
specs, software, crossover
formulae and even a selection of projects. If you get a DNS error,
try again or try here or here
.
-
The NHT1259
FAQ: Designed by Ken Kantor of NHT, this 12" is quite possibly the
best sub-woofer available to the DIY-er.
-
Brian Steele's
subwoofer design page
-
Looking Over My
Shoulder by Lynn Olson: An article that appeared in Positive Feedback
and was made available on the net. A great article on loudspeaker design.
Electronics parts and audio kit retailers
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Angela Instruments sells Audio Note
kits & parts geared toward tube equipment
-
The Audio Crafter's Guild
has a DAC kit and other goodies
-
Bartolucci Transformers,
an Italian firm, offers high-end output transformers.
-
Bocchino
Audio Components is an Australian company that, among other things
deals in binding posts, chassis connectors, and cables
-
Brendan Biever has a number of parts
for sale listed on his web-page. Tubes, transistors, caps, resistors,
etc.
-
Brent Jessee offers vaccuum
tubes for sale on the web.
-
Curcio Audio Engineering Kits
by Joe Curcio. High-end preamps, a crossover & a DAC. Heavy on tubes.
-
DigiKey has an excellent site up that
allows you to view their catalog and search for availability and pricing
on parts. For those who don't know DigiKey, all I can say is you should.
-
Electronix Express is an equipemnt
and component distributor aimed at supplying schools and colleges as well
as industry. While their catalog isn't on-line, a number of specials are
and you can order a free catalog online.
-
Marchand Electronics Inc. Seller
of high-quality affordable kits. Well known for their active crossovers.
-
Mouser is now fully on-line as well
-
Newark Electronics is now fully on-line as well
-
OPAMP Labs sells a number of plug-in
modules (filters, power-amps, preamps, etc).
-
Parts Express sells electronic
components and drivers.
-
Sonic Frontiers Inc. Premium
parts and kits
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True Audio Designs offers
a booklet on high-end amplifier design
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Welborne Labs has excellent
kits by Kimmel, Welborne & Borbely and a wide selection of premium
parts.
-
A list of electronic
compoent suppliers including new and surplus compiled by John
Woods.
-
Since resources for the DIY audio crowd overlaps quite a bit with those
of the ham-radio
crowd here's a link to an FTP site.
Audio test equipment
-
Liberty Instruments makes the IMP, IMP/M
and LAUD measurement gear & software for the PC platform. The IMP and
IMP/M (MLS version of the IMP) were featured in Speaker Builder a few years
ago. I personally use the IMP/M system.
-
An inexpensive
measurement mic by an AES club based on the D'Appolito's Mighty Mike.
-
LinearX, makers of LEAP, LMS, FilterCAD
and the pcRTA have a homepage complete with demos of their products.
Electronic parts companies
All these sites make data sheets available to users and are an incredibly
useful. Many also have supplemental application notes and device models.
For example, ever want to know how to use the LM12
80W op-amp from National? Most sites use the Adobe Acrobat format for their
data sheets. If you don't have a viewer (or plug-in for Netscape 2.0 95
or NT), you can download Acrobat for
free.
Other electronics resources
-
PartNet lets you search for parts by specification
or name across several manufacturers.
-
The Chip directory similarly
lets you find data on chips by number or functional category
-
The Sci.Electronics
FAQ is an excellent general resource covering basic topics like soldering,
PC-Board creation, & free SPICE sources
Magazines
Software
There are a number of excellent software tools out there for both the Mac
and PC platforms (and a few for UNIX). I know there are more than I've
listed below (especially for the Mac since the current count is 1). I'm
stuck in my ways and haven't hunted around recently for shareware / freeware
much. Let me know what you use and where to find it and I'll put it up
here so others can find it as well.
-
SD Sonic Design has a CALSOD demo available
for download. CALSOD allows you to mathmatically model the entire speaker
system and perform crossover optimization. Personally, I use CALSOD heavily.
-
Dylan Kelly, maintainer of the DIY
Loudspeakers mailing list has put together the
Audio
Software Archive, aimed mainly at loudspeaker design and placement.
-
True Image Audio has demos of their Windows 95 and Mac-based
speaker
design toolbox software (WinSpeakerz95 and MacSpeakerz) available.
-
SpeakerPRO
has a free demo (crossover, driver, and enclosure simulation software)
available for download.
-
Juha Hartikainen has a box
design in Java page up for closed, vented, 4th & 6th order bandpass
boxes.
-
Audua Inc. has an alpha version of SpeakerWorkshop
for Windows95. It appears to cover design, modeling and measurement
functions.
-
KB Acoustics has released a demo of
VisualEars, a package designed
to model room effects.
-
Ivex software. Free demo of their PCB
and schematic software
-
The PSPICE evaluation package is available
from OrCAD's page.
-
The PADS schematic and PCB layout
package is available on their page.
-
A short C program to generate
sine waves digitally
Projects on-line
-
My projects
include two speakers, a DAC and (sort of) a sub-woofer
-
Lynn Olson has put up full design plans and specs for the transmission-line
Ariel speaker.
-
Pass Labs has put the Zen projects
on-line, including the new Son
of Zen
- Colby Boles has
a number of home and car audio projects online
-
Claudio Bonavolta has a large number of
tube
schematics on-line.
-
Andrea Ciuffoli hosts a page for his progjects includingan OTL amp, a class A amp, and a Morel/Scanspeak loudspeaker.
-
Dave's DIY
Audio Page has an LM12 based sub amp and several speakers
-
Anthony Holton has plans for his
pre and power amps online.
-
Jim de Kort has a number of tube projects on PhaetoN:
his DIY audio site.
-
Marshall Leach has full plans for the Leach
Amp online
-
Richard Lim has put a very nice ASRC
DAC on-line.
-
Paul McKay has
a pre and a power amp project on line
-
Metaxas Audio Systems has a discrete
preamp on their site.
-
"Mike" has schematics for a pre, a
power amp, a phono pre, a digital delay, and a surround decoder on his site.
-
Bert Molenkamp has put designs for a power-amp,
pre-amp, and MC preamp online.
-
Martin Peterson has some info on his Plasma-static
hybrid electrostatics on-line
-
Jukka Tolonen has put his Glass
Audio projects on-line featuring an overhaul
of the Revox G36, a tube peak
meter, a soft
start tube circuit, and two new DAC
projects.
-
Matt Tucker has put up an active
active crosover and an AC filter his DIY audio page
-
Sheldon Stokes of SDS
Labs has a page of projects including the DAC he designed and wrote
up in Positive
Feedback
-
The Speaker Building Page
has a number of speaker designs on-line
-
Dan Hildebrand's 3-way
based on the NHT1259 woofer, an Eton midrange and a Scan-Speak tweeter
-
A push-pull Class
A tube amp
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A few speakers by Dick
Olsher including the Poly Natalia
-
Several speakers by Lou Lung
including a 3-way and a sealed sub
-
David D'Entremont has put up a 2-way
MTM on his page
-
An interseting 2-way using a "MSW wide band bending
wave transducer " and a pair of 8" woofers.
-
Kevin's Vaccuum
Tube Audio Page including articles written by the author for Positive
Feedback and several projects.
Usenet newsgroups
Research-related pages
Pages-O-Links
Other audio-related web pages
Support Person
Craig Stark / stark@whoville.ucsd.edu
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