Thursday, July 2, 2009

Getting Jiggy with it









JustMLS, ARTA, Speaker Workshop - they all have a common theme - they are software packages, not software + hardware packages. Praxis, Leap, Clio, MLSSA - these are packages of software and hardware for measuring speakers.

The software-only packages are a bit less expensive (ARTA and LspCAD Std can be had for $350 USD or so for both), but require the user to rig up hardware capable of repeatable, consistant measurements (average of $50 to create the 2 jigs for them). Praxis ($1000) and LEAP ($1500) provide you with the hardware also, making it easy to just get to work.

Since easy costs a lot more in the cash department, I am gonna try to get ARTA and/or LspCAD&JustMLS to function - that would be maybe $400 for ARTA, LspCAD Standard Edition, and a jig that will function for both products & hold the Wallin Preamp.

JustMLS and ARTA both provide details on the 'jig' necessary to use the software packages in question. A 'jig' in this case is a box with some connectors, resistors, and other stuff necessary to cable your speaker to the sound card.

I have almost ZERO electrical knowledge - kinda bad for someone who wants to create his own speakers. So, I gotta learn as I go thru this.... I bought the parts to create jigs from Mouser, and have some items already in my stock. I have been playing with the stuff from Mouser, and I think I can get the mic preamp, ARTA and JustMLS components all into one project box.

You need a program that can draw basic shapes. I have a friend with Adobe Illustrator on his terminal server, and he kindly gave me access via Remote Desktop and I drew away.

If you order your parts online from a place like Mouser, then each part has details such as the size of the part, and links to everything you bought is in the My Mouser part of the website. This makes it really easy to draw & place drill holes for each part, so you can print your templates, tape them to the enclosure, and drill holes for each component you need to mount.
I have a Hammond enclosure, sized 5.9x3.2x1.8 inches, Part# 1591DSBK. One small side is 3.2x1.8 inches. Easy enough to create a graphic of that size. One larger side is 5.9x1.8 inches - just a different graphic.

Once I create the new graphic, I use the View menu to show the rulers, in inches. Then I can draw exact size circles, squares, or whatever, and label them.

Above are some pictures of the jig that I started today - notice the printed out templates that I taped all over the jig box. I need a few more parts to finish, will post the final product pics when completed. Wonder if all this effort is worth it?

No comments:

Post a Comment