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3.14.02
Well on Thursday March 14th, 2002 I had recieved a package from an ebay dealer. I had ordered a pair of
6.5" speakers that I plan on using in a 5 channel computer surround
setup.
The idea behind the whole project was to keep the budget as low as
possible, while still maintaining some decent sound quality. Well since
this system is for my work PC, and not my home theatre PC, I could
afford to sacrifice a bit of quality and expense, considering I will
never get to crank it. Schools tend to try to stay quiet you know.
Well, like I said before, on eBay I had stumbled upon a pair of KSC
whatever speakers for \$10 US. Couldn't beat the deal and took it.
It turns out the speakers are manufactured by Koss Audio, (much to the
sha-grin of my audiophile friends.) However, this doesn't bother me, as
I have owned several pairs of Koss speakers and headphones in the past
and was pleasantly surprised with all of them.
Anyways, the package arrived at work and I was eager just to make sure
the speakers worked. So I cracked open one of those pairs of el-cheapo
computer speakers, you know the ones everyone has!! Well to my
surprise, the little amp in there is 4ohm stable!! Check the little guy
out:
Well, listening to the little midrange speakers free-air to break them
in sucked real bad. Especially considering I'm using no crossover. Well
I was lacking all lower frequencies and all of my midrange, it just
sounded like I was plucking a piece of aluminum. So I started looking
around my office for something, anything, to block the rear waves of
the speakers from the front. The only thing I could find of reasonable
size happened to be the box for an ATX power supply.
So What I decided to do, was cut a hole for the speaker, and use a
plastic packaging tape to seal the seems of the cardboard. Now I
understand that this is not a "suitable" enclosure etc. b/c the walls
are not stiff etc. Well, in the following picture you will see the
inside of the box, covered in packaging tape. Well all sides of the
box, except the baffle, were braced with supplementary pieces of
cardboard. (So sue me, I don't have saws and wood at all times of the
day!!)
Well after cutting the hole, and sealing all the seams with the "tamper
evident" packaging tape, I decided to give her a run on the little PC
speaker amp. (Which I know is 4ohm stable b/c the original speakers
were 4 ohm speakers. Though I am assuming that somewhere on the circuit
board, the little amp runs those leads into series. But it CAN
differentiate left and right stereo channels, so I'm not certain about
the last staement.)
And don't you know this thing came absolutely alive. I was amazed to
say the least. The midrange came right into the music, as well as a low
end, that in this enclosure extends downwards towards 50hz. Now of
course it's no audiophile grade setup, but for 10 minutes of time... I
couldn't have done too much better.
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