Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
Frank wrote: About the lightning stands, this Sunday I also found some garden tent (or pergolas) poles that could be used instead of the Manfrottos, they are much cheaper and have a detachable (quite heavy) base. Some fabrication involved anyway, as many said before. I, and I'm sure others, would be keen to see photographs, once you get that far ... if you could post a URL? Thanks, Michael. ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:41:23 -0400, jim moses wrote: very good - can you tell us where to find the amplifier cards? In the US Parts Express has a series of thes amplifier cards. A 4 ch 100w/c card without PSU runs $52. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=320-302 Michael On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, umashankar mantravadi umasha...@hotmail.com wrote: i would agree with that (arent there too many wires already?) but i found a cheaper solution in chinese made digital amplifier cards. 50 dollars including shipping for four channels! you need to build a box etc of course. there are switched mode power supplies too. (search for sure electronics on ebay) i use light weight home made speakers with a metal hook on the back. just now they hang on walls, but can easily hook them up otherways. i would make a ring and hook assembly which can slide up the stands and locked in place. umashankar i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:53:22 -0400 From: jmo...@brown.edu To: sursound@music.vt.edu Subject: Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes? I don't have an answer to your question. But i would consider using passive speakers and a separate amp setup. That will take some weight off your stands, and, the bigger advantage, you won't have to run power and and audio cables to every speaker location - just to the amp setup. Simple speaker wire (lamp cord) goes out to the speakers. we've been using this amp with some small behringer 1C monitors (JBL control 1 knock offs - more or less) for an inexpensive solution that performs surprisingly well (a bit lo-fi - especially the monitors): http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/597468-REG/Pyle_Pro_PCA3_PCA3_Mini_2_x.html we have a bunch of stereo kits that can be combined for multichannel use or used separately. - something like this is more pro: Rane MA4 4-Channel, 4 x 100W Amplifier MA 4 BH Photo Video http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/362083-REG/Rane_MA_4_MA4_4_Channel_4_x.html and there are a lot of surround sound receivers that will do the trick nicely with 5 or even 7 channels of amplification in a single unit. Many even have calibration routines built in. But it's hard to find them with discreet analog input these days - I would look for that or be prepared to deal with getting a digital multichannel input to the receiver. jim On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Franck M. mushroomac...@gmail.com wrote: I'm designing a mid-size (8 to 12-ch) ambisonics setup, using small active near-field studio monitors such as Fostex PM04, Focal CMS40, BM-5A...(the exact model will depend on the funding I'll get for this project). As it is supposed to be portable (well, transportable would be a better term) I'm planning to put the speakers on stands (such as lightning roll-stands from Manfrotto) that can be easily folded and put in some car (mine). For example, the 12 speakers setup would have 3 speakers per stand (floor, mid, ceiling speakers), each stand being in the corner of the room or, better, at the middle of each room side, in order to prevent that common room-corner-ultra-bass-boom effect. The 8 channels setup is simply the cube (or the parallelepiped), with no mid speaker. As some of you already may have built such fixed or portable setups, I was wondering how you managed to fix the speakers to (vertical or horizontal) tube stands or structures. For lights, they use tube clamps, but the weight is not the same when it comes to active loudspeakers. Most small form factor speakers have threaded mounting holes so you can put them on microphone stands, so I was planning to use them, but I couldn't find the missing link between the tube and the mounting holes... Thanks in advance for any tips! Frank ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- Jim Moses Technical Director/Lecturer Brown University Music Department and M.E.M.E. (Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments) -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20110630/250da75c/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20110630/5bb0d26f/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- Jim
Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
I did mention 'hard hats' in my original post. But the point bears emphasising more explicitly than my whimsy. Thanks Dave (and Peter). We _do_ use safety 'chains' .. though some non-rattling evolution of the idea. (On which note: lighting stands are already littered with rattling elements compared with mic. stands:) We have also moulded a loud speaker base, and now have a Silastic (elastomer) positive of a speaker base from which we can make troughed wedges . . . but even so would still use safety chains (with or without a hard hat ;-). The problem with sandbagging/weighting the base is --as ever-- portabilty. Three dimensional rigs just aren't fun to transport (or set up with the angle (elevation, that is) measuring and bespoke matrices ...). Michael For extra security for high speakers, we add luggage straps Dr Peter Lennox School of Technology University of Derby, UK tel: 01332 593155 e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk -Original Message- From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Dave Malham Sent: 01 July 2011 09:34 To: Surround Sound discussion group Subject: Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes? On 30/06/2011 20:42, Michael Chapman wrote: We just made 'bird tables' to put the top speakers on. About 200 mm of broom handle to slot into the lighting stand, and a approx 15-20 mm thick horizontal shelf (the right sized drill and the two glue together with no clamping). I said it was a quick expt'l project, but was over-ruled and the bird-tables were painted black ... must admit it is an enormous aesthetic improvement. Whoaa! Be very careful if you are using a system like this - many years ago I was working with Chris Richards from Cepiar, trying out some decoder stuff here at York. He brought with him a system exactly like this on which we mounted some of my (then brand new) Wharfedale Diamond V's at almost 4 metres height. What Chris forgot to mention was that he _hadn't_ fixed the speakers down in any other way than their weight. I went to move one of the stands and the speaker fell off, grazed my right shoulder and smashed its corner in on the floor. If it had been 50 mm further over, I doubt if I would have been interested in height information - or anything else - any more :-( For what it's worth, I used, on the Wharefedales, Tandy (Radio Shack anywhere other than the UK) Universal wall mounts screwed and glued to the back of the speakers. They have a four hole wall mounting plate. I made up some U bolts with threaded rod the legs of which fit through the holes in the plate. These then slide over stands made (by me) of 25mm square steel tube which have a cross shaped (removable) base. To ensure safety and stability, I have a pile of concrete blocks I keep specifically to weight down the bases - stage weights would be nicer but I've only managed to scrounge a couple of those...the blocks are way cheaper. You can use Speedframe (http://www.richardsonsuk.co.uk/product.aspx?p=47gclid=CJS8zNLd36kCFUEa4Qod-Hc5Xg) to make up this sort of stand, but being a good Yorkshireman, I just got a local company to cut up standard 25mm square tubing, which was much cheaper (though not as nicely finished) as the proper stuff and the only Speedframe bits I bought where the 5 way corner connectors to make up the bases. Dave PS Richard (Lee) - I'm pleased to report that that speaker is still working...I think I showed great restraint in not dumping it in the bin after it tried to kill me like that :-) -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 432448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 432450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound _ The University of Derby has a published policy regarding email and reserves the right to monitor email traffic. If you believe this email was sent to you in error, please notify the sender and delete this email. Please direct any concerns to info...@derby.ac.uk. The policy is available here: http://www.derby.ac.uk/LIS/Email-Policy
[Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
I'm designing a mid-size (8 to 12-ch) ambisonics setup, using small active near-field studio monitors such as Fostex PM04, Focal CMS40, BM-5A...(the exact model will depend on the funding I'll get for this project). As it is supposed to be portable (well, transportable would be a better term) I'm planning to put the speakers on stands (such as lightning roll-stands from Manfrotto) that can be easily folded and put in some car (mine). For example, the 12 speakers setup would have 3 speakers per stand (floor, mid, ceiling speakers), each stand being in the corner of the room or, better, at the middle of each room side, in order to prevent that common room-corner-ultra-bass-boom effect. The 8 channels setup is simply the cube (or the parallelepiped), with no mid speaker. As some of you already may have built such fixed or portable setups, I was wondering how you managed to fix the speakers to (vertical or horizontal) tube stands or structures. For lights, they use tube clamps, but the weight is not the same when it comes to active loudspeakers. Most small form factor speakers have threaded mounting holes so you can put them on microphone stands, so I was planning to use them, but I couldn't find the missing link between the tube and the mounting holes... Thanks in advance for any tips! Frank ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
I have pretty light speakers in the spherical array that I constructed, but for what its worth I was able to build a reconfigurable array extremely cheaply using tripod mic stands and threaded desktop microphone mounts. I just screwed the mounts to the bottom of the loudspeakers and screwed them onto the array. They can be found here for $6.49 each... http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/82464-REG/Atlas_AD_11BE_AD_11BE_Desk_Top_Mounting.html Josh On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Eric Benjamin eb...@pacbell.net wrote: Franck M. mushroomac...@gmail.com wrote: how to fix the speakers to (vertical or horizontal) tube stands or structures It's hard to see how to do this without doing some fabrication. For a similar 12-speaker system put together two years ago, Andrew Kimpel and I used large folding speaker stands of the type frequently used by touring musicians. These typically can be raised to a height of 2 meters or so and have a round finished tube that is meant to be inserted in a socket on the loudspeaker. I fabricated four inclined mounts from MDF that held the loudspeakers pointing downwards at an angle of 30 degrees, with a lip to ensure that the loudspeakers couldn't slide forward and fall off the stands. The inclined mount is necessary because most speakers have substantial frequency response errors for positions away from the horizontal plane. The middle ring of loudspeakers was mounted on conventional speaker stands which were located at positions between the stands that held the upper loudspeakers. The lower loudspeakers were placed on the floor with wedge-shaped inclined mounts to point them 30 degrees upwards. For a previous such installation we used a mounting system that involved four floor-to-ceiling columns fabricated from 3 ABS pipe. The top and bottom of the pipe had small flat placards which rested on the floor and against the ceiling. Obviously the columns had to be trimmed to match the exact height of the room. The speakers were attached to the column using Omnimount type speaker mounts similar to these: http://www.omnimount.com/Products/Speaker_Mounts/Stainless_Steel_Series/ and the columns helped to route the cables to the loudspeakers. It's difficult to get around the fact that there is a lot of infrastructure with such systems. We chose to use powered loudspeakers but it might have been easier if they had not been powered. Eric Benjamin - Original Message From: Franck M. mushroomac...@gmail.com To: sursound@music.vt.edu Sent: Thu, June 30, 2011 6:36:28 AM Subject: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes? I'm designing a mid-size (8 to 12-ch) ambisonics setup, using small active near-field studio monitors such as Fostex PM04, Focal CMS40, BM-5A...(the exact model will depend on the funding I'll get for this project). As it is supposed to be portable (well, transportable would be a better term) I'm planning to put the speakers on stands (such as lightning roll-stands from Manfrotto) that can be easily folded and put in some car (mine). For example, the 12 speakers setup would have 3 speakers per stand (floor, mid, ceiling speakers), each stand being in the corner of the room or, better, at the middle of each room side, in order to prevent that common room-corner-ultra-bass-boom effect. The 8 channels setup is simply the cube (or the parallelepiped), with no mid speaker. As some of you already may have built such fixed or portable setups, I was wondering how you managed to fix the speakers to (vertical or horizontal) tube stands or structures. For lights, they use tube clamps, but the weight is not the same when it comes to active loudspeakers. Most small form factor speakers have threaded mounting holes so you can put them on microphone stands, so I was planning to use them, but I couldn't find the missing link between the tube and the mounting holes... Thanks in advance for any tips! Frank ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- Joshua Atkins Ph.D. Candidate Dept. Electrical Engineering Johns Hopkins University 3400 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
Franck M. mushroomac...@gmail.com wrote: I'm designing a mid-size (8 to 12-ch) ambisonics setup, using small active near-field studio monitors such as Fostex PM04, Focal CMS40, BM-5A...(the exact model will depend on the funding I'll get for this project). ... For example, the 12 speakers setup would have 3 speakers per stand (floor, mid, ceiling speakers), each stand being in the corner of the room or, better, at the middle of each room side, in order to prevent that common room-corner-ultra-bass-boom effect. This would allow for first-order horizontal + second-order height. This seems unusual. You might like to consider 2 speakers per stand with 6 stands. This would allow for second-order horizontal + first-order height. Regards, Martin -- Martin J Leese E-mail: martin.leese stanfordalumni.org Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] Portable ambisonics setup, or how do you mount speakers on tubes?
I'm designing a mid-size (8 to 12-ch) ambisonics setup, using small active near-field studio monitors such as Fostex PM04, Focal CMS40, BM-5A...(the exact model will depend on the funding I'll get for this project). Mmm, I was involved in sourcing gear for a twelve speaker project. I am hoping my colleague who did the project will join in with her more practical comments. We decided, for better or worse, to put one speaker on the floor. This means (if you want anything vaguely) symmetrical, that you need one speaker at twice the height of the seated human ear. That means a lighting stand that is not the smallest in the catalogue (indeed for horizontal-only arrays its minimum height is just about 'standing ear height'). There are tall mic stands, but the only ones without arms (the joints would never take a speaker's weight) are more expensive than lighting stands. Four or six lighting stands take up some space in a big car;-) The projects seems to be sliding towards horizontal only, but there was/is a plan to make wedges to direct floor and high speakers towards the centre*. Depending how you do this you may need to provide hard hats to the audience. We just made 'bird tables' to put the top speakers on. About 200 mm of broom handle to slot into the lighting stand, and a approx 15-20 mm thick horizontal shelf (the right sized drill and the two glue together with no clamping). I said it was a quick expt'l project, but was over-ruled and the bird-tables were painted black ... must admit it is an enormous aesthetic improvement. OT: All this was to experiment with Jörn Nettingsmeyer's scheme for 'digital room correction' (an unfotunate term, not of JN's making, as the 'room' is not corrected;-(- Must say the results are impressive. If you want sizes/models of stands, the invoices are somewhere on my desk ... do ask. Hope to report on the DRC stuff in a bit, but again, do ask if relevant. Michael * and obviously you need a different set of wedges for each rig radius ... but we have moulds of our speaker bases and think we have made the 'hard hats' historic ... ... ! MC ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
