Posts in category "post-retirement" - page 14
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Happy New Year 2021!
Wish you all a very happy new year! Hope this year brings you more health, happiness and prosperity. When I wrote the new year post last year, little did I know that things will change so quickly. We have gone through some turbulent times indeed. I've had my fair share of ups and downs, but on the whole I ended the year on a positive note. Without going into too much detail, let me recount what happened in my life in 2020.
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Last Post For The Year
It is almost the end of the year and I already posted an article on reflecting back on the year. In my reflections I had a few ups and downs during the past year which are sort of covered in the quotes that follow. This post is going to be really short in that sense :). May be some of these apply to you and perhaps you felt something similar at some point in life? This is the last post on reflections for the year I promise!
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The Credit Card Experiment
There are polarizing opinions about using credit cards. Some consider credit cards to be very useful while others consider them as debt traps. Like most things in life, it is not as black and white of course. This post is not about debating whether credit cards are good or bad but more about my experience with a credit card.
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 7
Now that I have the front speakers, rear speakers and sub-woofer working, the next thing I wanted to do in my DIY AVR project was to bring up the center speaker. I ordered a TPA3118 amplifier board for Rs. 379 towards it. The only problem with the board (which I did not realize when I ordered it) was that it does not have a volume control. The repercussions of this mistake will soon become clear. Anyway, I connected the board to a 12V power supply. The same one that was powering the crossover board from my previous post. Output from the board is connected to my center speaker. The sound quality is fine to my ears. Anyway it is the center speaker, so we don't need a great quality output.
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 6
In the last post I mentioned that I was looking for a crossover board. The one that I purchased is putting out a huge DC bias and I was not comfortable using it on my sub woofer. Wondering if it is a problem with the particular unit that I got, I ordered a replacement. Unfortunately, even the replacement has the same signature output. So I decided to do something about it myself.
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 5
So far I have finished bringing up 4 of my 5.1 speakers in my DIY 5.1 AVR project. If you missed, check out part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 of the series. Next I wanted to bring up my sub-woofer. Since I have an active sub-woofer, I did not need any amplifiers to drive it. I just need to connect the output signal from my audio source directly to the sub-woofer input. But there is a catch. If you connect the audio source directly to the sub-woofer, the sub would be wasting a lot of energy which may heat up the driver and may damage it. Moreover driving the sub with all the frequencies will give boomy muddled up sound. So we need a low pass filter or a crossover.
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 4
As I mentioned in my last post, after measuring the frequency response and testing the TDA 7498, I decided to buy one more. The board I bought earlier did not have the right LC filter for a 6 ohms speaker. It was designed for 8 ohms speaker. So I decided to use that board for my rear surround speakers which were also 6 ohms. However, it is fine to have a slightly poor quality amp for the rarely used rear speakers.
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 3
The TDA7498 class D amplifier board that I purchased to power my front speakers was working great. The audio quality is at par with what my Pioneer 5.1 AVR delivered using class AB amplifier. I could not tell the difference in audio quality. None the less, I wanted to make sure the quality is really as good as my ears led me to believe. Enter a function generator and oscilloscope to make sure the frequency response is satisfactory over the range of audible frequencies (20 Hz to 20 kHz).
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver – Part 2
If you did not read part 1 of building a DIY 5.1 AVR, I suggest you start from there. Here is some important points from my previous post --
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Building a DIY 5.1 Audio Video Receiver - Part 1
Alright, you already know the story of my electronics going puff during a power surge. One of the electronics that got burnt was my unnecessarily expensive Pioneer 5.1.2 AVR. The reason I put emphasis on unnecessary is because I rarely used all the features of the device. Don't even know why I spent all the money :). After it stopped working, I opened and checked everything that I could figure out. But I didn't notice any obvious problems. The AVR just boots up, turns on the amplifier relay and turns off. Since it failed during COVID lock down, I couldn't do much about it.
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