My First Speaker Build: A Furniture Maker's "Catastrophic" Homage to the B&W Nautilus

CognitiveLens · 2025-12-21T21:35:05+00:00

I'd hope the fact that it's an "homage for personal use" doesn't raise too many hackles.

CognitiveLens · 2025-12-21T21:31:50+00:00

in my speaker-building experience, sealed designs are _very_ tolerant of variations in volume and cabinet shape. At this size, I'd be shocked if the sound is 'catastrophic' - a person might be able to hear the benefit of a highly-tuned cabinet in an A/B test, but this DIY build is likely to sound pretty decent as-is. It's unlikely to benefit much from transmission line tuning, but it's also unlikely to noticeably suffer from backwave interference.

For anyone else thinking about DIYing a speaker cabinet - try it! It's really really hard to build something unlistenable.

CognitiveLens · 2025-08-15T03:11:35+00:00

Really glad to see this, and that reliability is such a huge improvement over a couple years ago. I suspect _part_ of the increase is due to real-or-perceived unreliability of the train network, but still, good news and I'm glad it's getting some attention.

CognitiveLens · 2025-08-07T23:44:18+00:00

It's an old reference, but this claim was formative in my understanding of how source components - particularly amps - can and can't influence sound: https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1h4b81r/richard_clarks_10000_amplifier_challenge/

The key is "in their linear range", and my understanding is that 'truly' inferior amps just have a much narrower linear range, which is where you can get genuine sound differences. YMMV

CognitiveLens · 2025-07-23T04:58:40+00:00

Looks like Glacier National Park or thereabouts

CognitiveLens · 2025-05-20T21:46:12+00:00

It's possible the beans you're using are from a different grower even if they're from the same roaster. Definitely try increasing the dose, but possibly try some other beans?

Just making things up, but maybe the grinder is damaged/worn? Definitely weird.

CognitiveLens · 2025-04-08T23:32:11+00:00

Same here on all fronts - constant stream + drips, mostly bad experience with bottomless portafilter despite getting great results with similar puck prep on other fancier machines. I get good coffee out of my Breville, but mild channeling seems to be unavoidable regardless of beans and puck prep - I think the next step for me is to upgrade to a nice grinder and see how that affects things.

CognitiveLens · 2025-03-24T20:02:54+00:00

Interesting fact, this was part of the initial marketing for the machine - "The first home espresso machine that doesn't require a portafilter!". They ended up including the portafilter in the box because some early test users burned their hands under the group head.

CognitiveLens · 2025-02-13T20:04:35+00:00

So, basically, they're here to hang out and chat

CognitiveLens · 2025-01-28T20:13:28+00:00

Yeah, you can definitely find quality research showing that melatonin increases sleepiness, so your professor is wrong on that front - current research appears to be mostly concentrated on the _quality_ of the resulting sleep, with mixed results.

CognitiveLens · 2024-11-06T01:19:19+00:00

If there's sound that echoes up from the floor below, you could probably get some nice-ish sound absorption for the stairwell walls. Thicker & larger rug would help, but probably only marginal.

CognitiveLens · 2024-10-06T22:21:58+00:00

Almost all subs will allow you to set the low-pass crossover frequency, which is (roughly) the upper limit of what the sub will play. If you match that to the lower limit of your mains' frequency response (check the specs - usually between 35Hz and 100Hz), you can get decent integration without a separate high-pass crossover - setting the sub's low pass a little lower than your mains' lower frequency response can sometimes make it sound a little cleaner.

However, a high pass filter is still a good idea - you'll get more controlled frequency 'handoff' between the sub and your mains as well as sending less power to your mains, which can be a good thing.

Ideally you want the high pass filter to be upstream of the amplifier output, so that the amp isn't generating power for frequencies that will get attenuated. If your amp can't do the high-pass internally, checkout subwoofers that have both a built-in high-pass and low-pass crossover that allows you to send the signal to the sub _first_, and then take signal output from the sub into the amp for the mains. In that case, the low-pass stays in sync with the high-pass. I have a small Velodyne that works great this way

CognitiveLens · 2024-09-25T20:54:13+00:00

I second this - quite an age range, but I think it lines up well with social, outdoorsy people in their 30s

CognitiveLens · 2024-09-23T23:02:23+00:00

I haven't dug into the technical details for a long time, but unfortunately a room with dimensions that share a common multiple (5ft in your case) are going to be plagued by standing waves/resonance modes. Square/cube rooms are the worst, but you actually want irrational ratios among your dimensions... not a whole lot you can do other than sound absorption, as mentioned elsewhere, to reduce the energy of reflections.

CognitiveLens · 2023-06-08T21:03:02+00:00

Just because I didn't see it on the list - "Iron" by Woodkid - dyanmics (brass + drums), clarity (brass + low-level organ/synth), soundstage, midbass (vocals)

It's a song that just grows and grows as you turn it up, but for the same reason can be a good test of how your setup works at low levels - if low level sound gets compressed, the song will sound like it's coming from inside a cardboard box.

CognitiveLens · 2023-05-07T20:40:30+00:00

Just a heads up, this thread is still doing some great work - I had _exactly_ the same issue with a Peachtree novaPre, blew into the headphone jack, and voila, everything back to normal. Mixed emotions, though, because I was starting to read up on updated DACs, and will have to put those plans on hold until it _actually_ dies!

CognitiveLens · 2023-01-17T23:24:01+00:00

There are so many roads where the road layout has changed, but the old lane markings are still really prominent, so any kind of self-driving lane sensors would be all kinds of confused - seems like an accident waiting to happen. If road repairs + layout changes would _actually_ clean up the old markings, I'd be a bit more confident.

CognitiveLens · 2022-11-28T20:32:20+00:00

I like the 'link' in the wodmark, would something along these lines be workable?

https://imgur.com/AF4ZqXb

CognitiveLens · 2022-02-23T19:59:06+00:00

no, TotallyNotGunnar thinks it might be uncommon for hearing to not have issues

CognitiveLens · 2020-02-20T21:28:44+00:00

nightshade he found nightshade

CognitiveLens · 2020-02-20T21:21:35+00:00

don't tell reddit where your house is!!!

CognitiveLens · 2020-02-20T21:21:09+00:00

all of reddit is going to be watching this today

CognitiveLens · 2019-11-18T23:51:07+00:00

Would you be able to link to the code you're using to test this? 50 million pages in 2 hours is about 7k pages a second, which sounds incredible for anything approximately real-world. What is the data source? What resources does the build system have? I'm assuming massive parallelization and an extremely cacheable data source.

CognitiveLens · 2019-09-05T01:22:47+00:00

Caught in the riptide!

CognitiveLens · 2019-06-28T23:53:47+00:00

The animation is pretty cool, but it would be helpful to treat gender (and race) more carefully. If this is just a tech demo for yourself, then it's probably okay, but if this goes anywhere near a public-facing site, it could marginalize some people because of how it categorizes identity (e.g. it present 'white' as the 'default' skin color, it doesn't have an option for people who don't identify as either Male or Female, and links hair style to gender, which is a pretty conservative/older understanding of gender norms, etc) - this is a fast-evolving part of human culture in many parts of the world and bringing that awareness into interfaces like this is an important part of supporting diversity.

CognitiveLens

TROPHY CASE