Magnepan Tympani 1D Repair/Restoration: Part 2

I last left off my account of this project with the unfortunate revelation that the tweeter needed total replacement. Once the replacement tweeter had arrived from Magnepan, I could continue my work on fixing everything up:



The new tweeter turned out to be a little wider than the original unit, which meant we would have to widen the hole in the frame for it. This meant it was time to do some cutting. The damaged portions of the frame would have to be cut out as well and mended before the whole unit could go back together- not so much for structural integrity or aesthetics, but because I was worried leaving a hole in the frame might effect the sound of the tweeter. First up was drilling some holes to roughly mark out the corners of where the widened frame hole would lie:



Then, out came the jigsaw. Cutting was more of a pain than initially expected because the blade wanted to wander through the rather thin particle board, making carefully measured cuts wobble much more than I would have liked. It didn't exactly have to be pretty, though, because in the end the sock was going over it- it just had to hold together and not buzz. Anyways, after the new wider hole was cut we removed the damaged sections of frame:





Using some scrap from what was cut off of the frame I made a patch for the lower damaged portion:



For the upper portion, there was a lot more material missing and a scrap piece wasn't going to work. A quick trip to a hardware store and a cheap sheet of particle board later, I had cut out a piece that would serve as the backing piece of a 2-part repair:



Next up was a liberal application of wood glue and some clamps to keep everything steady while it set:





After that, I used another scrap piece from the original particle board to make sure the side of the tweeter had a nice flush surface to mount on:



After a little bit of fitting with a file to let the new tweeter sit flush in its hole, it was ready to mount to the frame. The tweeter itself came with adhesive on the sides, but the instructions recommended further attaching the tweeter to the frame with extra hardware. The use of bolts was considered for this job, but in the end the original factory attachment method of rivets was used:



A little bit of caulk was applied to seal up the smaller holes and cracks in the frame, and then it was time to handle the wiring. The existing tweeter wires were soldered onto the terminals of the new tweeter, and hot glued down in their new positions:



Then it was time to re-sock the whole assembly and put it all back together:



The fabric of the sock had actually shrunk a little while being off the frame- even 40 years of being held taut with staples was not sufficient to stretch the fabric out. I'm assuming that at the factory there was some sort of tool or weight to assist in the stretching process, since pulling manually took a lot of effort to get just barely enough fabric over the end. After a liberal application of staples we had the sock secured:



It was just a matter of soldering on the terminal plate again, and then reuniting the panel with the rest of the unit:



I checked the terminals once again with the multimeter to verify that all was well, and it was time to hook them up!

So, the final verdict? These sound simply amazing. They're not as sensitive as "normal" speakers, so to keep my center channel from overpowering them at a given volume level I had to tweak my receiver a little bit. Also, their bass response isn't as good as traditional speakers, but my woofer more than makes up for any deficiency in the low frequencies. I'm sure a well-trained audiophile with equipment could detect the difference between the left and right channel now, based on the age difference of the tweeters, but for me at least the difference is barely perceptible and possibly just placebo on my part. This was an awfully big project but I'm really, incredibly happy with how it turned out!

New look, various updates

Telefpreen has a new look- I figured it was time for a bit of a refresh from the almost-default page style in 2009. Alas though, I am not a web designer so I decided to keep it simple.

The Lepai LP-2020A+ article from July of this year has been updated with a parts list, apparently it's gotten a few search engine hits and I received a request to give a bit more detail about my modding of the unit. Hopefully it'll catch on, I'm still really happy with how my unit turned out.

I'm still working on the Magnepan restoration article(s), the speakers themselves are finished now but I'm occupied sifting through some pictures and battling writer's block to detail the rest of the fix. Also, look out for another PC system build article and my thoughts on the Nintendo 2DS, which I recently picked up and have been quite happy with.

As always, more to come.

Magnepan Tympani 1D Repair/Restoration: Part 1

Recently I acquired a pair of super cool, high end Magnepan planar speakers that were provided free of charge, but with the caveat that the left channel's tweeter was intermittently buzzing. Far be it from me to turn such a find down, considering how neat they were. Unlike conventional speakers, they rely on a voice coil embedded in a diaphragm to produce sound, which allows them to have excellent response at higher frequencies. These speakers are big, though. One channel consists of 3 panels approximately as tall as I am, and each panel is 16 inches wide. That's a lot of real estate, so I actually had to tear my room apart and rearrange everything so that they would fit next to my TV.

They looked pretty imposing, even in the maelstrom of moved furniture, lamps, and just about everything in the room:



When all was said and done and I hooked them up for a test run, it appeared as though the move had finally administered the coup de grace on the left channel's tweeter- everything else was responsive and sounded great, including the left channel's other two panels. Unfortunately, the tweeter was thoroughly unresponsive- not even an errant buzz could be brought forth from jiggling connectors. I took out my trusty multimeter and measured the resistance across each speaker's terminal, and confirmed that the tweeter was indeed dead. There had to be a break in the wire somewhere.

Alas, it was time to take the panel back to the "operating room," also known as my dad's lab. After detaching the stands, separating the tweeter panel from the rest, and removing the sock, we got to survey the guts for the first time:



There was no obvious break in a wire or something of the like, so we knew the problem had to lie somewhere in the tweeter itself. Out came the multimeter again, and measuring directly across the terminals of the tweeters yielded the same result. It would have been a lucky break if the problem had turned out to be one crappy little corroded wire or solder joint, but no such luck. The next step was to take apart the tweeter itself and see what the problem was.

We desoldered the terminals to the tweeter, flipped the speaker over, and neatly taped off the grille to make sure no foreign material got inside:



Then we drilled out the rivets holding in the speaker:





The speaker was separated from the housing now, but the adhesive that originally held the tweeter in place for assembly was holding fast. I tried to gently pry the assembly apart from the frame, and a lot of it separated easily with a little bit of gentle encouragement from a putty knife and some car trim removal tools, with the occasional tap from a hammer.

What I failed to take into account, though, was the fact that the particleboard of the frame and the adhesive were now nigh 40 years old, and their bond was starting to get about as strong as the material itself. The tweeter released from the frame, but with a sickening crunch it brought some of the particleboard along for the ride:



I'm no expert, but I think it's safe to say that's not good.

A little bit came off near the top and bottom of the tweeter, which would have to be repaired before reassembly. Fortunately, upon closer inspection the structural integrity of the speaker itself was not affected whatsoever and all I was actually looking at was some cosmetic damage. It would still have to be repaired, but I wasn't fighting for a lost cause just yet:



I'm getting ahead of myself, though. It was time for the postmortem on the tweeter unit. I was hoping it could be saved- Magnepan themselves said that as long as the Mylar wasn't buggered up it could be revived. Alas, there was a tear in the Mylar and the speaker coil itself had snapped in a few places. It was remarkably thin wire, making it extremely hard to see where the breaks were. The tweeter was beyond repair at this point, so a call to Magnepan and $250 later, a replacement tweeter for the unit was in the mail. Once it arrived, we'd get down to repairing the frame's damage and mating the new tweeter to it!

GTA V

GTA V Review

I should have made this entry a little earlier, but I was tracking down a very frustrating BIOS bug on my new computer- apparently under some situations it is possible for the BIOS clock to just plain "freeze" and stop advancing unless Windows 7 pushes an update to be BIOS clock via time sync. Lots of strange behavior would ensue, because the frozen BIOS clock would push its sync back onto Windows intermittently, causing the time to reset back wards at approximately hour intervals. It was a relatively simple fix, but immensely annoying to track down because the obvious cause would be a defective CMOS battery, but the battery read a solid 3.3V, which is exactly where it should be.
Anyways, on to Grand Theft Auto V.

If I had to describe it with a single phrase it would be "Incredible entertainment punctuated by moments of abject, controller-throwing rage." Now, don't get me wrong here- the game is very, very good. Impressive graphics, cool missions, really well designed environments, and a lot to do. The AI is even really, really convincing in spots when it comes to creating a believable, "living" city. The problem is, sometimes that all falls to shit and you're left wondering where the fun went.

I can forgive some of the minor transgressions like weapons switching flaking out sometimes when entering or leaving vehicles, leaving you flailing like an imbecile trying to punch someone who's about to shotgun you in the face from across the road. This sort of crap happens in lots of games. While getting wasted sucks, it's not the end of the world, especially considering you can skip missions now if you run into a mission you just can't clear. Other details, such as police shooting you in the face for stepping over an imaginary line I can likewise forgive- sure, it is annoying and I do look forward to a day when a police AI sees a player wander into a restricted area and reacts based on how they got there. Crashing a car through a checkpoint while firing at the guards should provoke return fire, while wandering in on foot and unarmed should get you tackled and escorted off the premises. We're not there yet, but I hope we get there soon.

Where I really start to lose my enthusiasm for a game is when things get into the "clearly visible" realm of artificial difficulty and/or careless coding. Careless coding being a sort of buzzword for things that should have been thought of but weren't. For instance, one mission has you chasing a stalker down and "teaching him a lesson." At first I thought this would mean beat him up as opposed to outright kill him- silly me. Anyways, I crash his car and proceed to drag him out to administer said beatings. Suddenly, this mildly obese white dude tears off into the sunset like a cross country runner on crack. He didn't ever get tired. Ever. He literally had magical infinite sprint powers, so me thinking I still had to beat him up chased his dumb ass across creation trying to taze him to slow him down. I guess part of me foolishly thought that there might be a difference between "teach a lesson" and "shoot in the face" but regardless, should said mission critical NPC really never get tired, ever?

That's relatively minor but it stuck out in my mind because of how much time I wasted- it gets worse. Police chases are made artificially difficult because policemen will mysteriously appear from the ether to continue a car chase, and when on foot they also are equipped with uncanny x-ray vision to detect you from two buildings down when you're hiding in an alley that's utterly hidden from their view. Non-police hostile NPC chases for missions devolve to the point of silly, blatantly (and I really do mean BLATANTLY) obvious rubber-banding- in one instance I was being chased by the bodyguards of someone I had just assassinated. The opportunity provided itself to go off-road, so I started to ride across the beach in order to lose them. It was going quite well until I noticed that the blip for the bodyguard's car was warping towards me on a direct a-to-b straight line, at a rather acute diagonal and at regular intervals when I would start to "lose" them. We're talking 100% unabashed warping at 400 MPH across a beach here. I found it particularly amusing that when I clicked the "look behind" button the rubber-banding stopped abruptly and the bodyguards disappeared into the distance and I lost them.

It's not all terrible though, and I haven't made a big deal out of that stuff to say that the game as a whole is not worth your time. The heists are excellent, and like I said the game is, for the most part, great. The problem I have is that when you set the bar so high in the first place, you can't help but feel a bit disappointed and annoyed when it starts to play like some B-list game that you'd more expect to have its fair share of bugs and nonsense to wade through.

Summer sale reviews: varying levels of disappointment

Before I begin, I've got some exciting projects and whatnot in the works. It all depends on how quickly the parts arrive and how quickly I can get to work on it, but I'm restoring an older pair of super-audiophile tier planar speakers, which is very exciting. There's also Grand Theft Auto 5, which I've been playing fairly relentlessly the past few days, and to top it all off I've got a Nintendo 2DS preordered and I'm going to try my hand at Pokemon X/Y when it releases in two weeks.

Anyways, moving on to my experience with the pile of games that I bought on Steam during their summer sale. I'll be running down the list that I had made in my previous summer sale post:

Borderlands 2 Season Pass DLC
In terms of  hours of content added to the game this is a big win. It's pretty entertaining and there is a TON of quests available for you to mess around with, including side quests. I've been running through it with a friend and so far it feels like we've barely scratched the surface. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem quite as polished as the original game and I've noticed a number of silly glitches that just plain shouldn't be there if everything was tested properly. Things like gun sounds just dropping out in certain areas, clipping through scenery, and spectacularly glitchy ragdolls that explode off into the sky. (I'm guessing this last one is a PhysX bug because it happens on my GTX 780 computer but not with my 5850 computer) All in all though, definitely worth the extra coin for all the goodies you get. If you liked Borderlands 2 to begin with, it is well worth it.

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
Sadly disappointing. I haven't tried to play though a lot of it to see if it gets better. Despite looking quite good, its awful voice acting and poorly explained interface really put a damper on the experience. 

Chivalry
I'll admit to having bought this one simply because of the hilarious Birgirpall video. It's actually pretty damn entertaining, though the learning curve can be a brutal- you pretty much get slaughtered relentlessly until you learn how to fight well. Best played with a big group of friends, though I've yet to get much play time in.

Dishonored
Liking it so far, though I find it rather annoying that the game presents you with a whole array of awesome ways to kill things, and then asks you to kindly refrain from murder. Finding it a bit hard to get drawn into it because of that looming threat of "bad end" hanging over your head, and trial and error stealth being the other option.

Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon
Far Cry 3 was quite fun. Annoying as hell graphics bugs aside, it was quite a fun game punctuated with a few moments of abject rage. The AI would wildly flail between being bumbling incompetent fools and omniscient god kings who knew exactly where you were the moment you so much as farted. This does not make for fun stealth gameplay. Add to that the attack dogs appearing out of thin air and the bullet sponging "heavy" enemies that are immune to headshots and take essentially an entire loadout of ammunition to kill and you've got a recipe for frustration at times.

After all is said and done, though, hip firing a PKM light machine gun at pirates and barrels of fertilizer while a field of marijuana burns down around you, with this song playing in the background just goes so far over the top that I can't help but remark about how memorable it was. It was hilarious, over the top absurd, and most importantly, incredibly fun.

Kerbal Space Program
Absolutely addictive and incredibly fun, but hampered by a few really frustrating interface issues. In all fairness, a number of these complaints are being addressed in the upcoming .22 patch, like the ability to save and "paste" in sub modules. It's intensely annoying to design an awesome lander or probe, only to have to rebuild it from scratch if you want to retrofit it onto a different rocket, or vice versa attaching multiple varied payloads to a successful rocket design. Thankfully, this and some other little annoyances will (hopefully soon) be taken care of, so I have to give credit where credit is due.

It also sort of bugs me that there is no automated telemetry available- though launching into orbit on completely manual control is great at first and really gives a great "seat of your pants" experience, I feel like establishing a nice clean orbit on autopilot makes later missions less stressful and more fun, because you still need a rocket that can do the necessary maneuvers. There's a mod for that, though- the community is quite active with generating their own content, making the game all the more fun to pick up and play. Definitely recommended.

Operation Flashpoint: Red River
I don't like it. At all. I was hopeful considering it had the Flashpoint name, but it was a huge disappointment. I went into the game fully expecting there to be the occasional AI derp here and there, but I was truly not prepared for the three ring circus of idiocy that ensued. Blue on blue everywhere. The uninspiring graphics, lifeless weapon handling, and overall clunky interface didn't help either. I didn't even bother playing any more after the first hour or so.

PAYDAY
I'm withholding judgement on this one until I get some more time with it, playing with friends. Initially, it seemed like a very poorly organized and explained clusterfuck of a heist game but that could simply be because I was thrown into "the deep end" and didn't have much time to get a feel for things before I was running around aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do to be useful.

RAGE
Also less fun than I hoped it would be. Still haven't gotten much time in, but I say it always is a bad omen for a game when you shoot someone in the head and their reaction is to say "ow" and continue attacking you.

Receiver
Really cool little independent game. A bit on the difficult side because of its main attraction, the fully functioning and correct firearm handling. There are so many key binds you initially have to pretty much play with the help menu open. Not so sure about it's long term appeal, though.

Strike Suit Zero
Still need to get more time with this one. So far though, it looks pretty nice. Though I don't really dig the space shooter genre as much as I used to, barring some absurd difficulty spike or other fatal flaw, it looks to be a nice diversion from my usual fare.

System Build 2013: case optimization completed, and a video card!

Last I had left the system build progress, I had assembled everything except the video card into the case. I knew that the hardest part of the build would be cable management, but since my sleeved cables hadn't arrived yet anyways I decided to defer any semblance of cable management until later. Using whatever cables I had on hand, I assembled the rat's nest to at least get everything up and running:



Sure, it looked a bit untidy but at least I could start optimizing my fan speeds. The 200mm Cooler Master in the front spun very slowly at the "standard" duty cycle assigned by the motherboard- in fact the BIOS actually red flagged the fan as spinning too slowly. I manually assigned it to spin at least 80% of its max speed at all times- since it's such a big fan the noise difference was almost imperceptible. Everything else seemed very happy at stock values and my CPU was idling right around 30 C, which is right where I want it to be. At this point I wouldn't mess with any overclocking just yet, though I made sure my RAM was running at the right timings and took care of other little details in BIOS.

Once my sleeved cables had arrived, I set about making everything just a bit more tidy:



A key component was still missing, though! I had finally tracked down the card I wanted, an EVGA superclocked GTX 780 with ACX cooler. I had read that it was on par with Nvidia GTX Titans (Spoiler: It straight up beats them at Unigine valley in my rig) so at least until something more awesome came out, I would have a real bruiser of a single card setup.

In it went, and now it was looking quite pretty on the inside with the nice sleeved cables and matching SATA cables:



Of course, the finishing touches still had to be applied. There was still plenty of cable management to be done fitting everything on the other side of the motherboard- the 650D gave reasonable space but I still feel like I could have used just a hair more room back there, considering how stiff and unyielding brand new Seasonic power cables can be. Wrangling them proved to be a bit difficult, but with a little patience (and enlisting Emily's help again) the cables relaxed enough to fit inside the side panel without bulging it outwards.

A dust filter from DEMCiflex to keep the dust out of the top facing radiator was a sound investment- it simply sticks on with a magnetic rim and though it seems somewhat floppy and flimsy off of the case, once mounted it is rock solid and works so incredibly well that even after a few weeks you can see rings of trapped dust that it prevented from going into the case- a quick vacuuming tidies it all up and you're good to go in just a few moments!

The last finishing touch was overclocking, and unfortunately the results were rather disappointing, though not entirely unexpected considering my choices. The Haswell architecture has a dynamic voltage that allows the processor to run at very low voltages when it is not under heavy load- in fact at idle it runs in the neighborhood of 0.7V! The downside to this feature is that your control over the voltages is limited such that you can't actually set a voltage maximum(!). For the average user running at stock clocks, it's a non-issue. From a heat dissipation standpoint for overclocking, it is a big, big no go. The clock targets are easier to set this time around, but that dynamic voltage is really what ended up giving me a hard ceiling of 4.0Ghz with it enabled. Anything above a 4.0Ghz turbo results in the Vcore kicking up to something absurd like 1.3V or more, which even a CLC isn't going to be able to dissipate well. Of course, I could have easily gone to a higher clock with a manual voltage, but then I give up the low end efficiency, and that seems silly since the computer isn't running games or benchmarking every waking second it is on. Right now, writing this entry with Mumble, Steam, and Firefox open but generally idle, I am only drawing 63W of power according to the readout on my surge protector/UPS. Since the CPU isn't really the bottleneck anyways I'm more than happy to live with the lower OC and better efficiency at idle.

So there we have it, the system build 2013 is complete!

To recap, the system has the following specs:

Corsair 650D Case
Asus Z87-A Motherboard
Intel i5 4670K CPU
Corsair H110 CPU Cooler
8GB Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR3 1600 RAM
Seasonic X650 Gold Power Supply
EVGA Nvidia GTX 780 Superclocked w/ ACX cooler
1x Sandisk ReadyCache 32GB SSD
1x Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD
3x Western Digital Red 1TB Hard drives in RAID 5


All said and done, I busted my $2000 budget by about $70, but it was with ancillary items like the sleeved cables and the dust filter.

Steam Summer Sale- see also: why I haven't updated

Yes, I know my final write up on my 2013 system build is long overdue, and yes, I am working on it right now. However, the Steam summer sale absorbed an inordinate amount of time (and money) such that I now realize it's been almost a month since I put any new content on Telefpreen.

I'll be brief so I can get back to the details of my 2013 rig. I sold my Xbox 360 and converted the cash into steam cards at Gamestop. I hardly played the 360 any more so it wasn't that huge of a sacrifice, and I'm more and more beginning to like the convenience of Steam. I've also lost a lot of confidence in Microsoft as far as consoles go, and I think it speaks volumes that I would never trade my PS3 for a pile of almost $200 in steam cards.

That said, here's a list of some of the stuff I got during the sale and will be playing soon and/or hopefully sharing my thoughts on:

• Borderlands 2 Season Pass DLC
• Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
• Chivalry
• Dishonored
• Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon
• Kerbal Space Program
• Operation Flashpoint: Red River
• PAYDAY
• RAGE
• Receiver
• Strike Suit Zero

Lepai LP-2020A+ Review & Modding

Update 9/17/2015: It's come to my attention that the board revision I describe modifying here is now obsolete and there have been changes made that throw following my specific parts list off the rails. Take the BOM of parts to buy as more of a general guideline now, since apparently some caps have even been altered to ceramic type from electrolytic.

Recently, I endeavored to put together a slightly nicer sound system since I was reorganizing my desk anyways- the existing setup consisted of a pair of large "white van scam" speakers liberated from their third or fourth owner for the lowly sum of $20 and a no-name 15W per channel amp borrowed from my dad's "parts bin" of assorted audio equipment. The system put out adequate sound, but to be perfectly honest it wasn't going to win over any audiophiles. The bass extension was reasonable enough but the midrange and tweeter sounded muddy, and tweaking the onboard knobs on the speakers was more apt to make one channel drop out intermittently than help anything.

So then, my mission was to get a better pair of smaller speakers and an amp to drive a much nicer sound system for my new computer. I was intrigued by the idea of building my own set of bookshelf speakers, and I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money otherwise. While I weighed my options on the speakers, the almost universally glowing reviews of the Lepai LP-2020A+ amp caught my eye. A 20W per channel amp that supposedly sounded amazing for the bargain price of $20? It seemed almost too good to be true.

After ordering one on Amazon I hooked it up to a pair of good home built bookshelf speakers- also on loan from the parts bin- to get a baseline idea of what I was working with. The sound was reasonable enough. With the tone defeat on it sounded rather flat and tinny, but with the tone circuit engaged it was easy to tweak into sounding pretty decent for the price tag. Not exactly "amazing" as some reviewers had raved, but certainly quite nice for only costing 20 bucks.

The unit is not without its flaws, however. The QC on the amp is more than just a bit dubious; the PCB itself was actually designed wrong, so the 3.5mm headphone jack input has its stereo channels reversed. The RCA jacks are fine, but such an elementary error doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the quality of manufacture. It's a simple fix- just reverse your speaker wires if you use the 3.5mm jack- but a fix you really should not have to do in the first place. Inside, there are little dots of soldering flux here and there but the solder joints all seem to be pretty well sorted. The only glaring shortcoming would be the low quality of the components. They're not utter garbage, but definitely made to the price point. Finally, it might seem like a nitpick, but the bright blue LED ring around the volume knob was just too damn bright, especially when it sits in my peripheral vision while on my desk.

The guts, as it came:



It seemed that a lot of the shortcomings of the Lepai were due to subpar internals, and so replacing the capacitors, inductors, and op-amps would yield a great improvement in sound quality. Since I have basic soldering skills, I figured it would make a nice side project. I put together a bill of materials for replacing all the important components and picked some suitable replacements online, mostly higher quality Nichicon and Panasonic capacitors. Once everything had arrived, I got down to business and desoldered both the through-hole caps and the surface mount op-amps on the tone/volume circuit:



You can see I marked the PCB with sharpie to prevent any confusion, but it turned out that it wasn't necessary- the negative side of the caps and pin 1 on the op-amps were already marked for installation at the factory.

Any high quality op-amp like an LM4562/OPA2107/LT1364 will do for the replacement. I went with Linear Technology's LT1364:



Installed onto the PCB along with the Nichicon caps:



The surface mount soldering was a bit of a challenge, considering how small the pins are on the op-amp. It's certainly not going to win any beauty contests, but it's functional.

If you look closely in the last picture, you will notice that the surface mount capacitors on C30 and C31 have been removed- these were originally ceramic capacitors which are pretty much universally regarded as unfit for audio applications due to their properties. These were the coupling caps for the input signal, so it would be a clear improvement to replace them with something better. The replacement film caps were much larger than the ceramic caps, but they secured to the surface mount pads quite solidly with a bit of solder. I also had to solder on a bit of extra wire onto C30's leads to get it to fit on the PCB comfortably:



Again, never going to win any beauty contests but it's functional. Next up, off with the inductors and the output capactiors:



Cleaning the leftover solder out of the holes took a seriously powerful soldering iron and a desoldering wick, and left some big splotches of burnt rosin on the underside of the PCB:



I'm not killing this board, I swear! It looks ugly but it's actually just a brown residue that wipes away with some rubbing alcohol. The new caps and inductors went on without a fuss:



Note the one output cap upside down just to drive those of us with OCD berserk. I didn't even notice at the time, but film capacitors are nonpolar so it doesn't really matter.

Another cap that came out turned out to have different sized lead spacing than the replacement I bought. On the left is the original, right is the replacement:



Not to worry though, because some simple work with a pair of needle nose pliers evens out the lead spacing:



And in it goes without a fuss:



Next up was the main power capacitor. The original one was rated at 2200μF and 16V, but this was grievously under spec. Most people went to 4700μF or higher, I chose a 5600μF unit rated at 25V. The voltage rating was much higher as an added safety margin. The problem this posed was that the new capacitor was much larger:



In fact, if it was mounted flush against the PCB the unit would not fit back into its housing. The fix was simple enough since the clearance was off by only a few millimeters at most. Affixing the capacitor slightly tilted in relation to the PCB let it go in without an issue:




The last part of note was the nonpolar caps in C20 and C21. The spots on the board for them were actually marked as polar:



Not a big deal, though I still ended up putting the shorter lead through the negative marked hole as a force of habit. In went the rest of the caps and a set of replacement white LEDs that will light up at a lower intensity:



The finished, modded PCB:



A pile of the old parts I stripped off:



And the bottom of the PCB, after cleaning most of the burnt rosin residue off:



Finally, plugging it in and flipping the power switch!



The modded unit passed what I coined "the other POST"- the "Power On Smoke Test" with flying colors. No buzzing, no smoking, no fuss.

The moment of truth was upon me, then: did all this work actually make a difference?

Yes, yes it did. It made a positively amazing difference. Everything sounded much fuller- the bass response was better, the mid range sounded nicer, and the overall range was much more clear. There was a massive difference with the tone circuit bypass, which now sounds almost as good as with the tone circuit engaged. There is a slight difference in the gain between the two settings, but I still prefer to have the tone circuit engaged. This improvement was not just placebo effect either, I had a number of impartial listeners remark about how good it sounds now. All told, the parts cost me about $15, so it was a significant investment in terms of the original cost of the unit. That said, for $35 this thing kicks ass. I'm very impressed with it at the price point. Of course it's not going to stand up to top end stuff and it doesn't have gobs of power to drive bigger or more inefficient speakers, but all told I'm positively thrilled with how it came out.

The only caveat I would give is that this unit really shines after all the mods but is just average before them. If you don't know how to solder or don't want to take this unit apart to mod it, you might not like it as much as I did.

EDIT: I've gotten requests to post up the parts list for what I replaced.

IMPORTANT! Be aware that this is for the PCB that is marked "LEPY LP2020A+ 130416PCB" and if your unit is a different revision, the location of components may have changed. If you find a discrepancy, just replace the cap with a higher quality one of the same specifications. The only caps I altered the spec on were the main power cap (C1 got a higher capacitance and voltage rating) and the coupling caps (C30 and C31 got film caps of the same spec)- in both cases they should be relatively easy to find even if their number has changed.

U1 and U2 replaced with Linear Technology LT1364 (or your favorite equivalent op amp)
C1 replaced with Panasonic EEU-HD1E562B (or equivalent 5600µF 25V cap)
C3 replaced with Nichicon UKW1C471MPD (or equivalent 470µF 16V cap)
C4 and C10 replaced with Nichicon UKW1H010MDD (or equivalent 1µF 50V caps)
C9 replaced with Panasonic ECW-F2W104JAQ (or equivalent .1µF 450V cap)
C14 and C15 replaced with Nichicon UFW1A221MED (or equivalent 220µF 10V caps)
C20 and C21 replaced with Panasonic ECE-A1HN2R2U (or equivalent 2.2µF 50V bipolar caps)
C28 and C29 replaced with Nichicon UKW1C101MDD (or equivalent 100µF 16V caps)
C30 and C31 replaced with WIMA MKS2C043301K00JSSD (or equivalent 3.3µF 63V film caps- whatever you can manage to fit)
C32, C33, C35, C36, C38, and C39 replaced with Kemet R82EC3470DQ70J (or equivalent .47µF 100V caps)
L1 replaced with Bourns 6100-100K-RC
L2, L3, L4, L5 replaced with Wurth 744732100

System Build 2013: Closed loop cooler, Haswell, and more

Keen-eyed viewers may have noticed that I gave away my choice of CPU cooler in the last post about my system build, as the box was sitting right next to the case in the last picture. I decided to go with a Corsair H110 based on the impressive performance numbers that more than a few independent tests showed it could put out. Of course, the price was much higher than an air cooler and though it definitely pushed my budget even thinner, I think that it was a worthy addition considering the fact that the most recent generations of Intel processors have always been a bit warm, especially when overclocking.

For the CPU, I bought a Haswell i5 4670K almost the first day it hit retail shelves. Considering the fact that my previous rig packed an i7 and that a good number of Haswell reviews were less than enthusiastic about its overclocking potential, my choice bears a bit of explanation. First off, I went with the i5 because in most (if not all) gaming benchmarks i5 versus i7 had a negligible effect- most of the graphics workload is dependent on the GPU and rarely does the CPU become a bottleneck. Saving $100 on a processor and spending $100 more on a GPU would have a vastly larger return in terms of gaming performance. Based on my usage, the i7's hyper threading just wasn't worth it this time around. In terms of why I chose Haswell over a previous gen i5, the simple fact that on the Asus Z87-A motherboard all of the internal SATA ports were 6 GB/S and supported RAID sealed the deal, as this feature is conspicuously absent from the previous generation. Micro Center was running an absurdly good bundle deal, and the whole endeavor only cost me $10 more than what I would have paid for a previous gen i5. That was a pretty airtight case for me.

Of course, to round it out there was still a lot of other choices to be made. I still needed a power supply, RAM, and a video card.

I chose a Seasonic 650W fully modular power supply- the wattage isn't enough to support a big SLI build, but I had decided to go for a big single card once again, because the power/noise/heat equation still greatly favors a high tier single card over two lesser cards in SLI. I wasn't about to skimp on the quality of the PSU, though, hence why I used a Seasonic that had been noted for its very solid, stable voltage regulation.

I chose DDR3 1600 RAM- although there is dispute as to whether or not DDR3 1600 or DDR3 1866 is the point past which diminishing returns kick in, 1600 is the highest speed actually supported on Z87 without an overclock. I found a good deal on 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Elite memory; despite the "overkill" sized heat sinks it was mercifully free of LEDs and bright colors that some RAM tends to come with, and the timings were excellent for the price. My previous system got along just fine with 6GB of memory, but when a kit of 2x4GB sticks comes along at such a good deal, upping the memory to 8GB didn't seem like too extreme of a jump.

The video card proved to be much more elusive than I had hoped. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 series has just hit the market, and a number of the models are a bit scarce. In the meantime though, I assembled what I had into the case:



More to come as I finish off this build!

E3 2013: My take

I'll admit that I don't really watch E3 with the enthusiasm that some consumers do. In fact, I tend to tune it out and let the hype die down before really digging into it. However, I felt like I should weigh in this year, as it really provided some great material to discuss.

Microsoft lost me with their lackluster presentation of the Xbox One, and managed to kill all desire I had for one when the details of it's rather draconian connectivity dependence came to light. I could go on about the fact that requiring internet check ins and always online single player kills the very essence of single player, but I'd probably just be preaching to the choir. The whole "kinect is always listening" business also creeps me right the hell out, as the camera and microphone will apparently always be monitoring. I'm not really the tinfoil hat type, but doesn't that strike anyone else as a grievous invasion of privacy? Used games being essentially blocked was just another nail in the coffin, and I can't help but be slightly amused by the fact that this rather bold move is spitting in the face of Gamestop's business model, which, last I checked, was responsible for moving a whole lot of Microsoft systems and games. Add on top of all of this the fact that I'm on my third Xbox 360 (the previous two died conveniently a few months outside of warranty, leaving me to foot the bill for another system) and I think you can count my consumer enthusiasm as suitably snuffed.

As an aside, why would they call it the Xbox One? Never mind that it's an odd naming scheme, it's like they actually want Ebay to be flooded with scammers selling "original Xbox" systems as "Xbox 1" and using sneaky wording to confuse the unsuspecting holiday buyers.

Sony really hit it big for me, and my previously lukewarm interest in the PS4 has been galvanized into some actual enthusiasm. A $100 lower price point and no used game blocking nonsense was a breath of fresh air. Still, I'm concerned about them stepping up to the plate to regain their momentum in the games department. I can't shake the feeling that Sony had been caught off guard this past generation when (in my opinion at least) the Forza franchise totally blew the doors off of Gran Turismo, which had been the reigning champion of motorsport games. Tom Clancy's "The Division" looked awfully cool, though.

Finally, Nintendo has been off my radar for a while, since the WiiU never really struck me as something interesting. That all changed when I saw the Monolith title that was in the works for 2014... It really, really wowed me, it looks like Monster Hunter but with mechs, and there's something undeniably awesome about that combination. Consider my interest piqued.

System build 2013: Case optimization (Part 1)

I've been running a bit of a backlog once again, as the computer building has officially started- more often than not I find myself making tweaks as opposed to writing about them. As I'm putting this together, the system is bootable and the OS is installed, though there is no video card yet and no attempt at cable management has been made. I'll have to back up for a moment to detail how I got to where I am now, and that leads me to the initial run of case optimizations.

Make no mistake- the 650D is a great case, but for the system I've designed it's slightly sub-optimal for a few (somewhat) easily remedied reasons. Most of note, the front 200mm fan is too shallow and a bit noisy, and its proximity to the hard drive cages makes it necessary to modify the case to fit a deeper fan that moves much more air. Hearing excellent reviews about the Cooler Master Megaflow 200mm fan and the relative ease with which it can be modded to fit the 650D led me to snag a plain old black, non-LED version to hack to bits. I suppose I'm officially a case modder now, then?

The modified setup involved cutting the 650D's front grate out, and removing the rear tabs of the Megaflow so that the fan fit through the front of the case and secured into the existing mounting points, which would (hopefully!) leave enough room for the drive cages to be mounted as well. The fan was easy enough, as I'm vaguely familiar with working on and shaping ABS plastic. Using a file almost feels like cheating, it shapes the material so easily.



Since it's not going to be showing in the final product, I didn't really have to worry about making it "pretty," just dimensionally correct. Finishing such a surface is a notorious pain in the butt anyways. On to the case. The front grate had to be removed such that the fan could slip down into it and meet up with the existing mounting points. This was much more involved, and required hearing protection, dust masks, a lot of patience, and a helping hand from my friend Emily, who tag teamed on the Dremel with me to get it done.



After finishing the cutting and sanding, I took the case to the edge of the garage and blasted it down with an air compressor- this was not a simple "canned air" job, since those steel shavings get absolutely, positively everywhere. And now, the finished assembly:



The margin between the fan and drive cage is very close, but it still clears- success! It doesn't really show well in pictures, but it's about a 1mm margin, so no buzzing fan rattling on a drive cage!

Aside from this major mod, everything else was just a matter of picking which fans went where, making sure that it would ultimately be a positive pressure setup, and coming up with a general game plan for cable routing, though this will come later after hooking all the hardware up and making sure it was ready to roll.

More coming soon!

System build 2013: Using a budget "cache" SSD as an OS drive?

Having used a solid state drive on my 2010 build, there was no way that I would go back to having only standard hard disks for my 2013 build. After looking at various reviews and benchmarks, I decided that the primary SSD for this build would be a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro. At $130, it offers an amazing performance level that is on par with the larger SSDs that have more memory modules for the controller to work with. The Samsung unit is also double the capacity of my current SSD, which cost me $170 at the time. Although it is tempting to bemoan the cost of being an early adopter, it's actually quite impressive to see that 3 years later, I'm buying a faster, larger SSD for less money.

I digress. As I learned to live with the somewhat limited 60GB on my current SSD, I found that it was a bit of a lost cause to try to "manage" games and prune them aggressively upon completion, especially on a drive that was sharing the OS. Reinstalling, updating, and so on became a bit of a nightmare. Having an SSD with 0 bytes of space left would not make for a happy computer when it was time to apply an update, be it game or OS. World of Tanks managed this feat once or twice during a patch, which resulted in the dreaded "no more space" error message and left me scrambling to figure out how to clear up some space. Steam was too big to fit from the beginning. Now both Steam and Tanks have ended up residing on the slower hard disk. 128GB of space is an improvement, but it's still going to require some creative tweaking because my Steam folder alone weighs in at 144+ GB. Now, to be perfectly fair my Steam library has not yet been pruned, but factor in that I've got to install World of Tanks (~14 GB) and my OS (~16GB) and I'm looking at deleting 46GB of stuff just to have a drive that is totally full!

Using a dedicated OS drive is the solution I've come to, but what to use without being over-sized and over-budget? The SSD market as a whole has pretty much moved away from smaller size drives, which is disappointing. Enter the SanDisk Readycache drive, a 32GB drive intended as a cache drive to speed up traditional hard drives. The price is certainly right, at $39.99 it was the cheapest SSD out there that I could find. But how would it fare when I just format it, throw it into a computer, and install the OS directly onto it? The deck is certainly stacked against it, since it's smaller (and as a result has much fewer memory modules) and uses a less advanced controller that is apparently more suited for its intended use as a cache drive. I'm all for giving it a fair shot, so I picked one up. I figure if it can deliver even comparable performance to my current SSD for $40 I'll be happy.

I decided to momentarily install it in my 2010 rig to benchmark it versus my current SSD, and eliminate all other variables. Same system, same SATA controller. The results were actually pretty interesting.
(To be perfectly clear these were both on my motherboard's 3.0 GB/s SATA controller.)

First the baseline of my current Corsair Force Series 60GB:

Bear in mind that it might be showing some signs of age, but it's the best I can do with my current resources.

Now the SanDisk:

Interestingly enough, the sequential read is actually faster, at 136% of the Corsair's speed. Where it gets trounced, though, is the 4K random read, where it barely hits 31.5% of the read speed (but this is still much faster than the average traditional hard disk drive). Since booting Windows 7 is a mix of sequential and random reads, it's hard to call it in one direction or the other. I don't believe the SanDisk will boot faster than my Corsair, given how much the random read lags behind. What the real-world difference in performance will be remains to be seen. My initial impression based on the data and the fact that these numbers still handily outpace traditional drives is that the difference will likely be hard to notice, and on the order of a second or two.

The bottom line is that for the money, this drive looks like it's actually a pretty decent choice. It's not going to win any benchmarks for sure, but its selling point is its reasonably low cost.

System build 2013 Prologue

In 2010 I detailed the process of putting together my first self-built, high end computer. This year, I'm going to be building another and applying the knowledge I gained from the previous build to make a more refined build. I'm going to be working a bit more on optimizing airflow and clean cable management in a larger case this time around. In addition, I'll be branching out a bit and experimenting with a few technologies that I've never played with before, namely a RAID 5 array and possibly a closed loop liquid cooler. I'll get to those later, but first let me expand a little on some other aspects of this build.

My budget is $2000 even this time around, which is an increase from last time by about $500. I'm starting this right at the edge of the release of two promising technologies, namely the Haswell Intel architecture and Nvidia's GTX 700 series video cards. I'll be waiting to see what each brings to the table- in the case of the GTX 700 series cards it's merely a matter of which one to pick, be it a 780, a 770, or possibly two 760 Ti's in SLI. On the other hand, I may eschew Haswell in favor of the "end of cycle" pricing on the Sandy/Ivy Bridge processors, though this of course depends on how much of a price/performance ratio the new architecture brings. It certainly looks impressive so far, but I'll withhold my judgement until the reviews are in.

I spent significantly more on a case this time around, to the tune of about double what I paid for the last one. Of course, in all fairness it is not a micro ATX case, but the Corsair 650D I purchased was initially not my first choice. The temperatures and noise levels it offered were middling compared to other offerings, and there were certainly cooler or quieter cases to be had for less money. That said, when I got to see a display model, I was impressed by the features it offered. The easily removable filters for the underside and the front are quite handy, the latched side panels are sturdy but easy to get apart, and overall it just has a very nice build quality to it. Looking at other cases, I just didn't see the same level of polish. It doesn't hurt that aesthetically, I find it very appealing as well. My only complaints after handling it were a trifecta of small issues; I could care less about the tool-less drive bays, the top vents frustratingly have no filter, and the fan situation is not optimized for a good "positive pressure" setup to keep dust away. None of those problems were enough to sway me away from it, and the fact that there was a $20 mail in rebate certainly eased the concern about cost.

On to the RAID array. After reading a little about RAID 5 and the fact that it can withstand the failure of a hard drive without a loss of data, I thought it would be a neat idea to try, now that I've realized my assessment that "I'd only ever really need ~1TB of storage" turned out to be a woeful underestimation. Having had good experiences with Western Digital, I chose 3 of their 1TB "Red" drives to set up in a RAID 5. They are inteded for NAS, but they also work well in a RAID array, being able to ramp their RPM up or down to simultaneously save power and keep up with demand. When not under load, they only spin at 5400, but hit them with a demanding data operation, they will spin up to the normal 7200 to accommodate. Seems like a really neat feature, and I can't wait to see how they perform in my RAID. Of course, I'll also be using SSDs to supplement my storage for gaming and/or OS applications.

Finally, I feel like it might finally be time to take the step over to water cooling and try a closed loop cooler. The technology has matured greatly since I last considered using one, and I feel much more willing to try one over a big air heat sink. Of course, air is still a bit more cost effective, and it is hard to beat some of the "big guns" in the air cooling arena even with a CLC. On the other hand, the CLC does allow for a "cleaner" airflow path and less clutter inside the case, when done right.

I'll have more to write as I acquire more components and information.

Bioshock: Infinite and Tomb Raider

A quick rundown of my thoughts on the aforementioned games.

I know I'm a bit late to the party with Bioshock, but it bears mention nonetheless. It's good, very good. There's no praise that I can give it that hasn't probably already been said. The atmosphere is absolutely incredible. Elizabeth is an awesome companion, as well- the game could have ended up as an excruciating, never ending escort quest but thankfully she never ever proves to be an annoyance. To be perfectly fair, this is because she's invincible and her job is to avoid combat, so it isn't exactly a triumph of AI mastery. If I had to register any complaints about the game it would be the weapon balancing and the random, arbitrary difficulty spike at the end of the game. Regarding the weapons, I found that the hand cannon essentially becomes the only weapon you need to use, once it was fully upgraded. Exploding heads left and right made my second weapon slot and "vigors" (special abilities) collect dust for the vast majority of the game, and the fact that Elizabeth would throw you ammo nearly every time you almost ran dry, there was hardly any need to even touch other weapons. The difficulty spike at the end of the game was far more of an issue. The final battle ramps up the difficulty to the point where you don't even feel challenged, simply bashing your way through a trial and error sequence. That said, I would still highly recommend the game.

Tomb Raider is a thoroughly enjoyable reboot of the franchise that I'm really liking so far. I've yet to get all the way through the game, but it's quite fun aside from a few little areas where it becomes clear that it is a PC port of a console game. I don't like quick-time events one bit, and the fact that they often have obscure commands you need to follow that aren't exactly clear the first time or two though can get really frustrating. The upgrade system for the weapons and skills, though, is quite nice. Graphically, the game is amazing as well. Barring some sort of egregious shortcoming that I uncover as I continue through the game, I would also give it a good recommendation for players who enjoy adventure games.

World of Tanks, Revisited

It's been over 2 years since I last made mention of World of Tanks, and I do believe it requires another look. The rather close-knit gaming community I associate with would play it intermittently over the years since its initial release, but enthusiasm was lukewarm at best after the beta. Earlier this year, a number of us decided to really dig into it and get back into the swing of things.

What I found was much, much different than how I left it, and it was changed for the better. The meta game has undergone a rather sweeping metamorphosis, and no longer is it strictly a battle of guns versus armor thickness. Armor still plays a role, but mobility and flanking tactics are now heavily emphasized. Not having good terrain awareness or leaving your flanks exposed is nothing short of a death sentence, no matter how thick your armor is.

Other things have changed, welcome little additions like being able to purchase the "gold" premium ammo for regular in-game currency (albeit at an inflated price) and camouflage patterns to customize the look of your tank. A number of tech trees have been added as well. Chinese and British tanks have been brought into the mix, and I have greatly enjoyed playing the British medium tank tree.

Of course, the plague that still remains is the random pub matchmaking dredging up the most impossibly dense and idiotic players to fight alongside you, leading to incredibly frustrating losses where a flank will fall due to utter incompetence and the sensible players end up surrounded. Sadly, it is very difficult to carry a team. 

All things considered, though, I found it a much more enjoyable experience to play, so I put some money into getting gold, and I put in a whole lot of matches to get myself up to tier 9 in two trees so far, the first of which was the mighty E-75 heavy tank:

 

 Essentially a Königstiger on crack, the E-75 has an absurdly thick upper front hull that can ricochet an impressive amount of fire, but suffers from limited maneuverability considering the fact that it weighs 85+ tons. I also have the British tier 9 medium tank, the Centurion 7/1 unlocked, but haven't made enough money in game to buy it just yet. I've spread myself a bit thin (as you might be able to tell by looking at my other garage slots) by playing a number of other high tier tanks including Russian mediums and heavies, American SPGs, and French light tanks.

After 2+ years of tweaking and improvements, I would probably give it the title of the best free to play game currently out there, though it's still not for everyone, and might be a bit hard to approach if you're not particularly interested in the source material.

Give it a look if you're interested:

http://worldoftanks.com/

A new direction for Telefpreen

So after a long, long hiatus from any sort of activity on my blog I've decided to retool it in the hopes of reviving it. My goal is to give it a new life and a new, more narrowly defined focus. As part of that, I should probably explain my motivations for this change.

To put it bluntly, no one gives a shit.

Now, as self-deprecating as that may seem, hear me out. Previously I had commented on various things that interested me, be it digital photography, motorcycles, cars, movies- the point being that there was no real unifying topic. On average, someone who is looking for a blog to read wants to see something more cohesive than what most personal blogs offer, which is a sort of context-free collage of random happenings in someone's life. I greatly enjoy talking about cars and motorsports, but someone looking for my thoughts on the F1 season probably couldn't care less about the vacation I spent in Tokyo. Likewise, I have a deep interest in military hardware and firearms, but someone here to see a range report on my AR15 chambered in .300 Blackout would likely be thoroughly disinterested in an article about the latest EDM I've been listening to. The problem I see is that the broader range of topics that I try to cover, the more and more dilute- and therefore less interesting- the blog as a whole becomes to read.

So, with that in mind I'm going to narrow the focus of Telefpreen into what the new subtitle proclaims it to be: "Video gaming, personal computers, and the occasional commentary on consumer electronics."

I mean, hey, the internet really could use another half-assed tech blog, couldn't it?