Some Holiday Things ~ But Kala Was In Kansas 25Dec25-21Jan26

Kala headed to Kansas in Dec to be sainted, and help her cousin with medical treatments there so Matt & I and others went through the holidays for the 1st time in 45 years without her. The stockings were up and Matt, Letha, and I did a gift exchange over a classic holiday meal at sushi! Matt enjoyed his bounty and LPC & MLC enjoyed their F1 dish towels. I scored a keen Shun serrated utility knife for skinned veges (really like Japanese steel) and enjoyed a world class DDH IPA, DDH Ghost in the Machine, once in Summit for skiing and audio work.

I did host my good friends Bro Brown & Donna... always a pleasure. Of course I was over at the Lodge for some nosh and brews too. And our friend and neighbor Alan brought us a treat of boozy eggnog!

We rolled into January dry as a bone here in CO so not much skiing but I did get out with BroB and Richard... we crushed some speedy blue & black laps @ the Key and Richard made guac, tacos, etc for dinner and we watched some football. I also snagged another keen DDH, from ORB this time of course ~ Slush was excellent.

I headed back to COS and hosted a Natl Champ watch party with Bob, Alan, Jim, and Dave (no team pic; just setup). We had my nachos and lobster raviolis with Sriracha and tomatillos... and some nice beers (except for Alan, who's doing NA January ~ respect).

In Dec25 Matt & I laid plans for the Rolex 24. I watched the Roar Before The 24 in preparation. And, Jim & I took out the FlyBox a final time before cold weather set in again. We hit some keen local brewers and capped with excellent sushi over a nice 4 hour night.

Decent holiday time, all things considered ~ I'm looking forward to Kala's return.

Building The TABAOs ~ PicoOnken Surrounds For Nest GR8 Room System 08Dec25-08Jan26

PicoOnken Motivation... With the front array of TABAQ mains and the TABAD center channel in place in the Nest GR8 Room, the surrounds screamed for a custom upgrade. Enter my PicoOnkens, a tiny (2.9L) Onken design for the Tang Band W4-1337SDF. I also call it a TABAO (Tang Band Onken) to match the other like-outfitted full range speakers here. I probably shouldn't put so much into surrounds, but I do love a sound envelope with all drivers of the same timbre. Plus, it's winter and I needed a new project, and I like the smooth sound of Onkens. The PicoOnkens are excellent ~80Hz surrounds at 10ft; they are fit for purpose and compliment the front array perfectly. It'd be hard to do better for a relatively inexpensive, and simple to cut and assemble, DIY 5.1 system of full range driver speakers than the Nest TABA lineup in the GR8 Room. I'm pleased.

TABAO Design... I focussed on aperiodic restricted port design techniques and worked them around the Thiele parameters of the TB W4-1337SDF driver employed throughout the Nest GR8 Room. The 4" drivers are about ~$100 each. I fashioned a cabinet worthy of small room or bookshelf mains which is simply built from 12mm Baltic birch, like the other full range cabinets in this room. Sure, given the objective of tiny, efficient, economic, and using a specific driver, I only targeted 80Hz lows, and the tuned port delivers 78Hz, through the mid-bass, smoothly and very well. Too, the modeling shown is bass reflex, there's a bit more nuance with simulations for rectangular (and restricted) ports; they have different circumferences and resistances after all.

TABAO Build... The cut sheet from 5'x5' Baltic birch employs just 2 major cuts, 11cm wide with the grain (a rip) and 22.3cm across the remaining piece's grain (a crosscut), then chops are made to these planks to yield all the parts. All that was done quickly and I did a dry fit then my100mm hole saw cut the baffles for drivers. Assembly was also simple with lots of clamps and Titebond III. I lined the PicoOnkens with 1/2" carpet underlayment to stop resonances and restrict the port, with one side still off. I installed binding posts as well while the cabinets were still 'open.' I then glued the final side to the speaker, using spray adhesive again on the lining to the inside as I put it on ~ I can reach through the driver hole in the baffle to secure final damping material. Once assembled and dried I sanded and finished the speakers in my favored True Black stain and satin polyurethane. After fully dried I soldered in the drivers and attached them to the baffle using BluTack and screws for a good seal.

TABAO Measurement... The PicoOnkens sound great and they measure great in 2𝝿 space against a wall as well. Before installing them in the permanent surround spots, I did some sweeps. Of course they don't go too low but they are plenty flat from 80Hz up.

TABAO Install... These PicoOnkens are installed in the Nest GR8 Room 'theater' as raised rear surrounds. I did not want to have to alter suspension brackets after removing the old NHTs so I simply screwed the TABAOs onto the existing brackets, directly into the back of the cabinets. I let Denon's own Audessy subsystem remeasure then re-equalize & rebalance the system.

Nest GR8 Room Update... I removed the old NHT 1 mains from the mantle in the Nest GR8 Room. Unfortunately this left holes and exposed drywall and wires. I got some 1/8" one-sided paneling in about the right color and cut pieces to size on the band saw. I used my smallest nail gun to tack in the cover up pieces. It looks ok.

Nest GR8 Room Future... The front array of 3 speakers doesn't need help now but the PicoOnkens raged there and might be a nice add as wide centers or elevated fronts in the wide wing mantle spots or above and flanking the monitor if raised front presence can be consistently delivered to them. Hmmm.

Jan '26 Music Appreciation ~ Happy New Year; Great Covers With Keen Guests 01Jan26

For this month's MA I offer a reach for me as I am normally mostly an originals fan. I show here some killer covers by some of my fav teams; sometimes they were joined by great guest musicians, sometimes not.

• Dave Matthews covers  The Band The Weight 22Sep24 - With Willie Nelson's sons & Nathaniel Ratliff
• Big Richard covers Pink Floyd "Time" 07Sep24 - Just when you thought they couldn't get better.
• Middle Aged Dad Jam Band covers Scenes From An Italian Restaurant 17May24 - Always good covers and guests from these guys.
• Paramore/Haley Williams covers Talking Heads "Burning Down The House" 02Feb24 - They've done it a bunch with tribute to Byrne.
• Jackson Browne (& guests from around the world) plays 'Doctor My Eyes" 08Sep23 - How'd I miss this version of one of my fav JB tunes?
• Mumford & Sons cover classic folk song House of the Rising Sun 30May23 - Street cred in New Orleans.
• Lake Street Dive covers Traveling Wilburys "Handle With Care" 30Oct22 - Every Halloween these kids kill with costumes & song.
• Brandi Carlile covers E John/B Taupin Madman Across The Water 06Oct21 - Great cover of a great song at a great studio.
• Highwomen cover Fleetwood Mac "The Chain" 10Aug21 - Classic from the women.
• Alex Leahy covers My Chemical Romance "Black Parade" 19Sep19 - Frankly, just a classic EMO kid killing the anthem.

AI Music Is Everywhere; Beware ~ I Hear And Buy Directly From Artists 17Dec25

As this entry title suggests, AI generated music and 'host' content intros and analyses are prevalent on all streaming platforms. It's cheaper to artificially analyze and mimic your favored styles and genres than pay artists' royalties. It's cheaper to have an AI agent be your DJ, even including voice-generated pithy comments, than pay a human. To me this just doesn't seem right... irrespective of how good it gets. OK, moderating... with a prompt to AI that you enter, asking for a playlist you'd like to try, has to be fine, right; till you are steered in one specific direction or another for someone else's gain. Why can a 'copy of the past' from a 'bot with all human context be better than something new, something invented by humans now. I get AI as a correlation-tool of vast data sets to bring 'proposed' insight that we can't discern... I've seen it and it's cool, but often wrong. Keep your eyes wide open on all this stuff.

Back to music... As often as I can, I buy music as directly from the artists I like as I can... bandcamp.com, and I go to as many live shows from the artists I like as I can. Remember trips to Tower Records? I'd read and bought the albums I wanted; I'd listen to them and read the sleeves & covers; I'd go back to Tower to find the same artists, writers, and producers and built my network of music knowledge... adding new insights as I went. The brand lives on in Tokyo but is mainly online in the US... I get retail is dead mostly, unless we can't stop porch pirates, the reference was a tactile version of today.

I still do that but with authenticated YouTube and bandcamp.com ~ and I often play the EP or album release through as the artists intended. Recently Maya de Vitry, but I track ~100 artists' new activity and add several every year.

Just compare 'our' (hey boomer or millennial) raucous middle school lunchroom with the quiet doom-scrolling scene today. I even asked an AI what the major streamers do regarding AI content... pretty damming to my sense of human need ~ do we use it? YES is the case for Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and Amazon.

Yes, yes, yes yes. I also asked about Bandcamp...

No. Please contemplate dumping streamers unless guided with specific awareness of and discount of, stray AI generated content. You will either be mis-guided or have your funds mis-appropriated. My blog content and recommendations are strictly human generated. My blog copyright specifically prohibits use of my prose and images for machine learning or AI training, but I've found unique lines from me elsewhere. And, my measurement of 'hits' and consumption by browser and country suggests violations of that copyright. Yet, what can I do? I do what I do as a human.

Repairing Sonance In-Ceiling Surrounds ~ Blown 3.5" Mid-Bass Driver 02Dec25-11Dec25

Debugging... I heard a buzz from one of my in-ceiling surround speakers in the Blodgett Fam Rm; I needed to fix it. They are Sonance 3-way speakers and actually sounded pretty nice, but they're 20 years old. I took pics and wrote the company's tech support but they neither have direct footprint replacements or a sufficient archive on the drivers they used or specs of the crossovers used... grrr. I pulled down the speakers and tested them; the blown driver is an 85mm mid-bass on the left channel.

Assessing... I removed the failing driver. It was 'no joy' attempting to glue the surround foam cracks back together, and the surround was old and decaying anyway. I measured its impedance @6.5Ω and the dimensions of the driver, hole pattern, and "cabinet."

Investigating... Realizing I was going to need to replace the driver I dove on Madisound and Parts Express for a suitable replacement. I didn't want to change the crossover or the other drivers in the 3 ways so needed something pretty close to the original, especially as to impedance. Of course nothing was a dovetail fit, especially as to dimensions, but I found a couple of possible replacements after building a comparator spreadsheet.

Selecting... I was hoping the MA Pluvia 7.2 HD would work as it's the same 4" driver as I used in the front L/R mains and the center channel, in the custom builds already installed in the Blodgett Fam Rm... but it is just too big for the in-ceiling "cabinet." The Dayton RS100 was about half price of the Fostex FF105wk, despite the latter's lauded performance, and it was likely a less problematic physical adaptation to the "cabinet." I bought a couple of the Dayton Audio drivers; reviews were strong enough. I did a prophylactic replacement of the same driver in the right side surround as it'd likely fail equivalently at some point and this'll give the set the same timbre.

Installing... The install with "cabinet" modifications went OK. The driver's came with gaskets and while the hole patterns don't match (known), I just secured the 6 screws directly through the plastic "cabinet" and backed the screws with speed nuts. It's all very secure and buttoned-up despite the dimensional differences. I reinstalled the speakers into their ceiling locations.

Listening... There's a noticeably better low end from the new surrounds now; the new mid-bass/full range drivers are 1" larger than the originals. And they are cleaner too. The key of course is that the repaired surrounds no longer buzz from being blown. The surrounds sound great and smooth in the new system, though they are not too vital for music. The sound on 5.1 (derived or discrete) soundtracks, with the custom front NanoOnken mains with the Onken-like center channel, backed by the SVS sealed subwoofer, is excellent. We watch plenty of games, shows, and movies on the Blodgett Fam Rm system and the kit is very strong and dialed in now after a number of fairly recent upgrades.

Measuring... I will do some measurements when I retrieve the mic from Summit.