more confused now...

[Snaz]

i spent majority of this weekend researching an amp/speaker setup for voice. i have come to the conclusion that i am more confused now then when i first started. So.. this is what i would like to do. can anyone help me with a good 10 watt amp design/speaker combo? the other bad part is, this speaker cant be no bigger then say 3-4". space is soo limited and i have 4 days to come up wtih something. so i'm asking for everyones help with this. i tried to use a RS white amp with a 10 uF cap across pins 1 and 8, it helped but its still so low in volume.

 

[audioguru]

What is a "RS white Amp"?

A little 3" to 4" speaker is too small to be sensitive.
10W will blow it up.

A cheap 8" speaker in an enclosure designed for it will sound OK with 10W.
A good 8" speaker in an enclosure designed for it will sound good.

My computer speakers are small and sound pretty good. The speakers are 3" and have the biggest magnets I have ever seen on such a small speaker. They each have a 4W amplifier and sound pretty loud when the volume is turned up. Their bass goes flat down to about 100Hz.

 

[Snaz]

sorry, RS = radio shack, which is what most of my kind use. space is of the utmost inportant and an 8" is WAYYYY too big. we cant have a speaker any bigger then 3-4" and even then thats pushing it in size.

 

[audioguru]

You didn't fill in your location so we didn't know you are in Guns Country. There is an RS in England that is not RadioCrap.
RadioCrap is gone from Canada.
We buy electronic parts at a real electronic parts distributor like Digikey.
A cheap little speaker squeaks. Tweeters are that size.
A bigger speaker has more low frequencies so that the sound is better.

 

[Snaz]

YouTube - Ebay item Star wars stormtrooper voice helmet

that will give you an idea of what we use for sound currently. so, basically AG you think its the speaker that makes it sound so crappy and not the amp design?

 

[audioguru]

Your cheap little speaker makes the horrible sound. It is too small and is not in a properly designed enclosure so it is squeaky with no low frequencies.
I think I also heard the horrible distortion from your power amplifier that has its volume control turned up way too high for the low supply voltage.

 

[Snaz]

so would a decent enclosure and more voltage help out?

 

[audioguru]

Speakers need an enclosure that is designed for their spec's.
Without an enclosure then the low frequencies at the front are cancelled by the out-of-phase low frequencies from the rear.

The supply voltage of a power amplifier determines the amount of power at clipping. The datasheet shows a graph.

 

[Snaz]

i have seen schematics of just transistor amp circuits.. is there any difference in sound quality for a total transistor circuit versus a chip design?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Depends how well each is designed - for ultimate quality discrete is considered best - but for your purpose anything would probably do.