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CMI/IUPUI Speaker Restoration Project: Speaker-less

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         As Monday finally came around, the restoration team met up at the IUPUI loading dock to take all of our equipment to our venue at Square Cat Vinyl, a local record shop in Fountain Square that also serves as a performance space, cafĂ©, and bar. The historical feel of the shop heightened the vibe we wanted to give with our performance, but you still couldn’t help but feel a little cramped on their small center stage. Nevertheless, we were able to set up the speaker and all of our gear onto the platform before showtime. After a quick sound check and some drinks to lighten the mood, we were ready to begin the set.                                                            Overall the night went off without a hitch. Despite some sound issues near the beginning, each performance went off exactly as planned, and the energy was high throughout the evening. There was even in attendance family of the original donator of the speakers, the legend himself Jero

CMI/IUPUI Speaker Restoration Project: InDIYana 2018

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In less than a week, you’ll be able to come and listen to our refurbished speaker live as our performers play through the Speaker - less set. As we continue to rehearse through our set, however, our speaker went on a little field trip to InDIYana 2018 with Keher Neote, our student electrical engineer on the project. InDIYana is a casual event of speaker enthusiasts who build and show off speakers of their own design every year in Fort Wayne. The theme of this year’s event was “Keeping Up With the Jones’s” in honor of Andrew Jones, designer of the famous Reference One speakers for Technical Audio Devices Laboratories Inc. in the 2000s. The idea is to showcase coaxial speakers at a budget price, and designers can compete with each other to see who has the best design. Keher’s goal, however, was only to explain his work on the speaker as well as show off how good it sounds even 60 years past its date of manufacture.              The experience was

CMI/IUPUI Speaker Restoration Project: Integrating the Speaker

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It finally feels like everything is coming together as we set up and finalize our set for our performance next month (Monday, May 7, 2018) at Square Cat Vinyl at 8 pm. After our final tests of the speaker at Klipsch, we were able to put the speaker back together and combine it with our set. It’s actually fascinating to see it in action because the sound coming from the speakers is surprisingly clear. When performing in the middle range of frequencies, the speaker is able to produce a quality of sound that seems incredible when you think about how old it is. It really speaks for the hand-crafted quality of the speaker; since this was just one prototype, they made sure each measurement of the speaker case would enhance the overall sound of the speaker.This high quality, however, is not without its limitations. The speaker’s performance drops when playing lower and higher frequencies, to the point where we avoid them all together for fear of blowing out the speaker. While