Help plan/design a home stereo/alarmclock dock

Ok folks, I have the ability and skill to design any number of pretty cool boxes or contraptions to mount the empeg for home use. However, some of the recent ideas I've had will involve some research to locate suitable parts. I'm hoping other have some leads to some of this stuff and can offer any otehr suggestions.

Initially I thought of making a simple component box that would just fit in with your standard seperate stereo system. Even though I may still do that, I also thought that it would be very cool to replace my alarm clock radio (I hate the thing and I really hate radio). For proper alarm-clock use this will require an alarm clock userland app (Tony (ynot) is working on one).

So, for my first dock I'd really like the following feature-set.

Out the back:
- The standard stuff provided by the car dock (stereo line-out, serial)
- plus ethernet
- IEC power receptacle
- speaker-level outputs - powerful enough to drive modest bookshelf speakers

On the front:
- a hole for the empeg
- a master power switch
- LED to indicate power status
- 1 or 2 toggle switches (for options about to be mentioned)

On top:
- SNOOZE button (this will need software support, because my idea is to have it use the phone-mute line as a trigger)

Inside:
- empeg car dock and wiring (to connect stuff already mentioned)
- two small speakers - capable of fairly decent sound
- power amplifier - to drive the speakers above, plus the speaker-level outputs on the back


So, those are the basics. Things I'm looking for are:

Good suggestion for an amplifier to put in the box.
Good suggestion for where to get the speakers and any tips on wiring them to amp, etc.

With regards to the amp, more options become available. Should it be strictly a power-amp using the empeg as a pre-amp, power-amp + seperate pre-amp or a combined pre-power-amp. There should be a lot of options here all the way from buying transistors and IC's yourself to build one, vs. premade small boxes (such as the headphone amplifiers mentioned in another thread). The idea here is not to spend too much getting these parts. I wouldn't want to spend the same amount to put an amp in this box that I would spend on a multi-channel pre-built amp to run my entire car for instance.

I've already been thinking of materials and ways to style the enclosure, but if anyone has anything to contribute, go ahead. Always open to more ideas.

Bruno

I suppose you've thought about some car stereo amps, a really cheap 2 channel amp might go as low as $50, unless you can find an open-box clearance type thing. Probably more $ than you're thinking though... I haven't ever found cheap good bookshelf speakers, no matter where I look. I'd like a decent set for my rear surrounds at home, and anything worth it's salt is about $100 a pair minimum. Yamaha makes some less expensive speakers that I thought were good for the price. Overkill for an alarm clock, but if you consider that this could be a nice second stereo, it could be easier to spend money on.

Interesting, wake up with the empeg, drive to work with it, lisen to it at work, drive home with it, and even go to bed next to it. Zany.

> wake up with the empeg, drive to work with it, lisen to it at work, drive home with it, and even go to bed next to it

...and then have it play white noise for you while you sleep.

How about cannibalizing a set of powered computer speakers?

Can be had in just about any quality from extreme crap to really good, comes with power supply and built in amp. Shouldn't be too hard to separate the amp from the speakers... Guess you'll need a switch to select internal/external speakers too.

/Michael

You wouldn't even have to separate the amp from the speakers. Based on the requirements, I don't see why a pair of self-powered speakers wouldn't work fine as-is.

True, I was thinking in terms of probably hacking the speaker cases too, to get a nice mount in the corners of the rack panel. If you want external/internal switchability you'd need to hack in the external/internal switch in the wiring between amp and speaker elements and that might be simplified by extracting the amplifier. Definately a case of "depends on what you use" though.

/Michael

This might work. Then my concern is the power requirements of the built-in amp. I suppose I'd have those concerns anyway. Since space would be at a premium, I was thinking of trying to do everything with a 12 volt supply - then I'd need an appropriate amp and I'd use the empeg's car dock connections (fitting a dummy jack into the dock to fool it into home mode). This way I can avoid multiple power supplies. My only concern about the small amp in those speakers is the possibile inability to power some bookshelf speakers. I'll have to scour for some specs.

In relation to an earlier post, the price of bookshelf speakers is unimportant - those aren't the ones I want to hack up and put in the case.

Now if only it were easy enough to get a spare dock connector (with some pins, but without all the wiring would be fine). I can make my own dock, but the connector would be an order of magnitude more difficult. Guess I'll have to use the dock from my spare empeg.

Bruno

It's huge, it's ugly, but it woke me up for the past six months. On top is an alpine 4 channel amp I had lying around. The PS delivers 13.8v 6A/8A and powers both, amp and empeg. The Selector Box on the left allows me to switch output to different locations including the bedroom on the other floor. The PS is switched on by a X10 appliance module, while a seperate universal X10 module feeds/cuts 12v to the empegs accesory line. (Which allows me to do a 'soft' powerdown. Accessory line first, PS 60 seconds later.)
Ventilation is provided by two vents taken from ATX PS's. They're too loud really, so they stay off when i'm in the same room, but are on when the X10 wakeup macro gets executed.

A set of Boston BA790's would work really nicely for this application. They take a 12V AC or DC in and sound quite nice. At my computer, I drive them right off the back of my empeg so I know they work well.

I'd like to stuff two speakers into the box, but not a sub - that would take up too much space. So the speakers need to be capable of a pretty full range on their own.

I'll be looking this weekend and will post the details of anything I buy. I'd like to get something that can use 120VAC (like I set I saw at RatShack). That means it has its own integral power supply, probably attached to its amp, that I'll stuff into the box. That way I don't have to put in one of those power bricks and barrel connectors (or hack off the barrel connector and get down to making even more of my own connections). We'll see though... I'll give it some thought as I go to sleep. Haha.

Bruno