Grayscale fonts

Sound Fonts
#1

I found this site called “great scale fonts” and it offers some nice sounding free fonts to download.

Warning! I uploaded these to my sd card and played with them and blew up my 40mm 5w speaker!

I looked at the audio and found lots of sub frequencies (20hz) and the gain was very high (around the -2db range peaking at 0db) Certainly enough to blow most speakers.
I like to keep mine below -5db peak and -10db constant.

So if you want to use them I highly recommend that you high pass these and reduce the gain.

#2

Blowing a 5w speaker seems like it should be impossible for a 3w amplifier.

#3

Here’s my folder (still have new ones yet to add).
These are my post-processed versions. Some font.wavs and other stuff might be tweaked to my liking, but yeah. Free is good. I do enjoy out-of-universe sounds.

#4

On paper yes I agree that it would be impossible.

But for the unfiltered fonts the extremely low frequencies over extended my driver and damaged the voice coil.

I dont want to sound like I’m ranting just want to make people aware that these may need a little tweeking.
I’m ok with killing the speaker as it was only a cheepy one off ebay.
I will be replacing it with a high end driver so I wonder if it will handle the fonts after?

Nosloppy did you high pass these fonts before you used them?

#5

This may explain it. Many speakers sold on ebay do not actually live up to their specifications.

#6

:rofl: that is very true.

Dont worry the next one will be very over the top

#7

Always do. Compare a ferq analysis on orig and mine.
Generally I always run through the font batch high pass, fading blasts and clashes if they’re not done, batch nemaing to consistent nomenclature, font folder structure,
check smoothswing and hum loop points after EQ, make sure bgn/end sounds have bits of their root sound fading in/out of them, basically give it a once-over to my taste/ideal standards before using.

#8

what program do you use for this?

#9

Didn’t blow mine. Great fonts. Although they aren’t very well optimised for proffie. Few tweaks and they were fine.

#10

welcome, glad to here your speaker is intact :joy: mine was a cheap one from eBay and was bound to blow at some point. :upside_down_face: Nosloppy has optimised some of these and posted them here.

1 Like
#11

Right I have some groveling and apologies to make!

my claims that these fonts can be harmful to your speakers are UNTRUE.
i apologize if i have upset or hurt anyone’s feelings on this and i apologize to the maker of Greyscale Fonts for slandering their product. it was never my intention to do so, only to pass on information i believed to be correct at the time. (these are actually some of my favorite fonts )

it turns out that my cheap speakers i bought off ebay seem to have done some damage to my amplifier. at low voltage (around 3.4v) any bass exertion comes with a defining crackling noise sounding a bit like a voice coil that has died.
i’ve tested this out on my sons board and all is ok with his.

#12

My recommendation is to stick with the facts.
Your speaker broke, and you were using a grayscale particular font when it happened. If it happens to others, then maybe there is a correlation there.
If you avoid drawing conclusions, you avoid both the possibility of being wrong, and the possibility of laying blame where it doesn’t belong.

1 Like
#13

Thank you for the advice, I will treat this as a humbling experience and next time I will refrain from jumping to conclusions.
I just hope I have not put anyone off using Greyscale fonts.

#14

I should also point out that coils are evil. (eletronically speaking) Speakers, motors and other coils tends to cause sparking if they are disconnected during operation. Basically, what happens is that when the connection is lost, but the two ends of the wire are still very close to each other, the magnetic energy in the coil manifests itself as very high voltage to be able to bridge the gap and jump across to the other side. (Your car uses this to fire the spark plugs…) Fortunately our little speakers don’t produce much sparking, but it can still be enough to fry the amp if you’re unlucky.

#15

It will be getting an upgrade in the speaker department as i now have the speaker from Dayton audio, I will post in the other topic for how it goes.

#16

I don’t think GreyScale has a proffie saber yet (or only just got one).

His fonts may not be very well optimised for proffie yet. Might be worth high pass filtering and Normalising the files just to be extra safe.