DIY speakers...

gonefishin

Super Member
Hi all. Just thought it would be interesting to have a thread where people can voice their opinions/suggestions on DIY speakers.

If you have any advice someone can use when starting a DIY speaker project...please post away. Some ideas that come to mind are construction and planning when thinking of building a pair of vented or sealed cabinets. Materials one should use...any pitfalls with a specific material...cutting holes...staining/finishing...veneering...well...you get the idea.

thanks :D
 
Read!
The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook VI

Loudspeaker Recipes / by Vance Dickason

Bullock on boxes / Robert M. Bullock III

There are others, too. Check your local library <another shameless plug to USE your public library!!>

Practice, you'll not get there without trying.

pete
 
The cookbook is a great read!


I just thought it would be good if we can put some ideas in one post...that may cover questions people may have while building.


thanks!
 
I think one of the best sources is following the DIY links and looking at what has been done at home by other people. It is very helpfull to see and read about projects built by someone whose system is close to what you have or want to get to. The less power you have to drive the speakers the smaller your options get as to drivers and designs.
I also find that the asthetics of the look to be important to me as well as the quality of the sound. There are a lot of great looking speakers out there! I like the eye candy, and tear out speaker adds of unusual shapes and unique laminatets etc.
I was up all last night working on a design for some transmission lines I want to build for the Texas DIY Shootout in Wichita Falls this October. Talk about boys with toys!
Thatch
 
Well I like to look at vintage designs as a reference and Ebay the drivers for them. I needed a better center to match my mains and just waited until the "right" driver showed up. I guess what I am saying is there is a lot of planning that goes into trying to fab a clone. If you are going from scratch you have to research the drivers to make sure they will all work together. So either way it takes a while too get it all together. With both my mains which were my design and my center it took me the same amount of time to plan out what I wanted then to find the drivers and build the crossovers and cabinets. The best advice is be paitient and don't rush and take the time to thinkout your design.

Rob2:)
 
Go to bottlehead.com and check out the Straight 8 DIY speakers. It comes complete with all the parts you need except the MDF. These speakers resemble the big Infinitys and its "only" $599 for the parts and the plans. It takes 4-6 weeks for the drivers to arrive but the plans come immediately so you can build the cabs and have them all done when the drivers show up. With their 96db efficiency you can drive them with as little as 4 watts of SET amp or go nuts and give em 200 watts of SS.


Mike
 
Wjhat a Hoser!

Mike ,
I didn't know you were into the Bottlehead stuff. You build a pair of those Straight Eights? By the way I went to a Bottlehead meeting where the host had Dalquists,maybe modified. I know for sure he had a Foreplay as I left him some very nice 12AU7s as a gift for letting all tube the audio junkies in the area into his house. Being a Bottle head I doubt the power to the Dalqists was SS. I don't think a SET was hooked up to them, but I really don't remember. I do know that the cloth panel had been replaced with a perforated metal one, but not if the drivers had been changed.
Join the TEXAS BOTTLEHEAD group in Yahoo. I believe the guy's name is Mike, but I do know for sure that he lives outside of Cleburne,Tx
 
Dave that is my next project. I am gonna build a set of these Straight 8's just for fun. I have to wait till probably after xmas though as the impending 3rd child will be a drain on the old pocketbook. A case of formula ( 12 cans lasts less than a week) costs >$30 CAN and diapers are $20 a bag. Well the kids are worth it anyway!!

Mike
 
Mike,

If you made those yourself they look great.

Do you happen to know the Thiele small parameters for the drivers used in the straight-8, or the type of driver so I can look it up?

What do you think of the sound of them? Any major sound faults?

Thanx,
Rob
 
Eric,

Forgive me but your point is????

Why don't you scale your design so that you can realistically build it, and then actually do so. Playing with hardware is much more fun that dreaming about playing with hardware. SSStrue. :)

Rob
 
Back when I began the great speaker hunt I came across those Straight 8's and was very oogled by them and then searched and found even larger versions of that type of speaker, they look very impressive.
 
Eric,

That comment had nothing to do with any post you have ever made before. The reason Rob wrote what he did is that your speakers as described would be suitable for a very large stadium seating movie theater, but not for a home.
Basically once you get to a certain point anything else is overkill. One good sub driver set up correctly is usually more than the average sized living room can handle let alone 16 of them.
I saw a site where a guy with a big basement actually built a bass horn by using existing walls and building a curved one for a flair actually moved his house cracked the foundation and outer brick walls with one 12" sub driver.
By the way I really got a kick out of a guy that has a big enough pair to sell a power cord for $3,500. Capitalism plus the Barnum saying "There is a sucker born every minute."
Course he said that over 100 years ago so we are probably up to a dozen a second now!:D :D :D
Thatch:D
 
EricB,

Forgive me. That discussion about power cords is long gone and I did not know I was replying to anyone from that discussion. I have no grudges with anyone here.

I was replying to your speaker post strictly on its own merits, but couldn't find any. Anyone can make a statement that they were gonna make a design with $30,000.00 worth of special parts but didn't because of the cost factor. It sounded to me like boasting disguised as crocodile tears. Talk is cheap, and if I was supposed to be impressed, I wasn't. So I asked what your point was, that's all.

From your most recent comments about speakers you sound like you wouldn't be in the least interested in anything inexpensive. You are entitled to be as elitist as you want to be. Just please note that the very first two words in the title of this forum are "Do it", and that is really my only point. :)

I have no issues with you. Post whatever you want and take it on the chin if someone doesn't see it your way.

Rob
 
EricB

I just reread the post in which you referred there was some "lack of letting go". I did not follow or respond (for obvious reasons) to that thread. I have a strong opinion on the product type, if not the specific product in question, and see NO POINT in engaging anyone here with my POV on that subject. I follow your thoughts in that thread and again here. I don't have any real problems with your opinions. Where I see a problem or take issue with is your attitude. You kind of "crashed the party" on the pc thread and again here your response is heavy-handed. I realize the "what's your point" reference was "borrowed" and you must see that as too much of a coinsidence to forgive. Rob said (after the fact) that it was not intentional, and it appears from the pc thread to have "buried the axe" and even extended a cyber handshake. And again, here his response is commendable, in that he just didn't hurl rocks back at you. You must realize that talk of "exotics" is not exactly embraced by everyone on this site. I'm not suggesting you kiss anyone's a$$, just know your audience before contributing.

MikE
 
Eric

How about you posting about something that you have made. I personally have designed and built a pair of cabinets with a dozen drivers in each. My very first speaker building project. Wired and used and actually sounded like I expected them to. Rob has pics of his latest project and written a critic on the sound, how it works for movies and the differences for listening. I missed out on most of the thread on the cables and so really have no idea about what that is about.
The thing is this is a small group of people a few of which have made their own gear. I wish I had a better camera, as I would like to post pics of a couple of tube amps I have built from scratch and which I modified from the original designs.
We really want to encourage DIY or there would not be posts to links on DIYers, tips on modifications, crossover calculators, etc.
I posted earlier about the guy that damaged his home with the power of his bass horn. Well he did and showed the results on the web.
You have no information about yourself on your profile and only posted info on your system very recently, of which it seems the only tweaks are store bought.
You have to admit that designing speakers that have in a pair 8 subwoofers, 16 woofers, 4 midranges and 8 planar tweeters seems a bit excessive.
Did you finish the box calculations, or design the crossover networks? How far did you take the design? Any special bracing for the part that holds 4 12" subwoofers? What kind of materials did you come up with to line the boxes. Sound proofing, sound damping, some of each? Anything special for defeating standing waves, and how many compartments for the 8 woofers in each cabinet? Ported? Size? Line array or some other configuration?
And I am serious. I really want to know. I would never want to build anything like this but I like hearing other guys thoughts on things like this. Evidently since you came up with a figure on the drivers you must have some specific ones in mind.
The dozen drivers in one box speaker that I built used only 4" full range drivers with an 8 ohm impedence and I built by weaving a wiring harness so that the total impedence of the speaker was 8 ohms. One I dismantled and one is put out of the way, but see the thing is someone told me that if I used an equal number of full range, strong on the mids drivers on each side of a tower and wired them out of phase that I could get imaging that was close to stat pannels at a fraction of the cost and could drive them with a fraction of the power.
Guess what. Its true. Now that might sound like messing around with odds and ends for the hell of it to you, but I spent a lot of time, effort and a chunk of change to find out if I could get the imaging at pennies on the dollar for Stats. And at least for me wiring a dozen drivers of 8 ohms each and 6 out of phase from the other 6 and coming out with an 8 ohm load was not easy. That is DIY.
And sincerly Rob is not picking on or at you, he like me wants to know how far did you DIY even if you didn't build it.
Discussion is what it is all about because we are stretched around the world and most can not get to listen to any other members systems.
David....I only know enough to be really dangerous ....Thatcher
 
Re: HMMMMMMM?

Originally posted by EricB


Maybe you should also considor this practice that you so kindly told me to do. Obviously it seems to me your pretty upset that I don't see it "YOUR" way.
<snip>
By the way-and If talk is cheap,meaning talk is cheap and really not worth anything, why do you or none the less anyone else bother posting or ask questions,read reviews,ask for help, If talk was cheap why would this site be here?I don't know Rob,maybe you can tell me?:dunno:


EricB,

I'm not in the least bit upset Eric. I'm too busy. I've got 12 university students here for three days this weekend and we are all busting ourselves mixing and pouring concrete, welding steel and building a radio telescope array. It will be two summers of this before we are done. Yes I'm boasting. IMO, when you actually do something ambitious and can show proof, you are allowed to boast.

Your speaker posting contained none of those elements you suggest as meritorious contributions, i.e. "ask questions, read reviews, ask for help". Well almost not. You did ask for investors.

Off to the machine shop now.

Rob
 
Build it and they will come!!

Hello Eric B.

Sounds like an impressive idea. What were you going for? Line source sounds like one of the statement Infinity's. The idea of scalling it back does have some merit. You can always design it in modules. You can design a core speaker and then add to it. You may find that a smaller version will indeed meet your needs and if it doesn't you can always add to it. I built my mains as a scalled back version of Drew Daniels system on the Lansing Heritage site. They sound great!! IMHO

Rob2:D
 
RobH...good points.


:mad: Now come'on...people took things the wrong way...big deal. Let's get back to talking about audio instead of how we evaluate each others posts.


Eric...Rob does have a point...The speakers you may be looking at to build are expensive...and will need a huge room...why not look into cutting back a little? This will make it easier on the pocketbook and better for most rooms.


take care all>>>>>>>>>>>
 
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