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the_village_treky

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So, after a year of inactivity I have returned! (Waits for applause... receives none, walks off disheartened)

Anyway, I'm wondering how many of you guys build your own speakers? It's something I have gotten into in the past year and the results are awesome... granted, it takes an insane amount of time but you save thousands on a good set. So, here are mine, driven by that little wonder the T-amp.

desk3iy.jpg


Got some Dayton RS180's and some Morel MDT20's with a 4th order hand made crossover network. Now anyone else do this kind of thing?

Ps. WOOT, 1,000th post!

(oh, and I know I have two right speakers... I screwed up doing the woodwork and have been to lazy to cut out a new face peice... will do someday)
 
I plan on building a pair of Dayton III's pretty soon to replace my av123 ELT's. I just blew my T-amp and will replace it with an amp6. DIY is so much better than retail if you have the means to do it.
 
the_village_treky said:
So, after a year of inactivity I have returned! (Waits for applause... receives none, walks off disheartened)

Got some Dayton RS180's and some Morel MDT20's with a 4th order hand made crossover network. Now anyone else do this kind of thing?

Ps. WOOT, 1,000th post!

(oh, and I know I have two right speakers... I screwed up doing the woodwork and have been to lazy to cut out a new face peice... will do someday)
Click to expand...

Just got through refoaming a Set of Optimus Mach Ones like these.

Two sets of these were left for dead in my bud's wharehouse. Seeing the ragged out woofers, these were given to me, yup, free. Mine cost a grand total of 8 dollars ;) For the new refoam surrounds and about two hours of work I also washed them down with Murphy's oil soap. Damn I didn't know my Technics receiver could sound that good. Too bad they're too big for my computer room.
 
Donnie27 said:
Just got through refoaming a Set of Optimus Mach like these. ...
Click to expand...
Ahhh, the golden days of hifi, before everything got cheap, plastic and disposable (and Radio Shack actually had products of value and informed clerks).
 
No, the tweeter is an OW1. Good eye on the woofers though. And the crossover was many, many hours of tweaking.... Ended up with 4th order acoustic on both though, good phase integration at the crossover point. Stupid resonance in the W18 really isn't bad to deal with once you see how its done.


They aren't transmission lines either, just a standard ported box with the port way down on the back of the cabinet. Can't explain why, but the port worked better only a couple inches off the bottom of the cab. I tuned the bass a little high in those, if I remember it was tuned for right about 40Hz, in my set I tuned it a little lower, I think it sounds better with a slower rolloff.
 
I also noticed seas woofers and wondered why you didn't use them for the center channel as well. Was there a specific problem with them in the horizontal arrangement? (From what I know--admittedly not much--"horizontal" center channels have weird dispersion/imaging issues)
 
Ahriman4891 said:
I also noticed seas woofers and wondered why you didn't use them for the center channel as well. Was there a specific problem with them in the horizontal arrangement? (From what I know--admittedly not much--"horizontal" center channels have weird dispersion/imaging issues)
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Yeah, there were a bunch of reasons, the biggest one was budget. I only had a touch over $1000 to do the whole 5.1 setup, and $300 extra on woofers wasn't helping.

As you mentioned, center to center spacing of the woofers is a bigger deal with the seas (180mm driver) than the M130 (150mm driver) Add the fact that the M130 is made to be flush mounted, and it works out that I could get the M130's close enough that lobing wasn't a big issue with my selected XO point, but with the Seas it would be. I would have prefered to do a w-T/M-w layout with a dome mid, but I refer you to the budget comment. :)

Box size for the M130 is smaller as well, the W18TV(needs to be shielded) needed something over 1 cubic foot, even sealed, and the M130's went in a much smaller box than that.

And I didn't really need the clarity of the W18's in a center channel, both my setup and that setup are designed for 2.0 or 2.1 listening because the image ends up being better.

In my setup, I went with Seas L18's, with an MDM55 and SS 8513 (I had this speaker commisssioned, 3-ways drive me nuts) not really a major difference, surprisingly.
 
Well, this has my interest piqued. I've been curious about building speakers (college budget) for a little while now.

How much work has to go into this kinds of stuff (how difficult is the cabinet work/electronic side)? And I remember hearing good things about theloudspeakerkit.com, but they're Aussie-only - are there US companies selling kits?
 
Can I be cool? I'm building my own amp right now:

http://41hz.com/

I'm building the "Amp6" model as part of the Audio Engineering Society at the University of Illinois.
Cool, can't wait till it's up and running... duno how its going to compare to my recently purchased Panny XR-55 though. I now have 3 amps and one set of speakers :(
 
ElektronikSeraph said:
Well, this has my interest piqued. I've been curious about building speakers (college budget) for a little while now.

How much work has to go into this kinds of stuff (how difficult is the cabinet work/electronic side)? And I remember hearing good things about theloudspeakerkit.com, but they're Aussie-only - are there US companies selling kits?
Click to expand...

If you want a plain cabinet, they aren't hard to build, couple hours. TO finish, just sand everything and fill any gaps, and paint with truck bed liner, it'll give you a solid textured black finish. You'll need at very least a jigsaw and prefarably a router to cut holes for the front baffle.

The electronics is stupid easy (if you aren't designing the crossover yourself) THere are typically only 3 types of components in an XO, you match up the connections of the components with the schematic, and solder. THis is some of the easiest soldering you'll do as well, the leads are big and heavy, so no damaging components, just need a decent soldering iron.

If you can go about $200 on the budget, I'd highly recommend heading over to murphyblaster.com and checking out any of the MB* series, they are cheap and sound great - I've built the MB20 with 2nd order XO and really enjoy it. If your budget is tighter, or you don't want to build cabinets, check out www.partsexpress.com and look up the BR-1, its a good way to start.

Be warned, once you start, you won't stop..... In the past 3 or 4 years I've built 10 pairs of speakers and a couple subs....
 
^^^

Assembling the parts is easy. I'd say it's the research into cabinet volume, driver selection and xovers, and how those parts will works as a whole is the much harder task and the 'art'.

Of course I guess that's why they offer kits... But when I looked into prepackaged kits a long time ago, they weren't much of a savings, if any, compared to an equivalent retail design of similar quality. Hopefully things are better today, but it would probably be wise to do some comparison research...
 
If you looked at my speakers, I went with the Truck Bed Liner finish. Works really well and is EASY. I wanted to use MDF because it is more predictable material to work with, and I did not want to finish it with a veneer so the truck bed liner gives a nice finish.
 
Archv6625, thanks for the detailed explanation!

I also second the PartsExpress BR-1 recommendation ;) Easy to build, and great sound for the price.
 
Nice to see some fellow [H] in the DIY audio scene. Im planning on modded 5066 + Fostex FE127's monopole folded base reflex design. You guys happy with your T-Amps with crossovers?
 
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