/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.1844706]

Has anyone here built their own speakers?

[Anonymous No.1844707]

Yes, and it's a lot like cooking your own food; with just a bit of experience you can do 10x better than the ones for sale, at much less cost.

[Anonymous No.1844713]

The JBL M2 monitors are $12,000 and that person probably built them for less than $1,000 after everything, though I'm unsure.

[Anonymous No.1844735]

>>1844706
yes, highly recommend. I build a speaker kit off parts express, the C-note kit. They are fantastic and rival $500 speakers for a fifth of the price. I recommend building a kit first so you learn the basics and familiarize yourself with crossovers. Diy speakers will get you high end results for a fraction of the price and you can customize them.

[Anonymous No.1844784]

>>1844735
>They are fantastic and rival $500 speakers for a fifth of the price.
How do you know this?

[Anonymous No.1844949]

>>1844784
What a stupid fucking question. Idk, this little thing called research and comparison I.E. listening to $500 speakers and using your *gasp* brain to make logical conclusions.

[Anonymous No.1844960]

>>1844949
You could have said what you compared it to instead of being mad.

[Anonymous No.1844961]

>>1844707
do you have a good resource for this? I do not want to spend the prices these companies are asking. it is ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.1844964]

2x15' guitar cab from a 4x12' frame

[Anonymous No.1844966]

here it is with the first tube amp I made
blues brother vibe if it'd be pink

[Anonymous No.1844967]

No because I would rather let competent people do it. Money isn't a problem for me and honestly I don't have enough spare time to afford making mediocre speakers building my hobby.

[Anonymous No.1845086]

>>1844949
If you’re building a speaker without some way to measure its frequency response you might as well just buy the cheapest speakers you can find. Of course you’re going to convince yourself whatever crap you slapped together is superior to some unspecified set of expensive speakers you more than likely don’t know anything about. You can’t trust your ears when building a loud speaker, you need quantitative measurements.

[Anonymous No.1845096]

>>1844967
im in the same boat as you.

strangely enough after I got my setup done for a few months I came across a free tone test and scored 7% so I guess high end speakers are pretty much useless for me lol

https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td

[Anonymous No.1845109]

>>1844966
What's that amp design?

[Anonymous No.1845157]

Yes.
Speakers are one of those things where people pay for all the wrong shit.
Turns out medium density birch plywood is the absolute best material for speaker cabinets, for example

[Anonymous No.1845171]

>>1844706
of all the things you could /diy/ with basic electronics competence, speakers sound like the most boring

[Anonymous No.1845203]

>>1845096
High end speakers won't matter if the room doesn't sound well. Besides, speakers also need to be the right size for the room too and many people forget about that.

[Anonymous No.1845220]

>>1845171
Yeah but also the most functional

[Anonymous No.1845243]

>>1845109
personnal design
inspired by hiwatt preamp stage/eq
tube rectifier
single ended KT88

[Anonymous No.1845259]

>>1845243
>single ended KT88
Noice, never played anything single ended bigger than 6V6. What plate voltage does it run at?

[Anonymous No.1845265]

>>1844706
yeah, wasn't worth it.
get a set of good 2nd hand speakers.

[Anonymous No.1845305]

>>1845265
Elaborate

[Anonymous No.1845648]

>>1844967
>He’d rather pay ‘competent’ people to work for him.
>He spends his time on /diy/

[Anonymous No.1845678]

Yes! I had a ton of fun with it.
I used a design from Troels Gravesen. I spent about ~1.5k, enjoyed the speakers for a while and ended up selling them for almost $4,000.00. I got into the math behind crossover design, case design, ported vs sealed, time delay, and all sorts of stuff. I highly suggest his website as it is truly excellent. He has many designs, and while some are more challenging/expensive to build many are more approachable.
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/

[Anonymous No.1845701]

>>1845678
Nice, which model did you build?

[Anonymous No.1845705]

>>1845701
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/ATELL-3.htm
This one.
Cabinet took me a few tries, but I learned a lot while building it.
I would recommend building a subwoofer (they're easy as fuck) before moving onto multi-driver designs.

[Anonymous No.1846255]

>>1845705
That's a nice looking speaker. Did you use different drivers? I calculated $3400 just for the cost of those.

[Anonymous No.1846402]

>>1846255
Yeah, I did use some less expensive drivers, which required me to redesign the crossovers somewhat and change the ports as well. Doubtlessly I made an inferior final product, but I learned a fair amount in the process.
Sticking exactly to his designs, pretty much any of them where he is happy will his final speaker will give you great results, better than mine was for sure.

[Anonymous No.1846419]

>>1844706
> procrastinating on a project
I bought some tang band full range drivers with the intention of building a pair of BD pipe speakers.

[Anonymous No.1846421]

>>1846419

[Anonymous No.1846464]

>>1844706
Cabinets for speakers or actually building drivers?

[Anonymous No.1846555]

>>1846419
I have those (I think) and I put them in a fhlite folded horn and didn’t like them
$7 fountek fe83s sounded better but lacked highs. I was going to augment with super tweeters but realized I’d be doing a two way and then what’s the point.
I’ve built a pair of overnight sensations which got me into the hobby and they sounded pretty good. I did a pair of fhlite cabs and have tried like 4 drivers in them, everything seems like a strained compromise on everything, like the jack of all trades master of none thing but on speaker driver form. I made some cardboard folded transmission lines (I think? Can’t remember now, I remember doing some calculations with the speaker driver active area and the length with respect to some wave fuck it’s been 5 years) with some tiny 2” bmrs which sound fucking amazing for what they are, more balanced and easy on the ears. I use them as computer speakers just Velcro’d to my monitor since they are the same height. They measure pretty damn flat and the bmrs disperse wonderfully.
My latest pair is a pair of two ways that I actually did three revisions of, slightly changing things up each time. Picrel, it’s dayton audio nd105-4 and amt-8, both rebrands I think. This was the most fun and most rewarding imo. Not the physical cabinet building or designing, but picking out drivers to pair together and just throwing them into winpcd and aligning phase and tweaking different filter circuits to get the combined response to line up just right - MMMMMM. It was like a video game, I “designed” like 30 xovers this way. I picked one and ordered all the parts only to find of fucking course my baffle step calculation doesn’t match real life measurements, my simulated response doesn’t match real life measurements, etc. then it was tweak tweak tweak. I have a shitton of extra xover parts now, and a pair of hivi F5s and vifa something or other domes that have been waiting a couple of years because I got too busy.

[Anonymous No.1846558]

>>1846555
Wow that was my first time hitting the character limit. Anyway the nds have a HUGE Xmax, they’re mid bass 4” drivers but on the parts express forums and YouTube etc people are using them as SUBWOOFERS and saying they hit like 6’s, which is great since you get juicy bass but also can cross higher than 6’s due to the cone breakup happening at higher frequencies, not to mention you can get away with smaller speakers. They hit really hard and... realistically? I was playing a game and heard a knocking sound, I thought someone was really knocking on my wall. I couldn’t have gone any bigger than 4” to meet those tweeters either, which really had to cross high. The amt’s are so sparkly and airy too they complement the bass very well. They are a tad sloppy though. The design is such a stretch but I’m very happy with them, ironically I gave all three revisions to family members but if I kept a pair I think I’d stop. I have the F5s and vifa bc25 up next, which seem like they’ll be easier to work with. I’ve got high hopes for this combo.
I said the cabinet design wasn’t as fun but getting the design to actually look decent with a combined 3D printed trim ring was rewarding in itself. I have a CNC now and will Cnc my next baffles.

[Anonymous No.1846560]

>>1846464
>building drivers
I dont think thats legal

[Anonymous No.1846601]

>>1844784
>Source: the common sense in my brain

[Anonymous No.1846606]

No. Csnt be bothered to do woodworking. I have however designed and built numerous tube amps

[Anonymous No.1846609]

>>1846606
How did you start?

[Anonymous No.1846661]

>>1844949
>>1844960
lol

[Anonymous No.1846668]

Does anyone have any literature on the topic thats worth reading?

[Anonymous No.1846691]

>>1844949
incel
>What a stupid fucking question. Idk, this little thing called research and comparison I.E. listening to $500 speakers and using your *gasp* brain to make logical conclusions.
chad
>I compared this $100 kit to *these* popular $500 speakers and the kit was superior in X, Y, and Z.

and >>1845086

[Anonymous No.1846763]

>>1846668
"Undefinition" Paul carmodys page
Zaph audio's pages
Parts express tech talk forum
Linkwitz's page if it's still up but it is heavy af
Also the book "loudspeakers", just now finding out they have a second edition now, I wonder what I'm missing out on

[Anonymous No.1846776]

>>1846763
Cheers bro, gonna check these out.

For you http://80.82.78.13/get.php?md5=12a33ad6f7c2b4b1679302ba8427289e&key=23D07U6MKXPMDBKG&mirr=1

[Anonymous No.1846919]

>>1845648
Building shitty speakers won't prove someone's worth. I'm much more competent at other stuff, and I'm not going to act like a retard and prove my supposed self worth by making something bad.
Oh, and last time I checked this board wasn't just about diy speakers.

[Anonymous No.1846947]

>>1846609
EE at Uni

[Anonymous No.1846965]

>>1846919
go post in another thread then.

[Anonymous No.1847036]

>>1846609
EE at uni, i started building point to point wired amps. However i dont have the patience for point to point anymore. Hence now my designs are mostly complete amplifiers on a printed circuit board.

Good recources are:
Kicad EDA suite or Eagle if you can find a older version. Im quite fond of Eagle myself.

PCBshopper.com for getting the cheapest PCB”s (spoiler JLC comes out chespest most of the time)

There is a Library online for Eagle called Radiotubes.lbr however its not noob friendly as most of the packages have the wrong pad and drill size.

The best octal sockets for new pcb designs are made by Belton. Those are solid as a rock. Generic Aliexpress novals are good enough for most jobs. But if you want high end: go CMC

Nice inexpensive tubes to play around with are NOS comblock tubes such as the 6N1P 6N2P 6N6P double triodes GU50 output tetrodes 6C19P triodes for OTL and regulators.

If you want Big and glowy the Russians made the GM70 directly heated triode. Those are quite popular in SE designs where you can get 20W class A. But they are by no means a tube to contemplate for the inexperienced as they usually operate at around one kilovolt of DC on their anodes. At those voltages there are no second chances!

6P1P-EV is a undervalued noval 12W beam tetrode electrically similar to 6V6GT that shouldnt be overlooked as last i checked you could buy a factory box of 50 for under 100US shipped.

Tube rectifiers are nonsense. Wasted heat poor efficiency and they cant handle big capacitive loads so you need an additional choke. There is something to be said for their use in guitair amps as they make for a high impedance supply contributing greatly to the distortion characteristics of guitair amps.

One little mod i use for peace of mind is to include a BY2000 diode in series with both anodes. If the tube for some reason shorts it wont take the power transformer with it.

[Anonymous No.1847049]

Continued

If you want to use tube rectifiers its important that you read the data sheet on their use. Most of the time the data sheet specifies a maximum capacitor value behind the rectifier tube. Don't bust this spec of you will have fireworks later on. Furthermore there is also a minimum transformer resistance for most voltage/current combinations so sometimes its necessary to use small value resistors in series with both anodes because the DC resistance of the transformer windings is quite low.

You can use Duncanamps PSUD2 to simulate most power supply designs, its really easy to use and gives precise results. Its actually a runtime environment of the spice engine and is truly genius.

As for wiring, thats an entire art in itself and noob builders are expected to build humming amplifiers because their heater wiring is sub optimal. there is a sticky in the tubes subsection of DIYaudio that gives some clues as to how to do proper heater wiring.

I myself have become lazy and extravagant. my current amplifier design uses DC regulation for the heaters so i can run the heater traces all over the board and give zero fucks about possible hum.

That and a servomechanism to keep the bias of both output tubes constant regardless of what mode the amplifier is working in. Those servomechanisms are actually simple AF if you get the hang of it. Just an integrator that picks up the cathode current signal from 10R sense resistors in the cathode leads of the outputs.

The only hard part is that you need the integrator to keep the tubes at cutoff during warmup otherwise the plate current will overshoot when the tubes start warming up, cause the integrator will try to upregulate the current on cold tubes. The solution is to use a LM555 timer that keeps the bias at maximum negative for the period the tubes need to warm up.

[Anonymous No.1847297]

>>1846965
>"has anyone here built their own speakers?"
>"no I would rather buy them for this and that reason"

>go post in another thread
I already do but thanks for the advice. I actually was hoping that someone would elaborate further and confront me on my choice, like why would a self made speaker (actually just the cabinet/casing) be better than a good midfield studio monitor especially when you're going to spend quite some money anyway, and what makes the diy version worth it at that point.
For sure there are very competent people here doing it as a hobby and I'm not criticizing their choices, I'm just here to learn from people who know more than I do.

[Anonymous No.1847445]

>>1847297
Sometimes you can get the same drivers as the $$$$$ speakers for really cheap, make a decent crossover with quality parts, and have full control over your cabinet build with things that are labor intensive and often skipped or skimped on in the commercial builds like bracing and quality damping, at the very least they’ll be on par. Some notable examples are the boenicke W5s which cost thousands of $ and use the fountek fe83 (maybe the fe85 now since the fe83 are discontinued). I think they’re like $14 each for the fe85s now, got my fe83s for $7 ea. The swans M1 is also a couple grand and you can get the mid bass drivers in them for about $30-40 each and the tweeters actually I have no idea but I think they’re just nicer ribbon tweeters which you can get for $75-200. A lot of the value comes from the design of the xover, which if you don’t really have the time to get into is when the value of the kits become apparent, designed by hobbyists who know what they’re doing.

[Anonymous No.1847571]

>>1847445
Thanks for the info. And yes crossover is a pretty big deal, I'm assuming that even the "fade out" slopes are different not only in terms of db/oct but also shape.
Since I'm mostly into audio production with a midfield setup (adam s2a at my workplace, adam a77x at home) how do these brands fare in the game? I'm assuming that monitors with analytic purposes (that don't color sound much and are supposed to have low distortion) are supposed to be built well (for a price range above 1k dollars at least) but I might very well be naive in thinking so.

[Anonymous No.1847594]

>>1847571
>I'm assuming that monitors with analytic purposes (that don't color sound much and are supposed to have low distortion) are supposed to be built well
This is correct, but there is no requirement for any manufacturer to have in terms of frequency response or coloration to use that term when marketing their product. A lot of it is subjective anyway, as much as we try to measure and scientifically quantify it. We intuitively know why an open baffle speaker sounds more neutral than a a sealed/ported enclosure, but afaik it’s not measurable save for internal reflections maybe.
I’m not familiar with those brands, but I’m not familiar with a lot of legitimate high end Commercial/professional brands either since I mainly peruse OEM driver manufacturers.
Other than the acoustic and electric slopes for crossovers, you mainly have phase angle alignment between the drivers I.e. are they in sync, and how the enclosure’s baffle step response is dealt with. This also ties into what the room is like sonically. Smaller rooms with little disturbance will have a bass boosting effect, but may also have nasty wall reflections that will bounce and interfere with your main sound waves. The sync is CRUCIAL since you are essentially blending the waves at the xover point, and unfortunately for most speakers it is done where our hearing is the most sensitive between 2k and 4K hz. Have it off a bit and they will destructively and constructively interfere at different frequencies. Have it perfect and you can actually flip the tweeter and have a hole in your response curve since it’s off by 180 degrees and they will destructively interfere perfectly. Blending is as much of an art as it is a science.
In addition to that there is the cone breakup of woofers and, I actually forget what it is, the “problems” of tweeters at their resonant frequency. The solution for both of those problems is to just have the xover point WAY away from the relevant frequencies.

[Anonymous No.1847600]

>>1844964
absolutely disgusting

[Anonymous No.1848784]

Another procrastinated project.
Picked up these monster JBL horns for $20 from a thrift shop that obviously didn't know what they had.

[Anonymous No.1848797]

>>1846419

Interested to see how this turns out. I used those same drivers in some Zigmahornet enclosures I built and they sounded awful. Every other driver I tried in 'em did to. Is there supposed to be some kind of baffle step correction circuit?

Anyways I use some 60s vintage Jensen Sigma coax drivers in some shitty looking open baffles, gotta rebuild those to not look like complete ass at some point.

[Anonymous No.1849206]

>>1845259
420V
Output transformer is Hammond 125ESE
12W RMS output power on 4Ω

[Anonymous No.1849207]

>>1845086
Well, isn't that half the beauty of diy?

[Anonymous No.1849211]

>>1844967
The irony flew over you head so hard it hurt everyone else

[Anonymous No.1849216]

>>1845157
I.. I have to doubt that for sanities sake

[Anonymous No.1849546]

>>1849216
You can check for yourself
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/rdreport_1977_03

[Anonymous No.1849565]

>>1849546
Holy shit. Does this take into account non traditional cabinet shapes?

[Anonymous No.1849568]

>>1849565
Probably not since it was written in the 70s

[Anonymous No.1849570]

>>1849568
Hmm, id love to see an updated study since 50 years is a long time for time to pass

[Anonymous No.1849583]

>>1847049
hehe rectum

[Anonymous No.1849597]

>>1849583
LOL

[Anonymous No.1849600]

I just bought a 100w tpa3116 amp board from China to play around with. Although I was planning on using old speakers I had laying around, but may just pony up some money for used Pioneers bs22 I saw on Craigslist.