Are white van speaker cabinets worth rebuilding? If so, what improvements would you do?

[aubpw]

Hello,

I have a pair of 3-way speakers that I got for free from a friend a couple years ago. They did not sound good, so I started tinkering... which is how I got into DIY audio.

It turns out that these speakers were White Van scam speakers. It was labelled as Audio Research AR-3AX, hoping to trick the victim to think it was the Acoustic Research AR-3AX. It had a crappy paper cone tweeter (which was blown), a 4" midrange driver, and a 10" woofer.

I have replaced the tweeter and the 10" woofer with new Goldwood drivers. Soon, I intend to replace the midrange drivers too.

But what about the box? Are there performance gains to be had from improving the cabinets?

Currently, the cabinets are simple MDF boxes. The wood back of the cabinet is glued in; you get access to the internals by removing the woofer from the front and pulling it out. (Me thinks this should not be, yes?) The drivers are arranged vertically in a TMW arrangement, centred horizontally. The inside of the cabinet is bare. It's just the drivers mounted to the front cabinet surface, the wires go inside to a 3-way crossover -- I don't know how good the crossover components are -- and then out to the back terminals.

Presently, the sound isn't bad... it's already better than a lot of HTIB stuff. And it's a huge improvement over how they sounded when I first got them. But I'm curious to see what else can be done, and am particularly interested in what cabinet rebuilding things can improve things.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on how much additional time/effort/money is warranted.

 

[TLS Guy]

Hello,

I have a pair of 3-way speakers that I got for free from a friend a couple years ago. They did not sound good, so I started tinkering... which is how I got into DIY audio.

It turns out that these speakers were White Van scam speakers. It was labelled as Audio Research AR-3AX, hoping to trick the victim to think it was the Acoustic Research AR-3AX. It had a crappy paper cone tweeter (which was blown), a 4" midrange driver, and a 10" woofer.

I have replaced the tweeter and the 10" woofer with new Goldwood drivers. Soon, I intend to replace the midrange drivers too.

But what about the box? Are there performance gains to be had from improving the cabinets?

Currently, the cabinets are simple MDF boxes. The wood back of the cabinet is glued in; you get access to the internals by removing the woofer from the front and pulling it out. (Me thinks this should not be, yes?) The drivers are arranged vertically in a TMW arrangement, centred horizontally. The inside of the cabinet is bare. It's just the drivers mounted to the front cabinet surface, the wires go inside to a 3-way crossover -- I don't know how good the crossover components are -- and then out to the back terminals.

Presently, the sound isn't bad... it's already better than a lot of HTIB stuff. And it's a huge improvement over how they sounded when I first got them. But I'm curious to see what else can be done, and am particularly interested in what cabinet rebuilding things can improve things.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on how much additional time/effort/money is warranted.

The cabinits you describe sound dreadful.

The bigger issue is that you can't reverse engineer a box with any ease at all. The box and port have to be designed specifically for that driver.

The we get to the crossover which has to be designed for the drivers selected. In addition the drivers also have to be selected with care to make sure you can actually make them work together. You can't pick a random set of speakers out of the back of your neck.

The bottom line is that it is much easier to design a speaker from scratch and forget using any parts from another speaker.

 

[fuzz092888]

Listen to TLS, he knows what he's talking about. At this point you're better off either ditching everything, selling the Goldwood drivers and buying a good pre-designed kit or finding someone to see if the Goldwood drivers you already purchased can work together to make anything. If you choose the latter you can ask in the DIY section of this forum or go over to parts express tech talk and someone will help you.

 

[aubpw]

Wow. Thank you guys for this. I'm always amazed at the response I get from the community here.

The bigger issue is that you can't reverse engineer a box with any ease at all. The box and port have to be designed specifically for that driver.

Then we get to the crossover which has to be designed for the drivers selected. In addition the drivers also have to be selected with care to make sure you can actually make them work together. You can't pick a random set of speakers out of the back of your neck.

This comment caught me by surprise. I see people on Parts Express reviews & forums saying they bought such-and-such driver to replace an old, blown out one in a vintage such-and-such speaker.

How is my situation different from theirs?

Is it because good speakers have intelligently-built cabinets and appropriate drivers for the cabinet volume, such that replacing one driver with a comparable one is acceptable?

 

[fuzz092888]

It could be that they found a driver with similar T/S parameters so that the speakers ended up performing like they used to. In many more cases people just drop random drivers into vintage speakers and say it sounds great, because to them, it does. However, you won't often find people who have heard great speakers or a great system attempting something like that because they know how much work would have to go into it and/or because they know dropping in a random driver would get you sound, just not very good sound. The drivers are just one part of a complex system.

Wow.
This comment caught me by surprise. I see people on Parts Express reviews & forums saying they bought such-and-such driver to replace an old, blown out one in a vintage such-and-such speaker.

How is my situation different from theirs?

Is it because good speakers have intelligently-built cabinets and appropriate drivers for the cabinet volume, such that replacing one driver with a comparable one is acceptable?

 

[GranteedEV]

Wow. Thank you guys for this. I'm always amazed at the response I get from the community here.



This comment caught me by surprise. I see people on Parts Express reviews & forums saying they bought such-and-such driver to replace an old, blown out one in a vintage such-and-such speaker.

How is my situation different from theirs?

It isn't. Some people will be easily satisfied and others expect some degree of quality.

 

[ARES24]

the tl;dr

Changing the drivers likely did make them sound better. But a properly designed speaker will be way more worth your effort

 

[highfigh]

Wow. Thank you guys for this. I'm always amazed at the response I get from the community here.

This comment caught me by surprise. I see people on Parts Express reviews & forums saying they bought such-and-such driver to replace an old, blown out one in a vintage such-and-such speaker.

How is my situation different from theirs?

Is it because good speakers have intelligently-built cabinets and appropriate drivers for the cabinet volume, such that replacing one driver with a comparable one is acceptable?

It's possible to do, it's almost impossible to do it easily and with any degree of certainty that it will sound better. The drivers determine the cabinet and choosing new drivers is like firing a gun into the air and hoping to hit the best one of 1000s of targets. What is needed is a good amount of luck and knowing how to determine what will/may work in those boxes. It's easiest if the speaker data includes a preferred box size, but most driver specs don't come with this information.

You know that saying about finding a needle in a haystack? Welcome to the haystack.