Building Speakers

[Fife]

Does anybody here build their own speakers? Is it possible to build some that sound competitive to mid-fi stuff (maybe Infinity Beta for example)? Any good places to buy the drivers? Thanks.

 

[plhart]

IMHO to be able to build a good mid-fi speaker you need:

1. A heck of a lot of know-how and experience in using truly accurate test programs in a reflection-free environment.

2. The ability to buy the parts at the types of prices a huge company with it's own manufacturing or contract Chinese manufacturing pays.

This is why you see good parts suppliers like Parts Express or Madisound offering kits which cost almost as much or many times more than the "mid-fi" speakers. Yes, they have done the design work for you. And what you're getting are sometimes "higher quality" crossover components mated to high quality off-the-shelf drivers by well known transducer manuacturers.

What is takes years to learn is where you make the tradeoffs in crossover parts and your own custom designed drivers to make them sound as good as these kits can sometimes sound. If you look at the fact that Speaker Builder magazine was merged with other publications from AudioXpress a few years back it sorta tells you that the market size for do-it-yourselfers has shrunk enough in size as to not be able to support a single consumer mag on the subject. Yes, the do-it-yourselfers, what's left of them, may have migrated to the web but this does not obscure the fact that the seemingly simple dynamic loudspeaker, to be truly good, is a far more difficult animal to design than most believe going in...

 

[jeffsg4mac]

Fife, Pat is absolutely correct. Designing your own from scratch would be a difficult task at best. Buy a kit or build a known and tested design. I once built a center channel kit from madisound that used all Focal parts. Total price was about $350.00 and I basically had a $2500 JM labs center channel. A buddy of mine in florida is still using it. I gave up on building my own speakers about 5 years ago because it was no longer a money saver. There are many affordable speakers now that sound fantastic and it would cost twice the amount to duplicate them yourself. One thing you can still save a little money on is building your own sub-woofer. Although, with companies like SVS even this is debatable. Either way you choose, Madisound and parts express carry everything you need to make the speakers of your dreams. There are several builders and exbuilders on these forums so if need any help we are here

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

Yes indeedy, they speak truth! I have built my own speakers and am building bigger ones from designs by Siegfried Linkwitz. It seems that I, like many other prospective speaker builders, thought that it would be a simple matter of finding the right size box and crossover points. Nothin' to it, right? Ha! After reading on Linkwitz's site and in other places what is involved in designing a decent speaker it was quickly apparent that there's more to it than I'd be willing or able to learn! So, if DIY still appeals to you, stick to kits or to fully realized designs by genuine experts who have done the heavy mental lifting for you. That's what I did and am doing. Unless, of course, you'd like to independently pursue graduate-level studies in things like acoustics, filter theory, electrical engineering...

I have spent over a year on this stuff. I think I am an intelligent layperson, albeit math-impaired (and you'd better know at least pre-calc from what I can discern). Compared to the people who design speakers for a living I am about at the level of a trained chimp...and unlikely to progress much further!

And as Jeff mentioned, these days there are enough really good speakers out there at moderate price points that DIY is no guarantee of getting a bargain. I and others pursue DIY only partly for the (hoped-for) savings and more for the fun of learning and building. For me, DIY is an excuse to buy cool tools!

 

[jeffsg4mac]

Rip, you made it to chimp level? WOW! I think about all the years I spent and I only made it to lemur level I will have to treat you to a banana some day.

 

[Fife]

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I'll spend my time building furniture to put the home theater stuff on. By the way what is "IMHO"? plhart started his reply with this. Is it an abbreviation for something? Pardon my ignorance.
Thanks

 

[jeffsg4mac]

IMHO is standard chat speak for in my honest opinion.

 

[MBauer]

IMHO Speaker Building

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I'll spend my time building furniture to put the home theater stuff on. By the way what is "IMHO"? plhart started his reply with this. Is it an abbreviation for something? Pardon my ignorance.
Thanks

Couldn't resist this tie in.

I think it can be affordable to build your own speakers, and you can get very high quality sound for less money than by purchasing them. Mass produced speakers have a high mark-up, and take up a lot of floor space in a store. Plus, the manufacturer has to pay for parts, labor, shipping, factory space, etc. You don't have to pay for factory space (a very high fixed cost) you provide the labor to build them - in general loudspeaker manufacturers buy the drivers from the same people you buy them from.

Look around a bit. Check out GR Research, North Creek Music, the DIY Forums at Home Theater Forum, AVS Forum, etc. It is not for everyone, but it is very doable and if you have the capabilities to build furniture you can build speakers

 

[Swerd]

I want to add my 2¢ to this and agree with MBauer.

It is not difficult to build a kit or copy a design published on the internet. The hardest part is building your own cabinet. If you are talking about building furniture, you can build speaker cabinets. You can also buy premade and finished cabinets.

The difficult part is custom designing your own speaker. This includes selecting woofers, tweeters, and designing the crossover. To do it the right way, you must have test equipment to measure the acoustic and electric parameters of the woofers and tweeters. Don't rely on the manufacturers specs because they often vary by ±10%. It helps to also have crossover emulation software to model the response from a proposed design. And finally, you must be patient enough to do a lot of trial and error tweaking of the computer-derived design. Small changes to the crossover sometimes make big differences to the overall sound.

Why not use someone else's design who has already gone through all this work? I also like to cook, but I rely heavily on cookbooks instead of trying to invent my own recipes. The same goes for DIY speakers. People have estimated that most retail speakers have a 3- to 5-fold markup in price. For $250 to $350 you can build a pair of 2-way bookshelf speakers that easily sound as good as speakers retailing for $1,000 to $1,500. I'm not exaggerating.

For a number of web sites with good DIY designs or kits, look here: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=42871#poststop

 

[dreadstar]

DIY speakers/sub

I am currently building a 10" shielded sub for use on my computer system.

Using a dyanaudio 10" reference driver from Partsexpress. i rebuilt one of my clients home speakers with a pair of these and they came out fairly decent.

However now the mids and tweets need to get replaced aswell since the woofers sound so good. (Atleast compared to what they did sound like.)

Building your own if you are an accomplished cabinet maker is well worth doing. But as so many others have said. Buy a kit they have done most of the hair pulling and skulldrugery for you. Just build the cabinets to spec and you should be fine and will have a speaker that sounds very nice.

http://www.zalytron.com/ has some very interesting Line array designs if you wish to get into that.

 

[JohnA]

My $.02

I'm going to be different! Speaker building doesn't have to be hard or difficult. There are many kits that you can start with. But if you have the tools to build your own cabs, you can do it! The most time is in the pre-production. Picking speakers, fig. out the x-over, box size...etc. Go to the forums on Parts Express http://www.pesupport.com/cgi-bin/config.pl and ask questions. They are starting to do monthly speaker builds...check it out on the home page (top right) it gives you all the info you need to build a set. The current set, "The Jubilees" Kick!!! They are a simple design, perfect for a noob. And remember You can do it!

 

[WmAx]

The difficult part is custom designing your own speaker. This includes selecting woofers, tweeters, and designing the crossover. To do it the right way, you must have test equipment to measure the acoustic and electric parameters of the woofers and tweeters. Don't rely on the manufacturers specs because they often vary by ±10%. It helps to also have crossover emulation software to model the response from a proposed design. And finally, you must be patient enough to do a lot of trial and error tweaking of the computer-derived design. Small changes to the crossover sometimes make big differences to the overall sound.

I feel it's important to make it clear that merely having sophisticated measurement equipment/software and mastering the use of this equipment/software will not automaticly yeild hi quality speaker systems. If top-quality loudspeaker systems are to be developed, a vast amount of knowledge, including by not limited to human perception of sound phenomena and the correlation of speaker parameters to this is required. All but a select few DIYers seem to fall short of this requirement. Many 'guru' designers(no names mentioned), or so they are considered on some forums, appear to have nothing more to their credit than software proficiency and/or frequent building as their skill(s).

-Chris

 

[caoauto]

To build your own speaker is try save some money and the sound as good as, that's it!. Then how about just copy of the hifi speaker designer cabinet then buy their drivers and crossover from them and install it.
Hope that will save some money and sound as good as. That's it, just forget about try to design or hot rod.

 

[Fb111794]

FWIW..... The poster didn't ask how hard it was to DESIGN speakers.... He asked about BUILDING them.

With all of the EXCELLENT companies that offer PROVEN high quality, well designed KITS (detailed box drawings, pre-selected and matched drivers, pre-assembled cross overs etc.), yes.... even you two trained Monkeys and Lemers could do it.

If you don't have the expertise, tools, space or patience to build the boxes, many kit manufacturers have boxes or links to other companies that will build the exact boxes for you.

Now, in all honesty, I've never actually done it myself. I have however, heard some of the Kit speakers and frankly, in each case, they were absolutely stunning. Of course, each of the ones I heard were some of the more expensive kits available.

I have been tempted and considered building some for some time. However, I figured that to be able to actually enjoy them.... I had BETTER get the Kitchen re-model finished first, or the Mrs. would lock me in the garage and I'd never be able to get to my gear.

Here are a few of Many DIY speaker building links:

Parts Express.... some "entry level kits"
GR Research.... simple and elegant.... a good place to start
Zaltron.... A full line parts and kits supplier
An EXTENSIVE set of links to manufacturers, designers, kit suppliers, articles and periodicals.... a PLETHORA of DIY information on speakers

So.... there is a start. If I had the time, and was done with my Kitchen, I wouldn't hesitate jumping in and trying one of these DIY speaker projects. I have heard several like I said, and was very impressed indeed.

Good Luck in your project!

JW
Indy

 

[annunaki]

The enclosure can be a MAJOR downfall of many DIY projects. Good bracing is key to prevent resonance. Here ia an example of extreme bracing I did for a set of speakers. This, like I stated, is extreme. These techniques do not need to be utilized to get great performance. They are just an example.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/annunaki_6/000_0097.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/annunaki_6/cabinetpic2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/annunaki_6/Sig7pic2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/annunaki_6/Sig7pic3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/annunaki_6/Cabinetpic1.jpg

Check out my post in the DIY section for other details.

 

[crashguy]

I built my own center channel speaker, and my own passive sub. Not too difficult at all, and both of mine turned out great. I have one tip though, DO NOT use house insulation inside the enclosures. The glass fibers will get into the voice coil and destroy it. I have used quilt batting material from the fabric store, and it works really good, its cheap, and it won't wreck the speaker.

Photos of my custom sub and center are on the systems forum under the thread topic "Canadian system".

 

[durado]

A little help

I wrote my masters thesis on speaker and cross over design. If you'd like a copy send me your email and I'll email it back to you ... it give a basic step by step on speaker design, woofer selection, and cross over design. It also has design equations ... many taken from the Loud Speaker Cook Bood by Vance Dickerson (I think that's his name)

 

[Fife]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm not thinking of designing my own speakers. I am content to copy pre made plans. I'm not a great woodworker but I have the tools and enjoy the toil. It is also more fun for me to combine two hobbies in one endeavor. Plus maybe it could save me money on good equipment?? It seems that the question now posed is "how good are the designs of the so-called 'gurus?'" I'm going to investigate some of the links posted.
Thanks

 

[philh]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm not thinking of designing my own speakers. I am content to copy pre made plans. I'm not a great woodworker but I have the tools and enjoy the toil. It is also more fun for me to combine two hobbies in one endeavor. Plus maybe it could save me money on good equipment?? It seems that the question now posed is "how good are the designs of the so-called 'gurus?'" I'm going to investigate some of the links posted.
Thanks

I built Madisound's Sub design, and absolutely LOVE it. My first attempt at building speakers, and while the cabinet looks good, I learned a lot to maybe do another attempt. My unexperienced take on the kits, you are using higher grade components then "commercial" designs. I've dealt with Madisound and found them to be extremely helpful. They helped me identify replacement woofers for my 30 yo speakers, that substantially improved the speaker sound. I'm torn right now between buying new speakers, building a kit, which would include the cabinet, or doing the least expensive capacitor replacement in the x-over.

 

[heymrpaul]

I feel it's important to make it clear that merely having sophisticated measurement equipment/software and mastering the use of this equipment/software will not automaticly yeild hi quality speaker systems. If top-quality loudspeaker systems are to be developed, a vast amount of knowledge, including by not limited to human perception of sound phenomena and the correlation of speaker parameters to this is required. All but a select few DIYers seem to fall short of this requirement. Many 'guru' designers(no names mentioned), or so they are considered on some forums, appear to have nothing more to their credit than software proficiency and/or frequent building as their skill(s).

-Chris

Chris,

You are so right about the lack of ability present in the loudspeaker business. I also think you are exactly right about what is needed to design a good system. I got into this business convinced I could save a lot of money building my own. I'm not so sure it is true anymore. The issue is expertise and cabinet building. We've got a CNC machine (about $200,000) for doing some of our cabinets because of the need for accuracy. But it is also true that audiophiles love the sound of something they had a hand in building even more so. It is like loving your own child. Beautiful, but not necessarily objective.\ - Paul