DIY Active Soundbar

[MagnumOpus]

I have a couple of speaker I want to convert in to an active soundbar for the fun of it. The original cabinets are vented, but I want to shrink the size and make the hole thing closed.

How do I calculate the conversion from vented to closed size, does anyone know?

[Cal Weldon]

Are you just winging it? If you don't have the T/S parameters to design the actual Q=.707 then guess at around 2/3 the size of the vented. Most drivers offer parameters that dictate the type of enclosure they should go in. If they were in vented, they might not give you want you are looking for in sealed.

[MagnumOpus]

Guess I am, sort of wingin' it. I don't have any data for the drivers yet.

[Cal Weldon]

Maybe post your ideas and some of the smarter types might have a direction for you to head. Good luck with it.

[MagnumOpus]

Originally Posted by Cal Weldon

Maybe post your ideas and some of the smarter types might have a direction for you to head. Good luck with it.

I'll give it a shot.

In my head it's quite easy.

Take the drivers out of the original cabinets and place them in new, soundbar-type cabinet, with the midwoofers facing the center of the bar, where I picture a chipamp of sorts, and with the tweeters flanking them. I upgrade the xovers with some nice components, put everything in its own internal compartment and hook it up directly to the chipamp, wich will have one set of inputs, hooking it up to the flatscreen. Dunno if I can control the volume like this from the tv, if not, perhaps a simple cheap remote would do fine.

As I said, just for fun, but would be nice if it actually turned out useful

I'll have to snoop around for some driver specs.

[MunkeyQ]

Why do you want to make it closed out of interest? If the drivers are designed for a vented box, they'll fare better in a vented if you want to make it smaller.

Also, it's better for directivity and lobing to put the tweeter in the centre and a pair of midwoofers either side. IMO, going for a mono approach might be preferable as you're not going to get a whole lot of seperation in a small cabinet under the TV.

[MagnumOpus]

Originally Posted by MunkeyQ

Why do you want to make it closed out of interest? If the drivers are designed for a vented box, they'll fare better in a vented if you want to make it smaller.

Also, it's better for directivity and lobing to put the tweeter in the centre and a pair of midwoofers either side. IMO, going for a mono approach might be preferable as you're not going to get a whole lot of seperation in a small cabinet under the TV.

Thanks for the reply.

I figured that a closed box could be made smaller than a vented one. No toher reason. I know the stereoperspective aren't going to be great, but it will be present, however inferior to other designs. Allthough I could make it mono, just as a project, but I really don't see the benefits in comparison.

I am leaning towards just putting everyting in a box similar to the volume of the other two combined and see what happens with a generic xover of some kind.