DIY Home Theatre Speakers

[Vikash]

I am thinking of building some HT speakers for my cousin with a budget of £1000. I am looking at some Tony Gee designs but need to build five speakers and a sub (probably xls10 + xls10p). The front two will also be used for music. SPL is not a big issue.

I am considering the SE W22 and tc25 for the front two (budget permitting).

Any suggestions? This is wide open at the moment, but I would really like to use hq seas drivers.

Also, how much budget should I typically allow for each 2-way passive xover?

All suggestions appreciated...

[5th element]

OK I see my email may not have included everything you were after. Passive xovers add a significant chunk to the speaker total price. Im always amazed at how much the order amounts to when putting one in for a crossover on a single stereo pair. I'd factor say £50-60 per stereo pair to be on the safe side, if you are using SE then you will want to use quality components in the signal path. Trap filters in parallel with the driver, as I said in the email, dont need to be of high quality as long as the values are accurate. Traps tend to be quite picky about accurate values.

So maybe £100-150 for the whole lot.

I'd recommend using a really good tweeter to match the SE with too because they really do deserve it. One to look to is the SS D2905/97 this is a super design that I rave about and matches the W15 I use perfectly. The bonus here is that its a top notch tweeter for less then top notch price. This is because wilmslow audio do a super deal on them, only being about £30 more per pair then the 95's. Comparing to £100+ more per pair for the 99 and Seas millenium. The 97/99/mill are all in the same league.

The 6.5" SE might also be worth considering instead of the 8", simply because if max SPL is not needed and bass can be diverted to a sub then the extra bass will not be required out of the 8". A 6.5 would make a better match with tweeters as you can cross it over a little bit higher. Not that the mentioned tweets cannot handle low xover freqs but if I am making speakers for other ppl id rather make them slightly more robust. If you are pusing a tweet in your own speakers and fry one then its kinda OK because you knew that might happen, but with some1 elses speaker, after the tweet blew you say, yeah thought that might happen as i chose a low xover freq.... id rather not go there.

[Vikash]

Cheers Matt.

It seems I misunderstood the budget which was to allow for an amp as well. Anyway, I'm now looking at four DD8 MKII but using the L17RE/P (since that's available from Wilmsow) and still the XLS sub. I think I can do that in £700 (drivers and xover).

What do you think?