small, cheap DIY speakers

[Jennice]

Hi folks,

I've seen the Gale speakers 3010s and 3020
( http://www.gale.co.uk/loudspeakers.html )
and they seemed to do the job for kitchen speakers at US$80 each.
However, being a DIY'er, I thought it would be possible to do something yourself, and have the fun of it, too!
The main criteria is: small and cheap. Second is the sound.

I'm new to speakers, but with the aspects provided above, I figure it shouldn't get too complicated!?

Any suggestions?


Jennice

[Josephjcole]

Does not get much cheap, smaller, and simpler than this:
Tangband speaker project
And apart from bass I imagine they sound pretty good.
Joe

[MarkMcK]

You might also try the slightly larger four inch.

A project is part of this forum at:

markmck's Tang Band mods

Better bass, small size, low cost, and good sound. No imagination required.

Mark

[Jennice]

Thank you for your suggestions, guys!

The nearest place for these units is in Germany (southern neighbour to Denmark, where I live). I've contacted them and await their pricing info. Now all I can do is wait patiently... like when my g/f starts looking in a clothing shop.

Jennice

[Xlight]

I have excellent experience with with Visaton FRS8 in a sealed 1,3 litre box. Not much bass (surprise, surprise!), but what is there, is OK, especially if you can (want?) use some bass boost. Extremely listenable, after a short break in.

The best part is the price, as opposed to the TBands, which are outrageously expensive in Europe (well, at lest compared to Canada or US).

Andrej

[indoubt]

Visaton FR10 4 Ohm, 2 br pipes 16mm internal dia 7cm long in a 20*20*11.8cm box with 12 mm wall (2,96 liters)

No filter required if your source can do a little equalizing, else a simple notch is preferred


I paid less than 7€ for the speakers(each) from a local supplier and they sound very good

[Jennice]

Nice cabinet finish. What did you make them of?

Jennice

[indoubt]

Sorry for the late reply

The fronts are 13 mm hardwood (brazilian cabawara) The rest is 12 mm meranti multiplex with 12 mm cabawara edges, three braces make the box pritty stiff and relatively uncolored.

As I was not too sure about the performance of the FR10 the box is designed such (including BR pipe size) that a monacor SPH100KEP as woofer would also fit. A tweeter would be needed than and both Monacor DT28 and Seas KTN25 would fit. For the monacor there is just enough room between the BR pipes. The seas fits easily. A crossover filter would than be necessary. the idea was to try a natural roll of for the woofer at approx 10-12k and filter the tweeter only with a film type condensator.

It never came to that as I was pleasantly surprised by the FR10 although I realise that the yellow kevlar cone and phase plug of the SPH100KEP would look much cooler.

Make sure to use the 4 ohm version of the FR10. The 8 ohm version has significantly different T/S parameters and doesn't like BR in small boxes without tall humps

[Jennice]

I've given it some thought what you said about the 8 ohm version.
Do you have any idea how to calculate the filters and enclosure, if I took 2 pieces of 4 ohm drivers and connected in series to have a bigger membrane surface? They'd play in a 30m2 room, and I'm afraid I wouldn't get much sound out of a single driver. WinISD can do the cabinet, but what about the filter?
Also, do you know about free software for a 3way filter?

Jennice

[indoubt]

For 30m2 I would choose another speaker. The suggestion for the FR10 was based on small and cheap in the topic heading and for small rooms where you need small speakers for a low price these ones are hard to beat. (i tried moddeling tangbands but they don't like small BR boxes at this size) The idea was to do witout subwoofer and these go pretty low for such small boxes (look at the curve in winisd)

You could use two FR10 in a box twice the size or even a bit larger with no filter I do not know how that would work out as I didn't try this. Some people are font of speaker arrays (a number of the same speakers in line) but I have no experience in that area. Maybe an experienced array DIY er can comment on pro's and con's of array's

If youre willing to go as large as 5-6 liters there are much better options. They come at a price however. The speaker in my avatar is 5 liters net. The size is just below 30cm high, 27 cm deep and 15,8 cm wide. they are real beauties and Woofer is an Peerless HDS134 combined wit a vifa ringradiator XT300ks4. The wilter is external.

Currently I'm designing an approx 5 liter box with a Monacor SPH135KEP and seas KTN25.

Both the 5 Liter boxes play (will play) very good in a living room as main system although they are combined with a quality subwoofer.

But you're playing in another leaqe than, both pricewise and soundwise