Electrostatic Boombox

[janosch simon]

Hey there my name is janosch simon i love diy stuff and over at head-fi i started my electrostatic headphone project and since i started with esl im intrigued by a boombox with electrostats just like the BenQ treVolo Wireless Bluetooth Portable Electrostatic Speaker | BenQ Global but with better bass
and perhabs curved panels hmmm.

has any of you tried something similar? i need to start from ground but i think this could be an very exciting project
here is the stuff i need to do research on:
-curved ESL
-subwoover
-crossover
-amp
-case
-controller/player (guess i will use raspberry and volumio)

cheers janosch

 

[Andersonix]

Thanks for bringing this new tiny ~$300 ESL to our attention.
Seems its main problem is it can't play loud enough without DSP compression kicking in, and the midwoofers are not good enough....?
Here's what it looks like.

 

[kevinkr]

I think small single ended electrostatic tweeters would be fairly easy for a skilled diyer to make - see some old Zenith and GE radios (must be some in Europe too) for inspiration.

HV could come from an inexpensive HV switcher commonly available on eBay.

 

[janosch simon]

hey there my diy elecostatic headphones turn out stunning so the mids and highs are even with my prototyp amazing! but the bass is so lala questions is if i then try to build a hybrid with a classic woofer and the esl panel for mids and highs. what size of a woofer would you suggest and what typ of case?

cheers janosch

 

[owenhamburg]

I would suggest thinking of the ESL as the tweeter.
Every time you aim for an octave higher FS for the electrostatic, you can either double the volume (3Db), or shrink the ESL to half the size, or half the size of the diaphragm stator spacing, allowing you to lower the voltages by at least half, maybe 4 times.

Considering cheap transformers usually go to a max of 230 V lowering the voltage saves a lot of cost.
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I would target about 1000V across the stators, using as many 6V
Target at the absolute lowest frequency about 500 Hz as the lowest frequency signal sent to the ESL tweeters transformer, so you will want no ringing in the Bass unit up at least up to about 5KHz, even with 24db filters.
Dont bother DIY curved ESL's for this project.
Do consider stripboard to make the ESL's.

 

[janosch simon]

thx for the reply guys what panel size would you suggest? im not so fit in the right hv and the voltage on the stators do you have a good link for laying out a system?
what you mean by stripbord? why not pcb with metal coating and cnc milled?

cheers janosch

 

[Andersonix]

Confession: Totally against the DIY spirit, I want to get one of the TreVolo (They're $200 at Benq outlet) and then add a bit of bass myself. Never heard them, but still want. Dog help me...