Well, don't call it a 2 way if you mean left + right speaker or 3 way describing a left, center an right speaker. As that is the wrong wording to use in that case.
Which demonstrates you still have a lot more to learn.
If you want to do it right, learn to build a 2 way, that piece of advise means learn to put together a woofer + tweeter first.
A true 3 way design is way more complicated than you envision right now. Trust us.
Which demonstrates you still have a lot more to learn.
If you want to do it right, learn to build a 2 way, that piece of advise means learn to put together a woofer + tweeter first.
A true 3 way design is way more complicated than you envision right now. Trust us.
Naaah. The miniDSP thingies do not sound right (be it HD or not). When I compared the miniDSP version of the Open Source Monkey Coffin with the final version using passive filters, the passive version was much, much better.
You should read the comments carefully and try to understand them before commenting.
Cool. Kinda my mistake for not using correct words but you should have understood what I was was trying to say from the second line wherebI said 3-way by adding Center channel. That should have given you a hint of what I was trying to say.
Sorry. Will be clear with my statement next time.
Try and read the post I wrote, try and comprehend it. Try and learn before thinking you can copy a commercial speaker.
Every one on this thread will see a 2 way as a woofer and tweeter, or any combination of 2 drivers in one box that split the task.
You'd be the only one thinking of a left and right speaker. I know it's harsh, but using the right terms is another thing you must learn.
Believe me if I say that any of this is way more complicated than you envision right now. Ask anyone that tried to make a 3 way from the start.
If you really think that I don't know what 2-way and 3-way speakers are. Then you are wrong. Come on otherwise I would not have gotten into this this thread. Because there are no decent speakers specially 3-way speakers in the budget range. You can go up and look at the part selection which I did. You gonna understand the route I am trying to take.
I'm sorry that this is difficult to hear. wesayso is being logical. We cannot just tell you what you need to do, there is too much to know, so we need to meet you half way.
I was happy at the start to hear you were considering buying a commercial speaker. If you want to make your own I expected you to take small steps and build up to better things, which takes time. Many of us have been doing this for a long time and have much experience to offer.
I was happy at the start to hear you were considering buying a commercial speaker. If you want to make your own I expected you to take small steps and build up to better things, which takes time. Many of us have been doing this for a long time and have much experience to offer.
I agree with @AllenB
Which is why it would make sense to buy second hand speakers to start with. And while having music and an incomplete HT setup learn to design and build your own.
If you get decent second hand speakers, you even have a sort of 'reference' that your own design can compete with.
Which is why it would make sense to buy second hand speakers to start with. And while having music and an incomplete HT setup learn to design and build your own.
If you get decent second hand speakers, you even have a sort of 'reference' that your own design can compete with.
If you're skilled in electronics (like you've claimed), then you might just have some DIY chance at the electrical part of the signal chain. However, I think there needs to be more planning and optimisation to it than just a casual assortment of things you can source.
For example, your Mini DSP costs INR 18k per channel. But are you aware that you could get the professional 6-channel dbx 260 for just INR 30-40k?
You seem to favor SB Acoustics drivers and that's a good choice. However, for less than half of what you are planning to spend you could get the SB Acoustics ARYA kit from Madisound. It sells for $695 (US). Now that's a really HUGE difference in cost.
And for your primarily HT use I seriously doubt that you would be able to tell much difference between the ARYA and some 3-way speaker that you intend to design yourself. In fact, the ARYA might end up sounding much better, since it is a proven and well tested design by experts in the field.
Here is a link in case you want to look it up.
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.c...s/sb-acoustics-arya-2.5-way-speaker-kit-pair/
Most people in this thread have vast amounts of experience. Many have designed great speakers (by all 2nd hand accounts) and their opinions are valid; their willingness to help is also very kind.
I on the other hand have a different perspective. I have designed and built many FAILED speakers. I'm at ~10 or so that sound different levels of crap to almost passable. I'm not stupid. Designing from scratch is just a hard task with lots to learn. If you have a lot of spare time and are willing to wait on great results, it can be done. If not, take their advice and start slowly.
Personally, I enjoy the woodworking aspect of making speakers and the mental aspect of learning about acoustic wave physics. That's why I'm happy to fail and fail again. We are all motivated by different things. Maybe try to have a real introspection about what motivates you. If it is a genuine effort to save money with equal sound quality to a commercial speaker as you stated in your first post, I doubt it will happen. Good luck on your journey and I hope you find what you are looking for.
I on the other hand have a different perspective. I have designed and built many FAILED speakers. I'm at ~10 or so that sound different levels of crap to almost passable. I'm not stupid. Designing from scratch is just a hard task with lots to learn. If you have a lot of spare time and are willing to wait on great results, it can be done. If not, take their advice and start slowly.
Personally, I enjoy the woodworking aspect of making speakers and the mental aspect of learning about acoustic wave physics. That's why I'm happy to fail and fail again. We are all motivated by different things. Maybe try to have a real introspection about what motivates you. If it is a genuine effort to save money with equal sound quality to a commercial speaker as you stated in your first post, I doubt it will happen. Good luck on your journey and I hope you find what you are looking for.
That was really good advise. Please can you also look into some 6ch or 4ch amps. I would like to use speaker cable instead of running XLR cables to the speakers as that will be cost effective.
That gonna cost more and will not be able to find matching center. But anyways that gonna cost more including shipping + Taxes
We're you trying to build Active or a Passive speakers. Building Passive speakers are extremely hard and I steer away from it. But building Active ones are not nearly as complex and need far less trails and can give you great results. Yes if design itself is really bad then it can't be helped. And I most definitely rely on community specifically for the design phase. But as you can see I am not there yet.
I've made both passive and active. I started active with a couple of miniDSP boards, then transitioned a few years ago to miniDSP HD. Outside of following others' designs, the best results I've had are using simple 2-ways (what some would call WAW or FAST) with the xover very high (say >6kHz) or very low (<~500Hz) with ($$) passive filters and then put the miniDSP upstream of the amp(s) to fix the warts. I mainly use DIY valve amps which also brings heaps of challenges with passive designs.
Don't underestimate Wesayso's advice (he's a rock-n-roll active speaker diyA legend, btw). DSP still needs a lot of work and understanding to make right.
This has been a hobby for me and I've made compromises that suit me. I'll never make commercial-grade speakers and that's fine by me. At best, most people on this forum that are successful at building a quality 1st speaker from scratch do so only with a lot of help from the community and a lot of measuring and adjusting. It is not a fast or cheap or painless process.
Don't underestimate Wesayso's advice (he's a rock-n-roll active speaker diyA legend, btw). DSP still needs a lot of work and understanding to make right.
This has been a hobby for me and I've made compromises that suit me. I'll never make commercial-grade speakers and that's fine by me. At best, most people on this forum that are successful at building a quality 1st speaker from scratch do so only with a lot of help from the community and a lot of measuring and adjusting. It is not a fast or cheap or painless process.
As anyone can see now, and what I fortunately realized early on, it's a lot of work to make even a good design work.
With that being said, you have an unlimited amount of crossovers in a DSP, that alone can cut the cost and time significantly If you want to make your own design.
With that being said, you have an unlimited amount of crossovers in a DSP, that alone can cut the cost and time significantly If you want to make your own design.
Or they build a speaker designed by one of the experts in the field, which is, in fact, rather fast, cheap, and painless.
There is nothing about DIY that requires you design it yourself.
Some people, a very few, are capable of doing a good design. For the rest of us simply building a speaker designed by someone else gives us the best of both worlds. Outstanding sound quality and low cost. Far better than can be obtained from buying retail commercial products.
Did you get equivalent transfer functions between the miniDSP and passive?
Without such, i think one setup may sound better than the other....but it's totally meaningless in terms of evaluating which can ultimately sound better.
If transfers were the same,.... then I'm all ears and can accept the subjectivity 🙂
I agree with you that building a box designed by someone else is likely to result in the best sound quality per unit money, if you pick the right design (either that or good second-hand loudspeakers). The issue of active versus passive is then also solved: whatever the designer has chosen.
About picking the right design: until 2020, there used to be a shop here where you could actually listen to loudspeaker kits before buying them. It would be most helpful if there were anything like that in the vicinity of the thread starter. An alternative could be a gathering of local audio enthusiasts where you can listen to each other's builds.
I made only two serious attempts at designing and building loudspeakers myself. The first time was in the first half of the 1990's. I didn't have much money and I didn't have access to all the fancy computer tools that there are today. I did have access to the original Thiele, Small and Linkwitz papers, I did know how to do filter calculations and I had a simple microphone capsule and a two-channel scope.
To keep it cheap, I built a passive two-way system. It was a 172 litre bassreflex box with a Chebyshev alignment that should result in a 23 Hz lower cut-off frequency. In practice, it did produce deep bass, but quite obviously too little of it. I never figured out why: too little bracing, lack of baffle step correction, something else?
The second attempt was a small, current driven active two-way speaker with some motional feedback via the second voice coil of a double voice coil woofer. It was completely analogue, and I built it mainly out of curiosity. It didn't have any obvious shortcomings, but it was no match to the second-hand ESL-63 electrostats I had bought in the meantime.
@VINEET REDDY
I can understand your wish to build something that rivals commercial products at some price points. In fact that is how I started in this hobby too, a few years back. But over time I learnt that DIYing speakers (at least in India) may not be as cost effective as one may think. The costs of parts add up over time, and we may not even have thought of it the beginning. So, in my limited experience, starting with ideas like creating your own designs rivaling commercial speakers at half the price etc. is a bad aim to have initially. It takes a lot of time, effort, and learning to do something like that. 🙂
With that out of the way, I would be really happy if one more person around gets into speaker DIY just because it is a lot of fun. There are lot of things to learn. And the experienced FMs on this forum help a lot. I too have a 3 way active speaker build thread here: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/a-3-way-design-study.376620/ . Please take a look if you find it interesting. I don't do this with any final aim like rivalling commercial speakers though. I just like learning more about, and playing around with speakers. But with even the limited progress that I have made (till now) towards the full system that I had started to build, I have got very satisfying results in terms of learning more and being able to hear music better than I have heard in the past on small commercial speakers. Every passing day, I learn more and get more excited about the whole thing.. 🙂
If you want to look into some good (passive) speaker kits available in India, you may want to look at these (if you haven't already done):
https://www.audiofy.in/speaker-kits. There area few at different price levels. T
There are a few here too:
https://diyaudiocart.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=speaker kit
I had started some years back with a speaker kit called 'Tributes' designed by Jeff Bagby. At the end of a few months trying to build that speaker, I ended up with something like below:
With all the imperfections it may have build-wise, I still love the sound of those speakers even with the kind of bad placement I have put them in.. 🙂 But more important is that I really learnt a lot building that project.
Another advantage with such an approach (starting with a kit) is that you can have a reference and then use a MiniDSP or something similar for DSP later to convert those from passive to active. Then you will also have a reference/goal that you would want to achieve initially, i.e., at least create an active crossover that sounds similar to the passive one. After that it is all up to one's own imagination and learning how much you want to take it forward.
I have a bit of a background in electronics engineering (in fact I have a PhD in wireless communications). Not that degrees matter much in speaker building. All that matters is your willingness to learn new things and apply them. Even with my background, I find it tough and time taking to learn deeper the different aspects behind making good sounding speakers. But I find it a lot of fun though. And I have been getting a lot of help here in learning 🙂
Wishing you all the best in your projects. Sincerely hope that you will consider the suggestions of FMs and start this journey properly so that you will enjoy it life long.. 🙂
Regards
Vineeth
I can understand your wish to build something that rivals commercial products at some price points. In fact that is how I started in this hobby too, a few years back. But over time I learnt that DIYing speakers (at least in India) may not be as cost effective as one may think. The costs of parts add up over time, and we may not even have thought of it the beginning. So, in my limited experience, starting with ideas like creating your own designs rivaling commercial speakers at half the price etc. is a bad aim to have initially. It takes a lot of time, effort, and learning to do something like that. 🙂
With that out of the way, I would be really happy if one more person around gets into speaker DIY just because it is a lot of fun. There are lot of things to learn. And the experienced FMs on this forum help a lot. I too have a 3 way active speaker build thread here: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/a-3-way-design-study.376620/ . Please take a look if you find it interesting. I don't do this with any final aim like rivalling commercial speakers though. I just like learning more about, and playing around with speakers. But with even the limited progress that I have made (till now) towards the full system that I had started to build, I have got very satisfying results in terms of learning more and being able to hear music better than I have heard in the past on small commercial speakers. Every passing day, I learn more and get more excited about the whole thing.. 🙂
If you want to look into some good (passive) speaker kits available in India, you may want to look at these (if you haven't already done):
https://www.audiofy.in/speaker-kits. There area few at different price levels. T
There are a few here too:
https://diyaudiocart.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=speaker kit
I had started some years back with a speaker kit called 'Tributes' designed by Jeff Bagby. At the end of a few months trying to build that speaker, I ended up with something like below:
With all the imperfections it may have build-wise, I still love the sound of those speakers even with the kind of bad placement I have put them in.. 🙂 But more important is that I really learnt a lot building that project.
Another advantage with such an approach (starting with a kit) is that you can have a reference and then use a MiniDSP or something similar for DSP later to convert those from passive to active. Then you will also have a reference/goal that you would want to achieve initially, i.e., at least create an active crossover that sounds similar to the passive one. After that it is all up to one's own imagination and learning how much you want to take it forward.
I have a bit of a background in electronics engineering (in fact I have a PhD in wireless communications). Not that degrees matter much in speaker building. All that matters is your willingness to learn new things and apply them. Even with my background, I find it tough and time taking to learn deeper the different aspects behind making good sounding speakers. But I find it a lot of fun though. And I have been getting a lot of help here in learning 🙂
Wishing you all the best in your projects. Sincerely hope that you will consider the suggestions of FMs and start this journey properly so that you will enjoy it life long.. 🙂
Regards
Vineeth