Best speakers <$100

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#63
Ron E said:
The chances of you throwing something together and convincing yourself that it is good are paradoxically very high. This is known in the business as i-did-it-itis, the well known fact that people (especially a novice) cannot think objectively about their creation. Even experienced folk are sometimes excluded from design reviews in engineering circles because they are convinced they made the "correct" decision at every step and cannot see the big picture.
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The amount of times I've heard someone say that they put some drivers in a box with a random crossover or replaced a driver "and it now sounds surprisingly good!" or "better than before!" - "but is now very revealing of bad recordings" etc.

I had a guy bring some of his diy speakers to my house and I can honestly say that I've never heard anything like it in all my life. The crossover was done by ear (single cap and resistor on tweeter) but not only that, the midbass driver had a very nasty breakup peak and the little ribbon tweeter wasn't designed to cross anywhere near low enough.
It sounded like Tracy Chapman was singing through a miniature fog horn and the breakup gave most music an acidic edge - very nasty!
The amazing thing was, the guy thought they were ok and just needed a tweak.
 
#64
Ron E said:
Look at it this way, complexity increases much faster than you might think. I would put it somewhere around the number of drivers squared or cubed. In the lower estimate, if dealing with a single driver is a difficulty of 1, dealing with 2 is a difficulty of 4 and with three a difficulty of 9. In the higher estimate, the difficulties are 1, 8 and 27. If you know very little about speakers, crossovers, etc, the chances of you getting something right is very small.

The chances of you throwing something together and convincing yourself that it is good are paradoxically very high. This is known in the business as i-did-it-itis, the well known fact that people (especially a novice) cannot think objectively about their creation. Even experienced folk are sometimes excluded from design reviews in engineering circles because they are convinced they made the "correct" decision at every step and cannot see the big picture.
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I think Ron's quite right here. I started by designing my own speaker with a single full range driver and thought that was pretty decent; it took very little time to plan and build. Ultimately it probably wasn't a very good speaker. 😱
When I finally decided to upgrade to a 2-way, it ended up taking 1-2 years to acquire the knowledge to produce a workable design. And after all that, my speaker may still be a lot worse than something designed by a Jeff Bagby or similar audio veteran. I certainly did learn a lot from the process, and that was well worth it to me. But it also cost a lot to do the thing right, and that included things like buying a measurement microphone to make real measurements for the purposes of crossover design.

Now I'm planning to move to either a 2.5 way or 3-way (a big 3-way open baffle is the ultimate dream when I have the space) as the next logical step in this process. But from just running simulations on design software, it's clear that 3-ways are a magnitude more complicated to get right.
 
#67
Godzilla said:
Fostex FF225wk
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That could be made to work… F10 ~33 Hz

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dave
 

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#68
phirius said:
What about this speaker make you all say its so bad? Why would replacing the drivers not make it a worthwhile experience?
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It's not that the Technics is "so bad", it's that they were designed to fit a certain market niche and price point and compromises were made in the design to ensure profitability. A speaker designed for a higher price point and targeted to a critical listener would not have made those same compromises, and would be a better starting point for someone interested in accurate audio reproduction.

Because most people do not put value on high quality audio reproduction and are not willing to tolerate large or "ugly" speakers in their decor, the used market for speakers represents a great opportunity to acquire a pair of speakers at significantly less than the sum of their parts.

This is why when asked what the best speakers are for under $100, most of us advocate finding the nicest used speakers possible. The trick is identifying which speakers used good components.

The Pinnacle speakers I linked to above contain Vifa tweeters and Peerless woofers, both well respected driver manufacturers. They also contain a well designed crossover network and reasonably well built enclosure. Even if you got the bug to "upgrade them" with better quality crossover components and the like they would be a much better starting point than the Technics.
 
#70
I actually did end up getting those Pinnacles that you linked gteforme00, thanks for looking out!. After doing some more research I was better off with them. Now just to power them...

I really wanted to build something for this setup so I am going to build an amplifier. Probably some modified gainclone that will give me >200w per channel.
Any input on how to modify a circuit such as this http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-HiFi-Gainclone-Power-Amplifier-2x68w-Class-A/ to a higher wattage is appreciated
 
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#71
>125w per channel*

Also, can multiple lm3886's be hooked up in parallel to create a 150w amplifier? Or does it make more sense to find a better equipped chip by itself such as the TAS5613A for example
 
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#72
phirius said:
I really wanted to build something for this setup so I am going to build an amplifier. Probably some modified gainclone that will give me >200w per channel.Any input on how to modify a circuit such as this DIY HiFi Gainclone Power Amplifier (2x68w, Class AB-A, LM3886) to a higher wattage is appreciated
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It's not worth it to try to modify a chip amp for more output. Build this instead:
60-80W Power Amplifier
or, complete with preamp, crossover, and power amp:
Project 137-1
 
#74
I am very excited that you scored those Pinnacles! I really enjoy my Pinnacle Aerogel Towers and they share a tweeter and a woofer with your AC850's. 200W seems excessive for these speakers. They are rated at 93dB (2.83V / 1m), the woofer dips to about 5.5 ohms so probably more like 90-91 dB 1W/1m. Either way they will get plenty loud with just a single lm3886. I would start there and make sure you give the amp a robust power supply. No sense making it more complicated than it needs to be!
 
#75
PSB 30 40 and 50 mkii are not hard to find and usually for under $100. I seen 40s with $180 price attached this week but that seller is OTL IMHO. They usually list for a lot less 😀
 

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