I have been watching and reading all about DIY speakers and I am very interested in building my own desktop monitors. I have never buildt any speakers before and I am reading many different opinions about what methods, designs, crossovers, etc to use for a speaker design. I am getting a little overwhelmed by the many design options and drivers.
I am currently looking into building dome shaped speakers, using the ikea bamboo bowls as a bevel and 3D printing the backside (see attached image for inspiration). I will probably choose to build closed back speakers as this will probably be easier to design. Besides audio quality, I am also looking for a unique speaker design as I find box shaped speaker designs boring and uninteristing. I want someone to walk into my room and immediatly look and want to listen to my beautiful low cost DIY speakers.
My desk is placed in a very small (2m wide) student room with a low ceiling due to a bed being above my desk. I have cheap accoustic panels on sections of my walls to help with the interference, but I think my room is highly sensitive to this issue. I have a second hand KEF sub woofer in my current setup, with 4 KEF HTS 5001 satellites for my surround and use a Onkyo TX-SR393 receiver. I however want to upgrade the front 2 speakers as I want to be able to enjoy the full fidelity of my vynil collection. I listen to a variety of music genres like alternative rock (Radiohead), Electronic (Royksopp, Daftpunk), and rock (AC/DC, Nirvana), but I also enjoy listening to dj sets from the hard techno to trance scenes.
I am a complete beginner when it comes to speaker building, maybe its wiser if I build a kit or fully guided DIY project before designing my own speakers. I am open to hearing suggestions and other peoples expereinces or builds.
I am currently looking into building dome shaped speakers, using the ikea bamboo bowls as a bevel and 3D printing the backside (see attached image for inspiration). I will probably choose to build closed back speakers as this will probably be easier to design. Besides audio quality, I am also looking for a unique speaker design as I find box shaped speaker designs boring and uninteristing. I want someone to walk into my room and immediatly look and want to listen to my beautiful low cost DIY speakers.
My desk is placed in a very small (2m wide) student room with a low ceiling due to a bed being above my desk. I have cheap accoustic panels on sections of my walls to help with the interference, but I think my room is highly sensitive to this issue. I have a second hand KEF sub woofer in my current setup, with 4 KEF HTS 5001 satellites for my surround and use a Onkyo TX-SR393 receiver. I however want to upgrade the front 2 speakers as I want to be able to enjoy the full fidelity of my vynil collection. I listen to a variety of music genres like alternative rock (Radiohead), Electronic (Royksopp, Daftpunk), and rock (AC/DC, Nirvana), but I also enjoy listening to dj sets from the hard techno to trance scenes.
I am a complete beginner when it comes to speaker building, maybe its wiser if I build a kit or fully guided DIY project before designing my own speakers. I am open to hearing suggestions and other peoples expereinces or builds.
Attachments
There is a mixed bag of requirements in your wish: first of all... How low cost you are going to go??? The lowest one probably would be re-purpose some old car drivers playing fullrange without any filters in some random box. But this is at the one side of extremity. The other side of extremity is to buy expensive drivers, like Seas, Satori, some exotic filter components - capacitors, with words "silver" written on them and so on.
Another part is how much audio gear you have at hand? Because if you want to design from scratch - you will need some. That is CALIBRATED measurement microphone, 2 channel audio interface with phantom power for mic, mic stand, and some neutral sounding amplifier. Maybe that Onkyo is suitable for that. And soundcard which is better than integrated in your laptop. Apple USB-C to 3.5 is good one, or if you have at hand some Asus Xonar 7.1 - you can do miracles, such as active crossovers with it. Maybe you can do that with your receiver too as it is 7 channel one, I am not sure. That is already ~250-500EUR until you start building actual speaker.
You already mentioned that you want to make some interesting shapes - bowls and other droplet shapes are definitely one of the best, here you are on right track. Skilled hands and some tools are an advantage, 3D printer is even better. Be prepared to make at least 1-3 prototypes until final design. You do not need to make perfect final thing from the first try. It just depends on your determination, free time and some additional expenses for each prototype.
Software: you will need to get good with at least 3 of them - REW, VituixCAD and EQ APO. All of them are free for non-commercial and VituixCAD is the main one. It has steep learning curve, be prepared for that.
Next part is how loud/big/bold you want to go? Those speakers will be "bookshelf" or "big coffin sized boxes. with skulls painted on them" There is nothing bad to want to have HUGE speakers. You have a small room now, so for you the smaller will work better. For the beginning I would like to recommend to go 2-way speakers. The ones in your picture are more or less the suitable to re-create: 5-7 inch sized woofer and suitable tweeter. As you have already some subwoofer, and your room is tiny by hi-fi standards you do not need very big woofer.
BTW, there are final designs only for box/cuboid shaped speakers, you are "doomed" to design yours from scratch. But it will be worth it.
Another part is how much audio gear you have at hand? Because if you want to design from scratch - you will need some. That is CALIBRATED measurement microphone, 2 channel audio interface with phantom power for mic, mic stand, and some neutral sounding amplifier. Maybe that Onkyo is suitable for that. And soundcard which is better than integrated in your laptop. Apple USB-C to 3.5 is good one, or if you have at hand some Asus Xonar 7.1 - you can do miracles, such as active crossovers with it. Maybe you can do that with your receiver too as it is 7 channel one, I am not sure. That is already ~250-500EUR until you start building actual speaker.
You already mentioned that you want to make some interesting shapes - bowls and other droplet shapes are definitely one of the best, here you are on right track. Skilled hands and some tools are an advantage, 3D printer is even better. Be prepared to make at least 1-3 prototypes until final design. You do not need to make perfect final thing from the first try. It just depends on your determination, free time and some additional expenses for each prototype.
Software: you will need to get good with at least 3 of them - REW, VituixCAD and EQ APO. All of them are free for non-commercial and VituixCAD is the main one. It has steep learning curve, be prepared for that.
Next part is how loud/big/bold you want to go? Those speakers will be "bookshelf" or "big coffin sized boxes. with skulls painted on them" There is nothing bad to want to have HUGE speakers. You have a small room now, so for you the smaller will work better. For the beginning I would like to recommend to go 2-way speakers. The ones in your picture are more or less the suitable to re-create: 5-7 inch sized woofer and suitable tweeter. As you have already some subwoofer, and your room is tiny by hi-fi standards you do not need very big woofer.
BTW, there are final designs only for box/cuboid shaped speakers, you are "doomed" to design yours from scratch. But it will be worth it.
@svp Thanks for the elaborate response! I have access to a 3D printer, and my CAD modelling skills are at a fairly high level so I am not too worried about the modelling and building of the speakers. I however do not have a calibrated measurering microfone nor a high quality sound card. I was hoping that by building a smaller set of fully enclosed 2-way speakers, I could get away with calculating and simulating this on my PC and skip the sound measuring and calibration part. My budget range is somwhere between 200 and 350 for the drivers and crossover (no material cost considered).
Hi Joris, I guess that you can copy an existing design i.e. choice of drivers and crossover.
Then you can make decisions... Like, if you adapt a 3 way design to that open frame ( other than going active ) you'll find that you'll need to raise the signal to the bass ( or just level down the mid treble section) in order to keep a balance, because of acoustic short circuit at bass frequencies
Then you can make decisions... Like, if you adapt a 3 way design to that open frame ( other than going active ) you'll find that you'll need to raise the signal to the bass ( or just level down the mid treble section) in order to keep a balance, because of acoustic short circuit at bass frequencies
@picowallspeaker I am guessing I would require a measuring microphone to measure acoustic short circuits in my room. And do you mean raising the bass of my subwoofer or that of the passive speakers using a crossover?
Speaker sound changes because of what is inside the box (assuming you are making "box speakers") AND what is outside the box. As you are probably making 3D printed custom "box" - you will not get away with simple prediction, so analog measurement microphone + 2 channel audio interface + 2 cables + stand for microphone is a must. Otherwise your other option will be making measurements by ear. Apple dongle is one of the best DAC you can buy for any money and it costs from 10 to 15EUR depending on the country.
If you are tight with money... Then Apple dongle + any decent 3.5mm mic you can get your hands on. You will have at least some measurements. You could use the trick to go to friend who has good calibrated mic and measure them side-by-side on the same sound source in the same conditions. You can then "calibrate" cheapest mic to act a little bit like the expensive one. Even there are tricks to make calibration file from another mic. You will find on internet. In this case your direct expenses will be less than 50EUR.
It is almost impossible to correctly predict the speaker response on the complex shape. Most likely you will do smth with tweeter waveguide, which is art of its own, but is it VERY worth it.
If the budget is tight - look at promotions and clearances on THLP or other big retailers. Right now I see this:
Tweeters
https://en.toutlehautparleur.com/sp...voice-coil-front-plate-3-7-inch-diameter.html
https://en.toutlehautparleur.com/sp...less-bc25sc55-04-4-ohm-1-inch-voice-coil.html
Woofer
https://en.toutlehautparleur.com/sp...tics-sb13pfcr25-8-impedance-8-ohm-5-inch.html
Food for thought:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...chano23-open-source-diy-speaker-review.54066/
Single driver FRs.
Real tight budget: https://kjfaudio.com/product/chn-50/
Less tight: https://kjfaudio.com/product/pluvia-7-2-hd/
dave