Hey all,
I'm thinking about gutting my Soundboks, and trying to improve the quality of the output. It's an original kickstarter one and it's had plenty of use. Frankly I've never been super thrilled with the quality of sound, though it did get very loud.
The cabinet itself is pretty well made and I think the woofers could produce some much tighter low end if they didn't also produce a bunch of mid range as well. I also don't need it to last 2 weeks on one battery charge, So I don't need the ultra efficient amp module it currently uses. If I can get it sounding half respectable for around $100 I'll be happy to keep using it.
Standard configuration is like this,
2 - 10" Eminence 4 ohm woofers (custom made, but very close to this I think Eminence LEGEND BP102 - 10" Bass Guitar Speaker) in a dual ported enclosure
2 - Eminence 1" Super Tweeters - These ones I think Eminence APT:30 - 1" Bullet Tweeter
1 - 4x"42 watt" Soundboks branded Bluetooth amp board.
I'm thinking to keep the woofers, replace the shrill tweeters, preferably with something that rolls off closer to 1khz instead of 3.5khz then power it with a little 2.1 amp that has tone and high/low pass knobs to tune it.
Tweeters I'm thinking - Dayton Audio DC28F-8 1-1/8" Silk Dome Tweeter
then powering everything with one of these amp modules
TPS3116D2 Class D 2.1 Bluetooth 5.0 Amplifier Board 2 x 50W + 100W with Filter and Volume Controls
The only problem I have with this, is that the tweeters will have to run as stereo, I don't think I'll be able to make the amp output mono easily, at least not using bluetooth anyway.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might do things differently to end with a better result?
Thanks for your time and input.
Ash.
I'm thinking about gutting my Soundboks, and trying to improve the quality of the output. It's an original kickstarter one and it's had plenty of use. Frankly I've never been super thrilled with the quality of sound, though it did get very loud.
The cabinet itself is pretty well made and I think the woofers could produce some much tighter low end if they didn't also produce a bunch of mid range as well. I also don't need it to last 2 weeks on one battery charge, So I don't need the ultra efficient amp module it currently uses. If I can get it sounding half respectable for around $100 I'll be happy to keep using it.
Standard configuration is like this,
2 - 10" Eminence 4 ohm woofers (custom made, but very close to this I think Eminence LEGEND BP102 - 10" Bass Guitar Speaker) in a dual ported enclosure
2 - Eminence 1" Super Tweeters - These ones I think Eminence APT:30 - 1" Bullet Tweeter
1 - 4x"42 watt" Soundboks branded Bluetooth amp board.
I'm thinking to keep the woofers, replace the shrill tweeters, preferably with something that rolls off closer to 1khz instead of 3.5khz then power it with a little 2.1 amp that has tone and high/low pass knobs to tune it.
Tweeters I'm thinking - Dayton Audio DC28F-8 1-1/8" Silk Dome Tweeter
then powering everything with one of these amp modules
TPS3116D2 Class D 2.1 Bluetooth 5.0 Amplifier Board 2 x 50W + 100W with Filter and Volume Controls
The only problem I have with this, is that the tweeters will have to run as stereo, I don't think I'll be able to make the amp output mono easily, at least not using bluetooth anyway.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might do things differently to end with a better result?
Thanks for your time and input.
Ash.
Why not keep the old board and modify it? Is it because the crossover is made via a DSP? If yes, then simply hooking an amp straight to the woofers might make for a lesser bass output. They might be doing baffle step correction with the woofers, especially since you described it the original board as having four channels.
Another option would be to use a 4 channel 3116 board with DSP and program it accordingly. Oh and I doubt their board is much more efficient than a good 3116 implementation.
Another option would be to use a 4 channel 3116 board with DSP and program it accordingly. Oh and I doubt their board is much more efficient than a good 3116 implementation.
Thank you for your suggestion! The woofers on the Soundboks 1 are sunken behind an outer trim so they probably would benefit from some DSP, the TPS3116D2 won't allow me to program that to provide baffle step correction. Given I'd like to crossover the woofers much lower than they currently are I'm not sure if baffle correction will be all that necessary. Frankly, i don't think I'll be able to fudge this thing into something with glass flat frequency response. But having the ability to boost the sub woofer channel and stereo channels separately will hopefully allow a bit more control.
If you crossover the tweeter near the baffle step, that might work, but the tweeter will probably have a hard time. Have you estimated the baffle step frequency from the cabinet dimensions? That might help suggestions.
If you can get a separate bluetooth module with an 3116 board with more crossover flexibility (or an external filter board together with straight 3116 amps board), you could consider simply rolling off one of the woofers at the baffle step. This will also enable you to sum the stereo signals before they're sent to the mono amps/crossovers with a simple summing opamp. You can even try passive summing with resistors if the output/input impedances of the boards allow it.
If you can get a separate bluetooth module with an 3116 board with more crossover flexibility (or an external filter board together with straight 3116 amps board), you could consider simply rolling off one of the woofers at the baffle step. This will also enable you to sum the stereo signals before they're sent to the mono amps/crossovers with a simple summing opamp. You can even try passive summing with resistors if the output/input impedances of the boards allow it.