I've been looking to replace my late 80's Advents, and unhappy with what my budget will buy me (~$2k). I've looked at used speakers and am seriously considering Salk speakers, but have never heard them.
However, I have become enchanted with the idea of building my own. I have some minimal qualifications.
My two main hobbies are:
1. woodworking (furniture) and
2. home studio music recording.
I have a very basic understanding of circuitry and electronic components
With some effort I think I can understand the technical aspects such as formulas and software. I've read Introduction to Loudspeaker design and mostly understood the concepts and formulas. I was thinking about using SoundEasy to design crossovers.
With this in mind, I'd like to build my own speakers. I could see maybe making the floor standing speakers, as well as the surrounds. Maybe I might even try to make some smaller ones for another room.
With that in mind, can you advise?
1. Should I do this? Am I kidding myself?
2. Is it reasonable that I could build my dream speakers (or at least some really amazing ones) right out of the gate? I understand there's some risk here, but I'm hoping I can either re-use most of the components if I get it wrong or sell the speakers to recoup some of the cost. (Also more specifically, are 3 ways reasonable to try right out of the gate?)
3. If not, should I try the surrounds first? What will I learn from doing it a couple of times vs. just being careful the first time around?
4. Will my budget get me appreciably better speakers than if I went and bought them in a store?
However, I have become enchanted with the idea of building my own. I have some minimal qualifications.
My two main hobbies are:
1. woodworking (furniture) and
2. home studio music recording.
I have a very basic understanding of circuitry and electronic components
With some effort I think I can understand the technical aspects such as formulas and software. I've read Introduction to Loudspeaker design and mostly understood the concepts and formulas. I was thinking about using SoundEasy to design crossovers.
With this in mind, I'd like to build my own speakers. I could see maybe making the floor standing speakers, as well as the surrounds. Maybe I might even try to make some smaller ones for another room.
With that in mind, can you advise?
1. Should I do this? Am I kidding myself?
2. Is it reasonable that I could build my dream speakers (or at least some really amazing ones) right out of the gate? I understand there's some risk here, but I'm hoping I can either re-use most of the components if I get it wrong or sell the speakers to recoup some of the cost. (Also more specifically, are 3 ways reasonable to try right out of the gate?)
3. If not, should I try the surrounds first? What will I learn from doing it a couple of times vs. just being careful the first time around?
4. Will my budget get me appreciably better speakers than if I went and bought them in a store?
With your "mere" $2K budget....?? From perusing the Salk website, these seem a bit too esoteric....AKA more money=linear more quality.
There really is no better sense of true accomplishment than hearing your favorite music thru something you actually created with your own two-hands.
My last creation lasted more than a dozen years.
Your skill within woodworking is a prized skill inside of Speaker-building.
A nice Three-way can be built way within your budget. Learn as much as possible here, nail down your approach & DO IT.
No time like the present.
--------------------------------------------------------Rick............
There really is no better sense of true accomplishment than hearing your favorite music thru something you actually created with your own two-hands.
My last creation lasted more than a dozen years.
Your skill within woodworking is a prized skill inside of Speaker-building.
A nice Three-way can be built way within your budget. Learn as much as possible here, nail down your approach & DO IT.
No time like the present.
--------------------------------------------------------Rick............
For a one shot project you are better in building a design from some reputable designer (meaning something that is fully documented). See something from Zaph, Troels Gravesen.
Your first design can be successful (but surely not a 3 way), but not in the first run, and that means you will throw away lot of money in the process.
Ralf
Your first design can be successful (but surely not a 3 way), but not in the first run, and that means you will throw away lot of money in the process.
Ralf
Do you mean that my first run won't be successful or my first 3 way build won't be successful?
He's of the glass is half empty persuasion!! Ha, Ha...
No, seriously, yes it can be done...been there, done that!
--------------------------------------------------------------Rick........
Hi,
You mention surrounds so I'm assuming a video system.
You could do a lot worse than : Zaph|Audio - ZA5 Speaker Designs with ZA14W08 woofer and Vifa DQ25SC16-04 tweeter
Upping the anti also look at : Zaph|Audio - ZDT3.5
rgds, sreten.
You mention surrounds so I'm assuming a video system.
You could do a lot worse than : Zaph|Audio - ZA5 Speaker Designs with ZA14W08 woofer and Vifa DQ25SC16-04 tweeter
Upping the anti also look at : Zaph|Audio - ZDT3.5
rgds, sreten.
Thanks for the suggestions. 80% of the usage will be TV/Netflix/Home Theater, however, this is not the critical application for me. I'd be fine with decent speakers from Best Buy for that. 10% is playing loud pop/rock music, and another 10% is listening to vocal/classical/jazz. The last 10% is the most important to me.
1. You seem to have most of the needed skills to build a speaker, so of course you should.
2. Now, this is a tricky one. There are as many preferences in loudspeakers as there are listeners. Some prefer small drivers in a svelte enclosure. Some prefer high quality fullrange drivers. Some prefer the larger PA-style drivers with high sensitivity. What is your dream speaker?
3. I must admit I have very limited experience with surround systems, since my interest is solely in 2-channel music systems. I'd still say you should start with the two main channels and make the surround channels compatible with those. Ideally.
4. You can make a pair of speakers with drivers costing ~100$ per speaker that equal commercial speakers costing 2000$ a pair. Then again you could really fudge things up and use a grands worth of drivers and ending up with a semi-useless box of mystical burbling sounds. Design & implementation is key.
Now, at least for me, it's pointless imitating commercial designs. In the end the amount of time and money you'll end up using on a DIY clone of a typical commercial loudspeaker makes it hard to justify. But then again we all do DIY for our own reasons. For me the main reason is gaining access to design principles that would be too niche for the mainstream manufacturers or just too damn expensive.
If you want to save money, don't DIY. If you want something out of the mainstream, you might not even have an option aside doing it yourself. And, if you just want to DIY, just DIY!
Conflicting info. It sounds like I could save doing it this way, but with some risk. So why would you say don't DIY to save? I do think it would be fun to DIY, but it's not like it wouldn't sacrifice from other fun things as well. What I really hope to get is some speakers that would cost me $5k or even more for under $2k. I know that I'll have fun doing it so that's not an issue. But I'm sure I'll pull more than a few clumps of hair out as well.
There are a variety of excellent "kits" available, too, from designers such as Linkwitz (Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design) (thinking of the LX Mini), Zapf, Bagby, many others. If you don't really want to learn all about crossovers, and you want to build something and have confidence that the results will be worthwhile, do a kit...
If I had budget and room, Linkwitz LX521 for me...
If I had budget and room, Linkwitz LX521 for me...
I admit to being slightly confusing. What I mean is that when you hit the "sweet spot", you can make "something for nothing". And at the other end you can fail quite spectacularly if you start with grandiose high-end drivers made of materials with difficult properties.
Were I you, I'd start with a known, tried and true design. There are several sides to making a loudspeaker, and choice of driver is just the first step. Given, the driver is the heart. Then there's the brain - the crossover. And that's the hardest part.
A 12" Eminence Beta 12CX with the APT50 driver appropriately implemented is ridiculously good given the price. Given a proper enclosure it beats most mainstream speakers I've heard under 2000$ a pair. And it'll give you dynamics uncomparable to a pair of speakers with 6,5" drivers. But this is only my personal preference.
A cheap and simple solution would be a full range driver in a sealed box.
That way you can forget about crossovers.
It wont be the best sound in the world but will be OK.
Given your woodworking skills you are probably best picking up a high quality 3 way design and copying it.
I have never used crossovers partly because I want high power.
So I stick to sealed full rangers and a sub without a crossover.
I get by OK with that.
That way you can forget about crossovers.
It wont be the best sound in the world but will be OK.
Given your woodworking skills you are probably best picking up a high quality 3 way design and copying it.
I have never used crossovers partly because I want high power.
So I stick to sealed full rangers and a sub without a crossover.
I get by OK with that.
I'm a retired Electronic Engineering Technician. I assisted EE's at Tektronix and Dolby Labs back in the 1980's and was always picking their brains as I did my hobby projects. I've been building speaker systems as a hobbyist since about 1967, many have been great and many not so much. Probably about 50 sets total over the years. I consider them all experiments. I've done many exotic designs, but have sort of gone full circle and come back to more conventional designs more recently. A simple design is easier to get right, the fidelity is limited by the program source material, and how a speaker interacts with listening room acoustics is very significant, especially in smaller rooms.
Calibrating a passive crossover correctly is actually fairly complicated, because you first have to accurately measure the efficiency (SPL of frequency range of interest - for level matching), and impedance of the drivers at the frequency where you want to cross them over at, before you can accurately calculate the value of the coils, efficiency matching resistors and caps. A five inch driver that is called 8 ohms (nominal) can easily be 15 ohms up around 3kHZ where you might want to cross it over.
Any kind of "stock 8 ohm" crossover (for example) is likely to be pretty far off, when put with random 8 ohm drivers. In any case you'd want to verify the results with a calibrated mic, RTA and pink noise, and then fine tweak the part values to get it more right, if you want a really good result.
Active crossovers are substantially better, and much more predictable, but require building up a chassis with power supply, and extra poweramps. Kits are a good idea in that they are likely to be fairly accurate and easy for a beginner to build, but when done you won't feel like they are your design, so limited pride, if that matters. You might be better off just buying some new speakers. If any driver has a foam surround suspension, rule it out. The foam disintegrates over time.
Having said all of that, researching, designing and building speaker systems can be pretty fun. It will get as complicated as you want. Nobody will ever know it all. Nothing is ever perfect. It's all about tradeoffs and personal preferences. You might find yourself studying acoustics and ear-brain psycho-acoustic effects... it's been fun for me, but isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea.
Peerless and Vifa (now owned by Tympany I think) is one of my favorite brands. I feel they compete well with the best most expensive drivers (Seas, ScanSpeak, etc.) for much less money. MDF is one of the better cabinet materials to use. Glue any variation of thick felt to the interior walls of the cabinet, before stuffing in the fluffy stuffing. Put in cross-bracing if the cabinet is at all large (6 inch woofers or bigger) (front to back in the middle, and side to side in the middle). If you are willing to build sub-enclosures for a 3 inch driver that can do from 500HZ to 15kHZ pretty darn well, the Vifa TC9 ($12) or the Peerless TG9 drivers ($22) are some of my favorites. They get directional at the higher frequencies, but they do it gradually, and I find that I like that personally. You could always add a super tweeter later that just did the very top end of freqs. if you want more "air".
Vertical line array woofers (Two or four 8 inch woofers for example) often interact with room acoustics significantly better than a single woofer. There's a ton of stuff to know, and a really good speaker is likely to involve a lot of time and work. It just depends how bad you want it to be your design; just what you want, and how much time you're willing to put into the project.
Calibrating a passive crossover correctly is actually fairly complicated, because you first have to accurately measure the efficiency (SPL of frequency range of interest - for level matching), and impedance of the drivers at the frequency where you want to cross them over at, before you can accurately calculate the value of the coils, efficiency matching resistors and caps. A five inch driver that is called 8 ohms (nominal) can easily be 15 ohms up around 3kHZ where you might want to cross it over.
Any kind of "stock 8 ohm" crossover (for example) is likely to be pretty far off, when put with random 8 ohm drivers. In any case you'd want to verify the results with a calibrated mic, RTA and pink noise, and then fine tweak the part values to get it more right, if you want a really good result.
Active crossovers are substantially better, and much more predictable, but require building up a chassis with power supply, and extra poweramps. Kits are a good idea in that they are likely to be fairly accurate and easy for a beginner to build, but when done you won't feel like they are your design, so limited pride, if that matters. You might be better off just buying some new speakers. If any driver has a foam surround suspension, rule it out. The foam disintegrates over time.
Having said all of that, researching, designing and building speaker systems can be pretty fun. It will get as complicated as you want. Nobody will ever know it all. Nothing is ever perfect. It's all about tradeoffs and personal preferences. You might find yourself studying acoustics and ear-brain psycho-acoustic effects... it's been fun for me, but isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea.
Peerless and Vifa (now owned by Tympany I think) is one of my favorite brands. I feel they compete well with the best most expensive drivers (Seas, ScanSpeak, etc.) for much less money. MDF is one of the better cabinet materials to use. Glue any variation of thick felt to the interior walls of the cabinet, before stuffing in the fluffy stuffing. Put in cross-bracing if the cabinet is at all large (6 inch woofers or bigger) (front to back in the middle, and side to side in the middle). If you are willing to build sub-enclosures for a 3 inch driver that can do from 500HZ to 15kHZ pretty darn well, the Vifa TC9 ($12) or the Peerless TG9 drivers ($22) are some of my favorites. They get directional at the higher frequencies, but they do it gradually, and I find that I like that personally. You could always add a super tweeter later that just did the very top end of freqs. if you want more "air".
Vertical line array woofers (Two or four 8 inch woofers for example) often interact with room acoustics significantly better than a single woofer. There's a ton of stuff to know, and a really good speaker is likely to involve a lot of time and work. It just depends how bad you want it to be your design; just what you want, and how much time you're willing to put into the project.
With existing woodworking skills and tools there's absolutely no reason not to build your own speakers.
Building speakers the equivalent of commercial offerings for a fraction of the price is very satisfying!
However, for a first project, I'd recommend finding a design that meets your requirements (sound quality and cost), buy the drivers and crossovers and build the enclosures.
A quick internet search on loudspeaker projects and kits turns up plenty of possibilities.
Various hifi and audio mags have published projects and designs over the years.
Do plenty of research, find the right project/kit and go for it!
Building speakers the equivalent of commercial offerings for a fraction of the price is very satisfying!
However, for a first project, I'd recommend finding a design that meets your requirements (sound quality and cost), buy the drivers and crossovers and build the enclosures.
A quick internet search on loudspeaker projects and kits turns up plenty of possibilities.
Various hifi and audio mags have published projects and designs over the years.
Do plenty of research, find the right project/kit and go for it!
We get a similar post about every month or so.. (..this time I think I'll save this link, for paste purposes.)
1. IF you really want a new hobby, something that can take up a fair amount of your time and can be fairly expensive, and think you'll have the time to spend on fully learning it, then yes - you might well enjoy yourself. It can take many years to learn some of the far more esoteric aspects of this hobby, but might only take a few months of study to learn most of what speaker builder's know. The fastest I've ever seen anyone do this was Dan Neubecker, who basically mastered the skills in a little over a month - and then continued on to create some of the more inventive loudspeakers (that are very well designed technically), that hobbyists have likely ever produced. Here he is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpZ0vE34UTo
IF however you are more interested in listening to good sound, spending time with family watching/listening to movies, etc.. Then run away as fast as you can - at least as far as making it a hobby.
The alternative (beyond simply purchasing as a "ready-made" consumer), is picking a proven design or kit. Some of the better designs can include those little details that are special: special enough that if the design were marketed traditionally - would likely be far more expensive.
2. Build yes, design probably not (..likely maybe 1 in 10,000 chance to produce something truly amazing on your first "go"..).
Selling speakers to recoup costs can be extremely difficult, usually you are better off selling the used components than the speakers. 😱 This means that your cabinets will be worthless, and your components will only have worth if someone else values them (..usually meaning that component is more expensive (desired), and your willing to part for it for less than half what you paid for it).
3. No. See #1 & #2.
4. Tough one. Like picking a DIY design to build, purchasing a really good loudspeaker for the money can be done.. both take quite a bit of research.
Help then:
A. Hobby.
-IF you decide to make it a hobby then purchase/learn/make-use of software/hardware that allows you to prototype crossovers "on the fly" digitally. Soundeasy and LspCad Pro are the usual suspects here. They require a computer and an appropriate sound card, AND they require multiple amplifier channels to output each "leg" of the crossover to each driver. Basically you need a full duplex sound card with 8 or more channels out and 4 (or more) stereo amplifiers (..which is 8+ channels of power).
This recommendation is made regardless of either utilizing an active design, or a passive design (..for crossovers).
Also, you will need additional testing hardware: a Calibrated mic, and enough free-space in a quiet environment (..and usually a large test-baffle as well). It's also a lot easier to just use Dayton DATS for measuring driver parameters (rather than utilizing Soundeasy or LspCad which have this testing ability). You can use other software for mic.-based freq./distortion measurements, but you can also use either of those program's for those measurements.
B. DIY fabrication from a proven design.
It's tough to really say what is or is not the "best" design for you. For that you really have to describe the use you want out of it and what you expect from it. Still, if there is one design that stands-out to me in many respects, its this one:
Kairos (Pair)
From there a subwoofer (or 3):
Rythmik Audio • Direct Servo subwoofer products
C. Purchase a loudspeaker..
There is the same difficulty here as in "B" above.. it really depends on many factors. For smaller speakers with real value - carefully research what Behringer offers.
D. Build a subwoofer..
The one thing I can say with relative confidence is that not only is it not difficult to design a good subwoofer, it can be economical when compared to decent commercial offerings. (..and freeware can help you with the design, you don't need Soundeasy. WinISD, not WinISD Pro is reasonably sufficient in this respect, from there all you need is a good subwoofer "plate" amplifier with fully variable phase and a variable crossover scheme you like.)
OR just do something proven like the Rymthik designs (..which have something you'll likely not be able to implement in your own design - ie. the current-sensing "servo").
Either way, it can actually save you money and result in a better product. It's also something that probably has full resale value (cabinet as well).
You can also consider buying a pro box for studio recording.
If you haven´t build a box yet, a can´t recommend building one.
If you haven´t build a box yet, a can´t recommend building one.
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