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#1 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Northern Virginia
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Background and Design Premise
I built my first pair of DIY speakers 22 years ago, and despite planning something much more ambitious and expensive just a few years later, I managed to instead build speakers for friends and family and indulge other hobbies in those intervening years. Now I have made up for lost time by building something overly ambitious. I made the cabinet construction more difficult than it needed to be, not only to get an nth degree of additional performance, but to make something visually striking and different, to experiment with new techniques and materials, and to confirm I am capable of doing all of this. It had a lot of educational and entertainment value. Deliberate hurdles include:
Project Highlights
All 3D modeling was done in Sketchup, although there is additional routing and shaping I do not know how to do in Sketchup that I did on the completed speakers. I designed the exterior shape first, then worked my way inwards placing collections of parts on a separate layer so I could work on them in isolation. What I ended up with was the ability to explode the speaker and dimension all parts. Anything too complicated to build from a picture was printed 1:1 and adhered to plywood for cutting. For example, the horizontal bracing that is not perpendicular to the baffle has a different shape on the top than it does on the bottom, as the angle to the side of the brace changes several degrees from the front to the back. I had to first cut to the larger of the top/bottom profile for these pieces and then cut/sand at a variable angle to taper to the smaller profile. This worked reasonably well, but with ~1mm tolerance on all finished dimensions, it added up to a lot of slop during assembly, and I had to fill a lot of gaps with glue or resin. 3way_curved_5.0_front.jpg3way_curved_5.0_iso_front.jpg3way_curved_5.0_side.jpg3way_curved_5.0_interior.jpg Project Details TMWW + SS: 3-way active tower speakers plus dual driver mono sub with 8 channels of amplification. Drivers:
Sample construction details: IMG_2537_1.jpgIMG_2638.jpgIMG_3068_1.jpgIMG_3208.jpgIMG_3687 (Edited).jpgIMG_6681_1.jpg Full design and build galleries. |
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#2 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Northern Virginia
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Sample results of completed product:
TV_room_7.2.jpgIMG_6839-Edit_1.jpg XO415 FR 22in FR and phase.pngXO415 TMW 22in drivers XO targets.pngXO415 TMW distortion perc.png 425 Vector average step.png425 Vector average waterfall.png20200604 Horizontal Directivity (Normalized).png Bass leveled via room EQ <100Hz XO414 TMWS LP waterfall 20-200Hz.png and spliced into off axis measurements to generate this 20200604 SPINORAMA spliced 200Hz.png |
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#3 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Nov 2013
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Whoa! Looks gorgeous, even the measurements too.
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#4 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Wow what a nice pair of speakers.
You have some very lucky friends and family if the speakers you made for them are anything near these. |
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#5 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: Madison WI
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Beautiful cabinet work... I'm very impressed. This is where DIY has an edge. You won't find a cabinet like that in a commercial offering without spending a huge amount of money.
Just out of curiosity, how do the MiniDSPs compare to the high end offerings from companies like XTA? I've always thought they were kind of interesting, but never really taken them all that seriously. You've clearly gone for a pretty high-end build though, so maybe it's time to reconsider. |
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#6 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
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How much time delay was needed to tweeter section, to get that nice LR2 mid-tweeter crossover?
All your works looks perfect for me ![]() |
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#7 |
diyAudio Member
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MtBiker,
Superb execution and the results are something that you can be proud of. |
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#8 |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: St Louis, MO
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I am very impressed. Excellent measurements, and the aesthetics are top notch.
To fill the 3/4 inch gap between the inner and outer wall, how much cement and epoxy did you use? I assume by "cement" you mean Portland cement... |
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#9 | |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Northern Virginia
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Quote:
What I need is either an 8 channel DSP with digital in (one box for convenience and volume control) and higher quality DACs, or 8 channel DSP with digital out to something like the Okto Research DAC. I am willing to DIY some or all of a replacement solution but am waiting for the DSP to advance one more generation. |
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#10 | |
diyAudio Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Northern Virginia
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Quote:
T: 0.05ms M: 0ms reference W: 0.01ms S: 1.14ms What is non-obvious is the FIR delay, which is I think was 3ms for TMW and not the sub. So add 3.0ms to the mid and subtract 1.14ms for the sub, and you get 1.86ms difference which is 24.8inches != the physical distance tower to sub. Unlike the delays for the drivers in the same cabinet (which were based on measurements and confirmed with step response), I arrived at the offset to the sub based on trial and error measurements for what blended the best with the towers. Using a tape measure provided terrible results. |
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