Building some speakers - Anyone done it?

[Crackie]

Pinoyuk said:

Crackie


Where does all this knowledge come from ? ! In the last post you mentioned the DSP crossovers and the H/F units . Any clues what these might be etc ?


I could spend days building speakers . I always loved it years ago playing with some early AR stuff (38 years ago !) One question more , what amps do you think are good fun for little money .Do you like the SMSL stuff etc ?.


Thanks

I've been very lucky and have worked in the Hi-Fi industry for 20 years working with companies such B&W, KEF, Celestion, Meridian, Mission, Acoustic Energy, TDL, TurboSound, Wharfedale, Peerless, Tannoy, Cyrus and many others. 5 or 6 years working for a large cabinet maker and OEM supplier, 12 years with an injection moulding company and 3 years as a designer at Amina Technologies. In the early 1990's the moulding company was making injection moulded reinforced polypropylene speaker cones; they also pioneered the process of overmoulding the surrounds onto these cones. This involves a molecular cross-coupling of the rigid cones and soft elastomer surround; no adhesives are used. A ground breaking process which was patented and licensed worldwide. The cone's mechanical properties and internal damping can be adjusted by adding different fillers to the cone materials; materials such as chalk, talc, mica, glass fibre and carbon fibre were used to optimise the cone properties and therefore its sound. Companies such as Tannoy, Celestion, Peerless Denmark were customers. Meiloon in Taiwan and LLC in the States used this injection moulding tech under license.

Regarding digital crossovers, I run one of these in my main system, https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box/... Its a digital active crossover and pre-amp. All 10 output channels can be configured to do crossover work, driver response correction, time alignment and phase correction........and room correction. You might be interested in this similar unit https://cpc.farnell.com/mini-dsp/mdsp-24/digital-s...

Regarding amps, I've measured a few SMSL products and they were good; better still if you bin the stock PSU and replace it with a good linear supply instead. I use a little Sabaj A3 class D amp in my dining room, its driving a pair of speakers from the early 90's that would probably cost 150 times more than the amp in today's money.

Edited by Crackie on Tuesday 15th October 09:21

[C2Red]

That’s so very useful, so a thank you from me, as I was looking on YouTube quite a lot for a retirement hobby to pursue

Currently running some original PMC FB1’s over here on the end of an old 8000a mk2.

K

[Pinoyuk]

I met Tony from function one /turbo sound . His buildings /work shops 25 years ago etc where amazing and he is a real Gent !

[Crackie]

C2Red said:

That’s so very useful, so a thank you from me, as I was looking on YouTube quite a lot for a retirement hobby to pursue

Currently running some original PMC FB1’s over here on the end of an old 8000a mk2.

K

There's a wealth of useful information here https://www.linkwitzlab.com/ Linkwitz was brilliant and happy to share his extensive experiences and knowledge with everyone; he sadly died last year.

Some more useful links here

http://www.tolvan.com/index.php?page=/edge/edge.ph...

http://www.hornresp.net/

https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

https://www.visaton.de/en/literatur/software

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/software-tools/324...

[lufbramatt]

Oh that's a shame about Linkwitz, I spent hours reading his website and always fancied building a pair of Orions with active amplification.

[Crackie]

Thread bump for Pinoyuk and C2Red...…….you both seemed pretty keen to get involved with some speaker projects.

Not sure whether you're familiar with Impulse speakers?? Their H2 and H6 models and the models which superseded them ( Ta'us and Lali ) still have a cult following today. H6s were £1250 a pair back in the early 90s and a relative of the H6, called the Aspara HL6, was £3600 a pair approx. 10 years ago.

One of the PH members, Telecat, uses some Lalis and rates them highly. I have the Impulse H2s; I think you could put together a pair a extremely good speakers, that would probably cost in the region of £3500-4000 today, for the cost £250 worth of drivers and crossover + whatever you fancy spending on the cabinets & cabinet finish.

With that in mind, you may be interested in the following links

https://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/diy-og-utvikl... This page has the cabinet drawing and crossover.

http://www.acoustica.org.uk/impulse/impulse.html

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Woofer here

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Tweeter here

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 17th November 23:11

[C2Red]

Crackie said:

Thread bump for Pinoyuk and C2Red...…….you both seemed pretty keen to get involved with some speaker projects.

Not sure whether you're familiar with Impulse speakers?? Their H2 and H6 models and the models which superseded them ( Ta'us and Lali ) still have a cult following today. H6s were £1250 a pair back in the early 90s and a relative of the H6, called the Aspara HL6, was £3600 a pair approx. 10 years ago.

One of the PH members, Telecat, uses some Lalis and rates them highly. I have the Impulse H2s; I think you could put together a pair a extremely good speakers, that would probably cost in the region of £3500-4000 today, for the cost £250 worth of drivers and crossover + whatever you fancy spending on the cabinets & cabinet finish.

With that in mind, you may be interested in the following links

https://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/diy-og-utvikl... This page has the cabinet drawing and crossover.

http://www.acoustica.org.uk/impulse/impulse.html

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Woofer here

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Tweeter here

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 17th November 23:11

Fab, thank you; think I might just have found my next project

[Crackie]

Pinoyuk said:

This thread has so much “project” about it .I love building speakers and will be ordering a few of these tectonics speakers . I fancy adding a high pass filter to give them a fighting chance and allowing them to skip the daft low stuff.

I am sure other members will be doing the same !
Crackie, you have one hell of a lot to offer . What would be a amazing speaker to build with these ? Stick to one , go for 2 , add a super tweeter , etc etc

Have you seen the Linkwitz LX mini? https://www.linkwitzlab.com/LXmini/Introduction.ht...

If use one of these, in a well damped 1m long sealed 140mm outer diameter pipe. https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/sb... with a .250mH inductor in series https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/audio-inductors-... The coil is used to roll off the woofers upper harmonics; the driver is already pretty good in that respect but the coil will improve things further and help the integration with the BMR.

and one of these https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/speaker-drivers/876... with one of these in series https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/alcap-claritycap...

The BMR should be mounted centrally above the mid/woofer on a small baffle. The mounting baffle for the BMR needs to be small; if not it will impact the omnidirectional dispersion of the woofer. If it is kept small the whole system should radiate acoustic power evenly in all directions.......

[Crackie]

C2Red said:

Crackie said:

Thread bump for Pinoyuk and C2Red...…….you both seemed pretty keen to get involved with some speaker projects.

Not sure whether you're familiar with Impulse speakers?? Their H2 and H6 models and the models which superseded them ( Ta'us and Lali ) still have a cult following today. H6s were £1250 a pair back in the early 90s and a relative of the H6, called the Aspara HL6, was £3600 a pair approx. 10 years ago.

One of the PH members, Telecat, uses some Lalis and rates them highly. I have the Impulse H2s; I think you could put together a pair a extremely good speakers, that would probably cost in the region of £3500-4000 today, for the cost £250 worth of drivers and crossover + whatever you fancy spending on the cabinets & cabinet finish.

With that in mind, you may be interested in the following links

https://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/diy-og-utvikl... This page has the cabinet drawing and crossover.

http://www.acoustica.org.uk/impulse/impulse.html

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Woofer here

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/se... Tweeter here

Edited by Crackie on Sunday 17th November 23:11

Fab, thank you; think I might just have found my next project

This driver is a very tempting option https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99p-SPn5Tc in that H6 cabinet. The SB Satori unit has TSPs which are very close indeed to the original SEAS CA17 driver used in the H6. It is presented as a midrange driver but has the same linear excursion as the SEAS unit and bigger mechanical excursion. QTS is identical and VAS is almost the same too, the only difference of note is the lower resonance frequency. The SEAS was 37Hz and the Satori is 31Hz. To make it work just take the H6 cab drawing in the link and 'stretch' the height by 10cm and increase the length of the internal horn by 4cm. The driver position would have to move up the baffle by 4cm to suit the taller cab.

The Satori has incredible HF for a 6.5" driver.........waaay smoother and much better off axis than the Fostex units loved by many full range single driver devotees. You could try the Satori as a full range single driver speaker in the slightly taller cab above and see if the full range ( active ) sound is for you. I think it will be very good, having read about other people on various forums using that Satori driver as a full range with very good, albeit anecdotal, results. My gut reaction is that the Satori will sound excellent at low to medium volumes but the treble will not sound so good at high volumes, particularly if you listen to anything with loud & deep bass. The cone excursion at high bass levels will modulate the treble too much ( intermodulation distortion ). If the Satori treble isn't for you then add the inductor to the bass section and a first order tweeter. The main reason I'm suggesting the Satori driver is that it is very sensitive. ( 92.5 dB for 1W. ) It will play genuinely loud, with good bass extension from a relatively tall, slim, easy to make cabinet and require very little amplifier power to do it. This has plenty of other associated benefits like low power compression.

For and extra £100 you could take care of crossover work actively with one of these........... https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box/...

It can be used with various freeware 'plug-ins'. This is the one to have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZljj5EQYo because you can 'fix your room' if you use the MiniDSP in conjunction with https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

Edited by Crackie on Tuesday 19th November 21:04

[JustALooseScrew]

What a Cracki(ng/e) thread.

It's fantastic to read honest posts by people that really know what they are talking about and want to share their knowledge.


The last time I tried anything like this was at school (some 30+ years ago), a mate of mine was building an amp and speaker system from a project that was running in Elektor magazine - his dad worked for Ferranti and used to bring home all the magazines for us.

I can't remember the details of the project now, all I remember is some four foot tall oak veneered cabinets that were about 10x12 inches width/depth and they sounded ace - even against his Dad's NAM setup.

Happy days and glad to see it still continuing.

[Ambleton]

My old man made me a pair of floorstanders a few years back. He used a set of Castle speakers he had lying around as donors. They were either Durham IIs or Trent IIs... I cant recall now.

The tweeters and crossovers were used (after going to wilmslow audio for a check over) and new mid units (recommended by them) were purchased from them too. The internal volume was kept the same as the original (although narrower and taller), as were the ports.

The cabinets are laminated solid ply with solid beech plinth and are incredibly heavy and solid. Plus I think they look great.

They reproduce voices very well but are not too bright. They arent very bassy, but they hold thier own against some very expensive, newer speakers when matched with a suitable sub and a decent stereo amp.

[Some Guy]

Surprised on one has mentioned Wilmslow Audio. some very impressive kits available. Also pre built cabinets if you arent handy with wood work.
https://www.wilmslowaudio.co.uk/

These are DIY speakers.

[Ambleton]

Some Guy said:

Surprised on one has mentioned Wilmslow Audio.

Literally the first reply to OP mentioned WA. And they have been mentioned quite a few times on the entire thread.

(Ps- I like the veneer on those speakers)

[Crackie]

Some Guy said:

Surprised on one has mentioned Wilmslow Audio. some very impressive kits available. Also pre built cabinets if you arent handy with wood work.
https://www.wilmslowaudio.co.uk/

These are DIY speakers.

Nice SCS badge on them...…. South Coast Speakers. 58, Wilton Road, Southampton. SO15 5LB

Impact Audio do those Visaton kits these days. https://impactaudio.co.uk/

You can get some of the range from Wilmslow too https://www.wilmslowaudio.co.uk/visaton-speaker-ki...

Edited by Crackie on Saturday 18th January 13:27

[Crackie]

Crackie said:

Pinoyuk said:

This thread has so much “project” about it .I love building speakers and will be ordering a few of these tectonics speakers . I fancy adding a high pass filter to give them a fighting chance and allowing them to skip the daft low stuff.

I am sure other members will be doing the same !
Crackie, you have one hell of a lot to offer . What would be a amazing speaker to build with these ? Stick to one , go for 2 , add a super tweeter , etc etc

Have you seen the Linkwitz LX mini? https://www.linkwitzlab.com/LXmini/Introduction.ht...

If use one of these, in a well damped 1m long sealed 140mm outer diameter pipe. https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/drive-units-1/sb... with a .250mH inductor in series https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/audio-inductors-... The coil is used to roll off the woofers upper harmonics; the driver is already pretty good in that respect but the coil will improve things further and help the integration with the BMR.

and one of these https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/speaker-drivers/876... with one of these in series https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/alcap-claritycap...

The BMR should be mounted centrally above the mid/woofer on a small baffle. The mounting baffle for the BMR needs to be small; if not it will impact the omnidirectional dispersion of the woofer. If it is kept small the whole system should radiate acoustic power evenly in all directions.......

I decided to have a play and build a pair of these speakers over the weekend; I'm pleased with the results although I've not measured them yet to fine tune the bass damping and optimise the crossover point.

I've not built an omni directional speaker before but have worked with DML panels which do have an omni directional radiation pattern. The plan was to build a pair of rear speakers for my surround system to replace a pair of old KEF Coda 7s...……….. if the the results were good then I'd post up the spec for anyone on PH who fancies having a play too. The original Linkwitz Pluto & LXMini designs which inspired the idea were sealed but these are bass reflex instead. This version uses a BMR for the high frequencies above 2kHz.........the radiation pattern of the BMR has the potential to improve on the HF driver used by the LX.

I had the drivers knocking about at home so they aren't the same ones shown in the links above but the principle is the important part for now. The cabinets are built from off the shelf parts from Screwfix so no cabinet making skills are needed......cost for cabs is less than £50. It should be possible to build a pair for £100 inc the drivers. This cost doesn't include the stone bases ( The bases are needed to give a decent sized footprint and to add plenty of mass at floor level to keep everything stable.

If any PHers are interested, please let me know; I'll post a few pics up, list the part codes and sort out some measurements once I've finished tweeking the bass damping.

Here's a pic of the parts used...…..130mm Kevlar woofer x 2, 80mm BMR driver x 2, 110mm pipe x 3m long, 42mm pipe x 3m long, 110mm end blank x 2, 110mm pipe joint x 2, 110mm rubber coupler x 1. Set of 4 brass inserts and spikes for the bases. Bag of wadding. Binding posts x 4. Internal cabling. 2 x 4.7uf caps ( Not shown in the pic below )



Below - Stone base with threaded inserts & spikes + 110mm end blanking plug.


below - Stone base + 110mm blanking plug and pipe joint.

Edited by Crackie on Monday 24th February 15:47

[paul.deitch]

Hmmmm. Really enjoying reading this thread. It's an itch I've wanted to scratch for years.
My 1970s Quasar QS1s have been repaired several times and now sound horrible.
Should I rip everything out and re-use the cabinet or?
I also love the look of these. https://www.linkwitzlab.com/LX521/LX521_4.htm
They would look good in my lounge. But I can't afford them!

Edited by paul.deitch on Tuesday 25th February 16:41

[stevoknevo]

Crackie said:

I decided to have a play and build a pair of these speakers over the weekend; I'm pleased with the results although I've not measured them yet to fine tune the bass damping and optimise the crossover point.

I've not built an omni directional speaker before but have worked with DML panels which do have an omni directional radiation pattern. The plan was to build a pair of rear speakers for my surround system to replace a pair of old KEF Coda 7s...……….. if the the results were good then I'd post up the spec for anyone on PH who fancies having a play too. The original Linkwitz Pluto & LXMini designs which inspired the idea were sealed but these are bass reflex instead. This version uses a BMR for the high frequencies above 2kHz.........the radiation pattern of the BMR has the potential to improve on the HF driver used by the LX.

I had the drivers knocking about at home so they aren't the same ones shown in the links above but the principle is the important part for now. The cabinets are built from off the shelf parts from Screwfix so no cabinet making skills are needed......cost for cabs is less than £50. It should be possible to build a pair for £100 inc the drivers. This cost doesn't include the stone bases ( The bases are needed to give a decent sized footprint and to add plenty of mass at floor level to keep everything stable.

If any PHers are interested, please let me know; I'll post a few pics up, list the part codes and sort out some measurements once I've finished tweeking the bass damping.

Here's a pic of the parts used...…..130mm Kevlar woofer x 2, 80mm BMR driver x 2, 110mm pipe x 3m long, 42mm pipe x 3m long, 110mm end blank x 2, 110mm pipe joint x 2, 110mm rubber coupler x 1. Set of 4 brass inserts and spikes for the bases. Bag of wadding. Binding posts x 4. Internal cabling. 2 x 4.7uf caps ( Not shown in the pic below )



Below - Stone base with threaded inserts & spikes + 110mm end blanking plug.


below - Stone base + 110mm blanking plug and pipe joint.

Edited by Crackie on Monday 24th February 15:47

Definitely interested! I stumbled upon the Linkwitz site about a year or so ago, sorry to hear he's passed away - these speakers appealed to me as they're unlike anything I'd seen before so I'm definitely curious to see your end product and your thoughts on how they sound.
And cheers for you previous links, fell down a rabbit hole with a couple of them!

[Crackie]

stevoknevo said:

Definitely interested! I stumbled upon the Linkwitz site about a year or so ago, sorry to hear he's passed away - these speakers appealed to me as they're unlike anything I'd seen before so I'm definitely curious to see your end product and your thoughts on how they sound.
And cheers for you previous links, fell down a rabbit hole with a couple of them!

There are several companies that have used waveguides and diffusers to improve directivity over the years...the goal being to energise the room in the same way that musical instruments do. Bang and Olufsen and Duevel https://www.duevel.com/ spring to mind but there are many more.

I've not quite finished the speakers yet because I've not had time to work out the way to mount the BMR driver above the main conventional driver. There's plenty of Blu tack and tape around at the moment...…….the sound is great though; good enough for me to experiment with going omni with the active system I have in the lounge.

I have a question for you, would you consider taking the active route on these? A miniDSP 2x4 https://cpc.farnell.com/mini-dsp/mdsp-24/digital-s... and one of these would work well https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WONDOM-4-X-100-Watt-6-O...

It would cost about £150 more than the passive version but you would be able to optimise the crossover, correct the driver responses, protect the bass driver from receiving too much bass at high volumes, level match both drivers perfectly and even correct your room's response.

[Crackie]

paul.deitch said:

Hmmmm. Really enjoying reading this thread. It's an itch I've wanted to scratch for years.
My 1970s Quasar QS1s have been repaired several times and now sound horrible.
Should I rip everything out and re-use the cabinet or?
I also love the look of these. https://www.linkwitzlab.com/LX521/LX521_4.htm
They would look good in my lounge. But I can't afford them!

I don't know the QS1s but I had a quick look and found this https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/329945-q...

Might be worth checking out what's causing them to sound horrible...…...when new they appeared to be well engineered for their time.

There are some who think the LX521 is the most realistic speaker they've ever heard, regardless of price. Siegfreid Linkwitz suggested that his little LX Mini wasn't too far behind the 521. Obviously not from a bandwitdh and bass extension point of view but an interesting observation.

[lufbramatt]

When I used to work for Geberit they did a HDPE piping system that was filled with mica to make the pipes really heavy to reduce noise transmission, called "Silent DB20". I always thought it would work well for this kind of speaker design, never got round to trying it before I got made redundant after not wanting to relocate!

Might be worth investigating though, it was a quality product.