anyone built any of their own speakers?

[Ianm2]

1/ kit

2/ internet design

3/ your own design

thoughts?

if 3/ how did you do the xover?

and

4/ does anyone wish they could either design their own or build some

5/ what would they do if 4?

thanks, I would build a pair of 24" reflex bass bins, and a 15 or 18" coaxial to go on top, cost of the drive units, approx.

2x £600, plus about £2-300 each for the dual concentric unit, makes £1800, probably make one the best speakers in the world.




in my own speakers, using a 12" bass and 1" compression driver, I am simply using a passive prebuilt butterworth 2nd order xover, with

1/ no time alignment
2/ no baffle step compensation
3/ the voice coil inductance rise isn't taken into account
4/ and there are no impedance or frequency modifying parts

or anything else to get rid of the problems

this despite the bass unit having quite a peak above 3hz and they sound absoultely terrific

link to bass unit

http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?...4_Inch_Drivers

coaxial

http://www.p-audio.co.uk/products/db..._bm-18cx38.htm

cabinet size for a super boom box response, is simply 0.5 x VAS in litres about 280 for the bass, based on thiele, small and hoge

[pre65]

Hi Ian-most of the very many speaker designs that have appeared on this (and other) forum (s) are,in the main,specific to lower powered valve amps.

The other point is that using single drivers,and therefore no crossover,results to a sound free from crossover distortions.

I am very happy with the VoFos that Ed built,but am also impressed by the OB speakers Nick G built to a design by James D.

I am also looking forward to hearing the latest creation from Steve Cresswell at Owston in a few weeks.

It may be that your particular way forward is different to the majority of us because of your amp choice,but thats just my "umble" opinion.

[Scottmoose]

1/ No

2/ No

3/ Yes. Too many to count. As for how I've 'done' the XOs, that is completely dependant upon the design.

As a matter of preference, these days I usually work with wide BW units, sometimes supported at one or both ends of the spectrum so as to avoid XOs in our critical hearing BW.

4/ See 3/

5/ Ditto.

I'm not a fan of drivers over 15in myself -not for home use at any rate. Couple of 15in HE woofers per channel is usually all that's needed.

[The Shadow]

I designed the Metronome tapered quadratic quarter wave loudspeaker enclosure and used them for three years. Scott helped out with the air mass loading for the original enclosures. After that Scott designed a number of larger Metronome enclosures for use with a wide range of drivers up to the Audio Nirvana 10 inch full ranger.

The "Mets" as the Americans tend to call them are a very successful design. No one who has built a pair has been disappointed with them. The real sleeper among the bunch is the enclosure designed for the Fostex FE127E. The sound this thing produces is phenomenally good.

I love the design of the Metronome from both an aesthetic and sound quality point of view. One caveat is that they are very sensitive to small changes in the amount of damping within the cabinet and they do need a fair bit of work on the part of the end user to tune them to the room.

Here is the page dedicated to their design and implementation.
http://www.frugal-horn.com/metronome.html

At the moment I am working on an open baffle design with built-in, downward firing active bass reinforcement. It uses the Fostex FE108E Sigma for upper mids and HF, a 12 inch Goodmans Axiom 401 for the midrange and of course the active system for the bass end.

Crossover is a simple first order filter using a 4mH inductor to roll the top off the Goodmans unit and a 10uF polypropylene cap to bring in the upper mids and HF to the Fostex driver

Results from the lash-up are extremely encouraging. I have about two weeks to get the final version tweaked up for its debut at Owston.

Steve

[soulminer]

Originally Posted by The Shadow

.... and of course the active system for the bass end.

Hi Steve. Could you elaborate on this part please? Are you using subs or have you integrated a larger driver than the Goodmans onto the baffle and utilised a separate power amp for said driver?

Cheers

[The Shadow]

Hi Lee

The bass end of the baffles will be handled by a pair of MJ Acoustics Pro 50 sealed box active subwoofers. These are bolted to the base of the baffle through the feet, which are tapped to take spikes.

I have left room below the Goodmans mid range-unit for a 15 inch bass unit to go in if I feel it is necessary. These drivers will be powered by Class D digital solid state plate amps, adjustable for level and crossover frequency to give dipole bass.

The plate amps powering the current subwoofers are fed from the high level inputs via the speaker outputs on the PX25 SET amp, this to give the bass the same character as the SET as is the usual practice for hi fi sub setups.

Here's a picture of what I'm up to:

There are wings to the baffle but these are not shown on this drawing.

[jdunham]

Yes, a few pairs over the years. But these are the best so far:

http://www.bd-design.nl/contents/en-us/d146.html

I see there is some renewed interest in OB speakers, well these are a twist on that theme. A front horn for good directionality in the diffuse range and the open baffle operrating in the modal range.

The cross-over is used only on the bass system, set at around 200hz. And a slot tweeter (not in those pictures) rolling in at 10khz.

Kind regards to all,

Jonathan

[andrew ivimey]

By a quick look on the web, George, those Beymas are a pale imitation of the ESS AMT Grand Masters that Stuart talks of.

ESS Grand Masters are up there with the very best. They used to be a bargain (around £250 a pair). Now they seem to be getting RARE.

[Dave the bass]

Ian, we were talking the other day on't phone about speakers... these are the little Fonkens I was talking about...

http://www.planet10-hifi.com/fonken.html

I'm totally chuffed with them. Small driver/cab, BIG sound.

DTB

[Grog]

I can't seem to find anywhere where the ESS drivers are avaliable. they beyma's are about £250 each, so a bit much for me, i'm used to building my own drive units for nothing ;-)
I really should get round to trying my new 100mm unit as a small hi-fi speaker, fs 60-70Hz and smooth extension all the way to 10khz+ with no whizzer/sub-cone.

this might all go horribly wrong but i'll try and attach the frequency response



well i can see it, if you can't let me know.
that plot is anechoic half space at 2v rms, so sensitivity should read 90.5dB for 2.83v (which is usual for hi-fi)... and thats a proper average not the highest point on the graph via the marketing department for another 2dB added on for good measure!