Is anyone using home built/designed speakers?

I'm retired so I have plenty of time on my hands when I'm not busy doing other things. I have always wanted to design my own speakers and see if I could do a decent job of getting them to sound great after reading and researching the matter.

I decided on an open baffle style after reading the initial reviews of Emerald Physics speakers and reading what other people had to say about an open baffle speaker on various forums.

I like to work with wood-based products as MDF, particle board and a sound deadening board are not wood but related. 3 different products to tame resonances in the baffle board, base and wings - 3/4" MDF, 1/2" particle board and 1/2" sound deadening board sandwiched between them.

The design will be somewhat modular with the coaxial speaker or full range speaker baffle being a separate from the woofer baffle so I can experiment with using different drivers - the woofers will stay the same. I'll use dowels to make the changes easy until I find the right combination.

I will design and build my own crossovers with help from online schematics and experiment with different X-over points. I'll use L pads to match speaker levels.

I plan to use 2-10" Morel woofers but the rest of the drivers will be a few I have researched - from an 8" full range or a 6.5" coaxial. 2 or 3 separate X-over modules handling the bass, midrange and treble or perhaps just a 2 way design.

a 5 degree slanted baffle for time alignment.

Has anyone had success with designing their own speakers?

 

Not sure I would design a speaker from scratch, but would get great satisfaction from making speakers based on some established design, or perhaps expanding on a successful design.
I have gutted old speakers and put new drivers in, but that's as far as I have gone. When I retire, I may do the same as you. Still working, and barely have time to listen to music...
Good luck with your projects!

 

I designed mine from scratch. My wife approved a budget of $1000 total with the caveat that I use them for a minimum of 20 years. Sounds like a small budget, but this was in the mid 90's. I used The Loud Speaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason as an aid. I started with objectives such as high power handling, low bass, and close to flat frequency response. My main take away was that an individual working on a limited budget doesn't have any wiggle room to experiment. If one has plenty of cash and time, it's possible to move X-over points, try different order networks, different drivers, etc. In 2015, I removed my initial cross over boards and went with new designs. Huge difference. It would have been nice to have made those decisions at the beginning. The experience was great and I would do it again. Let me know if I can be of any help with your project.

 

OBs are great (have owned Emerald Physics CS2) - a very special listening experience

Dont believe the 10" drivers will be large enough for your application
Have a look at the RCF catalogue
They have drivers that will cover the bass and also full range co axial drivers.

The original CS2s used a DBX as a crossover and for room correction
Suggest you consider something similar as it will smooth any humps and hollows that the completed speakers may have.
(While allowing you to tune the speakers to both the room and your own tastes)
Yes you will need a couple of amps but once active crossovers have been experienced the limitations of passive systems become very obvious.

The proposed baffle should be great - way better than most use
Unsure about the use of wings - these may tend to box in the sound too much - possibly better to use a more competent driver and dispense with the wings.
Baffle slope will depend on many factors including driver choice and position.
Suggest you consider a system that will allow for the slope to be adjusted.

Room corrected speakers are great - minimising the effects of the speaker room interaction while allowing ore control of the sound.
Combine the versatility of active room correction with the special way OBs deliver and you will have a great pair of speakers

 

I really like the Eminence Alpha 15A for OB bass. I think Emerald Physics used a version of that at some point.

 

Yep, in my best system I have homemade speakers.

Advantages you can have over commercially built units are:

1. Better built cabinets. Thicker sturdier, less resonant.

2. Better drivers

3. Chosen form

4. No mark up costs

5. Overall much better bang for buck unless you make some poor choices

Where one can lose out is in design choices and crossover design. I counter this with using active crossovers and ensuring sufficient frequency overlap between drivers.

It's a cool thing and proof is in the pudding.

 

Designing and building speakers can be very rewarding. Vance Dickesons loudspeaker design cookbook is a must to learn the basics. I started with acoustic suspension designs using cheap drivers and small cabinets. Then graduated to vented systems and larger cabinets. My current main system consists of 6 cubic foot cabinets, 10 and 12 inch woofers on the top and bottom, a dynaudio D28 horn loaded tweeter and a pair of Focal 5n313 midrange arranged in a true D'Appolito with phase and time aligned 6db/octave crossovers. This system took over 4 years of trial and error to get right. If you have the patience and basic math skills you can save tens of thousands of dollars and have the satisfaction of building it yourself.

 

My homebrew speaks are in my mancave so I can make cosmetics what I want them to be, no wife influence. So cosmetically they are not close to commercial grade, the focus is on SQ.

If I ever get bored I'll veneer (birch ply exteriors, tung oiled is standard), but not likely so, and I haven't made a grill yet!

 

it's really fun to design and build your own speakers! extremely good bang for the buck if you are patient and have the tools for the job. i have had great success with enclosed and ported designs as well as DIY mobile audio and subwoofers.
i have never tried open baffle but it looks like a fun challenge. just make sure you have the proper drivers that have the correct T/S parameters.
a guy on audiokarma builds them all the time (poultrygeist).
one thing that will help is RTA software and a good microphone to be able to measure your response, especially when it cones to crossover points and level matching.
some key areas for you to investigate-
BSC (baffle step compensation circuit)
zoebel network (flattens the impedance for smoother response)
distortion plots of your drivers if possible- you will want to tame any high peaks and break-up modes with your crossover circuit- either with steep roll-off or notch filters.
see the site run by troels gravesen. he is as good as they come for DIY speakers designs- he may have done an open baffle design, not sure.
good luck!

 

I’ve never tried it but I’ve always been curious about it. I think I’d be more likely to build a kit from somewhere like Parts Express than to start completely from scratch.

Meanwhile Id love to see pictures of some of the home-brewed speakers you guys have made.

 

My DIY speakers had been upgrading for 15 years. I have been using it for 25 years.

1 design
It’s bsaed on dynaaudio DIY Twenny!

2 the treble : silk dome esotar t330d
The mid/bass : 2x dyna 6.5 inches.

3 wood:
initially used very thick natural teakwood.
After 10 years, upgraded to natural Chinese Black ebony wood. ( it’s exotic wood and very expensive)

4 crossover. Initially used external crossover so that it easy to upgrade the parts

A Coils. Solen aircoil —> solen hexagon airfoil —>solo pure copper foil—> silver plated copper aircoil —> pure silver air coil(kimber cable 5N for treble, 4N for bass)

B internal speaker cables. Silver plated cable —> 5N silver for treble/ taralabs alloy for bass

C resistors : vishay—> Mcap Silver

D capacitors: Solen + real cap Teflon + MIT —>solen + Mcap supremes + musicap—> Mcap silver + mcap supreme + musicap—> mainly Duelund copper in oil+ Duelund aluminium in oil + audio-note silver in oil

E biding posts : wbt

It costs me an arm and a leg. But it’s a lot of fun.

 

My near field setup is with home built monitors. I was set to purchase Adam or Dynaudio for my mastering projects, but thought I would first set aside a few days to mod a pair of bad sounding Celestion-3 speakers. Nothing to lose.. the drivers are good enough, just a poor design ported cabinet, no acoustic dampening, terrible 2nd order crossover with cheap components. The challenge returned surprising dividends. The new crossover features split CFAC inductors (2nd order cap-less) and a fast cap asymmetric third order section for the tweeter, quality non-inductive resistor select for tweeter level, changed to an acoustically resistant aperiodic cabinet vent and critically placed internal acoustic dampening... the "real stuff" ... fiberglass. Time align is at the woofer at ear level. (upside down or woofer on the inside) How do they sound? Took the box out of the box.. Superb midrange, fast transients for immediacy and sharp imaging, (titanium tweeter) dynamic, not a lot of bass, a slight bump at 130Hz that I can live with. I was still expecting to purchase the Adam monitors, but no need to. I had auditioned them, loved the Adam ribbon top end, but actually favored the Dyns.

 

is there any way you could bi-amp? using a pre amp feeding a separate amp for woofer / tweeter opens the door for DSP based crossovers which are much easier and more versatile to use as crossover networks.
Mini DSP is very cheap and extremely powerful when used as a crossover. From your PC you can change crossover frequency, crossover slope, driver level and with parametric surgical EQ you can eliminate any objectionable peaks or break up modes by further suppressing the frequencies above or below the crossover point.

 

Thanks for your suggestions!!!!!!!!!

I will be using dual subs and have a Velodyne SMS to control the bass, hence the 10" drivers which will be high passed at 70 Hz. I read that I would need to use huge woofers to get the bass but I don't want to build a monster sized speaker because I want a narrow baffle for better imaging and the baffle for the mids/highs will be very small as well which is why I'm building a modular system. I think the dual 10s will get me to 70Hz or so but I'll discuss it with Parts Express to make sure I'm right about it.

The wings will be small and mainly used to support and further dampen the front baffle and to hide the X-overs and wiring. I plan to use outriggers to adjust the angle and level the speakers. Everything will be glued using rabbet joints, dados and dowels and no nails. It's as much a woodworking project as it will be a speaker project. The wings and everything else will be covered in black glossy Formica except for the front baffle which will be veneered thin strips of redwood I cut from 2x4s which should be interesting to look at.

I want to stay all analog.

Should take a few weeks to make the enclosure and all the jigs I'll be using to ensure uniformity.

 

Not bad at all. I like the better au-naturale (without the covers). Well done.

 

Lots of information on the web about this... I would start with this site;
diyAudio

I have thought about building full-range or open baffle, more time when I retire in a few years.

 

Have you seen the Nelson Pass Slot Loaded Open Baffle design? Very cool. Wide, but awesome. And OB speakers don't have to be flat and wide. They can use folded wings, to minimize their perceived size.

 

Roger 'Syd' Barrett used his own DIY built speakers for decades.

 

In answer to the thread question, yes, I still have some speakers I made myself floating around in my family. (My friends' Audax-based setup now upgraded to sister brand Focal's 936 towers). Wanting to have great speakers and not being able to afford it led to becoming a professional loudspeaker engineer as a matter of fact!

Over time, changes in technology and mass production have by now made it really difficult to make something better than what you can buy. But in some rare areas-high efficiency designs and yes open baffle-there isn't much to buy and it's expensive. And since you're retired, hey, go for it!

As for the baffle, let's go back to how sound works. The speaker cone moving back and forth creates a pressure wave, which travels through the air at 343-ish meters per second (around 1100 feet per second). When the cone moves forward it makes high pressure in front, and low pressure wave in back. Without any baffle, the two will simply cancel out, thus if you play a very low tone through a woofer in free air in theory you hear nothing (in practice you'll hear some distortion components). If you start to put a baffle around it, now the front and back pressures have to travel to cancel each other out. The size of the baffle compared to the wavelength affects the cancellation, complicated by the fact that drivers don't radiate perfect waves as you go higher in frequency. So you are jumping down a big rabbit hole my friend-you have discovered a great way to keep busy in retirement ha ha! I think a very skinny baffle around 10s is going to have a tough time outputting 70 Hz-oh, you'll hear something, because the cancellation probably won't be perfect, but you'll be sucking up a lot of power.
UM, WAIT, you plan to have NO enclosure? That really won't work too well. At the midbass frequencies with no box you can get sound, but you'd need large amps and the woofers would be straining back and forth. At the truly low frequencies, forget it. Plus, the "benefits" of open back i.e. spaciousness are really in the mid and high frequencies. So the 10s really must have an enclosure-which is an entirely different thread-running up to maybe several hundred hertz and crossing over to the rest.

I also highly recommend "Loudspeaker Design Cookbook 7th Edition Book" from www.parts-express.com! ; Vance is super smart in addition to being a nice guy. I'd also VERY MUCH recommend you get into active crossovers, maybe the mini-DSP models, because trying to adjust passive crossovers with so many variables going on is just rather futile. You should also get REW (Room Eq Wizard, freeware) and their UMIK-1 so as to be able to actually measure and quantify what you have going on, instead of just trying to mess around by ear. (I can already imagine someone posting "but what you hear is what matters!" however I am not talking about that, I mean for engineering and design purposes, where it is vastly harder to make progress through initial stages without measurement to help you sort out problems. Once you get to something good, then the listening is the final arbiter of design tweaks). Here are some other places to get advice:
Speakers - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews
Multi-Way - diyAudio

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/irfDshLmGujyS3fF7

Homemade garage speaks

 

Open baffle designs do work. Legacy Whispers come to mind. Wide front baffle is necessary to minimize power loss in the 200 hz. region. Skinny baffles (tower speakers) and small woofers just don't move enough air to play at decent spl levels in the lower octave (20-40 hz.).

 

Lots of great OB designs on the web that I bookmarked over time but some are just too complicated for my simple abilities.

After listening to the comments I may have to go with larger woofers, like 12s and make the baffle a bit wider. I'll speak to Parts Express and do more research as there are forums on OB designs which I have visited. I can also enclose the woofers and use some passive radiators and smaller woofers. Everything is up in the air except I want to use coaxials or a full range to get the imaging they provide in an open baffle arrangement.