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Headphone drivers for low power diy speakers

post #1 of 11
1/6/10 at 4:32pm
Thread Starter 
Strange idea maybe, but I noticed that my k500's have (almost!) enough power to fill the room, and I'm a bit paranoid about breaking them so I don't think I'm driving them full power.

Unfortunately the frequency response is terrible, but maybe with a proper enclosure and driven fully they'd make some nice, low powered, audiophile speakers?


Anyone ever tried this?
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post #2 of 11
1/6/10 at 4:44pm
You might want to look at the speakers John Grado built with RS-1 drivers.
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post #3 of 11
1/6/10 at 5:38pm
^ Exactly. Grado built some speakers with their drivers. I would start my search there.
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post #4 of 11
1/6/10 at 5:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by turgonml View Post
Strange idea maybe, but I noticed that my k500's have (almost!) enough power to fill the room, and I'm a bit paranoid about breaking them so I don't think I'm driving them full power.

Unfortunately the frequency response is terrible, but maybe with a proper enclosure and driven fully they'd make some nice, low powered, audiophile speakers?


Anyone ever tried this?
You can get pretty nice bare drivers for much less than a nice set of headphoness, this would be a much easier task than making headphone drivers work as speakers. Using a set of nice full range drivers you can build some pretty decent speakers that are fairly simple.
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post #5 of 11
1/6/10 at 6:36pm
Thread Starter 
m1abrams I looked at some fullrange fostex drivers but they didn't have what I was looking for. The lowest power was about 10w and they were very cheap, ~30 dollars. If you know of any low watt, high end drivers please let me know, I haven't found any!

As for the RS-1's, very nice! but 6000$ is not the price tag I had in mind Also, I have no idea if he used a crossover, baffel step correction, etc., so not too useful, other than showing that it is doable.

Just stick some drivers into a small sealed enclosure and see what happens I guess. So has anyone ever tried (other than John)?
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post #6 of 11
1/6/10 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by turgonml View Post
The lowest power was about 10w and they were very cheap, ~30 dollars. If you know of any low watt, high end drivers please let me know, I haven't found any!
That specification is useless, there's no reason to look for low powered drivers (the figure you are most likely looking for is sensitivity).

There are plenty of full-range drivers available from the likes of Tang-Band, Hi-Vi, Vifa, Peerless, Fostex etc. Have a look here to see some of them: EUROPE AUDIO - Home page

/U.
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post #7 of 11
1/6/10 at 11:30pm
See:
Zaph|Audio
Please don't use headphone drivers. They're not designed for filling a room. Let the drivers that are designed for that do the job better for less money.
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post #8 of 11
1/7/10 at 9:06am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nisbeth View Post
That specification is useless, there's no reason to look for low powered drivers /U.
I don't agree with this. I recently bought a pair of Ted Jordan JX92s fullrange drivers; they haven't arrived yet so I can't confirm this personally but all the reviews I read claimed that they sounded best at medium to high volumes. These are 50w drivers.

Basically I wanted a system that I could listen to at night without bothering the neighbors that sounds good. I'm looking for something that could give me 60-70db in a medium sized room. The Hi-Vi do sort of fit the description, still a bit too much power, I'm just doubtful what kind of quality a 30$ driver will give you...

Thanks for the replies though!
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post #9 of 11
1/7/10 at 11:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by turgonml View Post
I don't agree with this. I recently bought a pair of Ted Jordan JX92s fullrange drivers; they haven't arrived yet so I can't confirm this personally but all the reviews I read claimed that they sounded best at medium to high volumes. These are 50w drivers.
Those two things aren't really related. The 50W spec is the power handling of the drivers (and it is by no means an exact specifications, you can easily ruin them with less and easily run them on more given the right/wrong conditions).

If you want to calculate how you are utilising the driver in the way you describe with any sort of accuracy you need to measure the drivers sensitivity (factory specs are nearly always off), measure the SPL you listen at in a specific position and then find the required power for your specified SPL. This then has to be within the drivers power handling capabilities (again, manufacturers specs are not necessarily accurate here, so measurements and/or empirical testing would be necessary to get accurate information).
... and then to get any value out of this calculation, you only have to play test tones or pink noise so there is not dynamic range (crest factor) of the signal to take into account.

If you believe that each driver has a "sweet spot" in terms of SPL where it sounds best, then you probably need to look at the driver's Thiele-small parameters such voice coil inductance, moving mass, suspension compliance etc. as well as dynamic parameters such as motor strength curves vs. coil excursion etc.

Feel free to experiement all you want, but hopefully this shows that the drivers power handling spec isn't really related to what you want

/U.
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post #10 of 11
1/7/10 at 11:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by turgonml View Post
I don't agree with this. I recently bought a pair of Ted Jordan JX92s fullrange drivers; they haven't arrived yet so I can't confirm this personally but all the reviews I read claimed that they sounded best at medium to high volumes. These are 50w drivers.

Basically I wanted a system that I could listen to at night without bothering the neighbors that sounds good. I'm looking for something that could give me 60-70db in a medium sized room. The Hi-Vi do sort of fit the description, still a bit too much power, I'm just doubtful what kind of quality a 30$ driver will give you...

Thanks for the replies though!
A $30 driver can give you a LOT of quality, and probably a lot more than anything you could get from a headphone driver being used as a speaker.

$30 driver is actually getting to a mid-high price for fullrange drivers. Many people have done incredible things with much less drivers.
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post #11 of 11
1/7/10 at 12:52pm
Just jumping in to say that $30 is a reasonable mid-range price for a driver. I just built PartsExpress's BR-1 speaker kit and the woofers in them are about $20, same with the tweeters, and they sound great. Normal drivers are very reasonably priced. The key is in how you use them.
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