[mrhk13]

I was thinking of doing a make-your-own speakers project with my father-in-law: he's a woodworker, and I'm getting into diy audio. Since he has little interest in high quality stuff and currently has really cr*p speakers, I figured it's a good way of getting my feet wet, bond with him, and not get stuck with crappy speakers

I found these:
Audio Lab Loudspeaker Plans

It all looks quite doable, but I am confused by the cross-over scheme. It says the negative source goes to ground - is that really true? Does that mean I don't connect the negative cable from source to the speaker, but have it go to ground? And what about all the other ground connections in the scheme? I assume all of those come together and then go to the negative terminal, so completing the circuit. But then then midrange has reversed polarity, so how does that work?

Your thoughts and experience would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

P.S. Yes I'm a newbie at this. A link with more information would do me just fine. A speaker equivalent of the cmoy pages (my cmoy works great!) would be good.

 

[jclin4]

All the ground connections come together and connect to the negative input terminal: this includes the negative terminals of the tweeter and the woofer.

The positive terminal of the midrange driver should go to all the connections above. This is called reverse polarity and it is done to keep the midrange in phase with the tweeter and woofer. Don't worry, its normal.

 

[Olli1324]

Cool. I built some ProAc Response 2.5 clones last year; I'm very happy with the results. It was very stressful, but that is because (a) I built it with help from my dad and he is always stressed and (b) we built them in a workshop biassed towards metalwork (the basis of the aforementioned father's livelihood).

Good luck with your build; DIY speakers really excel in pound-per-sound value so I'm sure you will get a great pair of speakers out of this

Oh, and yeah, reverse polarity is quite normal; my DIY ProAcs have the tweeter done like that, as jclin said, to keep everything in phase.

 

[oneplustwo]

Check out htguide.com as well. LOTS of great DIY designs and a very active community. zaphaudio.com has some very well documented designs too. I've built his SR71 and ZDT 3.5 designs in the last few months and have the speaker building bug at the moment.

 

[kickassdude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oneplustwo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Check out htguide.com as well. LOTS of great DIY designs and a very active community. zaphaudio.com has some very well documented designs too. I've built his SR71 and ZDT 3.5 designs in the last few months and have the speaker building bug at the moment.

I've also build the SR71. Awsome speakers, I've bought a kit from Madisound, so it was really easy to build. The sound is clear, really neutral and non fatiguing. They can easily match $2k retail speakers.

If you got the right tools and you choose a good design, you can have some killer speakers without spending a fortune.

 

[diditmyself]

Some more links

DIY Loudspeaker Projects
Zaph|Audio
SPEAKER KITS from Parts Express ship same day and come with 45 day money back guarantee. Free Shipping Available. Order free 10,000 product catalog.
CLD Home
SDS Labs DIY Speaker World
Speakerbuilder.net!* The art and engineering of loudspeaker design
Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design