Great to see someone interested.
It's a brilliant hobby which has very rewarding results. Not everything you make will sound to your liking, but when it does it's a great feeling having built something that can compete with 'normal' speakers in a higher price range. Satisfying to say the least.
I’m going to recommend a few things to keep in your mind when looking at enclosures to build, but also remember that these are simply my views on the hobby after building a few pairs of speakers. What I say is what I would do, but make up your own mind. I’m as much a fool as anyone else. Most likely, I’m a bigger fool.
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Originally Posted by fraseyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I've been trying to think of a fun easy hobby that I can do after I got angry at continuesly failing and gave up on RC Heli's. Speaker building has really caught my attention as it looks fairly easy, fun and satisfying as you get a cool finished product. My dad had also built a few speakers (haven't tried any of them though as I don't have a suitable receiver...) so maybe it runs in the family?
But first I need to know some things... How much skill is needed? My only experience in electronics is a breadboard electronics kit that I had when I was 10 and the electronics stuff I have done at school. I have some experience soldering both from metalwork and electronics. Woodwork is something I have never been that good at but I have got some experience with that too.
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How much skill is needed depends a lot on how far you want to take it.
In essence, there are three routes in speaker building.
1.Stick with enclosures that are designed by others and are proven designs.
2.Modify enclosures designed by others.
3.Design them yourself.
Since you are (as I understand it) fairly young, I'd stick with speaker enclosures designed by others.
Modifying enclosures needs you to have built multiple different enclosures in order to be able to estimate how changes in design affect the sound. This can be done through mathematics and simulations, but since you are just getting into this, I’d highly advise you not to even think about the mathematical side of speaker building. For more of the same reason, skip number three as well for now.
Speaker designing is pretty much a fully understood progress by mathematicians and physicist but it’s a very tough subject and not something for anyone just starting to get into this hobby. Besides that, there’s always an experimental side so you’ll end up having build a lot of variations to your design before you hit the jackpot and have a good sounding design. There’s math behind it – but it isn’t perfect.
So, sticking to predesigned enclosures, how hard is it? That depends highly on the design. There are a lot of easy to build designs, and just as many which require some serious woodworking skill.
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Originally Posted by fraseyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Is speaker building that hard? If I can just follow a guide for my first build that would help, otherwise I might get frustrated and give up. Is there a VERY VERY easy step by step guide for complete noobs to building speakers?
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It’s not hard, so long as you stick to a design that you feel confident about being able to build. There is no ‘step by step’ guide. The reason for this is because there is no golden rule to speaker building. Firstly, there’s standmounts or floorstanders. Then there’s single driver speakers, two ways, two and a half ways, three ways, line arrays, electrostats (stay the heck away from these for now!
), and plenty more. Then there are the methods of using these setups: transmission lines, bass reflex, horn speakers, quarter wave, dipole, open baffle, etc. There are tons of designs freely distributed around the web. That makes this hobby fun, but also hard.
Your first build should be picked with two things in mind:
1.Easy to build.
2.Low cost.
In all honesty, sound isn’t that important yet. This is a learning stage and
you will get sucked into speaker building. The result of having built a speaker and actually listening to it is very addictive, so sooner or later you’ll be looking for more speakers to build. Which is also the reason for keeping it cheap now. It’s your first build, and you’re bound to make a bit of a mess of it. You might build it perfectly, which would be splendid, but it’s important to keep it cheap for now in case you do mess up. Just a precaution. There’s plenty of time left to spend a lot of money…
Ok, you’ve got the requirements for the design. What options are there then?
Well, not many. You’re basically looking at a single driver design. Multiple drivers give a lot of problems. Most of the times, their designs are relatively easy to build as they are just boxes with a transmission line or bass reflex port. The vast majority of commercial speakers are speakers with multiple drivers. There are some upsides to building a multiple-way speaker:
1.Great extension.
2.Use of large drivers for the lows results in loads of slam and pressure.
However, the problem with these speakers are easy to see:
1.Multiple drivers. Equals more money to spend.
2.Needs a crossover. Equals more money to spend and more work to do.
Those are just my two most basic complaints against speakers with multiple drivers. My complaints against them go further than that but aren’t very relative to building them, and are more of a personal approach. The filterless single driver approach is my favorite in speakers. If you want to read up on the differences between these types of speaker and why one would be better than the other, Nelson Pass has a great down to earth article on the subject on his site,
Pass D.I.Y. Home of DIY Audio, Amplifiers, Preamps and Speakers.
Let’s ignore my opinions on the theory behind the speakers for a second and focus on why I said a single driver.
The pro’s:
1.One driver. Cheap(er).
2.One driver. No crossover, equals cheap(er) and less work.
3.On some designs, no filter at all. Cheaper and less work again! Double win.
Downsides:
1.Often, the enclosure is somewhat tougher to build than a speaker with multiple drivers.
2.Not as much pressure in the lows.
I said the enclosures are harder to build. This can be true, but is too much of a generalization. I said this because a lot of single driver speakers are so called horn speakers. These are designs that are based around a rear loaded horn shape. Rear loaded since the ‘beginning’ of the horn starts at the rear of the driver. The horn is most often calculated for bass response, and uses the horn shape to amplify the calculated frequencies. These are pretty complicated builds for a first build, though doable if you spend some time. The second speaker I built was Buschhorn MKII sporting TangBand drivers:
As you can see, that might not be ideal as a first build. What would be ideal is a simple TL (transmissionline) or BR (bass reflex) speaker based on a single driver. Must be cheap too, so where does that leave us?
I have great experiences with Tang Band W4-655A / W4-655SA drivers. There are quite a few simple to build designs using these drivers. The drivers themselves cost roughly €25 a piece here in Europe, and sound pretty damn well for that price. I used them in three speakers.
There are some designs for the W4-655 here:
TangBand - Lautsprecher
Other than this – I can’t be much of a help. Just look for single driver speakers with relatively cheap drivers.
And oh, don’t worry about getting frustrated and giving up. See it through, build the speakers, and enjoy them. Then you’ll get
really hooked.
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Originally Posted by fraseyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Are the parts and stuff easy to come by and fairly cheap? What type of money are we talking about for a simple easy first build?
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Parts are easy to source and can be cheap. My first build was the Cyburg Stick (see here, might be a fun read:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/mak...sticks-244099/)
Total cost for those speakers, including filter but excluding paint was about €150 for the pair. Which should mean roughly $150 in the US. Speakerbuilding can get expensive very quickly, but doesn’t have to become that.
As a rule of thumb, most items cost a quarter of the price of what they are being sold for in shops to build. Sure, it’ll cost you some time (which is just good fun) and it’ll save you a bunch of money in the end compared to a commercial speaker.
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Originally Posted by fraseyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Hmm... Lots of questions. Hopefully this hobby will be right for me and I'll be able to have something to do other than playing video games...
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It’ll definitely get you away from video games. It’ll even get you out of the house to source parts!
Do you have the room and the tools to build them?
Be careful.
Wear eye protection, mouth protection when sanding or sawing, ear protection when it gets loud (ending up deaf after building speakers, wouldn’t that be a bitch?
), etc. You’ll probably be working with MDF. It’s extremely easy to work with and very rigid, but it is also bad stuff to get in your lungs. Don’t mess about with power tools and get people to help when you need it. Don’t work with power tools unless there’s either a friend or relative within shouting distance or a phone nearby. I hope this doesn’t come across as overly protective, but it’s easier to take off a thumb than to have it reattached… I’ve seen it happen and it’s not something I would recommend.
Hope that helps a bit,
Rik
Oh, a must to visit is
diyAudio Forums - Loudspeakers.
