New Bookshelf Speakers

[bnaboatbuilder]

Just a bought a set from your link. I'd been wanting to build some small speakers.

When I was in high school (30 yrs ago), built 2 sets of B.A.S (big a$$ speakers) because those were cool back then. Freshman year in college I built a pair for a classmate for good money.

Now I'm more into smaller speakers and had been wanting to do this. So much time has passed, I wouldn't have a clue what to buy if parting it out the way I did back then. Funny enough, I bought my stuff from Parts Express back then.

[member=64076]LooseSox[/member]  These look great!  The fit and finish on the veneer and paint are top notch.  I've always had a great deal of respect for those who have the knowledge to be able to assemble a speaker/crossover/box package from scratch.  Thank you for sharing!

For people like me who can solder, but don't have a clue on how to pick out components, I found a speaker kit online for not a lot of money.  Not sure how good these are, but they might be fun to build.

Mike A.

 

[Bohdan]

...When did Crown produce speaker systems?

IIRC Crown speakers were only produced for a short time around the middle to late 70s.

 

[Cheese]

IIRC Crown speakers were only produced for a short time around the middle to late 70s.

Thats very interesting, the Crown electronics were superb considering their price point, and their reel-to-reel tape recorders were the best of the best. A close second was Revox.
They were truly state of the art at that time. And I may add, bulletproof. There’s a reason why Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin used them exclusively for concerts.

 

[Holmz]

[member=64076]LooseSox[/member] what do you think about miniDSP and things like the DIRAC, and then bi/tri-amping to remove the cross overs and fix all the EQ, time-alignment and phase issues?

Then there are a few decent op-amp based amplifier designs in the 30-70W range with decent THD+N figures that could used...

 

[LooseSox]

[member=40772]Holmz[/member] that really depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go! I've never really got into it much myself as I never could justify the expense of doing it plus I've always been happy with a passive setup in terms of sound quality.

You'd want to have some very good quality drivers in the build as I doubt you'd make an audible (to the human ear anyway) differnece in the average living room. Throw in a few diffusers and bass traps around the room and then you'll really hear a change. In my experience, active gear won't make as big a change over passive gear vs passive gear in an optimised room environment.

 

[Holmz]

Understood... I keep coming back to the woofers and subwoofers using the majority of the power, and the low notes being a good candidate for modern class-D amplifiers, and the higher notes being potentially better served with class-AB or Class-A. Whether than is just an active cross over, or a DSP...

I need to shoot over to get some terminal strips and maybe figure out a box for holding the amps for a vehicle install. I had wires strewn over the table last weekend with a car battery and it was a total mess. Got some sound thinly coming over some ribbon tweeters, and had some VU meters in parallel. I should have removed those, but did not think about at the time. Then the power went off on both Sunday and Monday with the storms, so it was like we were spiritually in SA...

 

[LooseSox]

And we managed to keep the lights on here during the ratty weather last week! lol

Subwoofers is really where DSP will get the most bang for your buck in a home setup. A car even more so. The wave length of sub bass frequencies are huge and can cause all kinds of issues when setting up a susyem, especially if the sub is in a fixed location and can't really be moved (eg in boot of car, or corner of lounge room).

 

[Holmz]

Need to order the Nuetrik speakon connectors, as I already have holes in the speaker boxes for them and I ordered a 100 pack of M3 screws and locknuts...

The connectors seem pretty schmicko, and the mogami 4-core 11ga wire is relatively cheap and not too difficult to make up.

 

[LooseSox]

Well then, the recent warm spell here (mid 30sC) has bought on a couple of small bubbles in the veneer 

And of course, not on the back, but on the top of the bixes! I'm going to have a go at fixing it, but I have a feeling I didn't use enough epoxy all over considering the thirsty nature of mdf. I'm also in the process of building another set with silky oak veneer but this time I'm using the pva iron on technique.