My Drivers..i Finally got them!

Neutral as I have seen many DIY guys.. from any field doesn't matter...fail miserably...mainly due to lack of time, patience to procure parts and ofcourse deep pockets..If you can take the beating then it's more fun and you can readily plunge into it...If you ask me it's always better to go in for a passive sub and try n find an amp to power it.

hey sachu ive heard of arasuk and can u please give me his ph no i have some work with him...

best regards,
Sandeep

yes sometimes the diy costs alot than the commercially available sub. If you are looking for price better go for brand new sub.

By looking at the calculations of the moneys to be spent..If i were you i would buy a Polk at 12k and settle down...as most guys look for an alternative to pursue their hobby as DIY'ers and make stuff at fraction of cost what they generally pay in they market..As you see Sonic can make Proac's clones at fraction.. thats what I call striking it either sides...if it were to costs more than ProAc then who would be interested???,....right

Dear subboss yeah for a beginner who dont have any knowledge regarding the speaker designing and construciton. He have to learn how to make and how to build it and even simulate it as well as he has to repeat this many times so that after few years he will know how to design and what are the precautions that one must make before he builds one. The cost goes almost to the peak in the initial stages but as time goes on it becomes less. I have seen many of diyers will destroy their enclosure after building their speakers even after months together because they didnt get their expected results.
So be cautious before making any decisions coz it will dig ur pocket sooo deep that it takes time to cover it... wht do u say regarding this subboss

hey Sonic..thats true ....it will burn a hole in the pockets...so tread carefully..I suggest as long as you don't keep your expectations high keep moving... I don't mean to tell you create a piece of rot..but be humble...I'm a DIY'er too dudes..I've owned imported motorcycle in the past and burnt my fingers

Hi Mohan,

If I build a passive sub, then how do I crossover its frequencies so that it won't overlap the main speakers (Will my Pulz power amp then be capable of handling both the loads?). Will I have to build the crossover myself or are readymade crossovers available in the market?

I want to start really small so I won't fail big time.

Thanks Junia,

I'll look over the articles. Won't build anything till my fundas are rock solid.

Am going over to Arasuk's factory to look at his drivers...He manufactureers his own drivers....His inputs are going to be insightful...btw he says glasswool is the best to use...better than dacron...when i told him abt my concerns regarding the handling and long term use of glass wool he said that they come in different grades and taht it should not be a problem cause he uses them for all his projets and they can be used safely for vented systems too..
will keep u posted on this..

Dear Neutral crossovers are easily available and will do fine..I see why your pulz shouldn't act as a good amp for sub.. good luck...My assumption is you'll be using your sub for music..so it makes life more tougher while choosing drivers...i suggest go in for two smaller ones..may be opposed than going in for single big one farting all the way to glory....

Hi Sachi,

I just realized that subwoofer design is tough after reading Junia's link. Could you please give me some websites that explain what ts parameters are. I got to start from the basics.

Dear Neutral,

i would say that subwoofers are pretty difficulty to build.
What i can suggest to u is,for starters, download the WinIsd softrware and go thru the help file.
u can download it here-
http://www.linearteam.dk/default.aspx?pageid=winisd

Then u can go thru some of the diy sites like the one Junia has given and diyaudio.com...

Then there are many sites for Diy---which u will uncover as u go deeper into it..

You can look at partsexpress showcase of projects of subwoofers, also u can have alook at the LSDG(loudspeaker driver selection guide)to learn a bit more.
http://ldsg.snippets.org/index.php3
I will try and give u more links as and when i can...

hey sachu im waiting for your reply for the mail that ive sent ...just check it man...

guys i finally bought the wood for the speakers..and..also got the components for the Xover network today:D ..will finish the XOVER today and take it for testing tom to my uncles' place.

instead of pasting two panels of 3/4 inch MDF , will be using a single sheet of 1 inch MDF for the front baffle ..
paid 55bucks/sq.feet...
The best part was, i got a cut piece of 2.5 X 4 feet (just enough for the front baffles..)..
the rest all sides will be 3/4 inch MDF..
this way i will be saving some time, money and above all..the pain of getting the two panels to stick properly(just like u said Manek )..
Will be getting them cut to size and give them to Mr. Arasu for the routing to be done...
will elt u know as things progress..
Cheers,
Sachi

BTW, i want to thank Ravi for his help and support....
visited his place and checked out his system..
BTW nice pad Ravi.. ..
system's awesome..
the room , like u said needs soe treatment..
hope u get the xover on the sub right soon.. .

Also, the same day i had the pleasure of meeting Satish(Sat)..we were supposed to check out the H/K showrrom but it was closed(at 6.30 ! can u believe it..? )..
Neway, it is heartening and awesome to see like minded people getting together and having such trust and comradeship, especially when our community is such an isolated and exclusive one..
hopefully, someday, that isolation will be broken ...
Cheers,
Sachi

Sachi,
I made some minor adjustments to the room now, put back the carpet that was out for cleaning when you were there - the soundstaging greatly improved and is back to normal now!

Gonna experiment with the xover this week - AVR1404 has a fixed xover of 80hz and I have floorstanders for fronts - there begins my problem. Will let you know how it goes.

Ravi

Guys i need your opinion on this before i give it for routing the recesses for the drivers.
The final outer dimensions of the speaker are going to be
W=12.5inches
H=33inches
D=15inches
There will be 2 ports of diameter 2inches 6 inches from the base of the speaker..
The tweeter will be placed 1.5 inches from the top of the speaker..
Distances between the centers of the drivers and of theports will be,
Tweeter - Midrange=5.1 inches(according to the equation: speed of sound/xover freq the distance between them can be a maximum of 4 inches but i am not able to do this and seems like a compromise had to be made)
Woofer-midrange=10.9 inches..

woofer and ports =7.5 inches

Let me know your thoughts as i will be going down and giving it today for getting the flush mounting thing done..

Cheers,
Sachi

p.s: Ravi, do let me know abt the xover..i'll try and find out the proper way to set it..

Benks,
Did you do research on internal bracing of cabinets ?
I have seen most high-end speaker manufacturers doing that,
Whats the advantage and did you try incorporating that ?

hey abhi,
yes i will be using internal bracing....
will be using 3/4 inch MDF for that..
Bracing is basically used to reduce the standing waves and the diffraction losses..

Dear sachu,
I have auditioned Mr.Arasuk system and it was nice and no boom at all but i have found out that the basic impact is with the subwoofers if you listen to his speakers without subwoofers then forget the impact man...... its not a true audiophile quality speakers.

If we use someaudiophile quality spekaers for surround and use some heavy subs then we can easily get the good movie experience..

I have auditioned for about half an hour with his demos. For music I dont recommend the system. Even for movies its a bit pronounced.

see man he is using two 12 inch drivers with an external amp. See any system with this config will give good and deep impact but he hesitated to play Hotel california. The system is tuned for movies.

Let me know your opinion.

best regards,
Sandeep

are u crazy....
u must have heard his subs with the bookshelves...
with the two way MTMs and the 3 way floorstanders the subs were turned off..
and my reviews were pertainig to those speakers..
and i spent 3 hours that day and was with him for another 2 hours today..
believe me man..he knows the subject and he knows speakers..
his speakers have the best finish that i ave seen to date among DIY speakers(including that of acoustic potraits)...absolutely smashing finish..

REgarding hotel californioa,
ma he played the burmeister track..a full 11 minute deep bass drum track and i totally enjoyed it ..in fact never even felt that the song was 11 minutes long..it was that involving...
His 2 way speakers were better than most the speakers that i ahve heard in the 20-40k+ bracket and recommend them 110%..

The fact is that this is the first true completely Indian speaker that i have come across which can compete with the likes of some of the scandinavian counterparts..

His insight and knowledge in speaker builing has been invaluable for me..
Cheers,
Sachi

a sneak preview of my DIY speakers....


another picture

and one more from a diffrent angle..



am getting the speaker cutouts on the front baffle done tom...
Cheers,
Sachi

there it looks good with some nice polish too...BTW what poish do you intend use...maple, teak, or plain jane black

haven't thought abt the finish yet...
today..am buying the ports..finalising the markings on the front baffle(only the ports are left),
mark out the places where the bracings are going to come,
buy the binding posts( 6 pairs )
wire for hooking up the internals of the enclosure,
talk to Mr.Arasu about the glass wool,..
tom after having the speaker cutouts i should get a far clearer picture as to how the speaker is going to look..

Regarding finishiong..i would appreciate any help and tips u guys can afford me..
Cheers,
Sachi

benks you are foolish sometimes....if you plan to seek opinion from forum members..better conduct a poll......hey you've met the poll master and failed to grab some of his ideology..... .anyways jokes apart I suggest give it a classy rosewood finish like QUAD's....atleast a DIY work of art deserves rich color....

Dear sachu... I didnt auditioned his floorstanders or bookshelf alone.. I just auditioned his HT setup. It was nice and very good. I do say but wat I say is for the price that you pay we can make very good setups. I might have auditioned his bookshelfs even. Sorry by the time that i met him it was already 8pm and i have spent about 30min there ....but see man we can easily develop a system which is far more superior for 3.5lakhs... But till now the best setup that I ve heard is from him. I do appreciate alot for his HT performance. But lots of thumping is there rather than too much detail.

Like in the surrounds he uses peerless and in the front speakers uses vifas metal domes. But according to rules it will not create the true environment and real invovement.

Even man he uses philips dvd player which itself costs very less and imagine the price of the DACs how much they will be.
Come on man... its ok.. its my opinion. I think if you audition sivas ss speakers with plinius amps then you will change your opinion.

The prob with arasuks spekaers are not giving true presence and even i find little bit foggy.
Do one thing man go to siva and then audition his speakers in HT mode he is using DENON. You see the spatial sound and localization ( if feel these are one of the true factors of surround sound ) I found that far better in sivas system.

Well man I may probably come to your home when you finish it.

And how is the sub man? how is it sounding now? I think the placement is very nice. No booooom

sachu i cant see ur enclosure pics man.... use the imageshack.ws to post the links man... some browsers sometimes dont support the images. Please send the links from now onwards....

cheers,
sandeep

Guys this is an update on the speakers.
ur inputs...?

Front View.(all drivers are flush mounted).


Rear view(with back removed)
View of bracing



View of midrange box(closed)



Closer view of bracing and ports(Ports are 17cm in length and 46mm effective diameter)



Another view of the front(midrange box is closed and filled with 1 inch thick glass wool)



Rear panel view with binding posts


All sides are fitted using Araldite and then screwed(1.25 inch screws) on.

Inner walls are sealed using GE Silicon Sealant.


Cheers,
Sachi


p.s:another day's work is left after which i will post pictures of teh finished product.

By the way..each enclosure should tip well over 30kgs

outer dimensions are 32.5x13x14.75(HxWxD) all in inches.

Effective volume of the box is 2.35-2.4cubic feet and is tuned to 29Hz.

Hi Benks,

They look very interesting!

All the Best!

Thanks for te encouraging words Vivek.
More yet to come and you guys will be the first to know.
Cheers,
Sachi

benks...what frequency are the ports/enclosure tuned too ? How many litres did you allocate for the bass unit cab ?
Would you be putting the tweeter in a separate enclosure ?

Would you physically aligning the acoustic centres of the drivers for mechanical alignment ? What slopes have you used in your crossover design and at what crossover points ?

:-) Ofcourse, this is not a private investigation....just curious

Manek.

hey manek,
the ports are tuned to 29Hz(Fb) while the 3 dB point is at 31.5/32 Hz and the bass unit volume is around 65-66 liters(2.35/2.4 cubic feet) while the total internal volume of the bare box would be around 2.7 cubic feet(70 liters).

More important than the tweeter, the midrange would be put in a seperate enclosure and the tweeter is a chambered tweeter so not many problems there. but, both the drivers(midrange and tweeter) are in one single closed box of internal dimensions 5x4x10.5(WxDxH) and also the back panel is slanted to reduce standing waves inside the midrange box.
it is stuffed with 1 inch glass wool on all except the front baffle side.

Yes, the centers are aligned and the crossover is a 4th order Linkwitz Riley arrangement for both Hp and LP and Bp.
The crossover points are 350 Hz and 3400 Hz.

Sachi

Ofcourse, this is not a private investigation....just curious

but of course, aren't we all!

benks,

about the ports, are you going to use a flared ports ? better that you do if you can....make sure you have about 3 inches of space behind the internal port tube mouth.

Would you be implementing some notch filters to correct for rising driver impedance and impedance peak at resonance ? In one of my readings of Jeff Joseph's(joseph Audio) writings, he always recommends using impedance correction on all drivers during a DIY attempt. May add to the insertion loss but since many DIY guys cant measure their speakers due to lack of equipment, it atleast helps pose a flatter impedance load on the amps.

Manek.

nope. am not using flared ports. Ideally they would have been better but since the cost of the ports themselves would have cost me 600 if i go for flared ports.
Instead i went for free ends PVC for 20 bucks.


What u are referring is the zobel.
Nope. i will not be implementing it in the circuit.
the setup is going to be an active setup and hence the problems would be much lesser than those that would be encountered in passive speakers. The main advantege is that i can change the xover frequencies until i get it right by just replacing some resistors and capacitors.


it is ideal to keep the xover point in the middle of the flat impedance plot. By putting a Zobel u can extend the flat region throughout the freq spectrum.
Both the xover points that i have chosen are pretty much in the flat impedance region of all the 3 drivers and should sound good.
The L-pad attenuator is used only for tweeters and sometimes for mids(never for woofers) to reduce the sensitivity of the drivers to that of the woofer(cause usually the woofer has lower sensitivity. But in an active setup this can be set right by just adjusting the gain(volume) in the amplifiers for the woofer,tweeter and midrange sections.
Cheers,
Sachi

hi benks,
I am familiar with zoebels and attenuation circuits....:-)

What about your cabinets ? Have you tried adhering to the golden ratio dimensions ?

Any diffraction minimising stuff done to the cabinet like curved edges ?

Manek.

You've to mention the total cost at the end of your project...will be motivation for budding DIY'ers..oh and what are you using for internal wiring??

Manek schrieb:

hi benks, I am familiar with zoebels and attenuation circuits....:-) What about your cabinets ? Have you tried adhering to the golden ratio dimensions ? Any diffraction minimising stuff done to the cabinet like curved edges ? Manek.

Just explaining some things incase someone did not understand what exactly we were talking abbout, no offence meant to anyone.

Not exactly golden ration rules, just that the dimensions were thought out to make the cabinet as narrow as possible witout contributing to baffle diffraction.

I thought about doing curved edges and my carpenter agreed to do them if i wanted them, but then again since this is going to be an active setup, i can go right around this issue by utilising the volume(gain) controls on the active xover and amplifier sections.

Cheers,
Sachi

p.s: Mohan, i will definitely give you the total cost at the end of the project.

benks wrote :

Just explaining some things incase someone did not understand what exactly we were talking abbout, no offence meant to anyone.

surely dude....no offences, in fact I had onion rings with stars over my head...good some more in detail.BTW u didn't xplain what type of cable are you using for internal wiring...

benks,
just my opinion though......
it would still be a good idea to find out the frequencies from which the diffraction phenomenon is likely to kick in(i believe there is a formula for that depending on baffle width) and then see how well you can use the gain to compensate. if diffraction starts in between the LF XO point and MF XO point then you will end up getting a boost or dip in frequency ranges by just adjusting volume which will attenuate all frequencies within the band equally.

There is a lot said about the golden ration on many DIY posts and so maybe I thought you would take that into account...helps contain internal resonances to a point, over and above the dampening material.

BTW I was reading an interesting article on the net many moons ago that someone used to use a stethescope to locate standing waves/resonances within the cabinet during testing and then compensate with filling or bracing. Are you about to do that too ?

Manek.

Manek schrieb:

benks, just my opinion though...... it would still be a good idea to find out the frequencies from which the diffraction phenomenon is likely to kick in(i believe there is a formula for that depending on baffle width) and then see how well you can use the gain to compensate. if diffraction starts in between the LF XO point and MF XO point then you will end up getting a boost or dip in frequency ranges by just adjusting volume which will attenuate all frequencies within the band equally. There is a lot said about the golden ration on many DIY posts and so maybe I thought you would take that into account...helps contain internal resonances to a point, over and above the dampening material. BTW I was reading an interesting article on the net many moons ago that someone used to use a stethescope to locate standing waves/resonances within the cabinet during testing and then compensate with filling or bracing. Are you about to do that too ? Manek.

Yeah i know the freq at which baffle step occurs. I used the "The Edge" program to simulate it.

Golden ratios do help, and it was basically modelled using "the edge" and keeping the dimensions of the drivers in mind and hence was not happy with the look of the speaker.

Yeah, i too have heard abt using stethescopes to detect standing waves, but i don't think i will do this just yet cause i will be stuffing the entire box with glass wool to damp standing waves. so that should take care of that.
Each box would have around 11.5square feet of glass wool stuffed in them.

Regarding bracing, just went with the rule of not having a brace in the middle of the cabinet. The internal bracing were made using 1 inch and 3/4 inch MDF panels.
The lower one is 1 inch while the top one is 3/4 inch.

SUB_BOSS schrieb:

BTW u didn't xplain what type of cable are you using for internal wiring...

oops!
yeah i am using two different gauges of wires.

For the tweeter and midrange I will using a 70 strand one(cost me 7 bucks a meter).

For the woofer i will be using a 180 stranded wire(20 bucks a meter, Chinese make).
Resistances of both the wires are below 0.5 ohm.

hmmm........a steth for detecting standing waves!! i never knew my steth wud do that ... :D....BTW nice work.

pramod schrieb:

:D....BTW nice work.

I'll remmeber to pass on the niceties to my carpenter and thank him.

steths have to be used at very low volume otherwise you will bust your ears.....so anyone try thats trick out BEWARE !

Manek.

Manek wrote :

steths have to be used at very low volume otherwise you will bust your ears.....so anyone try thats trick out BEWARE !

whats a steth...I'm a learner

steth-stethescope

hahaha..thanks dude I thought it was a knida hifi equipment..

Dear sachu i couldnt see the pics Ive tried with Explorer, Opera, Firefox but couldnt see them yaar man. just past the urls so that everybody can see them...

byeeee

Obi-wan,
I must say that I'm mightly impressed with all your effort.
Are you planning to build custom amplification as well, to drive these speakers ?


Great Stuff.

And as sub_boss would say

Krish