End Game DIY Loudspeakers

[Wolf]

You start out with one idea and it changes into another... then you prototype it only to discover a resonance in the walls due to the construction technique. You keep the design but change the construction technique and if you are lucky that fixes the issue. Since you spent so much time... building test boxes, taking measurements, listening, more measurements, building prototypes, finding and fixing the problems, taking more measurements followed by more listening, you hopefully arrive at a destination that deserves to be finished... which then requires even more time and effort to finish them.

If you are lucky, you like them enough to put in the extra time and expense to finish the prototypes too.

Here are a few pictures that tell part of the story of this DIY project.

View attachment 254855View attachment 254856View attachment 254858View attachment 254859View attachment 254860View attachment 254864View attachment 254865View attachment 254866

Nice unobtanium JBL 15" woofers there...

 

[Mr. Widget]

Nice unobtanium JBL 15" woofers there...

At this point all of those drivers are unobtainium. That project was from the early to mid 2000s when all of the drivers were available new in Japan.
If you like that sort of thing (and I do) it is a bummer that none of them are still available. They were all stupidly expensive but extremely capable.

 

[Wolf]

That driver in particular was a buyout at PE over here around 1999/2000, and they went fast! Off the shelves...

It's been a bit of a mysterious rare unicorn driver ever since that plays well in any alignment you can think of.

Nice that you can enjoy them...

 

[Mr. Widget]

That driver in particular was a buyout at PE over here around 1999/2000, and they went fast! Off the shelves...

It's been a bit of a mysterious rare unicorn driver ever since that plays well in any alignment you can think of.

Nice that you can enjoy them...

Oh, you were talking about the Sub1500. I thought you were talking about the much more exotic 1500AL in the earliest versions of my project. Yes, when PE was dumping the Sub1500s at below cost I bought up a couple of dozen (they were even cheaper by the dozen) and shared them with a number of friends. They were quite a deal. I still have one pair of spares just in case.

 

[GXAlan]

Oh, you were talking about the Sub1500. I thought you were talking about the much more exotic 1500AL in the earliest versions of my project. Yes, when PE was dumping the Sub1500s at below cost I bought up a couple of dozen (they were even cheaper by the dozen) and shared them with a number of friends. They were quite a deal. I still have one pair of spares just in case.

Is the 2216nd better than the 1500AL at this point? Before Greg Timbers/Jerry Moro left there was talk about the next generation 1500AL, next generation Everest getting the low TCR wire technology of the 2216nd.

 

[Wolf]

Oh, you were talking about the Sub1500. I thought you were talking about the much more exotic 1500AL in the earliest versions of my project. Yes, when PE was dumping the Sub1500s at below cost I bought up a couple of dozen (they were even cheaper by the dozen) and shared them with a number of friends. They were quite a deal. I still have one pair of spares just in case.

Yes, the Sub1500, you lucky dawg! I was a college student at the time, and they sold out before i could get any. Treat them well...

 

[Mr. Widget]

Is the 2216nd better than the 1500AL at this point? Before Greg Timbers/Jerry Moro left there was talk about the next generation 1500AL, next generation Everest getting the low TCR wire technology of the 2216nd.

The 2216Nd is the newer design, but it is also a more cost effective design. They are both excellent. Having played with both, I would pick the 2216Nd just because it is so much lighter and easier to work with. Here is Harman's internal info for each:

1501al

...Submitted by Giskard

www.audioheritage.org

2216Nd

...Submitted by Giskard

www.audioheritage.org

 

[kimmosto]

my comment was not surface science though, that speaker is at least 1.5 meters high with a relatively complex layout. The far field is at at least 4.5 meter away. At distances closer than that the tunning and summation will be vastly different.

Distance between centers of individual radiating surfaces is max 46 cm which is about 0.56 x wave length at XO frequency (420 Hz). Upper woofer has passive all-pass filter for phase matching with lower woofer so woofers create short kinda CBT line array with floor reflection below low mid. Coaxial horn has delay adjusted with DSP. Integration was designed to ca 2.5 m and above, but it's not very critical due to coaxial horn and low XO compared to c-c of the radiators. When speakers were here, listening distance was never above 3 meters.

So what should I say anymore? Was this already third false claim in the same thread? Luckily I don't need to ignore you because also this discussion shows that ASR is not worthy for DIY as long as discussion is just unnecessary depating with false claims based on own imagination and biased interpretations.

 

[mcdn]

Something like this would be pretty damn close to end game IMHO:

Purifi-6661

Except for the utter ridiculousness of using a passive crossover! The biggest advantage DIY has is to get away from the passive designs of the mass market. This is a great physical design from Troels, but it could be so much better if it wasn’t passive.

Edit 1: and it needs a third woofer right at the bottom to properly eliminate floor bounce.
Edit 2: and no waveguide on the tweeter is a red flag. These are just table stakes for modern designs, unless directivity matching is solved in other ways.

 

[Doodski]

Except for the utter ridiculousness of using a passive crossover! The biggest advantage DIY has is to get away from the passive designs of the mass market.

Exactlyyyyy! For DIY a active DSP crossover makes passive crossovers ancient speaker technology. I don't get why a DIY dood or doodette does not go active DSP crossover. They can experiment and dial in things differently on different days conduct experiments and tune the speakers in many ways. It's just so much better on so many levels.

 

[mcdn]

Exactlyyyyy! For DIY an active DSP crossover makes passive crossovers ancient speaker technology. I don't get why a DIY dood or doodette does not go active DSP crossover. They can experiment and dial in things differently on different days conduct experiments and tune the speakers in many ways. It's just so much better on so many levels.

Well even as a dedicated audio freak I don’t go twiddling the crossovers on my speakers every day! but there are no technical downsides, and lots of upsides. Unless you‘re a manufacturer with units to shift, choosing passive is a strange move. There’s a small SBIR dip around 230Hz on my main speakers - easily corrected in DSP. it’s not a problem with the speakers, it couldn’t be designed into a passive XO because the designer can’t know where the speakers are going to be positioned.

Since room correction is essential, and requires DSP, the obvious conclusion is to eliminate passive XOs altogether.

 

[Doodski]

because the designer can’t know where the speakers are going to be positioned.

More yes, yes, yes. Lol. Room acoustics can be dialed in pretty good with active crossover and PEQ. There's just so much control and adjustment. I don't run a active crossover right now because I use headphones to keep things private and quiet but when I did I tweaked the gear often and dialing it in was interesting stuff. There's no way I could have done anything near what was done with the active crossover compared to a passive.

 

[Rednaxela]

Couldn’t help feeling a bit underwhelmed by the measurements section too.

Sure I have little reason to assume they sound bad, but on the other hand what is exactly being offered for me to assume the opposite?

(End of armchair comment.)

 

[mcdn]

use headphones to keep things private and quiet

and even headphones! People moan and moan and seek the end game device, when all they need is some DSP and competent low distortion headphones. Like, the 1970s were a long time ago, can we use modern tech please?

 

[Doodski]

all they need is some DSP and competent low distortion headphones.

It's amazing what a decently recorded song can sound like with $300 headphones and PC for DSP. I want to upgrade but I keep forgetting or I put it on the bottom of the need list because the Sennheisers I have now are OK. I gotta upgrade one of these days though...lol.

 

[Rednaxela]

Since room correction is essential, and requires DSP, the obvious conclusion is to eliminate passive XOs altogether.

In all fairness he does address room EQ with this design.

 

[jhaider]

In my eyes it makes no sense trying to DIY end-game speakers if you choose the same restraints a commercial manufacturer have to make. The advantage of going DIY is that you can go way bigger, heavier and attack issues with brute force instead of extreme technicality.

I agree with this - the performance reason to DIY is to integrate something into a room that could not be commercially sold. When I think "endgame DIY speakers" this now quite old design is what first comes to mind:

http://www.cowanaudio.com/finale.html

Take a look here for Area 51: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...-design-the-easy-way-ath4.338806/post-7203648

And the next version area 52 is coming soon
View attachment 254755

Wow that is cool. Is that yours?

 

[Vineeth Kumar V]

Wow that is cool. Is that yours?

I wish..
But that design is not mine. It was first showcased on DIYLoudspeakerProjecPad group and subsequently on diyaudio by FM Subtweeter (on diyaudio).

 

[Tangband]

Cloning a passive design into an active one of the same physical layout though is much easier, because you don't need the exact same drive units, internal dimensions and so on! The F328be would be cheaper and higher performing if it was active and used DSP, but that's not what the domestic speaker market wants. That's the real appeal of DIY I think, to create things that are strictly better but which the commercial market serves poorly.

Now granted the professional market does have more options, see the love for Genelec and Neumann here, but the aesthetic is very different.

This is very true.
I did this with my jbl 530 - put away the passive crossover in one of them , making them dsp active with two poweramps. It took only four hours of trying different crossovers and eq to surpass the other passive speaker, both with measurements and at listening. After a couple of weeks its sounded even better. Then it was easy to do the same process and copy the dsp crossover with the other speaker.

Doing DIY like this has two big advantages - one is that you can restore the speaker with its passive crossover If you want to sell it. Another advantage is the building of the cabinet and finish of the speaker ( already done ) .

If you buy the speakers second hand in the first place, it gonna be of high value to.

 

[DrFG51]

I think going back to the title of the thread, you've got to face some uncomfortable truths here. I'm not real hifi cognoscenti btw - just on the back of 40 years of buying it, and a few DIY speaker builds along the way.
Just look at the pictures in this thread. There's a thousand ways and more to get sound waves out of a box. Your first mission is to choose even a rough general idea - 2 way, 3 way, 7, horn, array, passive, DSP.... yada yada yada... Many of those you won't even have heard in something close to your listening setup. If you buy expensive, retail speakers you'll almost certainly get the chance to audition them with your kit, and probably in your listening room too. So you're not *completely* in the dark. If you DIY - yes, you'll save a bit of money (or more accurately buy some time from yourself ), but you have to accept that you're taking an expensive, hopefully educated, but a gamble nonetheless. Because the chance that you can hear the set you're interested in is minimal, even assuming you're going with a published design. The chance of hearing them with your kit in your room is, let's say zero to keep it simple. So on the basis of other peoples' opinions on maybe similar designs, but in different circumstances with different kit, you still have to be prepared to lay down 4 figure sums in kit and raw materials without any real clear idea what'll happen at the end. And if you can embrace that, it's loads of fun I really like making speakers, but I'm not going to fool anyone - especially myself - that I've got anything but the roughest idea how they'll sound once I've finished. If your objective is from the start - "These are the last speakers I will ever own", then you may need to think about that a bit before you start.