Like All of us on this forum I like my music and while I prefer acoustic perfection, I also like to feel the music.
Speakers come alive with the right amount of power.
And while I love my music, I tend to I listen to it when I'm doing something... Driving, hanging out by the pool, working out etc.
For the most part, most of my rooms in my house are overloaded with speakers and subs and whatnot but they're not used very much.
And seeing how my weight room only had a ambient music source I decided to upgrade it a bit, because I wanted that club-like visceral audio experience.
So here is what I did. My weight rooms rather average sized room of 15 ft x 13 ft. And I have various equipment placed on most of the corners and such. What I noticed was that I liked the ambient sound of the overhead acoustics while working out and was hesitant to find a solution that would be at a seated position or bookshelf height.
I looked for several weeks I'm various forms and crutchfield and really couldn't find what I was looking for in terms of power handling, what I felt would be crispness, and low end punch. (I thought the Devialet golds would work, but not for $6k).
But when I finally decided I chose the PSB Cs1000 "universal" speakers. The design is nearly 10 years old, however reading about them made me be very intrigued. Either wanted titanium tweeters or some sort of ribbon/AMT tweeter as I really don't think soft dome tweeters and horn tweeters really compare in way of timbre and ambiance.
Since I was trying to work on some sort of budget, I decided upon the SMSL SA400 to pull double duty as far as amplification and streaming.
The results were really solid. However the in-wall Russound single speaker I mentioned earlier actually had a bit more low-end thump likely due to wall resonance. And having just spent $1, 300 or so was a little aggravated that it didn't hit the way I wanted. Everything else about the speakers sounded fantastic. Even the separation and imaging surprise me although that wasn't my main criteria.
So being a bit OCD, I decide I needed a solution for some bass. I wanted it to be fairly compact as space is a premium in this room but I also didn't want to err with a weak solution.
Initially wanted to have a hanging sub as I thought this would be novel, however aesthetically it just wasn't going to work out. After that I decided I wanted to have a sub that I would place in the corner and in order to eliminate any directionality I wanted to have a driver on each face of the sub that face the room.
So back to looking at speakers again, I spent another week trying to figure out which would support what I wanted.
It's worth mentioning I was very tempted and thought I found several solutions with bandpass studio subs or partial horn subs, but they were just a bit big. And the reviews seem to indicate that they would have met my needs. (I can hunt them up if anyone's interested. Some are actually quite cool and state 124db+ SPL.)
Having spent my share mfg subs in the past, I know how close these things get to almost being good. The only one I was really considering buying was like an SVS sealed sub, but I just didn't think it had the power that I wanted.
Ultimately I wound up building my own enclosure using two 10-in Alpine S series. As I mentioned I had planned on putting a speaker on the two exposed faces to the room, however once I bought them my design was going to not allow the backs of the magnets to sit on the same height. So instead I decided to put them on the same face and then put the port on the opposing face.
Seeing how I was trying to do something a little different initially I wanted to put the port on the actual corner and flush it out in a way that looked unique. But again since my speaker placement didn't work I decided to do it as this picture shows.
I used a online sub site to determine my port size and sized it I believe for 39 Hz. I really didn't want much lower than that.
Thanks to the guys here on the form I wound up using a behringer NX 3000 bridged to give me roughly 3000 Watts. Even though the speakers are designed for only 600 RMS they have a peak of 1800 watts. I suppose I could have ran the behringer in parallel but I saved myself some wiring and I like the idea of having the extra wattage overhead
As for the enclosure I chose 3/4 in birch plywood. I obviously knew the edges were going to look a bit rough, but it didn't occur to me how I was going to cover it or stain it etc.
After thinking about for a while I realized I wanted a natural stain because I didn't really want a big black or dark obelisk type structure on the corner. What's that man I had to use some sort of other joinery, of which I'd never done before. So I gave cutting 45° mitered angles a shot. And while my relatively cheap home Depot table saw never really had a problem cutting 90° cuts, 45° cuts challenged my cheap table saw.
Nevertheless I wound up getting it done and was pretty happy with the result of the enclosure. I also realized that when you cut wood out of 45° angle you also increase the surface area a bit for your wood glue. Keep in mind if you're doing a basic joint versus on the 45, you reducing your interior volume by a few percent.
I only did one basic brace between the woofers and connecting each panel. Given the width of the enclosure was only 13.5 in and it was ported I struggled to think excessive bracing would even make any difference.
Once I had it all set up, given my haste, nothing came out of the sub at first attempt. Then after doing a bit of inspection I realized that I had the amp set to mono when it should have been set to bridged. Boom! It hits!
Initial impressions -- extremely happy at potential. The behringer amp has a high pass and low pass which I'd actually forgotten about. When I said it to low pass the crossover is 100 Hertz.
That's generally okay on the sub side. But if you keep in mind I also have the SMSL streaming full range to my PSB speakers with no crossover or cut off. (45hz - 3 db & support 150 watts RMS)
And the general challenges the SMSL amp struggles and actually shuts off during some of my listening sessions. Part of this may be due to the PSBs sensitivity of 86 dB, but my intention was to reclaim some of the power draw by crossing over the PSBs.
So that meant I need some sort crossover. It wasn't really in the mood to spend money on a another miniDSP and happened upon the Dayton 408 DSP and found out that it had Aptx streaming!
I was cautiously optimistic about Dayton's ability to stream Bluetooth and then also not really sure if it would work well. But now I have the Dayton as my preamp/crossover/streamer with my SMSL playing amp duties for my mains and the behringer doing the sub work.
Overall it cranks. I think I need to do some EQ on the highs as for some reason it's gotten a touch bright on some songs I'm a sub is tighter than I expected and I think putting the port on the opposite exposed face helps fill the room evenly.
I love the experience the speakers have when they are angled down and it works really good working out as well.
This is my first experience building a ported sub, that online subcalculator for porting gave me the confidence to be able to do it properly. I've built a couple sealed subs and don't think they've turned out as well as they should have.
The finish looks largely fine. I filled in some of my less than ideal cuts with some wood glue and then put a light coat of satin clear finish on it. Looks good for weight room use.
Oh yeah. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about my setup is that I have all my equipment up in the attic. It's definitely going to get hot up there and will likely have to replace some of the stuff over time.
Let me know your questions or if
you have any suggestions!
Speakers come alive with the right amount of power.
And while I love my music, I tend to I listen to it when I'm doing something... Driving, hanging out by the pool, working out etc.
For the most part, most of my rooms in my house are overloaded with speakers and subs and whatnot but they're not used very much.
And seeing how my weight room only had a ambient music source I decided to upgrade it a bit, because I wanted that club-like visceral audio experience.
So here is what I did. My weight rooms rather average sized room of 15 ft x 13 ft. And I have various equipment placed on most of the corners and such. What I noticed was that I liked the ambient sound of the overhead acoustics while working out and was hesitant to find a solution that would be at a seated position or bookshelf height.
I looked for several weeks I'm various forms and crutchfield and really couldn't find what I was looking for in terms of power handling, what I felt would be crispness, and low end punch. (I thought the Devialet golds would work, but not for $6k).
But when I finally decided I chose the PSB Cs1000 "universal" speakers. The design is nearly 10 years old, however reading about them made me be very intrigued. Either wanted titanium tweeters or some sort of ribbon/AMT tweeter as I really don't think soft dome tweeters and horn tweeters really compare in way of timbre and ambiance.
Since I was trying to work on some sort of budget, I decided upon the SMSL SA400 to pull double duty as far as amplification and streaming.
The results were really solid. However the in-wall Russound single speaker I mentioned earlier actually had a bit more low-end thump likely due to wall resonance. And having just spent $1, 300 or so was a little aggravated that it didn't hit the way I wanted. Everything else about the speakers sounded fantastic. Even the separation and imaging surprise me although that wasn't my main criteria.
So being a bit OCD, I decide I needed a solution for some bass. I wanted it to be fairly compact as space is a premium in this room but I also didn't want to err with a weak solution.
Initially wanted to have a hanging sub as I thought this would be novel, however aesthetically it just wasn't going to work out. After that I decided I wanted to have a sub that I would place in the corner and in order to eliminate any directionality I wanted to have a driver on each face of the sub that face the room.
So back to looking at speakers again, I spent another week trying to figure out which would support what I wanted.
It's worth mentioning I was very tempted and thought I found several solutions with bandpass studio subs or partial horn subs, but they were just a bit big. And the reviews seem to indicate that they would have met my needs. (I can hunt them up if anyone's interested. Some are actually quite cool and state 124db+ SPL.)
Having spent my share mfg subs in the past, I know how close these things get to almost being good. The only one I was really considering buying was like an SVS sealed sub, but I just didn't think it had the power that I wanted.
Ultimately I wound up building my own enclosure using two 10-in Alpine S series. As I mentioned I had planned on putting a speaker on the two exposed faces to the room, however once I bought them my design was going to not allow the backs of the magnets to sit on the same height. So instead I decided to put them on the same face and then put the port on the opposing face.
Seeing how I was trying to do something a little different initially I wanted to put the port on the actual corner and flush it out in a way that looked unique. But again since my speaker placement didn't work I decided to do it as this picture shows.
I used a online sub site to determine my port size and sized it I believe for 39 Hz. I really didn't want much lower than that.
Thanks to the guys here on the form I wound up using a behringer NX 3000 bridged to give me roughly 3000 Watts. Even though the speakers are designed for only 600 RMS they have a peak of 1800 watts. I suppose I could have ran the behringer in parallel but I saved myself some wiring and I like the idea of having the extra wattage overhead
As for the enclosure I chose 3/4 in birch plywood. I obviously knew the edges were going to look a bit rough, but it didn't occur to me how I was going to cover it or stain it etc.
After thinking about for a while I realized I wanted a natural stain because I didn't really want a big black or dark obelisk type structure on the corner. What's that man I had to use some sort of other joinery, of which I'd never done before. So I gave cutting 45° mitered angles a shot. And while my relatively cheap home Depot table saw never really had a problem cutting 90° cuts, 45° cuts challenged my cheap table saw.
Nevertheless I wound up getting it done and was pretty happy with the result of the enclosure. I also realized that when you cut wood out of 45° angle you also increase the surface area a bit for your wood glue. Keep in mind if you're doing a basic joint versus on the 45, you reducing your interior volume by a few percent.
I only did one basic brace between the woofers and connecting each panel. Given the width of the enclosure was only 13.5 in and it was ported I struggled to think excessive bracing would even make any difference.
Once I had it all set up, given my haste, nothing came out of the sub at first attempt. Then after doing a bit of inspection I realized that I had the amp set to mono when it should have been set to bridged. Boom! It hits!
Initial impressions -- extremely happy at potential. The behringer amp has a high pass and low pass which I'd actually forgotten about. When I said it to low pass the crossover is 100 Hertz.
That's generally okay on the sub side. But if you keep in mind I also have the SMSL streaming full range to my PSB speakers with no crossover or cut off. (45hz - 3 db & support 150 watts RMS)
And the general challenges the SMSL amp struggles and actually shuts off during some of my listening sessions. Part of this may be due to the PSBs sensitivity of 86 dB, but my intention was to reclaim some of the power draw by crossing over the PSBs.
So that meant I need some sort crossover. It wasn't really in the mood to spend money on a another miniDSP and happened upon the Dayton 408 DSP and found out that it had Aptx streaming!
I was cautiously optimistic about Dayton's ability to stream Bluetooth and then also not really sure if it would work well. But now I have the Dayton as my preamp/crossover/streamer with my SMSL playing amp duties for my mains and the behringer doing the sub work.
Overall it cranks. I think I need to do some EQ on the highs as for some reason it's gotten a touch bright on some songs I'm a sub is tighter than I expected and I think putting the port on the opposite exposed face helps fill the room evenly.
I love the experience the speakers have when they are angled down and it works really good working out as well.
This is my first experience building a ported sub, that online subcalculator for porting gave me the confidence to be able to do it properly. I've built a couple sealed subs and don't think they've turned out as well as they should have.
The finish looks largely fine. I filled in some of my less than ideal cuts with some wood glue and then put a light coat of satin clear finish on it. Looks good for weight room use.
Oh yeah. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about my setup is that I have all my equipment up in the attic. It's definitely going to get hot up there and will likely have to replace some of the stuff over time.
Let me know your questions or if
