Pandemic Builds

[D!sco]

I started getting into DIY audio as a way to save money, pass time, learn more, and increase my daily quality of life at home during the pandemic. This was rewarding and enriching, I can't imagine I'm the only one who started for similar reasons. Who else caught the DIY bug after being stuck inside for months? What are your builds? How do you like them? What have you learned?

I'll start with my Speedsters, not only the first audio device I've built, but the first box I ever made.

I'm shocked at what such a small package is capable of. They're not the cleanest or most neutral speaker, but they sound great. There's a slight V-shape to it's response, and a gentle, long bass roll-off. They come to life at a higher volume but are perfectly respectable monitors at normal listening volumes. It wasn't my first choice, I wanted to build the S2000s from DIYSoundGroup.com but ran into supply issues. I'll never know if I made the right choice, but I stopped thinking about it once I gave them a listen. Worth it.

After laboring over a box with portable tools, I cut my losses for the TV and went with a HiVi 3.1 build. After buying all the perfectionist crossover components, I said to hell with it and returned them. It's fine as-is.

I'm also very happy with these. The three way never struggles with details or clarity. I never feel as though I'm missing anything, besides the deepest sub-bass. I'm sure they'll be all I'll need for years. I just need to find a decent sub build... like, say... this Dayton 12"? A soft touch on the tone control knobs do good work, but it doesn't feel like a theater yet. Plenty for music, though. Wishing I had a better amp.

So that's mine, what have you all been up to since 2020 told everyone to go home and stay there?

 

[pma]

Two bigger projects during pandemic:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ew-diy-preamp-designed-during-pandemic.17675/

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...on-blameless-topology-and-measurements.21542/

 

[BelgianJoey]

I built standmount speakers based on the SB Acoustics Textreme Woofer and tweeter. Here I was testing the third order cross-over.

 

[BelgianJoey]

Finished speakers condemned to life on the floor too close together - the only place where my other half would have them - underneath a DIY TV+stereo table.

 

[D!sco]

View attachment 136207
Finished speakers condemned to life on the floor too close together - the only place where my other half would have them - underneath a DIY TV+stereo table.

Gorgeous pair, love the color matching. Shame about the placement, though. You could put them upside down to complete the look
How do they sound? Floor and otherwise.

 

[BelgianJoey]

Despite the less than ideal placement, I’m very pleased with the resulting sound in the room. I guess I got beginners luck with the crossover: In a Measurement plot with a Umik the crossover is nice and flat.
I’m thinking of adding a minidsp and class d poweramp to compensate a bit.

 

[raindance]

I would love to see proper measurements on those 3.1's. They are intriguing.

 

[LTig]

My Pandemic project was a patch for Asunder (CD ripper for Linux). I added the missing feature to upload CD information (album, interpret, tracks) to the GNU CDDB. It was hard to go back programming in plain old C after 25 years writing C++ and some Java code.

 

[dtaylo1066]

View attachment 136207
Finished speakers condemned to life on the floor too close together - the only place where my other half would have them - underneath a DIY TV+stereo table.

Great drivers. Nice job on the speakers. Hope the crossover is a good one. Did you do it from ear or calculations? Those need to be on stands. You must truly love your other half!

 

[xarkkon]

Thanks for loving the thread! Loving the builds so far. Here are my contributions:
C Notes
Bottlehead Crack with Speedball
GR Research XLS Encore

 

[BelgianJoey]

Great drivers. Nice job on the speakers. Hope the crossover is a good one. Did you do it from ear or calculations? Those need to be on stands. You must truly love your other half!

To design the crossover I googled first a lot to learn about types an orders, L-padding, Zobel impedance matching, notch filters (like here: https://www.diyaudioandvideo.com/Calculator/SpeakerCrossover/) … interesting stuff!
For the final decision what to do, I used the following website https://www.micka.de/en/2weg_en.php to simulate the behaviour. I manually created “frd” and “zma” files from the diagrams I found for the selected drivers. I used this website also to decide on the size of the box an the length and diameter of the port. Interesting to see with the simulator what design parameters have a lot of impact and for which there is some freedom.
The crossover I went for is a third order Butterworth @2000Hz - which seemed to me the best compromise given the response curves of the drivers. Having no stock of capacitors, inductors nor resistances, I knew there was no easy way to iterate or to tweak.
So there quite a bit of stress ordering the components and piecing the thing together.
I don’t know if I did everything right or if I had a lot of luck but I didn’t feel the need to change anything after comparing the (in room) response curves of my DIY speakers with my Dynaudio Evoke 30’s I used as a reference.