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- Dec 17, 2021
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NOTE: this started with dual subs, then I built two more here. Here is the total set of 4 custom subs:
I just finished up a pair of subs for my office, and thought I'd share my project. I’ve been making a lot of audio upgrades in my office recently, and the most recent was a quest to get better bass response. My wife's office is across the hall from mine, with a bathroom in between that we both share a wall with. She works all day like me, so I needed to keep that in mind. My office is just 910 cubic feet (around 11’x10’x8’), so I knew I didn’t need anything epic to pressurize the room, but I still wanted nice smooth bass with good extension. I’ve also never really designed/built/finished speakers of any sort before. However, I do have a good table saw, router, jig saw, lots of clamps, and everything else I needed.
With all this in mind, and very little research, I designed an 8-inch sealed sub enclosure for the Dayton Ultimax UM8-22. I know the of the larger Ultimax’s reputation and capabilities in Home Theater use, so figured/hoped the miniature version would perform well for it’s size. I followed their recommended volume of .35 cubic feet. For enclosure dimensions, I made the sub's baffle as small as technically possible when using 3/4" MDF, and then added the needed depth to accomplish the correct volume with bracing and the driver inside it. No magic here. I designed it in SketchUp:
And so I began making a giant mess in my basement. After cutting up the MDF, I worked thru gluing the enclosures together.
The last part of the getting enclosure together was building the baffle. Because the face plate was so close to the driver size, I had to counter sink the mounting nuts because they’d end up getting sandwiched between the face and the enclosure, and I also had to grind the inside edges or the hit the driver.
From there I was able to mount the driver for a test ride to see how it would sound. I hooked them up to a Crown XLS1500 that I got used for cheap off ebay (525 watts per channel into 4 ohms). I was able to test them different heights, and they actually measured best about 6” off the floor. That's great because I wanted the subs up on legs for several reasons. They would lift them up out of the toe stubbing zone, it’d make them easier to move when vacuuming the floors, and I thought it’d look cool and unique. I was really happy that it measured well too!
For the finish, I wanted them very dark and glossy with a high quality finish, but knew that painting was way out of my skillset. I saw a DIY speaker job somewhere that used Wilsonart Masonite, and I thought it looked great. I ordered a sheet, ran several edge and finishing tests with my router, and became confident I could get a good finish. I went to work.
Once they were laminated and finished (that was a lot of work to get right), I attached the legs, installed the speaker connectors, added some polyfill, and finished them off by mounting the drivers.
And here they are:
This is where they now live!
Next up was dialing them in as best I could with REW, a UMIK-1, a 70 Hz crossover, and a parametric EQ app on my Mac. I have a new miniDSP Flex on order, so when that gets here I’ll have a lot more tools to dial them in. That said, I’m very impressed with how well I was able to get them set up so far. I am getting a pretty flat frequency response with extension down to 10 Hz. I can play a little over 95 dB average volume at my seated position before the subs run out of steam and make bad noises. They absolutely rock and sound way bigger than they are, and I'm incredibly happy with them.
In this graph, the aqua line is my current room response just using these, a 70 Hz low pass dialed in on the sub, and EQ on the Mac compared to the purple line which is just my speakers alone (Revel M105s) with no filters and with zero EQ. The point with this is that you see zero issues at the crossover point and those filters work just fine. The 50 Hz null is from the room and can only be dialed out with a 3rd sub.
I just finished up a pair of subs for my office, and thought I'd share my project. I’ve been making a lot of audio upgrades in my office recently, and the most recent was a quest to get better bass response. My wife's office is across the hall from mine, with a bathroom in between that we both share a wall with. She works all day like me, so I needed to keep that in mind. My office is just 910 cubic feet (around 11’x10’x8’), so I knew I didn’t need anything epic to pressurize the room, but I still wanted nice smooth bass with good extension. I’ve also never really designed/built/finished speakers of any sort before. However, I do have a good table saw, router, jig saw, lots of clamps, and everything else I needed.
With all this in mind, and very little research, I designed an 8-inch sealed sub enclosure for the Dayton Ultimax UM8-22. I know the of the larger Ultimax’s reputation and capabilities in Home Theater use, so figured/hoped the miniature version would perform well for it’s size. I followed their recommended volume of .35 cubic feet. For enclosure dimensions, I made the sub's baffle as small as technically possible when using 3/4" MDF, and then added the needed depth to accomplish the correct volume with bracing and the driver inside it. No magic here. I designed it in SketchUp:
And so I began making a giant mess in my basement. After cutting up the MDF, I worked thru gluing the enclosures together.
The last part of the getting enclosure together was building the baffle. Because the face plate was so close to the driver size, I had to counter sink the mounting nuts because they’d end up getting sandwiched between the face and the enclosure, and I also had to grind the inside edges or the hit the driver.
From there I was able to mount the driver for a test ride to see how it would sound. I hooked them up to a Crown XLS1500 that I got used for cheap off ebay (525 watts per channel into 4 ohms). I was able to test them different heights, and they actually measured best about 6” off the floor. That's great because I wanted the subs up on legs for several reasons. They would lift them up out of the toe stubbing zone, it’d make them easier to move when vacuuming the floors, and I thought it’d look cool and unique. I was really happy that it measured well too!
For the finish, I wanted them very dark and glossy with a high quality finish, but knew that painting was way out of my skillset. I saw a DIY speaker job somewhere that used Wilsonart Masonite, and I thought it looked great. I ordered a sheet, ran several edge and finishing tests with my router, and became confident I could get a good finish. I went to work.
Once they were laminated and finished (that was a lot of work to get right), I attached the legs, installed the speaker connectors, added some polyfill, and finished them off by mounting the drivers.
And here they are:
This is where they now live!
Next up was dialing them in as best I could with REW, a UMIK-1, a 70 Hz crossover, and a parametric EQ app on my Mac. I have a new miniDSP Flex on order, so when that gets here I’ll have a lot more tools to dial them in. That said, I’m very impressed with how well I was able to get them set up so far. I am getting a pretty flat frequency response with extension down to 10 Hz. I can play a little over 95 dB average volume at my seated position before the subs run out of steam and make bad noises. They absolutely rock and sound way bigger than they are, and I'm incredibly happy with them.
In this graph, the aqua line is my current room response just using these, a 70 Hz low pass dialed in on the sub, and EQ on the Mac compared to the purple line which is just my speakers alone (Revel M105s) with no filters and with zero EQ. The point with this is that you see zero issues at the crossover point and those filters work just fine. The 50 Hz null is from the room and can only be dialed out with a 3rd sub.
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