A pair of Stereo Speakers for my Room

[aarondewitt]

Hello everyone, i am an avid reader of another hometheater website and just found out about this forum. I have a fairly simple question to ask. I am looking to build a pair of speakers that i will put in my bedroom with out a subwoofer. They will be powered by a Nad C352. I am willing to spend around $450 on drivers and crossover componets. Does anyone have any suggestions? I just finished building a pair of Wayne J's Veritas speakers for my main room. I am looking for a set of speakers that will work perfect for my xm radio tuner. It is a fairly small room, probably 10' x 15'. I would like to place the speakers about 5 feet apart. Thanks for all your help. I have seen some great designs on this forum so far and i am ready to start building something new and different.

[JonMarsh]

Can you give us a little more information about what tools and level of experience you have? Also, how important is apearance?

At the price level you're talking about, there are a number of commercial kit offerings, some with cabinets, some without. Here we're mostly talking about or working with "pure" DIY designs done by various members.

You're right at the boundary where a little more money might make a lot of difference in how many options you have. Also, if appearcne is secondary, then a simple MDF cabinet is inexpensive, and most of the money can be put into drivers and crossover parts.

For a guy who's lived with a lot of plain MDF boxes in years past, I'm getting more fussy in my old age, especially since you can get some very nicely made and braced cabinets from PE. I spend a lot of effort in the construction of larger speakers, but I've gotten tired myself of building small cabinets- especially since it would be hard to make something that looks anywhere near as nice for the money.

If you've been reading the threads in Mission Impossible, you can see there's a number of things recently finished or close that might meet your needs.

Check out Davey's low cost dipole system- the cost is a little higher, but it should have very spacious and detailed sound at a moderate cost.


Davey's Dipole Thread


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If your situation locks you into a more conventional box speaker, there are a few other projects close to completion, like the MTM's I'm working on, using Dayton RS180's and SEAS 27TDFC, and an MT system using the Extremis 6. My implementations are both in PE cabinets, but there's no reason you couldn't build your own if you prefer, or want to save a few dollars.

There are many new exciting drivers out, like the Dayton RS series, but these metal cone drivers require more complex crossovers to get the best out of them, which unfortunately means more cost in most cases.

There's another MT system I'm building in the near future for a friend which will use a simpler crossover, but requires a more expensive midwoofer- the Peerless 850439. Until I see the final BOM and calculate costs, it's hard to say how they'll compare exactly. The 27TDFC tweeters are ~ $30; the RS180's about the same; the Peerless 859439 ~$75, and the Extremis is about $90.

The MT systems I'm doing are in 3/4 cu ft enclosures, which from PE are about $90 each in three choices of finish (beech, Cherry, and a very nice piano black- my current favorite). The larger 1 cu ft enclosures for MTM's are about $100 each.




Quality crossover components do add up, especially for the lower crososver frequencies and steeper roll off I use. Realistically, most of these designs we're doing will run close to $200 per speaker for drivers and crossover parts. If you build your own cabinets, the cost can be quite low. With these attractive commercial cabinets (see the PE site for description - they have removable baffles making driver hole relief routing and cutting quite easy), the cost will be higher, but the results will compare well with expensive commercial speakers.

If you have reasonable wood working capabilities, you might also want to consider doing a Thor clone with the MTM design we're working on. This is a floor standing TL speaker using dual 7" Seas drivers and a Millenium Excel tweeter. A local acquaintance is building this design with his son, to use the Dayton RS180 midwoofers and SEAS 27TDFC tweeter.

The cabinet plans can be downloaded at www.madisound.com. A regular Thor kit with standard components is about $1600, while the premium component kit is ~$2K. You can probably get fairly close to the overall performance, maybe 80% or more for about $400 in drivers and crossover parts, and home construction of the cabinets.

Stay tuned as these projects reach fruition.

~Jon

[aarondewitt]

JonMarsh,

Thanks for the long reply. So far the speakers that i have constructed have been fairly simple. The crossover schematics were not overly complicated and either were the cabinets. If possible i would like to stick to basic cabinet designs, which would consist of a box with bracing. TL's are fine. I have a Altendorf to use for a table saw, i can cut sheets of MDF like butter. I have a router and a jasper jig, a few clamps, thinking about getting a finishing nailer, veneer, lots of glue, soldering iron, and hand sander. I am not skilled enough to some of the crazy cool looking designs on this website. I also checked out Davey's Dipole, i do not think that i have enough experience to build an active crossover yet. I would be confident building a pair of the Thor clones. As long as the boxes are normal on the outside and no crazy angles i think i will be fine. Although i love the look of the angled boxes. Right now the easier the crossover the better. And i know that is not a good thing. I have seen a few on here that look downright menacing. I am looking for a MTM design or a TM design that will fill my room with a wonderful pleasing sound. The attached picture looks really nice. I would love to build something with the MT8a or n but i never really found exact plans on this board yet.

[JonMarsh]

As per your email with ThomasW, here's the link to the folder with PDF's for the side and front view CAD drawings for the cabinet, and the crossover schematics.

Unorthodox Eight Inch Two Way resource - Link no longer available

Thomas will also upload the pictures of the crossovers.

One thing I usually do is photograph the crossovers and make overlays with the component designators, to make them easier for non-technies to build.

We have also done MTM versions, and will upload those crossovers soon.

I'm updating the design with a version using the Seas 27TDFC, which is a little cleaner in the presence region than the Vifa XT25, and has a little better off axis dispersion- plus, it's less expensive. That crossover design is very similar to the new MTM crossover treble section, which the "release candidate" was finished yesterday. Soon to be posted. An MTM with the M8a will cost a bit more than with the RS180's, but would have greater output capability and better deep bass. It could be built with M8n's to save some money.

In the near future we'll have some sticky threads and links up with the desgin data, organized for each project.

~Jon