Diy towers

[Audio_Rob]

Hey everyone, Its me again . Unfortuanatly I didn't get much feedback to my last post on the subject, nor have I found much helpfull information online. But here we go again!

I wanna take a shot at my first pair of DIY speakers. I currently own a pair of 3 way floor standing vegas with 10" woofers. Basically I want something that will play equally loud, throw out as much low end, but have a much nicer sound, I find the vegas to have raspy highs, and poor imaging.

Not to toot my own horn, but im very skilled when it comes to cabinet making, I have a big shop, with routers, table saws, jointers, planers, biscuit cutters etc etc, AND a big supply of very expensive and exotic wood. So im gonna make something very pretty

So I ask, can anyone recommend a decent Kit for around 500$ ?
or even some drivers that work well together and perhaps a crossover design i could use, i know very little about crossovers and understand that the pre-made ones sound bad, and the online calculators tend to have flaws.

[JonMarsh]

The only thing similar to your requirements that's been done around here is the dual 8" woofer MTM system I designed, which a number of folks have built up, but the total driver and crossover cost is higher than your target, even though it's a two way, at about $700 for four 8" woofers, two tweeters, and the relatively complex crossover.

Pete Mazz built a set for his brother, as described on his site no longer agailable. and in this thread.

Paul H built a very nice set, as seen next:




And there's quite a bit of discussion about ported M8a driver based designs in
this thread.

[Brian Bunge]

Jon,

How about the TL version of the Modula MTM's you designed? I guess it may not play as loud or go as low as the CV's, but it would be a huge step up.

[JonMarsh]

That's a good suggestion, too, Brian.

The real crux of the matter here, IMO, is that at Rob's requested price point, putting together a true three way would be difficult to do becuase of the crossover costs- and dual 8's puts you in the same category as a good 10" three way on the bottom end, but can manage a good two way with the right design approach. The larger MTM's ported or in a TL should go quite deep (mid 20's), and the swept volume is a function of Sd and Xmax- don't know what the CV 10" Xmax is, but since they usually emphasize efficiency over linearity, it may not be more than 5-6 mm, which would be about the same as the M8a.

If he really want's to kick some butt, he should save up a while longer and go with something like the project you and Chris are working on, a ten inch three way with dual 10's and an MTM mid unit.

[Jim85IROC]

Getting low frequency output to match a Cerwin Vega speaker isn't easy. They are very efficient, so they can get very loud with modest amounts of power. I have a pair of 12" 3-way Cerwin Vegas that I use to DJ small parties with. I'll also agree that the mids and highs suck and imaging is terrible. Where the CV's shine is at high volumes. When they are loud, their mids come around and sound pretty good, and the bass just keeps pounding.

There's very little out there that's going to get as loud as a CV with the same amount of power. To match the CV's output, I'd step up to a 12" woofer with good x-max and make sure you've got enough amp power to push it. Another similar solution may be to pair up 2 10" woofers.

Off the top of my head, a 3-way with an Adire Shiva, Vifa P13 and Vifa D25 or D27 seems like it could be a possibility. I'll bet we can find some P13/D25 filters out there to use as a baseline, then model the Shiva/P13 filter topology, and suit to taste. The Shiva is a 4 ohm driver, so you'll get more power out of your amp, and it's got great power handling and a large x-max. The Shiva has its first breakup at 780hz, but if you roll off the Shiva at around 400hz with a 4th order acoustic, you should achieve a good baffle step compensation, and still attenuate the breakup well enough to make it largely inaudible. The breakup of a paper cone won't be the awful thing it is with an aluminum cone.

Of course, all of this doesn't mean much unless we can find measured frequency and impedance data. DST and Adire have this data on their websites, but whether or not it's all that accurate is unknown.