Crackyflipside's RS225/RS28A Surround Build

[crackyflipside]

Time for another round of speakers to build, thankfully these MT's look like much less work than the Khanspire WMTMW. I went with Mark K's design after kgveteran told me about them. I do like powerful sound so it made sense to go with these rather than an MT designed for a 7" driver. The side surround speakers place me in a strange position because of their location.

So if a speaker was built with a pretty deep cabinet, people walking to the back row would constantly smack their heads with the cabinet. So after some thought, I decided to do a hybrid in-ceiling speaker. I wanted the front of the baffle to be exposed but not have a deep enclosure, I didn't want to sacrifice internal volume so most of the box is hidden in the ceiling, and I wanted to keep the same size of the front baffle. Here is the rough enclosure.

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Now the shape of the speaker presents the problem that a 8" woofer would not fit in the regular orientation of woofer bottom/tweeter top, so it will essentially be upside-down with the tweeter on the skinnier bottom part of the baffle. The rear surrounds will just be boxes, nothing funky like this.

[crackyflipside]

Rears are done:

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[TacoD]

Looking great! I only wonder why you put the tweeters at the top, I would flip the speakers.

[HareBrained]

What part of the cabinet is the baffle and what part is in the ceiling? It's unclear from the distance pic.

[---k---]

The triangle portion is likely in the ceiling. Its not deep enough to fit an RS225.

[chasw98]

Looking great, Chris! I have to get down to your place and see it soon. You have done an outstanding job. As Taco said, I would flip the speaker so that the woofers were closest to the ceiling and the tweeters hanging dowm.

Chuck

[crackyflipside]

You guys that are confused, the box in the first post is the side surround speaker, the finished one is the rear surround and is just a regular box.

Now the shape of the speaker presents the problem that a 8" woofer would not fit in the regular orientation of woofer bottom/tweeter top, so it will essentially be upside-down with the tweeter on the skinnier bottom part of the baffle. The rear surrounds will just be boxes, nothing funky like this.

Looking great, Chris! I have to get down to your place and see it soon. You have done an outstanding job. As Taco said, I would flip the speaker so that the woofers were closest to the ceiling and the tweeters hanging dowm.

Chuck

I would like to bring them lower but the side surrounds are pretty much stuck at the ceiling level so I don't want the tweeters in the surrounds to be at different heights. Still we will be able to angle them downward and then put screws through the side shelf to hold it at an angle. We weren't able to finish the sides today because that involves chopping up the ceiling and time we didn't have. You can come by when we got it acoustically treated!

K, the triangle part is the front baffle and I didn't think it would fit at first but once you take the double thickness front baffle into consideration, it gives you 1.5" so you don't really need much space since it isn't too deep. There is actually space in the back and it isn't a really tight fit. To sort of protect from the woofer maybe being to close and the probability of reflections, I doubled up the rigid fiberglass behind the woofer. It is pretty experimental for me and I have absolutely no idea how it will sound but if the sound is close to the rear ones, it should be fine. It's also just a side surround so my standards aren't as high as the rear.

[crackyflipside]

Completed and even after all the modifications... WOW ;x(

But now the horror story of the install. So the surround left speaker goes in perfect after we cut the hole. We are cutting the hole for the left surround speaker and then....... the return air duct is in the way... FFFFFFUUUUUUU- :M so we sit around for a little bit wondering how to fix this dilemma that we only have 6" of clearance once we go through the drywall; we took about 5 minutes. We decide to chop off his head... the speaker, of course, and just make it an infinite baffle since at the worst case it needs to be eq'd, I have a spare BFD that could be put in the signal chain. So we get a circular saw and chop off the box part and then install it.

I can't tell the difference between either speaker so it didn't change it that much. Of course I will run REW when I get some time. They got some serious bass capabilities for their size;p very surprised with how good they sound. First movie was Eagle Eye and they worked perfectly, never once did I ever notice them (a good thing!) it was just like the sound was surrounding me and never like, "Oh, that was the side surround". Once the mains are up and their tweeters are in the correct heights and the acoustics are in order, it will really make that illusion even more realistic.


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[servicetech]

I'd at least try turning the rear speakers upside down and see how it sounds. The angle of the sides may offset the tweeters higher location. Then again maybe not, but it's worth a try.

I too would like to do a side speaker project but DW would never go for the visible wires in the living room. Is there some easy way to connect the speakers so the wires won't be seen?

[crackyflipside]

I'd at least try turning the rear speakers upside down and see how it sounds. The angle of the sides may offset the tweeters higher location. Then again maybe not, but it's worth a try.

I too would like to do a side speaker project but DW would never go for the visible wires in the living room. Is there some easy way to connect the speakers so the wires won't be seen?

That is just temp wire, definitely not the permanent solution.

Yeah, I could have wired it in the ceiling but I already got the wallplates installed so might as well use them. When I put in the permanent wires in later, it will look much better. I'm kind of hesitant to flip the rear speakers because there are a lot of kids running around the house.