I love DIY! There is a great amount of enjoyment and satisfaction I find when completing a project. What makes it even more satisfying is when that project is enjoyed by not only me, but by many others. After completing my first DIY project my wife was very impressed by how great it sounded. Movies just seemed to take on a whole new level of realism and music seemed to come alive. The problem was that this was only in the family/movie room. We have a TV in our bedroom that we use sparingly, usually when the kids are sick or she doesn't want to be in the basement to watch something. After one exceptionally non-fun sick kid episode where we ended up using that TV for an extended period of time my wife made the mistake of complaining about the audio that was coming from the tiny built in speakers in the TV. Admittedly they are probably about at good as the speakers you would find in a $12 clock radio. Absolutely no bass, tinny mid range and screeching high end. Looking back this is probably one of the main reasons we haven't used this TV much.
We started talking about it and we decided to build some speakers for this TV. For this application we had some pretty tight space requirements. The speakers could only be about 10 inches tall at most. After looking around and reading through a lot of build threads I suggested to her that I build the Overnight Sensations for our application. She thought that was a great idea, but had some stipulations. The stipulations were she wanted to do it, or at least be very involved in doing it! Can you believe it! My wife wanted to help cut the wood, build the boxes, layout and build the crossovers, paint the boxes, everything! I was thrilled.
We ordered components a couple of weeks ago and got a good start this past week. We have both of the crossovers built and tested and the boxes are cut and we have a good start putting them together. I'll post some pics soon. One slight issue is that the tweeters are backordered and not due to arrive until sometime in early June. We are hoping to have the speakers completed by then so we just have to plug them in and enjoy. The other more significant issue is I can't answer all my wife's questions. She and I are both engineers, but we are mechanical engineers, not electrical engineers. As we were laying out and soldering the crossover she wanted me to explain how EXACTLY a capacitor and inductor work together to create a high-pass or low-pass filter and EXACTLY how an L-pad circuit worked to attenuate the tweeter. As you can probably imagine I had no idea how to answer these questions. On the bright side, it is exceptionally fun to work in the shop with my wife and have her very interested in what we are doing. Who knows, I may create a DIY monster when this is all said and done, then I'd have to build even MORE speakers...
I'll get some pics up soon.
:B
We started talking about it and we decided to build some speakers for this TV. For this application we had some pretty tight space requirements. The speakers could only be about 10 inches tall at most. After looking around and reading through a lot of build threads I suggested to her that I build the Overnight Sensations for our application. She thought that was a great idea, but had some stipulations. The stipulations were she wanted to do it, or at least be very involved in doing it! Can you believe it! My wife wanted to help cut the wood, build the boxes, layout and build the crossovers, paint the boxes, everything! I was thrilled.
We ordered components a couple of weeks ago and got a good start this past week. We have both of the crossovers built and tested and the boxes are cut and we have a good start putting them together. I'll post some pics soon. One slight issue is that the tweeters are backordered and not due to arrive until sometime in early June. We are hoping to have the speakers completed by then so we just have to plug them in and enjoy. The other more significant issue is I can't answer all my wife's questions. She and I are both engineers, but we are mechanical engineers, not electrical engineers. As we were laying out and soldering the crossover she wanted me to explain how EXACTLY a capacitor and inductor work together to create a high-pass or low-pass filter and EXACTLY how an L-pad circuit worked to attenuate the tweeter. As you can probably imagine I had no idea how to answer these questions. On the bright side, it is exceptionally fun to work in the shop with my wife and have her very interested in what we are doing. Who knows, I may create a DIY monster when this is all said and done, then I'd have to build even MORE speakers...
I'll get some pics up soon.
:B
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