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budget hi-fi floorstanding speakers

the goal for this project is to have €150 spent per speaker at most, while having a warm and rich sound

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luckily i have some experience in speaker box designing, so i thought "what if i can beat my own home cimena speakers at a cheaper price tag?"

which is exactly the purpose of this project.

i currently have klipsch RF52 home cimena speakers, which sound pretty good for the price (€200 each)

but i want to beat the quality
(i know sound is a personal reference, so each time i refer to beating my klipsch quality, i mean it for my own ears)

i currently have a working pair of my diy speakers, and calculated the price of each speaker including shipment and such.

but... i need to adjust some minor things, like:
i don't have a terminal in the back, it's just wire going trough a hole in the back as of now,
i need to tighten the wires to the speakers better,
the filters need to be moved in the enclosures,
the filters aren't fully correct yet (little too much high in my opinion).

I revived a pair of diy enclosures of a very old project of mine, added some mods, calculated the costs for one enclosure to be included in my final calculation and ordered some midwoofers (already had multiple pairs of fullrange speakers. (TB w3-871, TB w3-315, Visaton FRS8-8, Visaton FRS8-4)
So that wasn't an issue to test which fitted best sound-wise)

Currently the costs for one speakers are: €130, see parts list for details

Speaker specs are:

Resistance: futile! (joking ;) it's 8ohm)

Power handling RMS: about 50W

Sensitivity: i think it's about 84DB SPL @1Watt/1Meter, i don't have the tools to measure it

Frequency response: 38-20000hz (portnoise might occur on very high volume)

If using less than 30W RMS, you can go lower (xmax won't be an issue then)

speaker box design.skp

skp file including panel cutouts, and a render with dimensions

SSEYO Koan Play File - 196.74 kB - 03/17/2016 at 22:20

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  • 1 × dayton ND20FA-6 tweeter
  • 1 × Tangband W3-315SE (W3-315E will work as well) fullrange speaker used for the high end (€22)
  • 1 × Dayton DA175-8 7inch mid-woofer (€30)
  • 1 × Monacor DN-1 Crossover (€6)
  • 1 × 1ohm 5W ceramic resistor for limiting high frequencies, need to replace to 2,7ohm (€1)

View all 18 components

  • update 4: added tweeter, measurements!

    8bit-bunny03/09/2017 at 23:45 0 comments

    hi all, since i recently got a measurement microphone, i am now able to measure the response of the unit.

    this means i can resume this project and i litterally did that 1 hour ago.

    turns out there was a lack of high tones of my tb w3-315 (might be because i got them from a construction radio which was dead..), so i decided to add a dayton n20fa-6 tweeter. and the bass is still not loud ( cuts off at about 60hz)

    just compare the results for yourself

    'original unit'

    'new unit'

    this added about €12 to the costs.

  • update 3

    8bit-bunny06/02/2016 at 18:35 0 comments

    Hi all, sorry for the lack of updates, i didn't really had much time to work on tthe speakers sadly, but...

    I fixed the too much high tones by using a 2ohm 10watt resistor on the high end.

    In fact, i compared the speakers intensely to my Klipsch RF-52 (letting others listen too), and the conclusion is: much more detail in the sound.
    Eespecially in the mid-high end, without a overload of bass (which the Klipsch RF-52 have for sure)

    I am using them with my Marantz SR7010 receiver as the main 'left/right' speakers.

    only addition is that i have my 1 meter deep subwoofer (which kicks in at 60HZ to 10HZ) for a better movie experience.

  • update 2

    8bit-bunny03/17/2016 at 20:49 0 comments

    Hi all, i got some good news!

    I let over 10 people listen to the speakers, and none(!) of them were disappointed.

    Includes drummers which usually have high end headphones of the same price-tag (like €150+) were impressed as well.
    Also a local opera singer was pleased by the sound.
    Even let a local hifi-guy listen to them, and he was pleased with the warmth, and he agrees with me: still a little too much high notes coming out of them.

    Luckily this is a easy issue, just need to update the filtering part.

    The speakers can produce nice sound to below 30HZ (if using < 30wrms because of speaker excursion reasons).
    On the rated power of 50Wrms it can go as low as about 38HZ.

    Also, i calculated the wood-cost of a pair of speakers, and both will fit in one sheet of 244*122CM if done right. Also saves some wood for internal bracing if desired :)

    since i got some of the €150 budget left (about €20), i might apply some more dampening to the both speakers.

  • update 1

    8bit-bunny03/14/2016 at 13:10 0 comments

    since the origiginal enclosure design was for a 3-way system, i had 2 sealed compartiments (1x 4liter for mid, 1x 2liter for high) and one 12,8liter ported area for low

    fun and all, but i currently have the compartiment for the mid speakers unused (literally an empty area for no speaker)

    so i calculated that if i opened it up for the midwoofer to use as well, i have roughly 16liter for the woofer.

    i decided to open one speaker and cut the wood seperating those 2 compartiments out, and applied cable clamps to make the cabling internals more solid.

    i then screwd it back together and tested it to compare the 2 designs, the result is noticable, especially in the low end, lower frequencies are played better and i have slightly less port noise, the woofer doesn't get beyond it's xmax now at lower frequencies (need to test which frequency is the lowest though) plus it saves some wood costs!

    the issue of the high prescence is still there, so i will staill have to order new limiting resistors to get the high at a bit lower volume levels

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René Arts wrote 06/03/2016 at 08:57 point

Nice project, especially as you are on a tight budget. Maybe a bit offtopic, but I'd love to hear a bit more about your subwoofer. Might form a nice addition to this!

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8bit-bunny wrote 06/03/2016 at 11:31 point

the subwoofer is made of 22mm mdf, with a reconed shark xsub-12 (psi recone parts for) and this amp

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8bit-bunny wrote 06/03/2016 at 11:32 point

  Are you sure? yes | no

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