If you need reference speakers, why not just get a pair of those Behringer monitors. They're not as good as true pro speakers but at that price they'll beat what you can design yourself and for not much extra cost.
And you seriously think you can make 'reference' speakers at your first attempt?>
What on earth makes you jump to the assumption this is my first attempt? That was in 1958 to be precise.
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From: Andy Evans ( snipped-for-privacy@aol.comnohawker)
too weak and springy. If you do use it, get the stiffest silicone you can.
If all youve got is a 5"er then this is all fairly moot.
NT
Seems you've not learnt by experience, then?
If all youve got is a 5"er then this is all fairly moot.>
Well yes - a bit of overkill. It's really an exercise in what you can build quickly, hence the white Contiboard in easy to saw lengths - a few minutes in the kitchen. I wanted to try bonding together multiple layers and I'm learning quite a lot. for a start, bitumin sheets are good for sound deadening but ooze out of cracks. they also make a terrible mess of tools, so I've learned to do all the sawing and drilling, then put the bitumen in. I now think I'll keep the bitumen as dampening between sheets, but put a layer of silicone filler all round the sides to stop it oozing out. I'm hoping that once the silicone dries it won't ooze, thus keeping in the bitumen. If this is the case, it will be a useful easy assembly project. I may go on to 6.5" drivers, depending on the bass response I get from the 5". If it's adequate it saves a wider front. Harder to get wider extrusions than 6" channel locally. My next idea would be thick aluminium squares front and back and two concentric pieces of sonotube in between, with sand in between them. I like solid aluminium for a front plate because it's so much more accurate for fixing, and won't flake or splinter. Channel is nice, since you can bolt the sides on to it. Not exactly cheap, but not outrageous. Just fancied putting some ideas into practice.
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Seems you've not learnt by experience, then? DP
Why would I repeat what I've done before instead of trying something different? I sometimes think the only time you jump is when you can see a wrong conclusion.
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Well, you've said it in one. You invariably end up with the wrong conclusion.
Why use a material designed to have a hard wearing surface (for things like worktops) which will cause problems glueing it, when other near identical materials which can be easily glued are available? Any shed or timber yard will have chipboard - and cut it to size, if you can't do it yourself. Or do you think Contiboard has some magical audio properties?
And concrete or sand filled panels.
cast them in concrete then.
well cabinet only really affects the lower to lower middle range anyway.
Any room you listen in will have resonances in that area anyway, as will any concert hall, so privided the resonances are not massive, I tend to shrug and say it 'all adds to the experience'
Cheap too. And if you make them from 12" concrete, there'll be bugger all vibration or resonance.
you should be looking at non-rectangular enclosures.
And concrete or sand filled panels.>
My first build with my Dad was concrete columns - we had a big house! today, in a London flat, I need something relatively small. I think sand filled panels can be done - probably between two sonotubes.
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Concrete can be _highly_ resonant in the right shape of enclosure. It's highly rigid, so the reflections are large. Put two parallel faces towards each other and you have the conditions for a standing wave inside the enclosure, even if the panels themselves aren't resonating.
One obvious fix is damping inside the box. Another is to rough texture the concrete inner surface.
Well yi can fill em with rckwool to kill HF reflections. But the mass and elasticity get the PANEL resonances well up, and keep them small. You will get almost no transmission of sound through it, and no bomming bass resonances from flexing panels, allowing you to tune the cabinet using simpler maths.
celcon blocks might make excellent bass enclusures really. Mid and upper ranges are not so hard anyway.
celcon blocks might make excellent bass enclusures really.>
Indeed. Pretty much what my Dad and I used for our first concrete column. But too big for a London flat. This present build is really to try out multlayer materials. Obviously contiboard is not what you'd use in one sheet, but sandwich a bitumen sheet inside two layers and you have another 'material'. Add a third layer with different damping again and you have quite a different material. I remember a conversation with the guy that designs Totem speakers where he said resonance damping was all about sandwiching the damping between two sheets, and that damping the inside of walls alone (as commercial products largely do) was much less effective. That was really my point of departure.
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Nah, do it properly - folded horns. Takes the whole flat but the quality is awesome.
Nah, do it properly - folded horns. Takes the whole flat but the quality is awesome.>
I might have expected this on a DIY newsgroup!
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Not sure I agree. Horns always sound coloured. True they are very efficient - but watts are cheap these days.
Not the best of them they don't. Ultra low distortion. You need to make em out of high stiffness to weight material like titanium or carbon fibre tho..
Bass horns doo need concrete, and folding em is a pain.
Best to make a chimney and corbel it out to an enormous dummy fireplace and mount a really high power 12" unit at the pot end...:-)
Since they sort of work by adding standing waves, they all tend to have a unique character. This doesn't matter so much at the extremes of the audio range, but does in the critical middle part.
No serious monitor speakers that I know of these days use horn loading for MF.
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