DIY Gallery

[sensibull]

Lovin' the new forum. Thought I'd try to start that DIY gallery thread, with component links and total cost. Maybe separate ones for subs and speakers? Best to keep it pictures and links and no questions (Use PM for that).

Anyway, here's mine. I call it "The Low End"

Design: Sealed
Enclosure: ~ 3 cu. ft. (20" cube minus bracing, etc.)
Driver: 15" Quatro
Amp: 240W PE Plate Amp
Misc.: Beech Vinyl Laminate, Heavy Duty Grill Guides
Total Cost: ~ $275

[SteveCallas]

Avalanche 18 Sonosub

Design: Ported
Enclosure: 651 effective liters, 28" diameter tube, tuned to ~13.5hz
Driver: Ascendant Audio Avalanche 18 (discontinued)
Amp: Carvin HD1800
Total Cost: $1500 for two

[kgveteran]

Can't wait to get the fronts all done.

[chasw98]

Heres my sub. 9 cubic feet internal, 54 inches tall, 20 inches diameter, 15" SoundSplinter Rl-p15 dual 4 ohm, Behringer EP1500.

More info here.

Finished




Top Plate



Driver



FR Graph after EQ with BFD

[thylantyr]

Entry level line array I made for my friend.
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/robarray/

Drivers Per Tower
16 - 4" Pioneer midwoofers {Partsexpress buyout driver, 49 cents each}.
10 - Dayton PT2B planar tweeter, ~ $25 each in bulk.

Driver Power Handling
Midwoofers are rated for 5 watts rms.
Tweeters are rated for 80w rms.

Calculated Line Array Sensitivity
Low impedance mode: 104dB {3.2 ohm midwoofers, 0.8 ohm tweeters}
High impedance mode: 98dB {8 ohm midwoofers, 3.2 ohm tweeters}

Line Array Power Handling
Very high, it's running four QSC PLX3402 in bridge mode, 3400w per amplifier,
13,400 watts total using pro audio amplifier ratings.

Maximum SPL, 8 - 12 feet distance in room
Upper midbass: > 126dB[c] {meter hit it's limit}
Midrange: ~ 122dB[c]
Tweeters: ~ 115db[c]

Cabinet Construction;
Two piece design with rotating top section.
3/4" oak plywood, stained and polyurethane.
3/4" MDF front baffle, primered and painted gloss black.
3/4" solid oak base trim.

Bottom Section {base}
This is the central hub for all wiring using terminal blocks and it's the control center for
driver impedance selection and each tweeter has it's own dedicated fuse. It's wired for
either 8 ohms or 2 ohms on the midwoofers, 3.2 ohms or 0.8 ohms on the tweeters, a
switch controls selection.

Driver Chamber;
It's a ported design where four midwoofers share a common chamber and
each chamber is tuned to a calculated 100hz, F3 - 75hz. One 6" rear ported per chamber,
four chambers per line array tower.

Cabinet Dampening
5/8" MDF, 12"x12" panels installed on every chamber wall except the front baffle.
Acousta-Stuf inside poly-batting to make sound conditioning pillows on each chamber wall except the front baffle.
1.25" dowel per chamber for cross bracing to lower cabinet resonant frequency.

Driver Modifications
The midwoofers received lacquer cone treatments for sound improvement.

Crossover
It's an active setup. A Behringer DCX2496 {digital crossover} is used for the
tweeters and midranges. Crossover frequencies can be adjusted on the fly as per
listener needs. You can program the DCX with tons of settings for different applications.
Typically, I use a Linkwitz Riley 8th order stope, 1.71khz on the tweeters/mids,
and high pass 65hz on the midwoofers.

Amplification
Select high impedance mode and use weak amplifiers, the high sensitivity nature
of the line array will generate more than enough SPL for the normal listening session.
If you feel in the mood for a concert in home, switch to low impedanc mode and
run big power amplifiers like those proamps that's driving it.

[perpetual]

I made two enclosures for the Dayton 15" Titanic MKIII, one ported and one sealed. They were both made out of double 3/4" walls of HDF for a thickness of 1.5". There are more pics on my signature.

[PLincoln]

http://www.cyberfrogs.net/photo/inde...diaroom&page=4

infinite baffle vented under the kitchen.
2 x 15" atlas drivers powered by adcom gfa-545 (one driver per channel

baffle is 2 sheets of 3/4" mdf laminated together using gorilla glue

adcom has a DC decoupling cap circuit between it and the receiver that I made in order to elimate the constant pop when changing sources on the receiver. its a simple HPF cut at 8hz using some quality caps from PE.

[PLincoln]

a couple of people have emailed me abot the HPF for my IB that I used to eliminate any DC shift to the inputs of the adcom, here is a quick and dirty schematic.



Be sure to use quality poly caps...I used some Solen caps from PE. My adcom's input resistance is 22kohm, that in parallel with the 100kohm yields about 18kohm resistance.

That in combination with the 1uF cap yields around 8.8hz corner frequency. I'm currently using a 4.7uF cap...dropping the corner down even further to 2hz, that would make sure that the filter has no audible effect, being that the adcom will probably rolloff before then.

I had to use this filter because the GFA-545 does not have any decoupling caps in it, and this caused the IB drivers to pop when being turned on/off or anytime the input signal was changed.

I made the filter, placed it into a project box as shown with RCA type leads on each end. It is connected to the LFE output on my receiver and then to the input on the adcom.

here is a dirty pix:

the resistor is on the underside of the board

[bimmerboy750]

Here's my sub / riser. It's a pseudo-horn. 2 10-inch 500W drivers. (partsexpress.com). It's technically two 4th order bandpass subs with both ports dumping out into a common chamber (the pseudo horn). Total height is 13 inches. The non-square boxes by virtue of the piecewise horn shaping providing great cancellation of undesired standing waves. The structual construction is MDF. The riser steps are solid oak stairsteps. The right and left flanking cabinets are just oak panel and MDF construction with pine kickplates.

The sub itself is just the center 1/3 section (the horn) the pieces on the the left and right side of the sub are just storage (empty).




The sub design is a modified "Wicked One". The mod itself is an additional 6 inches in length (of the horn) with a wide flare over the last six inches. You can see each sealed boxes (left and right bottom) and the ported boxes (left and right upper) with the common "horn".

It's a whole house shaker. Particularly good mechanical vibrations when sitting on the couch on the top of the riser. The Horn gives a good room fill despite being just behind the front row of seating. I don't have the equipment to run an FR on it. It's driven with Peavey CS-800 (2x400W into 4 ohms) and filtered with a RANE active crossover with the 3db point set at 70Hz.

[mjrtoo]

Originally Posted by SteveCallas

Avalanche 18 Sonosub

Design: Ported
Enclosure: 651 effective liters, 28" diameter tube, tuned to ~14.7hz
Driver: Ascendant Audio Avalanche 18 (discontinued)
Amp: Carvin HD1800
Total Cost: $1500 for two

Man, it looks like you live in an apartment. How many times have you had the cops called?!? heh

[RTPBob]

bimmerboy, really creative design...I like it a lot. Couple of questions. Have you ever measured the response of your design? Also, I think I know where the subs are located in that design but could you clarify that for me? Does the fact that the horn is two different lengths (steps) cause any problems?

[rlj5242]

From the original post:

Best to keep it pictures and links and no questions (Use PM for that).

I'll be deleting this message soon to keep this a gallery only thread.

-Robert

[46minaudio]

XBL2 Atlas 15 inch driver .,6 cubic ft tuned to 21 hz.Twin flared 4in ports 18 in long.PE 500 watt into 4 ohms with a single band peq.Marble finish with clear coat the buffed with rubbing compound.

[bimmerboy750]

Originally Posted by RTPBob

bimmerboy, really creative design...I like it a lot. Couple of questions. Have you ever measured the response of your design? Also, I think I know where the subs are located in that design but could you clarify that for me? Does the fact that the horn is two different lengths (steps) cause any problems?

Sorry, I don't have the equipment to measure the response. I think the 3db point was designed for 28.1 Hz. Each sub is on the left and right side on the pieces that run parallel to the top and bottom of the wire drawing.

The Horns start out in the upper (left and right) corners. the gap at the very corner is the throat. The horns are independent up until each reaches the center (vertical axis) of the box. There, they become one. I was originally disappointed with the response. I thought it came out sounding more like a midbass horn. I was feeding it the subwoofer pre-output of my receiver which had a 3db point of 150Hz!. One of my Peavey CS-800's takes that pre-out and drives the sub. I could've fixed that by dropping in a pair of passive crossovers, but I had on hand a 2-way active crossover. It could go down to 70Hz with an 18DB/octave rolloff. Once I put that in, I was happy. So I'd recommend putting in either a passive or active crossover if building this sub.

The horn as I mentioned earlier is derived from the "Wicked One". http://www.decware.com/whorn.htm is the website that has more details on the original design.

[Jack Gilvey]

Been a while since my last project...here's what I've got pics of:

An old PR job with Lambda 15PR1400's and assorted 12's:



My raw dipole, Adire DPL12's:



Dual 15 IB, Atlas 15's:



Raw PR sub, AV12 and Lambdas:



Buncha others not worth archiving.

[bimmerboy750]

This is a 4th order isobaric sub with 2 18" Peavey Black Widow drivers. 3/4" Particleboard veneered with Poplar veneer and a 1/2" Poplar surface with glass inlay. Port (not shown) is on the wall side.

[Darin]

Here's the abridged pictorial of my dual sealed servo sub:

Interior layout:


Push/pull drivers mounted out of sight on back/top:


And finally, installed:

[fraDcat]

I can't find any pics of it completed but here are some pics taken while building it. It's a 115L sealed tumult with 1000w amp.









I'll try to get some of it completed as well.

[CAVX]

I decided I wanted to do a complete matched 7.1 system, so I made 3 LCRs (Image 2), 2 Subs (Image 3), and 4 surrounds (Image 4). Image 5 is a close up of the XT tweeter and my own badge...

Image 1 is my DIY 2.35:1 screen (but that's another story)

The system uses 14 VIFA P17 woofers, 17 VIFA XT Super Tweeters and 2 sets of the PEERLESS XLS Active/Passive combos.







Mark

[PLincoln]

mark...awesome. bet that sounds great!

[chasw98]

Mark:
Did you design the L/C/R's after the M&K models? They look great! Next time I'm down under, I want to come by and hear them.

Chuck

[CAVX]

Originally Posted by chasw98

Mark:
Did you design the L/C/R's after the M&K models? They look great! Next time I'm down under, I want to come by and hear them.

Chuck

No Probs there Just PM for details...

Yes I liked the compact design and M&K's THX 150 certainly achieved that, so yes it was huge inspiration towards my design.

I just decided to use a tweeter with a wider band and use larger woofers (6.5" over the 5.25") for more defined midbass and VIFA make both high quality units at an affordable price. The system plays loud and clean with good imaging and I really like them...

Mark

[chasw98]

Mark:
I have a feeling that yours probably work better than the M&K's. Something about DIY that will surpass commercial models......

Chuck

[CAVX]

Well what I love about DIY (apart from the cost factor ) is the ability to have a bit of creative freedom. When you buy off the shelf, you have to like it 100% or grin and bear the parts you don't. With a DIY project, you can change the parts that don't work for you and create that "special" something that can often not be bought...

Mark

[Jack Gilvey]

Amazing, Mark.

2.35:1 CIH is the only way to go.

You are correct, sir.

[oachalon]

Heres a couple pictures of my dual adire audio tempest 15 subwoofer. I did this box maybe 6 months ago for my recroom.






Dont have any pictures while building it.

[fraDcat]

OK I took some pictures this morning of my speaker. Sealed 115L Tumult powered by a 1000w Kiega plate amp.









The sides are Baltic Birch stained in a maple or honey maple if I remember right. The trim pieces are just poplar(can't remember the stain) and the top is actually a bunch of scraps from some shipping pallets that were cut down and run thru the planer and glued together. I gotta say my father actually did most of the work. I'm there more for beer/soda runs when he gets thirsty lol. I did do all the sanding and staining though.

[MrSensitive]

i wanted something to complement my Orb's from orbaudio..
so I decided to build my own speherical sub:




it's only a 8inch driver, but it goes deep and loud enough for me...
and it blends in quite nice with my orbs, both visually and musically..

[chasw98]

Where did you get a sphere to build that with? Looks very interesting and beautiful!

Chuck

[Darin]

Don't you ever feel like it's staring at you?