Building a PC sound deck... with a twist! 

I agree!

Exactly true....

Assthethiccs is nice

Yes I agree too

True

I have to imagine the prices would be crazy crazy high! The prices for the diy builds are deceiving because they don’t cover his invaluable expertise and experience 😅

The fact is that he can make nearly anything, so sticking in hifi isn’t that good for him, hoping you catch the point

Yeah but 4 days of work… at what, let’s say 20€ an hour (probably too low but idk). 8 x 4 x 20 = 640€ without material costs. Admittedly still cheaper than the mass produced speakers

@@MaticTheProto 20 an hour is waaaay too low for craftmanship like this. I'd expect more like 50 an hour. that being said, the 4 days was JUST on figuring out the crossover settings, so i'd guess the final price would be closer to 4000, or even more as it's a custom piece.

@@MaticTheProto he used 4 days to fine tune crossover.

I was particularly impressed with the DIY 4K beamer.

I would buy it!!

I'd like to buy as well

I'd buy one too 😍.... So bad at soldering 😅

@@artt3231 make it. this is a channel for the makers. not the buyers

Exact same thoughts as I listened to the comparison too. Bass was surprisingly better according to my setup I'm listening to it on (10" Ultra cabinets).

Thats what so many commenters on this video are missing about the fundamental concept behind this channel. So many are saying how much he could make selling these, or that they'd buy one in a heartbeat (one comment even from an self-proclaimed audio engineer, who I would assume would be much more inclined to do his own tuning anyway?) BUT ITS A DIY CHANNEL. Its not only a resource for those of us who want to get hands on, and achieve amazing value and pride in what we craft, but also an inspiration for those who may have been less inclined to do so. He made over $40K on this video as of this comment (2M views) by making one unit... for himself lol; I'm pretty sure he understands his business quite well, and entering the production space is not in the cards.

after 4 days of adjusting just the frequency splitter.... and its not shown how. so either ur a genius like him but even with such videos its impossible to build one on ur own.

@Odysuess08 I too noticed that some of the steps in his builds often turn out to be exceptionally difficult to replicate. I think one has to have a higher level of understanding in engineering or some piece of tech that he keeps behind the scenes.

@@tj_enju I think thats the magic of the channel to make the people feel they could if they wanted even its just an illusion.

@@Odyseuss08 No you can do it - some of the stuff requires googling but you can do it But no you do need to have time and the effort to donate to a project like this

@@personthing88 I wonder if there is a much easier way to power those speakers and tune them, because to me that's way above my head.

I was thinking the same

I would pay for that!

don't have imagination or don't have the budget to explore it?

@@Praxis4RageBaiting Hm possibly both

@@Praxis4RageBaiting for me it's more budget limitations. Even more considering I'm from Brazil and things are expensive here!

SOMEONE WRITE THIS DOWN

Ohohohoh!!!

There are pretty powerful mini PCs that are not much bigger than a CD box, so it's possible. Mainboard scavenged from a laptop with broken display and messed up case could fit too. I don't count SBCs like RPi and similar ones because they are not very powerful in most cases.

he already put the pc in the desk!

That space is needed to give better sound, if you build pc there the sound quality suffers, since the sound waves doesn't have enough room, like said in video the woofer needs 10liters space to sound optimal.

@hoiy vinosa nobody was unsupportive. It got my like and I added this video to my Favorites list. Chill out man

@@klausschaeffer365 think he answerd on accident xD

@@klausschaeffer365 I think you misunderstood. Don't reply so aggressively

@@jamesthomson13 wtf??

Honestly would be interested in someone wanting to make an automated way to do the audio tunning, I think that would hopefully lower the bar

totally agree

That's a great point, the more I look into doing more projects, and realise I would need a lot of tools, I appreciate the more accessible yet awesome products that Matt does :)

agreed but 95% of what they do on those big machines can also be done with small, cheap, secondhand tools if you know how to use them. For some projects it would take 10x more time, but in other cases it's only a little bit more complex.

@@ThaJay True but this way an idiot like me doesn't have to work out how to do it, I can just follow the video :)

@@MagicMoose14587 I agree, if you know how to use your limited tools in many good ways and avoid danger, you would not be watching this video.

Kind words, thank you!

@@DIYPerks I love you sooo much! thank you for the replyyy

The infrequency of the videos is what makes them a treat to me. Whenever a new one posts it’s like a special surprise!

@@DIYPerks You should make a video of all the plants you feature in your videos, with links to buy the pots and soil, lol! But seriously, could you identify the plants in the thumbnail of this video?

Well, over 3,5 million subs is not 'so underrated', is it? Don't get me wrong I wish Matt all the success, but I got the feeling it's already going really damn well.

actually literally

you think he BOUGHT the house?

thats disrespectful! obviously he would built the house himself.

builds the house my guy

Living the dream.

@doire aintu the diy build sounds richer than those bookshelf speakers.

Actually it doesn't make that much of a difference

@@amcomma for cheap 40-50$ speakers? obviously. For a stand for speakers? again won't make much difference But for enclosures for higher end Audiophile gear or just better audio in general especially if you already know what you're looking for, yeah it makes a difference, not massive but definitely exists and can be noticed

I reckon any inconsistencies of the wood could be balanced out through the manual tuning of the crossover circuit.

The real downside of natural wood is s it's tendancy to twist and warp with changes in temperature and humidity. That's way sealed MDF or marine plywood are preferred.

it's less about uniformity but rather the sound of the material. the little particles and bonding glue in mdf give it a dead sound with little resonance, while hardwood resonates more and colors the sound (which is obviously suboptimal). that's why enclosures usually use some type of compound material with veneer on top

do you mind to share your setup? mine is jlsound i2s, ak4493 and drv603. all running off some pretty custom linux sbc. (jack + clean alsa config, no bs like pulseaudio..) running local flac files. If you are using adau1701: is it intercepting i2s while increasing bit depth and sample rate on the soundcard? Mine is running the native resolution right now. So any sound effect just decreases quality a lot.. But i'd love to have some room correction or bass boost, reverb etc..

@@alexruedi1995 I use a sure electronics APM2 (adau1701) with the connection board, which the left and right channels are both connected to 1 TDA7498E amplifier (the sanwu red board), and the 1 sub channel is connected to another 2 TDA7498E boards that outputs 4 x 160w. One of the boards are running off a 250W 36v power supply and the other 2 powering the subs are using a 1000w 36v power supply in order to have excess power. the setup is used as computer speakers and sounds pretty good. For the I2C stuff, I'm not there yet, although I'm trying to use a Arduino with a display + rotary encoder in order to make a interface to control the DSP. However, I've seen many examples of it being controlled by i2c on google.

You can always go one better...

This, was thinking the same thing. It'd also be interesting to see how far we could dial these in with either a quality physical EQ, or something like APO.

that would be really good information to have and he have the the know how. probably better to have 2 decent speakers and therefore nullifying the project.

The clean video editing is what I find refreshing about his videos.

1200$ were better ;), DIY he made, IS AWSOME, but i doubt 99% here can reproduce the video it self and as well, he's DIY got huge bass, meanwhile with 1200's, you are hearing high frequencies, which were missing on DIY and because they are high, they cover the lows and ofcourse, lows are thick and leave a feel for "superior"........ :) Summary, DIY project he present, awsome, i would like having one (meanwhile couple of monitor speakers are on my desk), but those professional speakers are hitting really good. :)

Its a really cool project, and the diy definitely has more bass and highs, but the high mids sound like there is a huge cut, and there are some resonances throughout the frequency spectrum. Still insanely impressive for what it is and how much it costs though

@@bananam0nk597 Yeah, the 1200s definately had a fuller warmer sound and sounded better on the first song but his DIY solution had a bit more fun sound or sparkle on the second song at the end test, sadly it can be hard to describe the difference. It can be a hugely subjective experience though and sadly many people never really get a chance to experience a good pair of headphones or speakers.

Yeah, but the point of this design is a monitor stand with speakers set up for close-up listening. It's for someone who plays games, listens to music while doing office work or watches movies on PC.

Maybe integrate an DAC. Would be super useful for all the streamers and people with microphones.

Or just hook up your headphones to the dedicated headphone jack on the pc?

@@JustMamba exactly what i thought aswell lmao

so do I :)

The only reason this would be worth doing is if that headphone jack was ALSO an improved audio format, because if it was just wired verbatim to the motherboard, it would only sound as good as the motherboard is capable of. A dedicated DAC to plug headphones into as well could definitely be a cool addition, though.

First comment Edit: nevermind

Hello again King :)

You here!?

then just use screws

I mean, if you build it, it's your choice if you want to use glue or screws.

It's hot glue just use some rubbing alcohol and a heat gun or hair dryer and it'll come off.

@@noe9250 yup I would. Thanks.

@@asandax6 And how do you get to them?

And every speaker is not always designed to be listened on axis

I thought this as well. The project is great but a lot of his justification recently is quite silly.

I’ve been involved with the speaker design process for architectural speakers and never saw parts that small in a crossover!! I’m worried that the tiny crossover components may easily overheat.

@@chrismerklin8460 well he said something about them being part of the circuit before amplification, so not much power going through but I'd still imagine the parts make a difference at low level signals.

@@chrismerklin8460 sadly this part which seems to be really intersting he even doesnt touch in his process of the work he shows. when he shares everything about the material it would have made sense to share the final version of the crossover.

@@Odyseuss08The chap has linked a separate video with more details on all that.

@@tatianaes3354 where? i dont find it.

I find the highs laughable on the pros compared to the DIYs, what listening device did you use?

@@Azer1125 imma have to agree with Andrew here, the pros sound way clearer and differentiated. The DIY system sounds good, but doesn't have a neutral sound, its bass heavy and muddy in the upper mids, which is perfect for gaming (it actually sounds amazing in that case) as most gaming Headphones have a similar frequency curve ("V-Shape"). I wouldn't use it for critical listening or other genres than bass heavy ones tho:)

I listened using KZ ZSN Pro in-ear phones, and I agree with Andrew.

@@Azer1125 I was listening on HD660S's and LSR-305s btw

i mean you can always use equalizer to make it sound how ever u want.

Do you have any more detail or articles I could read up on cancellation lobes? Thanks 🙂

@@turbokadett I'm not sure of any articles but a cancellation lobe is just a region where the phase of one wave is 0° and the other is 180°. Polar plots depict this very well in driver measurements. Certain websites will provide polar plots when measuring speakers off and on axis.

Prefer the expensive speaker too. They seem more clear and the DIYs seem to have some emphasis on the mids. Would be interesting to see a frequency diagram comparison.

The DIY’s are for gaming while the 1200 ones are for music. I would understand the reason for the mid heavy response he prefers for that reason (speech in gaming etc)

I was surprised when I listened to the comparison. For the first song I preferred the 1200 ones since they sounded fuller but on the other song it was the other way around and I preferred the DIY. Weird!

I agree; I used a couple different headphones thinking " well there's no way he would use an example that made his DIY project sound worse" ... idk maybe it's just my preference but the 1200s sounded way better. The DIY almost sounded like there were instruments missing. Would definitely like to see that frequency diagram.

@@shuaglenn6802 the diy just kinda sound metallic and missing warmth

You can buy crossovers off the shelf, no worries about that

i personally think the diy speaker cannot compare to the professional ones. the diy ones are Good, but not perfect

@@ZVLIAN same opinion

as with the two above me, you are not paying so much for the deep bass in the expensive speaker but more for accurate recreation of audio. Though for just enjoying music and gameplay the are amazing for the cost and knowledge you'd get from DIYing it

Agree but professional speakers has much clearer hights.

Your right by the way why does a more expensive speaker sound worser 😡😡😡😡😡

Or maybe the ButtKicker.

Wouldn’t this create a tripping hazard?

That's sounds a bit silly tbh😂

He sure is a modern renaissance man

Don't forget the ASMR part. Could listen to his calm enthusiastic voice for hours 😂

That whole wood coloring the sound myth is nonsense

All speaker enclosures have a resonance - a frequency where the chamber starts to amplify sound. With MDF, the panel resonance is less noticeable and it is probably a good compromise for cost/performance with commercial designs. But I don't like MDF, especially for DIY, it is not sustainable, easily damaged by chipping, cracking and from liquids and doesn't give a nice finish. I think bamboo is a great alternative material, but optimising the use of the materials isotropic properties with the speaker design is beyond DIY.

All materials vibrate and possess some degree of resonances (stored energy). MDF is more rigid than most woods so it's resonances tend to be higher in frequency. Good enclosure damping and cross bracing is important no matter the material.

I’m a bit perplexed by this comment. Does plywood “color the sound” or not?

​@@JosephQPublic All materials color the sound to some degree. Some plywoods are favoured because they are characterized by a deep toned but well controlled resonance than say stiffer MDF. This adds a degree of warmth to the sound that some designers have used to good effect. For instance many classic British Monitors of BBC design used birch plywood precisely because of it's acoustic properties. Iconic speakers like the LS3/5A, Spendor BC1, Harbeth Monitor and Mission 770 as well as dozens of other British designs were made from thin wall birch Ply damped with bituminous pads. The highly damped but deep toned resonance of bitch plywood adds to the charm of these speaker's. It adds a degree of warmth without smothering over the lovely midrange of these classic designs.

@hoiy vinosa weirdo

Why when everything he makes is massively inferior quality than what you can buy already?

​@@bashkillszombies yes. Lets see you do one better then

i had an issue with the led backlighting blub plastic covers falling off inside my Philips monitor due to the speaker system underneath my monitor

Sound bars in general are all degraded in sound quality. They are a compromise of space for audio quality. The midrange is almost non existent and the lower portion of the midrange is made up by the subwoofer. This becomes a problem because sub bass frequencies are non directional, yet low midrange frequencies are directional, at least to the human ear. That means that where you place your subwoofer becomes more critical because your ear will be able to tell where the subwoofer is or the higher end frequencies coming from the subwoofer will create special distortions when listening. If you ever wonder how much of the frequency band a subwoofer is making up for since a sound bar is lacking, turn off the subwoofer and listen to how terrible the sound bar is by itself.

​@@VictoryAviation I'd call that "downgraded" rather than "degraded". You are talking about a lesser sound quality based on the form factor and design. That's a different story. My issue is about use-case. Sound bars are optimized for living room arrangements, so if you put one on the far end of your desktop and sit in front of the desk like a normal computer user, that's too close. The sound quality is significantly degraded compared to sitting a meter or so further away from the exact same sound bar. By the way I found that specific sound bar fine even without the sub plugged in if I was sitting in the suggested listening distance. It was just not suitable for PC usage. Maybe I picked a good model, maybe I'm just not an audiophile. Doesn't matter to my point I think.

That is why you use a sound bar with a TV, and put the whole thing on a coffee table 3-4 ft away while you sit on the couch. Big media setup perfect for games and movies, and put the TV on a mount that you can pull closer for boring old work dealing with text and emails. Current Gen graphics cards are finally available at OK prices, and have modern hdmi for eARC and full low latency 4k 60fps hdr compatility. It's truly amazing! And yeah, it is no 120hz monitor, but I'll take 4k hdr on a big display at 60fps any day compared to a tiny screen at a higher framerate. At home I am mostly consuming media or doing work. For the 3-6 hours a week I play games vs the 20-60 hours a week doing everything else it just isn't worth it

@@rustkitty Degraded sound was correct. A sound bar uses psychoacoustics to give the allusion that you’re hearing a full spectrum of sound. In other words, the sound you are hearing out if it is not the same sound that the audio engineers created in their multi-million dollar studio. The engineers of sound bars take a different sound driver setup and manipulate the EQ to a point where it doesn’t suck. In order to do that, the EQ must be colored (changed) compared to a flat EQ. Almost all modern headphones do this as well by the way, like beats and bose for example. So in the sense of the definition, the sound is certainly degraded from the source material through sound processing and because the equipment is not capable of recreating the same quality of signal.

itsjust hot glue you can just pull it out with little effort

@@thewhiterabbit133 Depends what glue it is. Some glues are so freaking strong that you will rather destroy the wood trying to take it apart. Especially industrial quality glues are unbelievably strong and gluing points become stronger than the material itself.

@@thewhiterabbit133 If that was woodglue Matt used, he isn't getting the front panel off without destroying the wood. I agree with Alex. I wouldn't have permanently closed that space. It's £300 spent on a home made speakers, (subject to issues) so I'd want it to be fully accessible. That being said, I think they are incredible and they are on my list of things I want to build, but probably never will, hence why I live vicariously through Matt.

you meant dosty?!

I think he imagined that in the sander the dust can be collected by the device, but I agree with you: in both cases it will make a mess. But in the end the idea is very good!

Have you worked with MDF? It’s in its own category for being dusty as it’s compressed saw dust essentially. Sanding wood yields less mess all around.

@@JosephQPublic also mdf smells worse.

@@JosephQPublic I strongly disagree

I agree. I am a DiY speaker designer as well and all of the things you have mentioned matter a lot. There is something to be said about making a compact video though... if he went into detail on every single aspect of speaker design that he would NEED to do in order to make an actually decent speaker, this video would be 5 hours long.

@@thephantompsychic yeah that’s true. But: I doubt that these things were taken into consideration at all. I might be wrong.

@@rouldiy Tell that to those popular brands that make PC speakers. They dgaf what they put into their mostly plastic enclosures. They use random parts, shitty drivers, amps so badly designed they distort at half of the volume etc. Compared to them Matt did an awesome job.

@@mattx5499 If you're spending more than $320 (that amount doesn't include the wood, or LEDs for that matter), you could probably get a decent set of speakers for that amount. Yeah, these are going to sound better than a pair of $20 plastic speakers, but they also cost quite a lot of money to only sound awesome compared to, by your own admission, shit.

@@Civilian08 I can asure you that there are plastic speakers that cost far more than $20. And this project is not only about speakers, but a quality monitor stand without any cable mess and a desk lighting. All made of quality parts and materials.

I'd buy one, no doubt

Its a great concept and it has a ton of possible iterations and shapes it can take. He got a real product there. Product that is not on a market. If he would figure out production part, he could literally turn it into a business. How ever, nowsdays people use headphones so the market is small.

@@EddyKorgo Market is huge but requires a lot of experience. Im disapointed that those diy project would lose in sound to a speaker that is 10 times cheaper. Diy give impression of fuller sound here because of subwoofer and normal monitor speakers usually prefer rolloff to make a space for one and not push the drivers to the limit. If you would add a subwoofer to a 500usd pair of speakers this setup would be far far behind. You just cant fit a good enough subwoofer in that size.

I very much appreciate your preface so that your comment was taken at face value, which it was. 😊 That being said, I actually hopped into the comments to state that the $1200 speakers sounded flat in comparison. I did also hear the difference between the mid and high tones, but I think it enhanced the sound, not deteriorated it with the fine tuning he did on the circuit board. I would actually bet that can get chalked up to things like the person listening's tonal preferences, their hearing (especially given to fully take the sound in required headphones), as well as simply trying to listen to his audio and it coming out of a wide variety of all of our diff sound devices (from high end headphones to a $5 pair) with each having varying sound output. I know personally I'm listening on Raycons. I know they aren't half bad, but not even close to great. So I will leave it with you this... maybe try listening again from a different set of headphones?? And speakers for sure don't work. I tried before putting headphones in (was being lazy...lmao). I have to say I don't comment on RU-vid much, but I was in the comments and was going to make my own telling him how he bested $1200 speakers by making them sound flat and dull, then I ran into your comment. So I thought I'd chat with someone instead of talking to myself in the comments...lmao!!

And I'm going to hit right in the middle of these comments. For gaming, I think the DIY speakers nail it. Some of that "balance" is sacrificed for slightly more detail in my ear. For music, I am inclined to lean toward the bookshelf speakers because they round off some the highs a bit more. However, there are several things to take into account here: 1) the bass fires differently in each type of speaker which will creat a very different feel, I'd think 2) the diy speakers can be be further tuned, whereas the bookshelf speaks are fairly fixed unless you get really adventurous 3) room treatment can have a huge impact and can actually close some meaningful gaps All that said, if the DIY version cost even 30% less, I'd say that the value to performance ratio goes to the DIY. Plus that design just has some sexiness to it. 😉 I'd be inclined to put some felt under the speaker unit to eliminate some resonance in the desk since the speaker housing sits directly on it. Anyway...so many options and things to try. And damn, did I say that design looks sexy?

@@unicornlap Thanks for the introspective viewpoint, Laura. Arguably, my hearing has likely been damaged by years of loud concerts and music performance. I take better care of it now, but no doubt I've lost a bit of the clarity that others might possess. My take may be completely off from others! Thanks for your comment! :) P.S. I also don't comment much on YT videos, so I totally understand!

@@vasocreta That's a good point. Different "needs" drive different sounds. I definitely have preferred equalizer settings for music, compared to gaming. I tend to have surround sound increased for games, while focusing more on bass for music. When I saw 'focus,' I don't mean cranking up. the differences are small. However, they're just meaningful enough to hear what I need to hear in each situation. Thanks for the comment and keeping a good conversation going! RU-vid comments aren't always toxic. :)

@@matthelton6637 toxic comments suck. lol I love when people can share thoughts and ideas and just have a conversation. This is where the internet shines 🙂

Any suggestions as how to fix the issue? I'd like to make these for my setup.

Low range is borderline garbage

It could also be your listening setup, your ears, etc. Just saying. Other responses in this thread are their opinions as well.

@@thresh- If there is an issue, you might try mounting the midrange drivers flush to the face of the cabinet, and/or try altering the crossover component values, using the driver specs to determine things.

@@thresh- Mount the drivers from the front and don't go crazy with the router in case you want to recess the after all. You can make the cage/mounting flange flush with the surface but you shouldn't go further than that. And I'd use MDF instead of random wood scraps. Different types of wood will produce audible differences in sound. MDF isn't the ideal material, but it's good enough and consistent in its properties. One potential cause for issues off the list. I'd maybe try and add a little more volume to the speakers, the woofer's probably going to be happy even with a liter less. There's a lot of simulation software available for zero to a couple bucks. IMO it's always worth it to spend an afternoon or two simulating and fine tuning a setup to your liking before you start cutting material.

Noticed this too. Agreed.