you prolly dont care but if you are stoned like me during the covid times you can stream pretty much all of the new movies on InstaFlixxer. Been binge watching with my gf these days =)
Thanks for going into more depth, I’ve been trying to research speaker building for the past couple months in my off time and I’m excited for the software and crossover videos!
This is an older video but hte way you break it down and simplify how to compare and combined speakers is phenomenal! Love this series and you have single handed gotten me into custom speaker building with the breakdowns!!!
Whoa...I'm creating a playlist to save this and other videos to. So much info especially for a speaker building newb. I'm going to go back and listen/watch this series multiple times, i can see that now. Thank you for the great lesson!
I love these instructions videos you do! (All the others too of course!) I'm in deep in planning of a speaker of my own. Waiting in agony for the crossover episode... Have gotten real stuck on that. Keep it up! You're helping and inspiring a lot of people!
Kirby, Thank you for these videos. I've been looking to replace woofers/tweeters in some DIY speakers that I inherited from a previous owner in our current house. This is great information for a person looking for replacement woofers/tweeters for an already existing enclosure & outdated woofers/tweeters. My biggest constraint is fitting woofers/tweeters into my pre-cut flush-mount enclosure. I don't have a way to cut/modify the enclosure at the moment & don't want to spend money on a router.
Yes Sir - keep these going. Good design practice explained well and agree totally with constraints and goals for ALL design projects to drive creative solutions that actually work for your needs. THANKS!
Awesome details man! I really appreciate all the information. I'll be using this series and some of your other videos to build some speakers for my new desktop PC
Awesome video as always....love the simplicity of the information that you share....great for all stages of DIY speaker builders..keep it up...looking forward to the next step
Hi Kirby, when you will do the enclosure video, could you include some info about refelx enclosures, especially about the different types of transmission lines? Keep up the good work!
So I have 4 of these and I'm putting them in a homemade box all 4 in a row. Should I make separate chambers for them? I also have 2 6 inch passive radiators and was wondering if I could put one on each side. Just didn't know if that would be good for 4 4 inch speakers
Question, following your videos and tips would I be able to actually build high quality loudspeakers (sound wise speakers) that can compete with higher quality brand name speakers. I mean a 2000$ dollar kit to compete with something double or triple that price point. Or, do the higher brand names have the advantage on us DIYers with crossover technology and technical knowledge. I’m very curious because I want to build a kick ass system that will considered audiophile quality but I’m just not sure. Thanks love the channel
Can you make a video about the parts that go into making a crossover network? I'm planning to experiment with an open baffle tower and I can't find any videos on crossover networks for those of us who are clueless about the subject.
CX120-8 is an excellent choice , but for a real 2-way speaker my choice will 2X TCP115-4 + SEAS Prestige 19TFF1 - H0737 in MTM configuration and an X-point somewhere around 3600 Hz (out of the human voice spectrum)
great tut as always. hmm. i have a pair of dual cone full range drivers, but of unknown ts parameters. which i will have to measure. have you ever measure ts parameters?
Hey Kirby, thanks so much for this excellent series, very informative. I'm looking to start my first speaker build in the next week or two but my soldering skills aren't too flash so am looking to use off the shelf crossovers. The TCP115-8 = 55-6000hz and TD20F-4 = 3000-20000hz, can I buy a 5K low pass filter and 5k high pass filter and wire them in parallel? So the sub 5K frequency gets sent to the woofer and the above 5K gets sent to the tweeter? These filters are about $5 on PE and would be a lot easier than soldering my own which is something I'll probably have a crack at once I've got a couple of builds under my belt. Thanks
Hi Kirby. You did not say that when the driver is mounted in a cabinet it's SPL graph is quite different from the datasheet. Also - the low end of the SPL graph depends on the acoustic design: closed box or vented and it's parameters. You need to know how they measured SPL for the datasheet.
hmm, but dont you need tweeter attenuation when the power below that crossover point is being split between the two woofers regardless? or does overal percieved SPL increase when there is two woofers splitting the power? sorry i know very little about all this.
Great vid man!!! just a question though, 2 mid/woofers @ 8 Ohms in parallel is 4 Ohms, in series it is 16 Ohms.. do you intend on fixing the matching in the XO?
Need help, can you explain in your next project how to design and make own headphones wired and wireless with better than average sound quality to use as gaming headphones so to plug in into pc. Closed preferred. Is that something you would be able to help?
i am a musician. i want to make something which gives me that moving and clear bass. i watched ur studio monitor guide. but m thinking to expand the speakers and make it into a home theater system(only if possible). So should i make a full range setup(will that give me sufficient bass)or make a 2.1 type of setup and what size should i go for?
If you press alt/option and then click the top right icon (the three lines) for the notification bar, it'll put your computer in do not disturb mode and you won't have to remove each notification individually. Just a little something to make your life easier 😉
I really love your videos, so cool helps a lot with building my own! Favorite youtuber next to pewdiepie (i know its kinda weird to compare u and pewdiepie but whatever)
Hi, thanks for your videos. I want to construct similar setup but I have some doubts. What is the final impedance on each stereo channel, 8 ohm? How is distributed the amplifier power among each of two woofer and one tweeter, 25/25/50% 33/33/33%? Thanks
Once you start talking about dB you should take a moment to explain to everyone that the gap from 90dB to 81dB is actually huge, that the scaling isn't linear.
nice video. The part were you go into the tweeter being more efficient a good pick because there will be two drivers kinda lost me. Typically isn't having multiple drivers basically a benefit because they have to each work less? Meaning the excursion gets cut in half resulting in lower distortion. Are the woofers going to be wired in parallel cutting the impedance in half resulting in more power to the lower band and thats why?
Isn't the rule of thumb +3db for every matching speaker added. So one 4" woofer is 81db 1w/1m, if you add a second matching 4" woofer wouldn't their overall sensitivity go up to 84db 1w/1m? The tweeter being 90db 1w/1m wouldn't you still need about a -6db Lpad on it to bring down to match the woofers?
How do i find a circuit board that has bluetooth, aux, and RCA connectors(that will work with a turn table)Preferably with a 3 way input selector and a volume pot?
Hi Kirby... I left a message on your last video about selecting a driver. I cannot find the Worksheet on your website. You keep saying to go download it, but the shortened Google link you provide just goes to your /shop. No worksheet download.
Where does audio quality come into your considerations? Ie. different drivers have different audio reproduction qualities. What about the material that the cones are made from?
I know it's different from your normal videos, but this video could prove very helpful for people serious about building their own speakers! Thank you! I mentioned in the last video I made a pair of speakers, here are mine: imgur.com/gallery/eI4nH It was my first time doing wood finishing, so it's less than professional. They sound amazing though!
Your speakers look amazing! To get even better sound out of them I assume my video "How to Design a Passive Crossover Network" could maybe help: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5Kvl0iBQ0L0.html&list=PL4lJ1ej0uWlQjzOstioAZ1bd555vG9WHF
Marius Loubeeka thank you! As far as I'm aware, I did the best I could without buying super expensive inductors or making my own, or doing a higher order crossover as well, My next step will be to go active, but that'll require me buying a lot more hardware.
An active crossover for a 2-way project is quite complicated because baffle step compensation isn't that easy to achieve. My favorite German DIY loudspeaker magazine Hobby HiFi nearly never use an active crossover because they say that a passive crossover is easier to develop, cheaper and sound quality is equal. But a digital one as for example the MiniDSP 2x4HD might be fun to play with if you have measurement hardware. The USB microphone MiniDSP offers is acceptable, I use it too. But if you buy or have a microphone anyway just use ARTA (free test version) for measurement, measure drivers on their own, import to BoxSim (freeware), simulate crossover, build crossover, measure complete box again to verify and repeat some steps if neccessary. The process of making is what this hobby is all about. Have a look at my channel where I already cover some of those topics. More will follow step by step but RU-vid is also only a hobby for me. If you only want to *have* good speakers and don't enjoy the design and development process so much then you should take a look at my "Top 10 DIY Compact Speakers" video and build one of those which are fully developed to perfection.
What about the ohm ? Does it matters ? Do they need to match in the woofer and twitter ? Or as there are 2 woofer 1 twitter the woofers need to be 8 ohm and tweeter needs to be 4 ohm ?
Yes, you want the resistance of the woofer and tweeter to be the same. I think Kirby could answer to more confidence on why, but I am fairly certain that if you had a 4 ohm tweeter, and a 8 ohm woofer, the tweeter would be twice as loud (3db) as the woofer. This ruins the balance on the pair. I may have missed something in his videos, but there is going to be a tweeter and woofer per speaker, so 2 together. If you had two woofers and 1 tweeter though, you still WOULD NOT want to make the tweeter 4ohms. The power from the amp would be split "evenly" across everything, but because the tweeters are half as resistant, they would be "twice" as loud. The advantages of using two woofers is, for the same power you can be +3db... OR.. at the same db, the cone movement is less, and there is less distortion.
Abhinil Bose: No, the nominal resistance ("ohms") does not matter. Unless the impedance ("ohms" over frequency) does not fall at any frequency below what your amplifier is rated for. And it does not need to match unless you have for example a valve / tube amp which needs a constant impedance to work correctly. With the voltage divider at the tweeter you can adjust the impedance within some boundaries for that range. Important is that the branches of your crossover ar specially designed for the respective impedance of the driver(s) they are connected to.
WeBuild4Life: Transistor amplifiers are voltage sources. Their voltage does not depend on the connected impedance (within their rated range). That's the reason the sensitivity is usually given at 2.83V/1m. Those values are therefore directly comparable between 4 and 8 ohm drivers. The 3dB difference in SPL you mentioned would (theoretically) occur between two drivers of the same kind of which one has 4 ohms and the other one has 8 ohms nominal impedance - of course at the same voltage. Then the one with 4 ohms is able to emit double the amount of power (P = U * I) which leads to the 3dB more SPL (SPL = 10 * log(P2/P1)). But the German DIY loudspeaker magazine Hobby HiFi showed that practically higher impedance drivers don't have exactly twice the impedance at every frequency. Usually tweeters are louder than woofers and that's why you use a voltage divider to adjust the SPL of the tweeter to keep the balance.
I don't use software. Instead when I tune my speakers they are tuned by ear by adding different length cardboard ports and once I am satisfied with the bass output esp in the crucial 50hz to 250hz range. Drivers are selected by sensitivity, woofer 89db, tweeter 90db and crossover point depends on sensitivity at that point (90db at 2500hz)
Is it just me, but you've missed the part where the twitter you've selected and the mid-woofer have different impedance. Unless you deal with it when designing a cross-over :)
Sorry to say but the low part of a speaker can't be read from the frequency response. You need to simulate and calculate it with the Thiele Small parameters and some decent software.
vicky kumar they sound same Only difference is loudness level 4ohm sound loud on same amplifier but amplifier heat up more 8 ohm, 16ohm not loud but sound better and low distortion
You completely disregard the cone material whether it should be paper or aluminum or some exotic Kevlar ( they all sound different… personally paper is more natural) and what are the differences in the sound quality. In addition I think sensitivity is a big issue because a lot of people have low power amplifiers
