I’m 15 and I started out buying a $25 Logitech surround sound system at savers (witch was acually ok) to now wanting a set of $800 Sony speakers (I don’t have 800 to spend on speaker) so I think this might be the way 😂 I’m really good with electronics woodworking really a lot so I don’t think it will be a problem
I had some oak boxes I turned into speakers / end-tables. I bought an instruction book from Radio Shack on how to build them for the right drivers. It contained all of the formulations I needed. Then, I ordered my tweeters, mid-ranges, and bass drivers with the proper crossover along with the connectors. They both sounded great and looked better than any item you could buy. Plus rugged enough to be furniture or moved to another location.
I'm perplexed how audiophiles like Steve Guttenbourg (spell) don't try to make their own speakers. Making speakers is like buying speakers from hi fi shops and trying them out (but costing two zeros less).
I thought you were actually building speakers.😠😠 You are making speaker boxes not speakers. Might want to specify that. I thought I was actually going to learn something.
still dont understand the Hz-KHz, and how to build 1 sound system that can reach pitches that would resemble the old electronic days.. I.E..Laura Phillips Anderson and hard drum base.. CAN ONE SPEAKERSYSTEM handle all that? putting a project together with a great Old School artisant, and was asked to build a flight case he can take on the road.. have parts from Magnat .and lots of sound equiptment ... any tips ? needs to be put in a flight case and ready to board in a plane or bus...
Good video, but I watched six minutes before realising you’re mainly talking about the enclosure and crossovers. Do you have any info on how to build the speaker itself?
Hi Kirby , I was wondering if you can help me please ! One of my personal goal in life before I die was to build a 12" inch 3-way speakers for my car . I have all the parts available except the 3-way crossover/driver . I am very unknowledgeable in crossover/drivers . I read so many info that is just way too confusing for me ! Can you please help me one on one ? Is there some way I can reach you by phone to answer some question ? Can I give you my email address or personal cell phone here ? I would like to talk to you if possible ? I would greatly appreciate your help in this matter cause you seems very knowledgeable in this field ! Thanks
I recently identified one of my phobias, called trypophobia, that could be why I'm having a hard time getting through this video... It's very interesting, but the flappy ear holes are really setting me off :-(
I don't care if I'm late to the party here, it needs to be said that you contradicted yourself. You say that you find dense hardwoods sound better than less dense, softer woods. Then you immediately follow that by saying PINE is a great option, when that wood is neither dense, nor a Hardwood. So which is it, Hard or Soft?
Hey, as someone who know nothing, here's a way you can improve your video. When you go over each topic, like sealed enclosure vs ported, if you could explain what that means, and why you would do that. Especially for the more tech it items I have no idea what a crossover is and it would be helpful if you could explain what is it, and not just tell me the options.
So this video goes over everything i already know. there is no actual in depth video of how and what to put in the calculators. i can calculate air volume that is addresed on the website of the speaker i want. but then if i would like a speaker with a tweater and a mid range that is ported. or a speaker with a full range maybe mid range with a passive radiotor. i can't find ANYTHING that is usefull to what i would like to know or need to know to calculate the best box size. besides that there is more to it like speaker inpedance. For real i have watched your video's but i have not really gathered that much from them it did refresh my memory a bit so i wil continue my search and hope to get awnsers i have read a bit of the Sound Re enforcement handbook from Yamaha
enclosures need to be calculated? I made a ported inclosure without any calculations, just measurements for the box itself and over all it sounds pretty good. I made my own speaker and only seemed to follow the last step (finish). great work kirby
Like I said in the ending, there's no one right way to build speakers. And that's definitely one way to make it sound good, but making it sound the best it can? That's a different story. Thanks for watching!
It's been a dream of mine for a while now. I already have a vintage audio shop (plug me "Electric Lady Audio). Anyway... I've been wanting to build my own speakers and put them in old ugly junk box's and call them (you ready??) "The Sleeper series"
First off, I love the videos and you have inspired me to build my own speakers. You state that quality plywood, MDF and dense hardwoods sound better than softer, less dense woods. But then right after that you mention Pine as a being a great choice, but pine is a low density softwood?? It appears some of your videos you have used clear pine. I was planning on using a nice figured maple for my enclosure.
@@KirbyMeetsAudio coz the face is the only thing you can see on this (suppose to be) tech-related channel. IMHO - need more precise details, photos, examples with how a speaker resonates, etc
this video was not only super helpful but just really inspiring. You can really see you're passionate about this and it's infectious :) Thanks and subbed
Are there any NON-Bluetooth diy amplifiers that you would recommend? I am in the process of setting up my home studio and I want to build my own reference monitors for 7.1 surround sound design. Can you help me with this?
Hey man! Just subscribed to your channel a few days ago, and I just wanted to say you have some great vids! I'm a former DIY speaker builder/designer myself (used to frequent the P.E. Tech Talk forum for years). I wish there were more people in the hobby that could dedicate a channel to the craft. You've done definitely done that in spades. I traded my speaker building in for a small woodworking business these days, but watching your vids makes me want to break out my measurement gear and stock back up on my crossover parts. Lol. Congrats on starting your own business too!
Nice introduction for the absolute basics. I think a lot of people will benefit from your information. And yes there is no right and wrong way if you have a method that works for you. I've run into that over the years with some people. I do want to add a couple of thoughts as I've been building DIY hifi speakers for 20 years: In the initial planning a major factor is the total Q of the woofer. To get the woofer to perform properly in the most basic sense there is one spec in the TS parameters most important to look at first. That is the QTS. For sealed enclosures, woofer QTS should be between 0.50 - 0.6. For ported and passive radiator between 0.25 - 0.45. The consequences to picking woofer with a QTS of lets say .3 for a sealed enclosure would be that the woofer will make no bass and have no weight to the bass sound. The consequences to picking woofer with a QTS of lets say .6 for a ported enclosure would be that the woofer will sound boomy and heavy, muddy and also have a bad resonance spike somewhere in the upper bass that would be nasty to listen too. After you have found an appropriate QTS then the FS and the VAS are the next most important TS parameters that can make or break how good a woofer can perform.My advice is to get a modeling program of some sort and try the woofer TS parameters in some different enclosure types and sizes and see what looks best. To know what looks best in a plotted frequency response is a whole other topic so people reading this need to learn that in a basic sense to know what to look for. A super basic program that works well is the Sub Tool box www.mfr-eng.com/toolbox.htm. This is a subwoofer program and a basic one at that, but I've used it many times over the years and it has never steered me wrong. However I know what I'm looking at with a plotted frequency response, and similar looking responses can sound drastically different when you get to the hifi level. With this program you are putting in all your own data manually and you can compare many woofer plots so you can get a visual sense of whats happening. The best I can say for beginners is if you look at the frequency response example shown in the link you want something like the red sealed curve. That would be a very natural hifi response in a room. The green ported example they show has two different parts to the curve which appear as a cliff. This would sound more like a heavier boomy sound in a room, similar to the big box store speakers. You always want one nice smooth looking curve for high quality sound and never anything drifting up above the 0db part of the graph unless you want some extra resonance over the rest of the speakers overall sound. But the great thing is that adjusting the box type and volume you could make a curve anywhere between the red and green one and that's when things get interesting. This means you can make exactly how you want the bass response to sound. Once you have that and the box type and size then its on to picking a tweeter and doing the crossover work.
Wonderful information! Thanks so much for taking the time write this out. I think it'll be a big help to a lot of beginners. And welcome to the community!
Check out the Jaycar home speaker 10" woofer (Response brand). It's the 10" paper cone variant and cost about $65 (Australian) each. I got some and I run them with a 4" FR driver. The woofers are in sealed enclosures just with a single 5.6mh inductor on them. The best bass I ever heard! Even if someone offered me a woofer worth a mill, I would still have a real hard time giving up my Jaycar woofers. That's how good I think they are. Maybe it's not the "extension" below 60 hz, it's more the sharp attack of the bass notes and the wonderful kick drum sound. Like you can hear the actual skin on the kick drum being kicked. It's so sharp it's almost like a "tick", but with that deep thud that isn't too overpowered or "muddy" but with that deepness that makes a natural deep "rrrr" but not "boomy" just wicked balanced undertones. Sick! Check them out please, you won't be disappointed. Needs to be with either a med&tweeter or FR driver. They only go to like 1 khz. I can give you more details if you like. Every time I listen to them I wallow in the amazing bass sound like I'm being pampered in luxury. House is amazing with those sick undertones and snappy kick. Fuck I hope you try them (and I suggest you try them in a sealed enclosure, and start off with just a 5.6 mh inductor). I tried it first off with just the 5.6 and it sounded so good that I won't even consider anything else. Also my boxes have a slanted front so the box isn't all straight (and maybe that helps). My speakers are keeping me up all night cos I can't stop listening to the music.
Step #7 I don't think many beginners will be able to judge what to do with a crossover if they made it by computer or math, or even a pre built crossover. It takes experience to judge how to fix a crossover just by listening to it. I can do it cos I have been trying for decades. It takes time and curiosity. Now I have built a completely GUESSED crossover and it was GREAT the very first time. It happened yesterday for the very first time. My previous set of speaker crossovers took a year before I was happy (a particular challenging acoustic set-up in those speakers). But without experience you may have to go to your computer to tweak it. You have to know (approximately) all the frequencies in hz and khz (when you hear them). And you have to know (off hand) the ranges of the caps and inductors without looking it up, if you have any hope of doing it just by listening. I found out just by hearing different caps and inductors (over the years). No computer or math on paper (just in my head). And you have to know how caps and inductors behave in parallel and in series (way difference). And you have to watch the impedance with your resistors etc. I have some speakers that go down to 2 ohms above 10 khz. lol but I am actually aware of that and the speakers sound great so I don't care but I would NOT put those speakers on any hi end (expensive) amp. And I now have a different driver set-up design and so this is the only pair I made like that. The next ones only go down to 4 ohms in the highs. Ineficient but killer sound top end. And there is the (dreaded) woofer tweeter level that I think is very important cos it gives you a choice on bass content against treble content. Too much woofer can DROWN OUT the nice highs and visa versa. And that I find is about the most difficult crossover challenge. My "tweeters" are coaxial (inside med drivers) and the "tweeters" are completely DIPOLE. That's why they are ridiculously inefficient but killer best treble I heard.
Hi. can you help me? I bought BOSS AUDIO CXX10 Chaos Exxtreme 10 inch Single Voice Coil (4 Ohm) 800-watt Subwoofer and BOSS AUDIO PC65.2C Phantom 6.5" 2-way 500-watt Component Speakers. What kind of Enclosure will be better to make? and can you suggest simple amplifier for this? Thank you.
I'm interested in building some home studio monitors, active if possible to save on space, Ill be using a macbook pro & maschine studio and dont have room for an amp too. So to construct something like Rokit 5's or NS10's. Any suggestions to where to statrt choosing the component parts to achieve a flat response for playback and mixing. Also, I have a 12 Kenwood car sub in a sealed enclosure and somewhere in a box some Focal 6.5 's with tweeters and seperate crossovers, as these were for car audio are they in any way usable.. for instance could they be hooked up to an existing home audio amp rather than buy an inverter for the existing alpine and kenwood amps they ran off originally? and would the sound be any good - the focals are the yellow fibre glass coned ones and they sounded awesone in a car but wonder will that translate to an enclosure? Prob better than a steel car door I know but people get very antsy about using car audio speakers in home kit.. do they have a point? Keep up the good work and loving them tunnels! :) Peace
man please consolidate the information and avoid the tirades. good information, clearly knowledgable but it requires a lot of attention to decryption of what your saying.
Does anyone know good websites in the UK (that ship to Ireland) that sell speaker components? I've been looking for a while and can't find any that stand out as being really good.
+schismtomynism It says it does international shipping, but it's calculated in checkout so I don't know how much it'll be yet, thanks for the suggestion though. :)
+Matthew Ahern I live in Norway, and have been thinking about getting some Dayton drivers from parts-express. Did not go through with it when I saw the shipping costs :/
Oh okay, thank you :) I was hoping it would be low, but most American websites have insane shipping costs, it's why I was looking for a UK (or European) website :/
Hello, i have seen almost all of your videos and i am planning to bluid my own portable bluetooth speaker but i have some question. i am planning to use 2 tweeters with rms 60 watt and 1 woofer wirh rms 60 watt, i connect these with an bluetooth amp with 2x50 watt and for the subwoofer 10p watt, the amp has a max output of 3A and needs 18-24v but i would lije to use a battery bank wichh gives 18-24 output but there are only really expensive one or only 12v, how can i fix this? thank you for all of your videos, they really helped me!
I am building with one 1" tweeter and two 3" midrange speakers in each box with a separate subwoofer. question is how or where to buy a crossover with taps for only one tweeter and two midrange.... the sub will be limited already by the amp.
Men, would you please explain the differences between the speakers (Dayton´s PS and RS), and I thing, a lot of people would like to know about, how to use and when to use diferent kind of speakers, diferent models. Thank you.
Calculate EBP (ported or sealed enclosure)... dimensions 0.6:1:1.6 or, 0.8:1:1.8... Purpose: PA or Near-Field Monitors... active crossovers vs. passive.
So i rebuilt some b and w dm110 from 1988 with birch ply cabs. The components are now past their best but the boxes are nice and i would like to replace the components. How do i chose something correct for these boxes?
Hello Kirby, this is a informative video. I just bought some Yamaha NS-10M that sound great but the cabinets are in rough shape. So I am looking to make a replacement cabinets. I would like to know if the wood type make a difference?
Really liking this series Kirby. Thanks for putting in the effort. I'm a long time woodworker (probably old enough to be your dad 😀) and you've inspired me to build a Bluetooth speaker for my little shop. Your videos are easy to make it all the way through... the right balance of words and visual stimulation... you have a knack.
Hey @kirbymeetsaudio so I want to build my own Bluetooth speaker. I want to use it for work but I work in a warehouse where it's really loud so it's hard to here even the loudest speakers. I really want it to sound good. Is there any suggestions you have for me?
Love the channel, id love to see how you wire up your speakers and in the future if you were to try something else, i think it would be awesome to see you incorporate an am/fm receiver and bluetooth receiver in the same system, im thinking about trying it out but im trying to figure out how id get the circuit wired up and working without a massive power drain, so far all i can think of is to have a 4-way rotary switch to alternate electrical feed to each receiver but if you can think of something better im open to suggestions
excellent video, just wonder where the rest of the videos in the step by step series were. The only suggestion I would have, would be to demo exactly what you are talking about because some people are visual learners and can't connect the theory until they see the practical
hey I'm wondering what's a Twitter I'm trying to make this bluetooth speaker and I got the speaker from a old tv you know one of those rear projection TVs will it make for good sound?
Hey Kirby! Just found your channel and it's everything I've been looking for I've been building ceramic speakers for two years for deep rich bass and quality high end at a large volume as well. I'm in the process of building a box that isn't ceramic and it's all falling apart 😢. Don't get me wrong the box is solid and my wiring is spot on but attaching the speakers to the box without screws is messing me up silicone didn't work also it's a portable Bluetooth boombox that's ported with 8 drivers please help!
Hey there, really enjoyed your videos so far! Because I cant find a mobile bluetooth speaker on the market right now, convinving me by specs and their price im planning to build my own, I have quite exact visions right now and consider myself as a rudimentary gifted handyman.So i worked for wood and stuff for years, typical stuff you may have to do from time to time, but im not that good at physics and eletronics. Is there any way to get in contact with one of you, showing you my build plans i made yet,right now its only the idea behind it and how it should look and how i want it to function in a specific way. Thank you so much in advance and keep up the good work! Greetings from Germany
Heya, awesome!!! It looks like the "Watch the in depth video here" links embedded in your video don't work (like for the in-depth on crossovers, choosing drivers etc.) can you throw those links up here too?? Thanks Kirby! You rock!
What are your thoughts on building a two-way system without a crossover at all, and just letting each driver follow its natural frequency response curve? (And purposefully selecting drivers that had very little overlap in their frequency response.)
In theory, the less intrusive or complex the crossover is, the better and more coherent the sound. However, what you're suggesting would limit which drivers you could use, greatly. The closest thing I can think of would be a Lowther designed speaker, but that's just one speaker driver. If you could find speakers that are complimentary and have gently intersecting natural roll off points, it would actually be interesting to see how that sounds. A long time ago, when car audio was barely an industry, I drilled holes in my car's doors and rear deck panel and stuck home audio speakers in them. I had no idea what a crossover was and the whole thing sounded like crap. Shortly after that I walked into an electronics store and found out what a crossover was. I bought a pre-assembled three-way network, took it home and installed it in my car. It made a huge improvement even though it wasn't designed for my hodgepodge of speakers.
+Kirby Meets Audio if you can figure out how to make a modular Bluetooth speaker kit. I think there's a good market for it. I'd be very interested in purchasing a kit to make my own Bluetooth speaker with tried and tested components.
Hi! I'm really looking forward to see the next episodes of this series. Your speakers are awesome and I like the way you produce your videos! All the best!
i'm finding it extremily difficult to find a amp that produces 200 watts per channle without spending 500 dollars can i run drivers below their rms rating and just use a 100 watt per channle amp?
You definitely can!! An RMS rating is only to tell you how much MAXIMUM constant power you can send to the speaker but having anything under that is fine. The compromise you make by going lower in power is how loud the system will be able to play without considerable distortion (still, a 100w/ch amp will give you quite a bit of sound, even with lower sensitivity speaker...) and you will loose a bit of headroom for those super high dynamic passages!! What I usually recommend is to have as much power as you can afford... The thing is, watts are really not all of the story when looking at a power amp! I would choose a 50w/ch class A/B amp with a toroïdal power supply WAY before a 100w/ch class T amp with a El Core power supply. Having good damping factor will ultimately give you better/louder/tighter sound because the amp will have a better control over the movement of the speaker cone! It's a bit like a car engine; watts are the horsepower and damping factor is like the torque, you want a good balance of both!
It's a pleasure to help! Just to be clear, the RMS rating on a speaker serve to tell you how much CONSTANT power you can send to the speaker without overheating the voice coil, but music and movies are not CONSTANT power, they are bursts of dynamic power so it is perfectly fine and in most case recommended (if possible/affordable) to have more power on tap than what your speaker's RMS rating states. As I mentioned, you want as much power as you can afford. There is absolutely no problems running a 50 w/rms speaker on a 1000w amp (as long as you stay intelligent with the volume knob!). The lower the effort for the amp, the less harmonic distortion in the signal and the higher the headroom (read; better dynamics!).... Anyway, I could go on all day on that topic... Keep on listening friend!
