20 ms·

Those aren't homemade speakers, they're homemade enclosures. Disappointed as I was expecting something more substantial than "I made a box".

by scoot 12y ago

unholiness 12y ago
Agreed. I think there's a lot to be learned from building a driver, if only for the powerful experience of realizing that there's nothing magical about it. Just a magnet and a coil of wire. It's the equivalent a CS guy designing a rudimentary processor: it won't be necessary be good enough to beat out commercial stuff, but it sure does convince you that the thing you take for granted really can be done with just transistors/magnets and wire. I for one would have loved to do this kind of activity as a kid: it's a pretty simple concept that puts a whole lot of power in your hands and exposes interesting questions. It looks like Bose is doing something in this space at kids science camps [0]. If you can acquire/make an amp and a strobe light to replace their "blue box", there's a whole host of kid-friendly activities on the site to do with kids centered around making hand-made, origami paper drivers. [0] http://build.bose.com/ http://build.bose.com/
mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
DIY speakers as a hobby is mostly about enclosures and crossover networks. It's quite rare that people would build their own speakers drivers (some planar speakers being an exception). Where it's rewarding is taking available drivers and building a full speaker around them -- usually optimizing for performance vs cost. It's difficult and expensive to build really high quality loudspeakers. Add markup to that and the retail price of a well engineered speaker will quickly go into 5 digits. The speakers in my living room are DIY (though they don't really look "DIY" as far as that might carry negative connotations) and they're an excellent value. They were also fun to build. In no way was I disappointed afterwards because I had not, say, wound the voice coils myself.
userbinator 12y ago
The box is a huge factor in making them sound good. For a brief time, I had a pair of speakers on my desk made from old PC case speakers that I salvaged and just put on stands made from blocks of wood with a hole in them. I liked the look, and the sound was alright, but rather weak and tinny. Then one day I decided to build a box around them, and the difference was night and day - much louder sound with significantly more bass.
VLM 12y ago
This might sound harsher than intended, but given how the performance of a speaker is driven by the interaction of the enclosure with the driver parameters its kind of like saying a saxophone is just an enclosure for a reed. Or a car engine carburetor is just an enclosure for the air that connects to an engine. The acoustics of the enclosure dominate the performance of the overall speaker, especially at the low end freqs. There is a big difference between just making a box, making a box that looks nice, and making a box that cooperates with the specs of the driver to make a good speaker. You might be surprised how awful the specs are for a bare driver hanging by its wires in the air without an enclosure. It is very much like the analogy of a musical instrument reed.

Those aren't homemade speakers, they're homemade enclosures. Disappointed as I was expecting something more substantial than "I made a box".

by scoot 12y ago

Those aren't homemade speakers, they're homemade enclosures. Disappointed as I was expecting something more substantial than "I made a box".

unholiness 12y ago

Agreed. I think there's a lot to be learned from building a driver, if only for the powerful experience of realizing that there's nothing magical about it. Just a magnet and a coil of wire. It's the equivalent a CS guy designing a rudimentary processor: it won't be necessary be good enough to beat out commercial stuff, but it sure does convince you that the thing you take for granted really can be done with just transistors/magnets and wire. I for one would have loved to do this kind of activity as a kid: it's a pretty simple concept that puts a whole lot of power in your hands and exposes interesting questions. It looks like Bose is doing something in this space at kids science camps [0]. If you can acquire/make an amp and a strobe light to replace their "blue box", there's a whole host of kid-friendly activities on the site to do with kids centered around making hand-made, origami paper drivers. [0] http://build.bose.com/ http://build.bose.com/

mbenjaminsmith 12y ago

DIY speakers as a hobby is mostly about enclosures and crossover networks. It's quite rare that people would build their own speakers drivers (some planar speakers being an exception). Where it's rewarding is taking available drivers and building a full speaker around them -- usually optimizing for performance vs cost. It's difficult and expensive to build really high quality loudspeakers. Add markup to that and the retail price of a well engineered speaker will quickly go into 5 digits. The speakers in my living room are DIY (though they don't really look "DIY" as far as that might carry negative connotations) and they're an excellent value. They were also fun to build. In no way was I disappointed afterwards because I had not, say, wound the voice coils myself.

userbinator 12y ago

The box is a huge factor in making them sound good. For a brief time, I had a pair of speakers on my desk made from old PC case speakers that I salvaged and just put on stands made from blocks of wood with a hole in them. I liked the look, and the sound was alright, but rather weak and tinny. Then one day I decided to build a box around them, and the difference was night and day - much louder sound with significantly more bass.

VLM 12y ago

This might sound harsher than intended, but given how the performance of a speaker is driven by the interaction of the enclosure with the driver parameters its kind of like saying a saxophone is just an enclosure for a reed. Or a car engine carburetor is just an enclosure for the air that connects to an engine. The acoustics of the enclosure dominate the performance of the overall speaker, especially at the low end freqs. There is a big difference between just making a box, making a box that looks nice, and making a box that cooperates with the specs of the driver to make a good speaker. You might be surprised how awful the specs are for a bare driver hanging by its wires in the air without an enclosure. It is very much like the analogy of a musical instrument reed.