Speaker Builds Overview

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:01][music] >> Welcome to another edition of my audio project series.

[00:00:17]In this video, I will discuss the various speaker build projects that I've done over the years starting at a very young age.

[00:00:25]This is just an overview.

[00:00:27]If there's enough interest and more details, I can do other videos with more specifics on speaker building.

[00:00:34]Please leave a comment if interested, otherwise I will consider this video enough.

[00:00:40]Early in my childhood, I was always attempting to make sound improvements to my audio listening devices.

[00:00:46]At that time, this was essentially a portable record player.

[00:00:50]Since my dad sometimes repaired TVs for people, we had spare parts lying around, which included various speaker drivers that he pulled from various TVs.

[00:01:00]I thought it would be a good idea to connect a number of these to my record player using the headphone output jack.

[00:01:06]My dad saw this and explained that it wouldn't work well because the speakers require a baffle and a closed box to prevent the back wave of the speaker from canceling out the front wave.

[00:01:17]We proceeded to the basement where we built a small box out of scrap wood.

[00:01:22]This was my first speaker build.

[00:01:24]From that point on, I was hooked.

[00:01:27]For Christmas that year, I asked for speaker drivers and a crossover from Lafayette Radio and my dad helped me build my next generation speaker.

[00:01:35]I still have it till this day.

[00:01:39]Over the years, my interest in speaker building and speaker mods continued.

[00:01:43]I ended up modifying my KLH 17 speakers while in college due to me continuing blowing the tweeters.

[00:01:51]After college, I was determined to do my first real quality speaker build. With limited woodworking skills and equipment, my approach was to purchase ready-made speaker cabinets and add the drivers and crossover network.

[00:02:03]At that time, there were a number of companies providing components to the DIY speaker enthusiast.

[00:02:08]KEF speakers at that time were one of my favorites.

[00:02:11]And they had a line of drivers and construction plans for speakers. It was called their constructor series.

[00:02:18]So, I purchased a pair of speaker cabinets from Speakerlab and a set of KEF drivers, which included the T27 tweeter, B110 mid-ranges, and a pair of B200 woofers.

[00:02:30]With my handy Black & Decker jigsaw, my only piece of equipment at the time, I cut the holes for the drivers. I used some plastic storage containers that fit the B110 holes for the mid-range enclosures and built the crossover network built on KEF's recommendations.

[00:02:47]The result wasn't bad.

[00:02:49]These remained my main speakers for a number of years.

[00:02:53]I'd always had an itch, though, to improve upon these.

[00:02:56]Some years later, I had a co-worker who was into woodworking, and he needed some speakers.

[00:03:02]So, I agreed to design him a pair if he would build me he a new set of speaker cabinets.

[00:03:07]My original Speakerlab cabinets were too small for the KEF drivers I was using, so being able to have a custom-built cabinet to match the drivers was awesome.

[00:03:17]It was also an opportunity to improve upon my original design.

[00:03:21]I ended up purchasing another pair of B110 KEF drivers and configured the driver orientation into a D'Appolito configuration.

[00:03:30]I have spent many years working on this crossover design and making improvements to these, and it continues to be an ongoing project.

[00:03:38]Jumping forward to my early home theater years drove me to build my first subwoofer.

[00:03:44]It was essentially a failed experiment, but I learned a lot.

[00:03:47]The design was a symmetrically loaded or bandpass design.

[00:03:51]In this design, there's a rear sealed enclosure followed with a ported enclosure located in front of the driver.

[00:03:59]This is similar to the KEF 104.2 design.

[00:04:03]It measured as predicted, but suffered from excessive port noise or chuffing at the lowest frequencies.

[00:04:09]My choice of subwoofer driver made the port diameter too narrow and long, resulting in the excessive noise.

[00:04:15]This shows the importance of matching the speaker driver to the proper enclosure.

[00:04:21]For my next subwoofer project, I looked at existing subwoofers in the marketplace.

[00:04:26]I was drawn to the Sunfire True Subwoofer.

[00:04:29]Instead of a port, the speaker uses a passive radiator design, which replaces the port with a drone cone.

[00:04:35]The drone or passive radiator is identical to the main driver, but without a voice coil or magnet assembly.

[00:04:41]I found a Sunfire True Subwoofer driver on eBay, and then purchased a passive radiator directly from Sunfire. I then built a 1 cubic foot box to hold the drivers.

[00:04:52]For an amplifier, I used a WS600 amplifier from D2 Audio that I had designed with built-in DSP functionality.

[00:04:58]>> [clears throat] >> It worked great. It was my main home theater subwoofer for many years.

[00:05:05]Subwoofer project number three.

[00:05:07]While working at D2 Audio, I was working with a customer in the Dallas area who was designing a sound studio.

[00:05:14]They were having a custom subwoofer driver designed for it, and we got on the subject of building speakers.

[00:05:20]He offered to send me one of the subwoofer drivers, and I took him up on his offer.

[00:05:25]It was a massive 18-in driver with a single voice coil and multiple spiders.

[00:05:30]It sat in my garage for years waiting me to build a cab for it.

[00:05:34]After retirement, this is one of my first projects.

[00:05:38]Rather than build a cabinet myself, I turned to Parts Express and found a 4 cubic foot knockdown cabinet that would work perfectly with this driver.

[00:05:46]The results were quite good. I used the same D2 audio amplifier that I used for the Sunfire subwoofer.

[00:05:53]This continues to be my home theater subwoofer today.

[00:05:58]Another build I did was back in the CRT monitor computer days where the speakers needed to be shielded so as to not interfere with the CRT monitors.

[00:06:07]I wanted a pair of speakers to connect to my PC and I came across the zero gauss design from Vifa speakers that utilized their M13 SG-09 shielded 5-in midwoofer and a D19 TD-03 tweeter.

[00:06:24]I built a cabinet per the specified dimensions including the port on the output to the back.

[00:06:32]I wanted them to be powered and I found a cheap Sony XM 2020 car amplifier at Crutchfield.

[00:06:39]I then built a simple 12-V brick external power supply to power it.

[00:06:44]I then added the Radio Shack equalizer preamp.

[00:06:47]The amplifier is built into one of the speakers and drives the other speaker which is passive. It sounded great.

[00:06:53]It's one of the better speaker monitors I have heard.

[00:06:57]During my home theater build, I needed a center channel speaker to go with my Ohm I main speakers.

[00:07:05]In designing a center home theater speaker, the driver characteristics should match the timbre of the main speakers to maintain seamless sound across the center stage.

[00:07:15]This meant the drivers needed to have a similar composition to the ones in the Ohm I.

[00:07:20]For a center channel tweeter, I found the same Ohm I tweeter on tweeter on eBay.

[00:07:25]For the midranges, I found a pair of Jensen dome midranges also on eBay.

[00:07:30]And for the woofers, I used two 6-in paper cone drivers from Parts Express that seemed to be a good match to the Ohm I 8-in drivers.

[00:07:39]I then I the enclosure putting all the drivers horizontally in a symmetrical configuration.

[00:07:45]This driver orientation makes things a bit complicated from a crossover perspective, but being able to utilize a D D2 audio DSP based amplifier helped tremendously.

[00:07:55]The amplifier and power supply are built into the cabinet.

[00:07:58]My latest tuning came out so good that I didn't even know the front main speakers were off accidentally when watching a movie recently.

[00:08:06]The sound of the center channel was that good.

[00:08:09]That's it for my speaker build history overview.

[00:08:12]Again, if there's enough interest, I can provide more details for the specific builds or just more general info on speaker building if those are interested.

[00:08:24]Thanks for watching.