Single driver speakers, DIY or commercial

[mwhouston 3,817]

Just now, fell off the boat said:

I like the look of these Barrel speakers. Anyone heard them yet? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/The-Barrel-voice-Custom-handmade-Bookshelf-Full-range-Speaker-Free-shipping/254405077442

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll drink to that.

[aussievintage 1,824]

3 hours ago, fell off the boat said:

I like the look of these Barrel speakers. Anyone heard them yet? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/The-Barrel-voice-Custom-handmade-Bookshelf-Full-range-Speaker-Free-shipping/254405077442

 

 

 

 

They do look superb.

[mwhouston 3,817]

Really think the Visaton is the way to go. In a 60ltr sealed box appears to have reasonable bass (f3=60hz with resonance extremely low). I would like to try a wide baffle for a change and a switchable BSC network (in or out). 

The HF side may be a little down but moving away from single drive an external HF driver or super tweeter perched atop would fix that. The Altronics version just doesn’t have enough power handling. BG20-8 does. 

Inexpensive and sourced in Australia, it would be my choice. 
 

 

 

BG 20 - 8 Ohm | Visaton

WWW.VISATON.DE

---

20 cm (8") full-range speaker with tweeter dome. High efficiency. Suitable for full-range units as vocal or guitar monitors or as a mid-range unit for full-scale or musicians' PA systems.

 

[mwhouston 3,817]

I have stolen this image from the DIY thread. I hope the member is cool with it.

 

This is how I envisage my Visaton 8” single driver build. No port though. 
 

I like the idea of a wide baffle board and the tilt back appeals to me. A finished box either just black or a nice timber veneer. BSC at the back with binding posts and make it defeatable. 
 

The driver will be centre in the top 1/3rd of the baffle brd. 1/3rd up from the bottom will be a port 3/4” in diameter and the depth of the baffle brd. 
 

It will be plugged with a cork from a Woodfords reverse bourbon bottle. Reason is the corks top is made from American oak and when oiled look nice. Pop the cork to change bass characteristics. 
 

Edited November 22 by mwhouston

[oohms 117]

I'll dig out my BG20's and see what i can come up with over the next couple of weeks

 

Had it not been approaching summer, i'd be tempted to build something like a set of voight corner horns for 8" FR drivers

[Ihearmusic 361]

Work in progress.........

 

 

When finished should look like these....

 

[Ihearmusic 361]

DIY Visaton BG 20 Single Driver Full Range Speakers

BLOGSANDPROJECTS.COM

 

[planet10 131]

Here is a set of sealed sims for the BG20.

 

 

A vented box looks to get into the high 20s. My 1st talke would be 100 litres, but it works in 150 litres, and should work in a smaller box with a loss of some LF extension.

 

dave.

 

dave

 

[planet10 131]

7 hours ago, Ihearmusic said:

Work in progress.........

Where did tht design come from? Looks like a “classic” design. Those are very hit and miss.

 

The box you linked to says it is a bass reflex but given the box ratios it is going to be an ML-TL. I would avoid that one.

 

dave

[Ihearmusic 361]

TUBE-MANIACS: TQWT für Philips 9710

TUBEMANIACS.BLOGSPOT.COM

---

Die Suche nach einem geeigneten Lautsprecher für Single Ended Trioden kann zu einer frustrierenden Erfahrung werden. Alle Konzepte die wir g...

 

15 hours ago, planet10 said:

Where did tht design come from? Looks like a “classic” design. Those are very hit and miss.

 

The box you linked to says it is a bass reflex but given the box ratios it is going to be an ML-TL. I would avoid that one.

 

dave

Yes Dave, like with every design, it is a bit hit and miss.

Either one likes the sound or one does not. Amplification matters as well, Room they are put in and so on and so on.

At the end of the day one can only give it ones best shot.

 

 

The design a based mine on is coming from the link above. It is in German however.

 

The other link I forwarded was just for the guys considering a design for the Visaton Driver.

[planet10 131]

Yes, every design could be hit or miss, but classic designed Voigts like this one ar emaybe 1 in 10 a success, modeled ones have more like a 9 out of 10 chance or better. Unless mass loaded a Voigt typically has a lot of low frequency ripple. And without modeling you have no real idea of the volume needed to agequitly load the driver.

 

Matching a speaker to amplification, at least in the LF, is largely determined by getting an output impedance of the amplifier to match the speaker/box. In most real worl cases this means low output impedances because of crossovers causing a wild impedance. Single driver speakers with their typically benign impedance curves often are a much better match with higher output impedance amplifiers — some like the FE1xx6 series really demand it.

 

In the end the only thing that matters is YOUR enjoyment of the music, the connection it allows to the emotion of the music. If you are heepy you are happy.

 

[quotr]The other link I forwarded was just for the guys considering a design for the Visaton Driver.[/quote]

 

The linked BR box is alctually going to be an ML-TL and is likely not well tuned. It also has the braces running in the least effective orientation (and given it is chipboard — not adequately braced). We can do a lot better.

 

dave

 

PS: Google is pretty good at tranlating German.

Edited November 23 by planet10

[Linolad 41]

Hi All,

 

Loving this thread, so here is my current story.

 

My full range speaker journey began about August 2017 when I started studying and reading threads on DYIAudio.com.  After thinking through a number of possibilities, including tall line arrays, I elected to make a pair of Frugel-Horn Mk3’s, a small form transmission line loudspeaker system that most typically uses a 4” full range driver.  I knew that the they would fit into the little nib walls that separate the living room from the family room.

 

The absence of crossovers, and therefore avoiding the attendant issues they bring, was an acceptable compromise over the lack of ultimate power handling and the level of cone breakup that a small 4” cone inevitably brings to the audio table.  To power the boxes I organised with Dave, (after several emails back and forth with pestering queries!), from Planet 10 in Canada to freight me a pair of matched, Enabled Marks Audio Alpair 7Pen 4” drivers. He also supplied me with helpful advice as well so it is especially welcome to see him contributing to Stereonet and this thread.

 

I downloaded the plans from Dave’s website for the 18mm material versions and then sent the info to my friend John at Aranmar Acoustics and asked him to supply me with the raw bits so I could put them together and finish them properly. He sourced some Finnish sourced Russian low void ply for the cut. I say raw, but John CNC’d the parts required and the sanded them and I picked them up taped together.

 

This was April 2018 and I put them together over the next few weeks experimenting with loading the front chamber and lagging the internal sides and also hand rasping a chamfer away from the edge of the back face of the baffle board to let the throat “breathe”. I used them for a few months in their raw state until I reluctantly took them apart, sanded them properly and put a 2mm chamfer on all edges. My son then sprayed them satin white plus top coat lacquer (about 15 coats all up, I lost count) and I put them back together.

 

I initially tried some Cat cable (5, 6 & 7) as speaker cable, but although I liked some aspects of the sound the 10 metre lengths would appear to be a little lossy and thin sounding so I settled for some 20AWG twin insulated Belden speaker cable, although I will experiment further down the track.

 

The sound? Well they got better every few months until now about a year and a half in I think they have settled down and been run in.  I would estimate, in the particular part of the lounge they are in and where I listen from , I would not get anything useable under around 60 to 70hz, but I never expected to.  One of the remarkable aspects of these speakers, apart from the sound stage and stereo imaging, is that they sound great at low levels, in fact I have taken to listening to them at lower levels than I have in the past with other speakers as they exhibit a level of detail and blend throughout a large part of the frequency spectrum that I find particularly  involving.  Many speakers, in my experience, require you to move a reasonable amount of air to become involving.

 

The next step is to take them apart again to give them a final cut and polish, but I am not sure when I want to stop listening long enough to do that even if it is only a couple of hours work!

 

All in all I am very happy with the build and subsequent sound quality and find it is always more satisfying when your enjoyment of your hobby is not just governed by your hip pocket. Given that in the past I have often owned big, multi driver speakers (Polks, Magneplanars, Klipsch etc…) I have rearranged my thinking and find if I do want to play music more loudly I will choose use my headphones. However I do play them at a surprising good volume from time to time.

To be continued….

 

[planet10 131]

Frugel-Horn Mk3’s, a small form transmission line loudspeaker

 

A rear mouth tapped horn. It has a choke (thanx Mr Klipsch). The rear moth loaded by a wall/floor gives a virtual 4x increase in the moth size. Corner load gives 8x. The rear curved mouth developed by Ron Clarke makes the rectangualr mouth acoustically look a lot more like an ideal circualr mouth.

 

Damping helps with tuning making it suitable for many different drivers and kill some ripple. There are also a larger and smaller one. And an XXL relative is in beta.

 

dave

[Linolad 41]

1 minute ago, planet10 said:

 

 

 

A rear mouth tapped horn. It has a choke (thanx Mr Klipsch). The rear moth loaded by a wall/floor gives a virtual 4x increase in the moth size. Corner load gives 8x. The rear curved mouth developed by Ron Clarke makes the rectangualr mouth acoustically look a lot more like an ideal circualr mouth.

 

Damping helps with tuning making it suitable for many different drivers and kill some ripple. There are also a larger and smaller one. And an XXL relative is in beta.

 

dave

Thanks Dave, you are the expert on this model.  Actually I did know that it was a horn, mainly becuase you have told me so previously!

 

Cheers

 

Mark

[mwhouston 3,817]

32 minutes ago, Linolad said:

Hi All,

 

Loving this thread, so here is my current story.

 

My full range speaker journey began about August 2017 when I started studying and reading threads on DYIAudio.com.  After thinking through a number of possibilities, including tall line arrays, I elected to make a pair of Frugel-Horn Mk3’s, a small form transmission line loudspeaker system that most typically uses a 4” full range driver.  I knew that the they would fit into the little nib walls that separate the living room from the family room.

 

The absence of crossovers, and therefore avoiding the attendant issues they bring, was an acceptable compromise over the lack of ultimate power handling and the level of cone breakup that a small 4” cone inevitably brings to the audio table.  To power the boxes I organised with Dave, (after several emails back and forth with pestering queries!), from Planet 10 in Canada to freight me a pair of matched, Enabled Marks Audio Alpair 7Pen 4” drivers. He also supplied me with helpful advice as well so it is especially welcome to see him contributing to Stereonet and this thread.

 

I downloaded the plans from Dave’s website for the 18mm material versions and then sent the info to my friend John at Aranmar Acoustics and asked him to supply me with the raw bits so I could put them together and finish them properly. He sourced some Finnish sourced Russian low void ply for the cut. I say raw, but John CNC’d the parts required and the sanded them and I picked them up taped together.

 

This was April 2018 and I put them together over the next few weeks experimenting with loading the front chamber and lagging the internal sides and also hand rasping a chamfer away from the edge of the back face of the baffle board to let the throat “breathe”. I used them for a few months in their raw state until I reluctantly took them apart, sanded them properly and put a 2mm chamfer on all edges. My son then sprayed them satin white plus top coat lacquer (about 15 coats all up, I lost count) and I put them back together.

 

I initially tried some Cat cable (5, 6 & 7) as speaker cable, but although I liked some aspects of the sound the 10 metre lengths would appear to be a little lossy and thin sounding so I settled for some 20AWG twin insulated Belden speaker cable, although I will experiment further down the track.

 

The sound? Well they got better every few months until now about a year and a half in I think they have settled down and been run in.  I would estimate, in the particular part of the lounge they are in and where I listen from , I would not get anything useable under around 60 to 70hz, but I never expected to.  One of the remarkable aspects of these speakers, apart from the sound stage and stereo imaging, is that they sound great at low levels, in fact I have taken to listening to them at lower levels than I have in the past with other speakers as they exhibit a level of detail and blend throughout a large part of the frequency spectrum that I find particularly  involving.  Many speakers, in my experience, require you to move a reasonable amount of air to become involving.

 

The next step is to take them apart again to give them a final cut and polish, but I am not sure when I want to stop listening long enough to do that even if it is only a couple of hours work!

 

All in all I am very happy with the build and subsequent sound quality and find it is always more satisfying when your enjoyment of your hobby is not just governed by your hip pocket. Given that in the past I have often owned big, multi driver speakers (Polks, Magneplanars, Klipsch etc…) I have rearranged my thinking and find if I do want to play music more loudly I will choose use my headphones. However I do play them at a surprising good volume from time to time.

To be continued….

 

Great story and outstanding results. Had a big long chat with John just last week. We have known each other for nearly forty years. 

[Linolad 41]

3 minutes ago, mwhouston said:

Great story and outstanding results. Had a big long chat with John just last week. We have known each other for nearly forty years. 

Cheers mwhouston,

 

I think I first met John in the middle to late 80's becuase we did some commercial work together, great bloke!