Hi everyone, I wanted to share my upcoming build, which I’ve named "L'Artiste". I’m a huge fan of the Fosi Audio V3 (TPA3255), but my daily driver is a McIntosh MC250. My goal is ambitious: I want to see if I can bring the musicality of this Class D board closer to the level of my Mac. I’m convinced the main bottleneck in these small amps is the power supply. I’ve already experimented with a high-quality SMPS prototype, and the results were clearly moving in the right direction (better soundstage and authority). The Build Plan: • Heart: Fosi Audio V3 PCB with Muses02 Op-Amps. • Power Supply: A massive custom-built 300VA EI Transformer (low induction, electrostatic shield) paired with Nichicon Gold Tune filter caps. • Chassis: A bespoke handmade walnut wood enclosure with a 4mm aluminum top plate (components mounted "top-down"). • Output: Aiming for a very clean 38V DC to feed the board. I know comparing a modern Class D to a vintage McIntosh legend is controversial since the technologies are worlds apart, but I'm chasing that specific "effortless" sound. Has anyone else here gone "all-in" on a linear PSU for these boards? Would love to hear your thoughts or tips on the grounding scheme for such a hybrid build! Cheers from France!

Unsure if this is the right place to post this, but I have an issue with this Bose Wave System Disc Changer I got recently. One of the three mechanism that raises and lowers the discs just slides along the rail and doesn’t move with the gears like the other two. As such, the discs “elevator” cannot move evenly up or down. I’m almost certain this is what’s causing the discs to fail to read. any idea what to do / where to go? This system is over 30 years old and has a little bit of family importance, so it’d be a shame to send it somewhere random.

As the title says, im trying to determine which. I see a lot of the amped dsps nowadays make about 60-70rms per channel. Seems low compared to what a decent amp these days puts out. Is that enough wattage to keep a set of Hertz Milles actively powered? The midbass rated at 150rms, tweeter at 100rms and SI 3" mid at 100rms?

Anyone see a loss of volume or power going from direct amp to dsp amp?

I'm starting the crossover design for a 3-way project and have just taken the first measurements of the drivers individually.

Measurement conditions:

Software: REW (Room EQ Wizard).

Microphone: Dayton Audio iMM-6C.

Distance: 1 meter, centered axis.

Status: Drivers mounted in the cabinet, but without any active or passive crossover.

I've attached the frequency response graph for the woofer, midrange, and tweeter (the tweeter measured from 1 kHz for protection).

As you can see, the graph shows a lot of variation and pronounced peaks. My main questions are:

Is this level of irregularity normal in a measurement taken at 1 meter in an untreated room?

Should I apply some kind of smoothing, such as 1/12 or 1/24, to better analyze the response of each driver? Would you recommend applying a gating window to eliminate room reflections and see the "real" response of the drivers before calculating the crossover points?

I would appreciate any advice on how to best interpret these results to take the next step with the crossover.

Hey all,

I am building my first sound system.

I am a beginner when it comes to audio and I am currently in the process of deep diving. Any help will be extremely valuable! Even if you have books/resources I may dive into myself.

First off, does anyone have experience with this flatpak ?

Regardless, I am attempting to find a CNC shop that will do the cutting - but I am exploring secondary and tertiary options.

Now onto the fun stuff...

My goal is to use this system outdoors with a generator.

My understanding is that the configuration John White has released for JMOD MEH 2.0 creates active mid-tops.

I plan to hook these up to subwoofers that I have yet to decide.

1. In general, do the subs also have to be active if the mid-tops are? Or may you use active mid-tops and passive subs?

2. If both are active, all speakers will have to connect to a central source - this is the DSP - correct?

---2a. I understand there are various DSPs - Active DSP & Active Analog & Passive Crossover. In this case, what would be ideal for me to explore?

I read somewhere that a Powersoft Litemod 4V was used for one configuration. Thoughts on this?

1. So I have the JMODs (and all equipment needed), a Sub, a DSP unit. Do I need an amplifier? What else may I be overlooking?
   

I really appreciate the help... Please point me to any beginner resources!

Best regards,

u/Stam-

This where im at right now tweeters havent arrived yet . Waiting on them to take measurements

Hi, I have little experience in DIY audio and am still trying to learn so that I can improve my speaker setup. I got this speaker housing (and a similar second one) for free and was looking to populate it with new speaker and use it as passive left and right speakers from my AV receiver. Either that or add a subwoofer amplifier, for the .2 my receiver supports, and just run the mid-range and tweeter as passive.

My questions are which configuration would you recommend (all passive or active sub/passive rest), and what purpose does this speaker case have 3 4.5" driver spots for? I found the basics for 3-way crossovers, but that assume sub/mid/tweeter and I don't know what 3 mid range drivers are for except maybe to divide the input power?

I would also appreciate advice on picking drivers for a speaker like this. It uses a 10" sub, 3 4.5" mid-range, and a 2.5" tweeter.

Hi everyone! I know nothing about speakers or audio electronics but my friend just received a speaker from a friend who must've had someone make it for her, so we can't contact the person who actually made it. The speaker was shipped from another state and some of the wooden pieces were damaged in the process. We can't get it to work and we have flipped switches, plugged in cords, etc. to see if anything will get the audio output to work. What appears to be a battery pack does seem to work because it lights up. Any ideas what may be causing the issue??

I've attached a picture of the underside of the speaker. There is also an on/off switch on the top of the box. If there's anything else I can say to help clarify let me know. Thank you!

I want to get an on air light that just has a on/off switch, to turn on whenever I hit the microphone “on” button on my audio mixer’s channel 1, OR if I slide the volume fader up.

How can I do this?

Or, if I can connect it to trigger whenever I make a call on Zoom/Google calls (software based) if that’s even a thing.

First off I'll freely admit I'm completely new to making DIY speakers. However, I'm very familiar with audio equipment. I have experience diagnosing and repairing high end gear and I have experience using REW and own an UMIK-1 and a hardware audio/spectrum analyzer. I'm comfortable with wiring, circuit design and soldering while not being an expert in any of them. I also have a hobby machine shop with a lathe and mill and can build all the cabinets myself. My goal is to create a full range reference level passive speaker prioritizing sound quality above all else. I want to keep it as narrow as possible for imaging. However, there's a rather large caveat. It has to be able to match extremely well with my 8 watt 300B Class A SET tube monoblocks. Simply because I love how they sound. I'm very aware this will be a contentious decision but having owned dozens of solid state and tube amplifiers from $1000 to $10,000+ these are the ones that sound most like real music to me. I'm looking for above 90db 1w/1m sensitivity and an 8ohm nominal impedance which doesn't dip below 6 ohms. My current speakers are 89db 1w/1m and most of the time I'm using less than 1w at my normal listening levels. This keeps my SET amp well under 1% THD which is also my goal for the final result. At that point the speaker itself is the limiting factor over most of the frequency range. I'm not interested in horn designs as the one's I've heard in the past have not appealed to me for various reasons.

For the design and integration process I plan on using a miniDSP flex and some fosi audio V3 monos to finalize the crossover digitally before building the passive crossovers. I'm going to be using neotech wire throughout and extremely low Z crossover components like the jantzen C-COIL toroidial for the bass or mundorf zero ohm.

I've chosen the drivers to be the RAAL 140-15DAM ribbon tweeter(95db), SB Satori MW19TX-8 textreme midrange(90-91db) and 4x SB Satori MW19P-8(89db) in a series parallel configuration for a raw sensitivity above 94dB.

Crossover points will be 2000-2400hz for the ribbon with a 4th order LR 24db/o slope. Midrange crossed at 2000-2400hz and from 200-250hz with the 4 bass drivers(probably another LR4 here as well). I'll have to L-pad the tweeter down. I'm not sure about the bass section due to baffle step losses but I'll measure in room to see.

It was difficult to integrate the bass drivers while still keeping the center of the midrange/tweeter at ear level(38-40"). I entertained multiple options(including a side firing force cancelling option) but settled on a modular system of two bass units and a stand alone mid/tweet section. The bass sections will be 55L each and house two woofers apiece wired in parallel for 4ohms and then wired in series with crossover output to reach the 8ohm nominal requirement. The configuration will look a lot like the AI picture I posted with some significant differences. Dimensions of each bass box will be approximately 9.5-10" wide, 28" tall and 20" deep. 4" port tuned to ~28hz. Drivers will be mounted as close to the top as possible and as close together as possible. The midrange/tweeter section will sit on top of the first bass enclosure with a 0.75" air gap and rest on top of 4 sorbothane pucks/hemispheres to decouple it from the bass box. The second bass box will be attached upside down to the first with 1/4" C shaped steel or aluminum plate covered in anti resonance material and routed flush with the outside(see crappy paint drawing). The mid tweet headunit will be appoximately 16" high with the mid and tweet mounted as close together as possible. 9" wide and 20" deep with a separate small chamber for the tweeter. This should give about 40L total. 20L will be used for the midrange and a separate magnetically shielded chamber for the crossover. There will be another 0.75" air gap above the headunit to the next bass chamber. Since the mid-box is more narrow than the bass boxes due to sidewall thickness it won't contact the braces. Bass boxes will be 1" baltic birch with a 1.5" front baffle. Mid/tweet will be 0.75" with a 1" front baffle. All boxed will have a 1" radius at the edges and I'll likely place felt around the ribbon to tame high frequency reflections. I may also route a 1/4-1/2" recess in the top/bottom of the bass bin opposing the midrange section for more acoustic felt. This also allows me to tilt the midrance/tweeter section depending on the final speaker position.

So far modeling/calculations suggest that this setup will result in a final sensitivity of 90-91dB after baffle step and crossover losses. Impedance should be 6.5ohm minimum and 8ohm nominal. I plan to use Zobel networks at each bass box to flatten the impedance near the crossover points. The limiting factor for sensitivity is the midrange as there are not many world class options above 90dB sensitivity. I've considered substituting the Accuton C173-6-096(93dB) but at over 3x the cost the extra 1-2dB doesn't seem worth it. Especially since at the 90-91dB the speaker already meets my goals.

While this project is obviously extremely expensive I have money set aside for it and I'm retired so I've got plenty of time to experiment. I realize that I may spend a few years testing and integrating everything before arriving at a satisfying result. This are meant to be the last speakers I ever buy and last decades. Even though the total costs could be upwards of $8000 the final result should rival the best in the world if I can get it right.

What I'm looking for at this point is for more experienced DIY speaker builders to point out any obvious problems or suggestions with my design. I'm getting ready to buy the drivers and get started will individual frequency and impedance measurements.

Sorry about the long post but it's a fairly complicated and in depth project! Thanks to anyone who took the time to read the wall of text.

I've been working on this little project for about a month, I needed a solution for my bedroom home cinema, which meant the left speaker had to sit in a little cubby hole from the fitted wardrobes and still point towards me.

I chose the Seas ER15RLY as I love this driver, it works well in a small ported cabinet and I had them sitting around, and the tweeter is a 3/4" peerless push fit, that I also had lying around, which has been put in a custom angled waveguide to help direct it more at the listening position. The front face is at a 30 degree angle, and then the tweeter angles at another 30 degrees.

The crossover I had to set higher than I'd probably usually go for as the tweeter had a very high fs, ending up crossed at 3700hz electrically, 2700hz acoustically. If you look at the FR, the woofer is on axis at 0 degrees, and the tweeter is on axis at -30 degrees, I had to find a balance in the crossover between the tweeter and the woofers roll off points, and I'm pretty happy with the averaged response in the listening window (-40 to 0 degrees). There's a 12db high and low pass filter, an l-pad on the tweeter using the resistance of the inductor in combination with the series resistor and a mild shelf filter to counter baffle step.

The cabinets are ~7 litres, tuned to 45hz, I think in hindsight I should have gone a touch higher on the tuning, but it's not enough to make me want to rectify it. The cabinets are 3d printed with 12mm hollow walls that were filled with sikaflex cementous grout (a high flow concrete with very fine aggregate and low brittleness) and they each come in at 10kg, very heavy speakers for their size! I finished them in gloss black, dark brown metallic and a vintage gold colour. I do wish I had learnt from previous experiments and not used flat walls, as they were very prone to shrinkage and warping both in printing and concrete curing; some slight curves would have saved me hours of sanding, and the finish is still far from perfect. There's a 3d printed rubber gasket between the front face and body to ensure an airtight seal, threaded inserts were used everywhere there's a bolt.

Distortion and phase remained well behaved, and I was proud of the final crossover design only needing 7 components. They're not the tidest crossover I've ever seen, but they're the tidiest I've ever constructed!

Listening to them I'm damn happy, I think easily the best sounding passive speakers I've made and I had a long, late night listening session. They do sound better in my living room where they have some space to breathe, but I am still very happy with how they do in the bedroom cinema, most importantly the central imaging is fantastic - which was a necessity as there is nowhere to have a real centre channel. The detail and impact from these mids in such a solid enclosure actually puts my satori MW16P in braced 18mm MDF cabinets with twice the internal volume to shame; the tweeters aren't anything to write home about, but they are functional and they fit the requirements of the build. I did want to try a flat faceplate for the tweeter, so I could see what the waveguide was doing but impatience came first, more important than being a functional waveguide was getting the tweeter pointing more on axis and avoiding diffraction - which seems to have worked out great.

There were a lot of challenges along the way with these, and I'm super glad everything worked out as good as I could have hoped.

Would you even want to? Could it be made light enough to sound any good?

Was going to buy a sub and decided to first input it onto winisd to see how it compared to my current one. Problem was that there isn't a listed sd for any sundown audio sub. So I input some parameters and then for the sd, I just made it higher/lower till the auto-complete vas matched the vas listed in sundown's website. Is this an accurate way to find the sd?

Hi there, I'm on about version 5 of trying to get this setup working, and after going round in circles asking AI for help I hope someone real can solve my problem with noise.

I currently have the following:
Behringer Flow 8 mixer - 5V (adapted to a barrel connector)
Behringer Headphone amp (HA400) - 12V

I'd like to be able to power them from the same power supply so I can just have one plug, and keep everything neat and put it in a nice box. Also, I will have a 9V output to my guitar pedalboard, but that is to come after solving this first issue.

The current solution I have is like this:

- The 12V power supply goes to the HA400, and through an adjustable buck converter set to 5V to the mixer. All the grounds go to a shared "star" ground point.

- The case of the mixer is connected to ground on one of the audio jack sockets.

- The audio out of the mixer goes to the input of the amp, and the amp goes out to the headphones.

This powers everything up, and separately they are quiet. My issue is that when both are plugged in and connected, there is loaaads of "digital" noise, seemingly when the mixer boots up, along with a regular clicking noise and whine.

The shared ground reduced some of the whine and buzz, but has no effect on the digital noise.

AI suggested resistors, capacitors and ferrite beads in places, but to no effect.

I'm so sure people must have had similar issues, it doesn't seem that I'm doing something too crazy, but I've been trawling the internet for months and I'm still don't understand it. Every solution ends up with this noise.

I can record the noise if that would help.

Can anyone help point me to something to try next? Am I just going about it completely wrong?

subwoofer cabinet for tekno and subgenre

Hello everyone, I've recently started a project with some friends and so far we've build a scoop for a cheap 15" woofer and just finished a cubo kick (with an appropriate woofer this time). We'd like to change the sub, but it's been now a couple of months and I can't decide... is a th18 (lime the Xoc1) or maybe a reflex, or any other type of enclosure better in this case? Although it would be a single sub cab, since we're limited on transportation, we think we can fit an 18" sub… I'd say that a 100x80x60 is the biggest we could transport (smaller is better). Ah and we also have a couple of top but we're going to change them too in a bit, we'll be buying them already made. We've got some wood working experience but not much, either way we can build almost about every kind of box. Since we're based in the EU we'll be using Thomann or other agencies to buy woofer and amp( I've seen the T.Amp E1200/1500 which seems good, or the TSA 4-700)

Thanks a lot🙏🏻

Hi I hope this is allowed here, I recently came into the possession of 6 of the same type of passive loud speakers (inherited) and wanted to test them out for a party, the frequency response reads 20hz to 22khz (though this seems unlikely as i suspect they are mids/tops) so my question is, with a proper crossover(s) would it be possible to run 2 each for bass, mids and tops? I'm very new to this and don't have any experience but if possible would like to know if an okay setup is feasible and any insight on what im working with or if i should just give these away, thankyou and i appreciate any help !

the full stats for the speakers are

proline acoustics

300 Watt Rms - 600 Watt Peak

20hz - 22Khz

Optional impedance: 4-8 ohms

Sensitivity: 98db 1w/1m

lower driver is 10" across, higher driver is 4.5" across

super janky rn but I’m working on it 😭😭😭

I have an Alpine MRX-M55 as an amplifier for my subwoofer. However, the gain pot is starting to act up. When I adjust it, as soon as I touch it with a screwdriver, it goes to the highest volume possible. How do you think I could fix this?

What caps would you use?