DIY Monitors?

Hello,

This forum is rich in DIY components in addition to being both an educational resource and form of entertainment.

The one thing that I have not seen here are any articles on DIY monitors.

There is a robust home stereo/theatre DIY industry but I couldn't find much on  studio monitors.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Mac

It's hard to design studio monitors that can be relied upon to be flat, accurate, or at least the same as others use.

JR

maq3396 said:

Hello,

This forum is rich in DIY components in addition to being both an educational resource and form of entertainment.

The one thing that I have not seen here are any articles on DIY monitors.

There is a robust home stereo/theatre DIY industry but I couldn't find much on  studio monitors.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Mac

Click to expand...

You can find informations over the web about most classic monitors as NS10 and L3/5a.
Not much other builds

there are a few build your own speaker kits and plenty of information about cabinet design and speaker design on the web.  The kits are more for the hi-fi  market and not sure how well they would fair in the studio world.  The other information is good stuff, a lot of the old altec designs still hold up in 2016 and there are plenty of old altec information out there to where you could diy a set of voice of the theaters.

There have been a few projects here on the forum. I remember that group member Moby built some near fields and mains, and I know someone put together an Auratone style kit a while back. Additionally, pertinent discussions occur frequently. Outside the forum, there are some kits that are designed as studio monitors. Seas make a "reference monitor," and winslow audio has kits for mains monitors.
Personally I have been working on designing my monitors for more than a year. Granted I've been working on a lot of things during that time, but nonetheless, getting a full frequency range to translate properly with the limitations of drivers/crossovers/cabinets is not trivial. When I started out I definitely didn't fully appreciate this. It may seem really simple but it is in fact a deep rabbit hole. I strong recommend the book Loudspeakers by Philip Newell and Keith Holland or at least that you read some of their AES papers. I think it may change the parameters of what you're looking for. That certainly was the case for me.

i once used cheapo behringer  passive monitors, with Bryston 3b amp... it was surprisingly super very nice...
good amp making a lot of differences... 

maq3396 said:

Hello,

This forum is rich in DIY components in addition to being both an educational resource and form of entertainment.

The one thing that I have not seen here are any articles on DIY monitors.

There is a robust home stereo/theatre DIY industry but I couldn't find much on  studio monitors.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Mac

Click to expand...

I think the usually-unstated question is do you want to reproduce a known design, or do you want to design your own from scratch?  As I say in this other thread, it's easy to put woofers and tweeters in cabinets and successfully have them make sounds, but there's a lot to learn if you want to do your own (good-sounding) design, and it'll surely take several iterations before you have something you'd want to use to make serious mixes. I only have enough experience in this area to be dangerous (about three speaker builds over a few decades), but at least I know I'm dangerous.

To have good success on your first build, adhere as closely as possible to a known-good commercial design.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/277976-should-i-build-my-own-speakers.html

Thanks for the comments everyone.

I have much reading to do!

Cheers
Mac

A few tips from making my own:

I tried the infinite baffle type first (various technical reasons) but then found that I had over compensated the bass when I listened on my home hi-fi.  So I would recommend a reflex type to get you flat to at least 40Hz, 20 if possible.  The driver T/S parameters are optimized for one type or the other (inf baffle or ported) so you need to make that your first decision.

After you have decided on your bass driver your next decision is whether to go 2 way or 3 way,  2 way will simplify your crossover but it makes great demands on your tweeter's bottom end and your bass unit's top end.  The mid range is probably the most important listening area so do you really want the weakest parts of your drivers right there?

Going 3 way makes the choice of driver easier especially if you can choose them all with similar efficiency (max dB), if they are not the same then you will have to add voltage dividers to your crossover to bring the higher units down to the lowest common denominator.  Alternatively you are into independent amps for each driver so much more work and expense.

The type of crossover is another minefield as there are serial and parallel types as well as lots of different slopes to consider.  The cabinet will require lots of thought and should be well braced internally with dowels to stop panels vibrating in the vital mid range and the mid and top drivers need to be airtight to the rest of the cabinet.

Final tip: when testing try listening to your most familiar/favourite music, if it sounds ok, you are in the right ballpark.

As Gato said, its a very deep rabbit hole ......................One pill makes you larger ???.....................One pill makes you small

Good luck!
DaveP

As other people have said there's a lot of info around the web on building studio monitors.
There are other forums specifically oriented to building cabinets and speakers.

here at groupdiy there's an Auratone similar project, check this thread:
http://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=43086.0

I've built for myself somo ProAc type speakers, with info I gathered in google
pic attached

I would say that, in order to avoid the pitfall that passive x-overs are, an active design is much safer, considering amps and a reasonably good DSP "speaker processor" can be had for very little money.
The most important factor is determining your target; I think targetting 20Hz LF response is unrealistic, because it involves building the house around the speakers.
Many DIYers use the Behringer DCX2496; it is both lauded and criticized. I think it is definitely NOT the weakest link in most cases.
Anyway, there is a choice of second-hand BSS, dbx..., that can be had second-hand for not much. The most common problem is trying to get unrealistic results, such as a using 1024-point FFT EQ to get perfect frequency response. A good understanding of acoustics and speaker operation is necessary in order to properly prioritize performance.

There are also quite in-expensive analog active crossovers - I mean  ~70usd range. Installation or car types even.

In my current 'hifi' speaker build, I'm using one such to find my crossover frequencies. I can then work on some fixed crossover network for inclusion inside the cabs.

Or not! The active crossovers are pretty good to use if you have the multi-amp setup

2way or 3way mono or stereo and with a sub split as well - makes for some very interesting experimenting with speaker and room setups.

---

These current hifi speakers are going to be interesting

-  Sansui 12" alnico woofsters circa late 60s - virtually nos from tube-based gear. These are high sensitivity and quite 'dry', using paper cones. NO poly-whatever cones here!

- Fostex 5" full range, current issue, as a 'mid and little hi-freq' driver.  I don't like extended hi-freqs, so I need to dial down the fostex top end to suit.


So, a pair of  two-way boxes way boxes, external active 3way stereo, analog crossover with optional sub split
.
I am still finding I prefer tube amps for hifi, but that's no problem even with multi-amping - my diy tube amps are beginning to pile up all over the place.

I even scored a pair of the Sansui cabinet grills - the intricate  wooden trellis types. Awesome ebay find, and continuing this particular styling theme is great - my other speakers are Sansui sp9000 '70s 12" 3way,  and a truly wonderful pair of little Realistic 8" 2ways. All with wonderful wooden grills and in virtual nos condition.

I find listening to modern, high power handling speakers with poly woofers not as lifelike as the lower-power rated paper cones.

Excepting my Tannoy 8" concentrics,  which sound really good with a proper strong power amp as a studio monitor setup.

--

Good luck with your build! And if you haven't already, get the free software app 'Room EQ Wizard (REW)'  and, like me, try to learn how to use it with a mic for tuning and test measurements!

I have yet to get useful measurements of speaker response tho' - there's a lot of technique in the setup of the speaker-under- test and placement of measurement mic to avoid reflections and such. All good stuff  however, and a question of practice 

I've got a handful of Tannoy System 800 8" dual-concentrics and System 6 6.5" dual-concentrics that I've made a few monitors from - very easy to work with (only one hole for the driver!) and the crossovers are very simple with small cabinet sizes - I'm going to list some here soon as I don't need all the ones I have -

Tungstengruvsten said:

I've got a handful of Tannoy System 800 8" dual-concentrics and System 6 6.5" dual-concentrics that I've made a few monitors from - very easy to work with (only one hole for the driver!) and the crossovers are very simple with small cabinet sizes - I'm going to list some here soon as I don't need all the ones I have -

Click to expand...

Do you have the designs for these available. I have a pair of 10  inch Tannoy monitor golds that I would like to build into bass reflex cabinets.

Cheers

ian

This is probably the best reference for cabinets for Tannoys -

http://www.hilberink.nl/speaker.htm#cabinet


I don't have plans together for these - just based them off the originals when I had borrowed a set of each -

Tungstengruvsten said:

the crossovers are very simple with small cabinet sizes

Click to expand...

Pray, how does the small cabinet size make the crossovers simple?

I am almost embarrassed to share this, but apparently not.

I am working on upgrading my TV sound system.

In recent weekends I replaced the surrounds for two different pairs of old speakers I had laying around (I'm a packrat). One a 6" 2-way very nice hifi speaker from the 80s (Fourier designed by Bruce Zayde). The other a 8" 3-way studio monitor (AMR308) from the 90s (designed by Mike O'neil's transducer  group at Peavey perhaps Jon Risch). I even had an old large sub collecting dust and spider webs in the corner. (another O'neil design probably before Risch worked at peavey)

Since my cheap surround decoder has 6 audio channels this leaves me short one speaker (center channel dialog speaker).  I had one old AR4x from the 60s, the other speaker from the pair was stole from my parents house in the 70s (I had given it to them for a modest hifi).  Well the AR4x sounds like a fuzz box now so no go for dialog channel. The dialog chnnel isn't heavy lifting because there are L & R front channels and a dedicated sub channel. But it carries all the dialog so distortion is audible.

On a lark I decided to see what my drum tuner sounds like as a center channel speaker. There are two 4" full range speakers inside. Not much cabinet volume but this one doesn't need to develop very low frequency response, just prevent a back wave that can cancel out the front wave.

I wired the two drivers in series to drop the center level some wrt the sub level which is on the same stereo volume control.  To my surprise the two speakers in series were louder than the old computer satellite speaker i was using previously.

To my very pleasant surprise it sounds great,,,  ;D  (really) while there is a pretty low bar to sound better than my old TV sound system. 

I was also surprised at how easy it was to replace the driver surrounds, apparently the small drivers tend to self center over the voice coils so you don't need to shim them like with bigger drivers to prevent voice coil rubs.

My system doesn't look quite as ugly as the photo, but close.  8)

========

To make this story relate to this thread, simple single drive monitor speakers (like Auratones) don't suffer from crossover issues in the midrange so do a decent job for monitoring vocal tracks, that said they lack much boom and sizzle.

JR

if u dot have a quality amp there is no point of using high quality  speakers...
amp is way more important than the speaker itself...
some speaker companies, wouldnt even sell you if you dont have the required min quality of amplification...

kambo said:

if u dot have a quality amp there is no point of using high quality  speakers...
amp is way more important than the speaker itself...

Click to expand...

Huh!!? What a shock. So my beliefs of 40+ years that speakers were the weak link are shattered...

some speaker companies, wouldnt even sell you if you dont have the required min quality of amplification...

Click to expand...

That is true; as a speaker designer and manufacturer, I want to have a degree of control of the performing capability of the customer's system. We recommend using our amps and wiring harness (processing is non-negotiable, it has to be our own), but if the customer wants to use his own, we offer him to do a final check, ensuring that, in case he uses his system in conjunction with another, they will be compatible in terms of polarity (unfortunately a too-common issue) and headroom. We don't want anyone dissing our speakers because some penny-pincher has put sh..ty amps or wired his system with a shotgun.
It certainly does not mean we consider the amplification being more critical than the speakers. We know the level of harmonic and intermodulation distortion in loudspeakers is several orders of magnitude worse than a suitably designed and chosen amp, as well as the frequency response variations. Indeed loudspeakers are not subject to the audiophool-dreaded TID.

Tungstengruvsten said:

This is probably the best reference for cabinets for Tannoys -

http://www.hilberink.nl/speaker.htm#cabinet


I don't have plans together for these - just based them off the originals when I had borrowed a set of each -

Click to expand...

Fabulous link. Many thanks. I have searched a lot for Tannoy enclosures but never came across that site. Great resource.

Cheers

Ian