Speakers

That is a sweet design.

I had thought about making my own speakers sometime.

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://amcraftsman.com

Excellent! If you need anywhere to field test them ij their home, left me know.

-- Behind the Bark is a lot of Heartwood----Charles, Centennial, CO

I never knew speakers were so complicated. I’d love to see the inside and how all that is wired. Great Job!

-- Watch live video from our shop. http://wwbeds.com/live.htm

Really cool looking, and I’m sure they must sound great.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Interesting and unique design well done Scott

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop, custom furniture ,maker, woodworking school, heirloomwoodshop.com

focal? going straight to the top huh? looks great. Interesting to see that it’s made of MDF, and the resonance is good. I made mine from Birch Plywood with B&W speakers, and in terms of sound – there’s a lot to be desired. I was thinking about a remake from solid wood, but maybe I’ll give MDF a try first.

Thanks for the info. good read!

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

I have made a few speaker boxes for some friends and they always ask me to use MDF. Now I know why. Thanks for the post and those speakers look fantastic.

-- Jerry--A man can never have enough tools or clamps

Thanks for the comments gang.

Purp Lev – MDF is inert and more acoustically neutral than ply and hard woods. The resonance is really achieve by the box design, and should be controlled and minimized as much as possible for home speakers….the T-line eliminates the resonance, while most other designs “control” it to a specific frequency.

Home music reproduction has very different goals than live music production. There’s a lot of confusion caused by those differences when the advice is treated as generic without being applied to the specific discipline. Pine and ply are excellent for guitar and instrument speakers, but add too much color and warmth to a typical home hi-fi setup….it’s always a matter of what someone likes, but the term “Hi-Fi” stands for high fidelity, or faithful reproduction of the original, which means as little coloration or change as possible….warts and all…transparency and neutrality are desirable if that’s the goal. Different objectives than a musician would have.

There are some other basic generic tricks that you might consider…the box is only one of the main components…drivers and crossovers are the other two. Since they should be proprietary, it’s probably best to trust B&W’s approach and recreate their original design as closely as possible, but it might be worth upgrading any electrolytic caps to a decent poly cap of the same value. If there wire is subpar, replace that too with some decent OFC speaker wire….brand name isn’t critical, but design and gauge matter. It’s also very important to get the tweeter and midbass drivers as phyically close together as possible to avoid phase shift…the idea is to produce a single music wave from two drivers, so you have to get the centers of the drivers within the distance of the wavelength of the crossover frequency between them…most tweeters crossover in the 2k to 3kz range, making it very difficult to get them that close. (a 1kz frequency has a wavelength of about 12”, 2kz ~ 6”, etc.). Ok…too much coffee! ...good luck!