soviet_selva
Member
It all started with the desire for a Great Clean Full Range (mainly great Bass) sound producing floorstander, but as I came across various speaker models I realized that whatever is good or great costs more than Rs 26,000/- a pair and post marriage for me spending Rs 15 or 20 grand on speaker was not on the card. So I thought lets assemble a speaker to handle low frequency alone as I need Good audible omnipresent bass. So this is what I underwent :
OBSERVATION:
23-03-2011
After searching for a good sub-woofer drive for my DIY passive sub woofer project I realise that its quiet
tough to get a good sub woofer speaker.
Peerless has no retail in India, only some kind of excess stock is being sold by one Mr Jitu Bhai,
whose contact is 9821161535 (Mumbai). He only has SM20NL : 8" 8 ohm sub, which costs
Rs 1,350 per piece. Specification & distance of dealer wise it is not worth taking risk by buying
from Mumbai.
E-mailed to Norge, to see if they can sell any Wavecor sub woofer drive but they said they have no extra
speakers left. E-mailed to Dakshin speakers but got no response from them.
So next, only Dainty , a Taiwanese speaker maker, has retail in Chennai and Decibel of India has
retail in chennai. Decibel speaker I am yet to know whether they make Sub-Woofer, coz the day
when I went to Ritchie street I got to see only Woofer.
Hence I finalise to go for Dainty 8" sub woofer as of now and to commence my DIY Passive Sub
project
Dainty 8" Sub woofer available for Rs 518 per piece approx.
24.03.2011
e-mailed to Mr Vipul Tulsiyan of Vipul AudioTech, it was amazing - mostly I wait a day or two then
we will get reply e-mail but in this case after 15 minutes of e-mail I got a call from Mr Vipul and
he gave Address of Vipul Electronic said this shop deals in Bolton & Zipp brand of raw speakers
hope we will get a good drive for our Passive Sub project.
Also during his telecomminique Mr Vipul said my idea of connecting the Passive Sub to Onkyo receiver
will not give desired performance and he said I will have to go for Powered Sub.
I understand the point stated by Mr Vipul, but what I feel is : In my Onkyo receiver we can set the
crossover in amp @ 40 Hz which means less than 40Hz will got to Powered Sub & above 40Hz will be
handled by the front speakers. So my observation is if connected with a potent Woofer / Sub Woofer we
can attain good bass from this Passive Sub Woofer which I am going to assemble.
I feel Mr Vipuls point will hold true in the sense that we can not / will not get the floor rumbling bass thru
this assembled Passive Sub, also its not my object of building this Passive Sub to get the effect of a
powered sub woofer, a Powered Sub Woofer can be beaten by a powered Sub woofer only and this I
have experienced.
So my project goes on, God Help.
29.03.2011
Visit to Vipul Electronics : Went to see how does Zipp speakers look & if they have Bolton Sub-Woofer
during visit got to see two sub woofer models one of 40 watt max and other of 100 watt max
the 40 watt one was looking good but as usual no T/S data was available and it costs Rs 400 per unit
the 100 watt one looks excellent to me but have no guarantee of performance, has thick foam surround
large excursion, robust magnet, orange color cone (some kind of weave) costs Rs 950 per unit
its the costliest sub-woofer per unit which I got to see in Ritchie street.
Now after discussing with Frank, his view is these speakers will not perform, so in a dilema but my inner
mind says "Go For It" lets see how it sounds. So I decided to go for It
02.04.2011
Bought Zipp sub woofer, 80W / 8Ohm Rs 475 per unit
but I didn't expected this: getting a component for my crossover is a getting tough, spent around 30 min
walking in Ritchie street but got no lead, only got the capacitor. Getting inductor is real tough it seems
will go Ritchie street some other day to find / buy rest of the components required
07.04.2011
Dimension Finalisation
After a few glimpse of dimensions of speaker box of established brands, I decided to go with the following
dimension:
H 31 cm
W 28cm
D 25cm
Area 21700
The volume seems high but my estimate is , if made with a 0.75" thick MDF the effective internal volume
will be 17.5 Ltr which comes to 0.618 Cubic foot
Box dimension can be quiet easily determined if T/S Parameters were available, but since this is a Chinese
or Taiwanese mass produced woofer it has no T/S data. So in my case I have fired my bullets in the dark
I pray & hope my system will sound good.
09.04.2011
After reading about the suggested enclosure volume of few sub-woofer drives listed in Madisound.com i
feel that we should reduce the volume of our enclosure, so I revise the dimesnion as :
H 28 cm
W 28 cm
D 24 cm
Area 18816 / 18.81 ltr
11.04.2011
QUIET CONFUSED, SO NOW GOING WITH THE DIMENSION FINALISED ON 07.04.2011
ie H = 31, W = 28 AND D = 25
Also the letter I wrote to Eltek asking for inductor got returned, no such party at the address
so mostly we will be making our own inductor, also have to search for any readymade one in
Ritchie street before finalising to make
07.06.2012
So after 1 YEAR and 2 Months I got the box. Actually in between this 13 months period
I forgot the box for speaker, as I did not want to spend anything on this due to ever reducing
bank balance. But this time during my Tuticorin visit on 17.05.2012 I gave order for speaker
box as per dimension finalised on 11.04.2011. And got the box when parents visited Chennai.
ie on 07.06.2012. Box build is good, but finish is Very Poor, anyhow decided to go with this
without any carpenter work as it will increase cost of the Box.
10.06.2012
Have to seal all internal corners with saw dust and fevicol, saw dust could not be located
easily, walked around 3 kms in my locality but could find only one saw mill that too was
closed due to Sunday.
Bought screw to fix speaker but by mistake bought bigger screws so have to buy newer ones
At back side of speaker box no hole was there for connecting the terminals, so thought of
drilling holes with hand drill and will cut of off the hole but could make only one hole with
hand drill and the drill bit dot bent. So had to abondon the idea.
11.06.2012
Next big challenge is making Inductor.
Asked office people help on cutting the 4.5 CM dia hole on back side for fixing connector
seems it can be done
12.06.2012
brought one speaker box to office and Salim sir helped to make hole using machine drill and
levelling tool. It was a perfect hole, have to bring next speaker box tomorrow.
13.06.2012
brought the other speaker box to office and Salim sir helped to make hole using machine drill and
levelling tool. It was a perfect hole, Salim sir felt it was more precise hole than yesterdays
14.06.2012
Went to ritchie street, mount road, to buy wire for speaker. In non branded ones thick wire
was costing Rs 75 / meter, so went to MX shop there after seeing different speaker cables
bought the one costing Rs 40 / meter , bought total 10 mtrs
Then searched for different shops to buy copper wire for making inductor but could not find.
Also searched if ready made cross over is available for Sub Woofer, could find only one
shop which retailed cross over for Sub woofer is Dainty, it costs Rs 460 per unit and cuts 250 Hz
Yet to decide on crossover, thought first we shall assemble the speaker box and then since
crossover will be external we can either buy / make it later
15.06.2012
Bought saw dust for sealing the internals of box
16.06.2012
Mixed the saw dust with fevicol created a paste and sealed the internals of speaker box
let it to dry
17.06.2012
Found the speaker box mounting hole to be slightly bigger, had to increase the size of the hole
by 0.5 to 0.8 MM. Did do by same technique, used the saw dust + Fevicol paste to enlarge the
hole
20.06.2012
after letting it to dry for 2 days I found the paste applied has shrunk hence I did not get the
desired hole size and then again applied more paste to further increase the size on 21.06.2012
23.06.2012
So now the hole was looking better with enough diameter but this time when sat to fix the
woofer I noted that the hole has gone small
. What next ? Bought filler to scrap off the
diameter by few MM but also required the saw tool to reduce the diameter. After working
with saw and filer for 1 hour or so was able to reduce the diameter to the required level.
Fevicol + saw dust is a truly hard binding tough combo
24.06.2012
Finally the day when I finished mounting the speaker on to the box, after screwing the speakers carefully I was ready to test the speakers for their sound quality. But :-( to my dismay it did not sound good. BOOOOOO anyhow I took it in the right spirit (though i felt sad for bad bass). Also the major weak link is the Zipp woofer, wherein on its magnet its stated as "Sub Woofer" I too bought it thinking it to be Sub Woofer but by performance I feel its just woofer. So my quest is still on, now 2 things are on list first will try making this a Ported type enclosure and after 6 or 8 month will again
search for good Sub Woofer.
THANK YOU
Regards
OBSERVATION:
23-03-2011
After searching for a good sub-woofer drive for my DIY passive sub woofer project I realise that its quiet
tough to get a good sub woofer speaker.
Peerless has no retail in India, only some kind of excess stock is being sold by one Mr Jitu Bhai,
whose contact is 9821161535 (Mumbai). He only has SM20NL : 8" 8 ohm sub, which costs
Rs 1,350 per piece. Specification & distance of dealer wise it is not worth taking risk by buying
from Mumbai.
E-mailed to Norge, to see if they can sell any Wavecor sub woofer drive but they said they have no extra
speakers left. E-mailed to Dakshin speakers but got no response from them.
So next, only Dainty , a Taiwanese speaker maker, has retail in Chennai and Decibel of India has
retail in chennai. Decibel speaker I am yet to know whether they make Sub-Woofer, coz the day
when I went to Ritchie street I got to see only Woofer.
Hence I finalise to go for Dainty 8" sub woofer as of now and to commence my DIY Passive Sub
project
Dainty 8" Sub woofer available for Rs 518 per piece approx.
24.03.2011
e-mailed to Mr Vipul Tulsiyan of Vipul AudioTech, it was amazing - mostly I wait a day or two then
we will get reply e-mail but in this case after 15 minutes of e-mail I got a call from Mr Vipul and
he gave Address of Vipul Electronic said this shop deals in Bolton & Zipp brand of raw speakers
hope we will get a good drive for our Passive Sub project.
Also during his telecomminique Mr Vipul said my idea of connecting the Passive Sub to Onkyo receiver
will not give desired performance and he said I will have to go for Powered Sub.
I understand the point stated by Mr Vipul, but what I feel is : In my Onkyo receiver we can set the
crossover in amp @ 40 Hz which means less than 40Hz will got to Powered Sub & above 40Hz will be
handled by the front speakers. So my observation is if connected with a potent Woofer / Sub Woofer we
can attain good bass from this Passive Sub Woofer which I am going to assemble.
I feel Mr Vipuls point will hold true in the sense that we can not / will not get the floor rumbling bass thru
this assembled Passive Sub, also its not my object of building this Passive Sub to get the effect of a
powered sub woofer, a Powered Sub Woofer can be beaten by a powered Sub woofer only and this I
have experienced.
So my project goes on, God Help.
29.03.2011
Visit to Vipul Electronics : Went to see how does Zipp speakers look & if they have Bolton Sub-Woofer
during visit got to see two sub woofer models one of 40 watt max and other of 100 watt max
the 40 watt one was looking good but as usual no T/S data was available and it costs Rs 400 per unit
the 100 watt one looks excellent to me but have no guarantee of performance, has thick foam surround
large excursion, robust magnet, orange color cone (some kind of weave) costs Rs 950 per unit
its the costliest sub-woofer per unit which I got to see in Ritchie street.
Now after discussing with Frank, his view is these speakers will not perform, so in a dilema but my inner
mind says "Go For It" lets see how it sounds. So I decided to go for It
02.04.2011
Bought Zipp sub woofer, 80W / 8Ohm Rs 475 per unit
but I didn't expected this: getting a component for my crossover is a getting tough, spent around 30 min
walking in Ritchie street but got no lead, only got the capacitor. Getting inductor is real tough it seems
will go Ritchie street some other day to find / buy rest of the components required
07.04.2011
Dimension Finalisation
After a few glimpse of dimensions of speaker box of established brands, I decided to go with the following
dimension:
H 31 cm
W 28cm
D 25cm
Area 21700
The volume seems high but my estimate is , if made with a 0.75" thick MDF the effective internal volume
will be 17.5 Ltr which comes to 0.618 Cubic foot
Box dimension can be quiet easily determined if T/S Parameters were available, but since this is a Chinese
or Taiwanese mass produced woofer it has no T/S data. So in my case I have fired my bullets in the dark
I pray & hope my system will sound good.
09.04.2011
After reading about the suggested enclosure volume of few sub-woofer drives listed in Madisound.com i
feel that we should reduce the volume of our enclosure, so I revise the dimesnion as :
H 28 cm
W 28 cm
D 24 cm
Area 18816 / 18.81 ltr
11.04.2011
QUIET CONFUSED, SO NOW GOING WITH THE DIMENSION FINALISED ON 07.04.2011
ie H = 31, W = 28 AND D = 25
Also the letter I wrote to Eltek asking for inductor got returned, no such party at the address
so mostly we will be making our own inductor, also have to search for any readymade one in
Ritchie street before finalising to make
07.06.2012
So after 1 YEAR and 2 Months I got the box. Actually in between this 13 months period
I forgot the box for speaker, as I did not want to spend anything on this due to ever reducing
bank balance. But this time during my Tuticorin visit on 17.05.2012 I gave order for speaker
box as per dimension finalised on 11.04.2011. And got the box when parents visited Chennai.
ie on 07.06.2012. Box build is good, but finish is Very Poor, anyhow decided to go with this
without any carpenter work as it will increase cost of the Box.
10.06.2012
Have to seal all internal corners with saw dust and fevicol, saw dust could not be located
easily, walked around 3 kms in my locality but could find only one saw mill that too was
closed due to Sunday.
Bought screw to fix speaker but by mistake bought bigger screws so have to buy newer ones
At back side of speaker box no hole was there for connecting the terminals, so thought of
drilling holes with hand drill and will cut of off the hole but could make only one hole with
hand drill and the drill bit dot bent. So had to abondon the idea.
11.06.2012
Next big challenge is making Inductor.
Asked office people help on cutting the 4.5 CM dia hole on back side for fixing connector
seems it can be done
12.06.2012
brought one speaker box to office and Salim sir helped to make hole using machine drill and
levelling tool. It was a perfect hole, have to bring next speaker box tomorrow.
13.06.2012
brought the other speaker box to office and Salim sir helped to make hole using machine drill and
levelling tool. It was a perfect hole, Salim sir felt it was more precise hole than yesterdays
14.06.2012
Went to ritchie street, mount road, to buy wire for speaker. In non branded ones thick wire
was costing Rs 75 / meter, so went to MX shop there after seeing different speaker cables
bought the one costing Rs 40 / meter , bought total 10 mtrs
Then searched for different shops to buy copper wire for making inductor but could not find.
Also searched if ready made cross over is available for Sub Woofer, could find only one
shop which retailed cross over for Sub woofer is Dainty, it costs Rs 460 per unit and cuts 250 Hz
Yet to decide on crossover, thought first we shall assemble the speaker box and then since
crossover will be external we can either buy / make it later
15.06.2012
Bought saw dust for sealing the internals of box
16.06.2012
Mixed the saw dust with fevicol created a paste and sealed the internals of speaker box
let it to dry
17.06.2012
Found the speaker box mounting hole to be slightly bigger, had to increase the size of the hole
by 0.5 to 0.8 MM. Did do by same technique, used the saw dust + Fevicol paste to enlarge the
hole
20.06.2012
after letting it to dry for 2 days I found the paste applied has shrunk hence I did not get the
desired hole size and then again applied more paste to further increase the size on 21.06.2012
23.06.2012
So now the hole was looking better with enough diameter but this time when sat to fix the
woofer I noted that the hole has gone small
. What next ? Bought filler to scrap off the diameter by few MM but also required the saw tool to reduce the diameter. After working
with saw and filer for 1 hour or so was able to reduce the diameter to the required level.
Fevicol + saw dust is a truly hard binding tough combo
24.06.2012
Finally the day when I finished mounting the speaker on to the box, after screwing the speakers carefully I was ready to test the speakers for their sound quality. But :-( to my dismay it did not sound good. BOOOOOO
anyhow I took it in the right spirit (though i felt sad for bad bass). Also the major weak link is the Zipp woofer, wherein on its magnet its stated as "Sub Woofer" I too bought it thinking it to be Sub Woofer but by performance I feel its just woofer. So my quest is still on, now 2 things are on list first will try making this a Ported type enclosure and after 6 or 8 month will again search for good Sub Woofer.
THANK YOU
Regards
