Puget Sound DIY Speaker Contest - August 2010!

[kareface]

"The Puget Sound! DIY Speaker Contest" is once again being sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Audio Society (PNWAS) and will be held on Saturday, August 28th. In the coming days and weeks, I'll be posting information as to location, rules and how to enter. The event is free for attendees, although there is an entry fee for contestants to help defray costs of the facility rental.

If you're interested in DIY speaker building, or just Audio, this is a great way to meet and connect with others that are of a like mind. Come for an hour, or spend all day, it's interesting and a whole lot of fun. While spectators aren't allowed in the evaluation/judging room, we usually have an similar, or nearly exact, system set up in a separate area, in order that the public can listen to the various entries.

If you're new to speaker building, this is a chance to talk to the contestants about speaker design and Audio in general. I believe that you'll be astonished by the quality of sound that these home-built speakers are capable of.

If you have been working on a speaker design that you'd like to enter, this contest may serve as an incentive to finish it up. In the past, all entries have received a printout of the frequency response of their speaker as well as being able to talk to real experts and audio professionals."The Puget Sound! DIY Speaker Contest" is once again being sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Audio Society (PNWAS) and will be held on Saturday, August 28th. In the coming days and weeks, I'll be posting information as to location, rules and how to enter. The event is free for attendees, although there is an entry fee for contestants to help defray costs of the facility rental.

If you're interested in DIY speaker building, or just Audio, this is a great way to meet and connect with others that are of a like mind. Come for an hour, or spend all day, it's interesting and a whole lot of fun. While spectators aren't allowed in the evaluation/judging room, we usually have an similar, or nearly exact, system set up in a separate area, in order that the public can listen to the various entries.

If you're new to speaker building, this is a chance to talk to the contestants about speaker design and Audio in general. I believe that you'll be astonished by the quality of sound that these home-built speakers are capable of.

If you have been working on a speaker design that you'd like to enter, this contest may serve as an incentive to finish it up. In the past, all entries have received a printout of the frequency response of their speaker as well as being able to talk to real experts and audio professionals.

I will be in attendance this year, and time permitting I plan to build a pair of speakers to bring with me to the competition. If you live in or near Seattle it should be a ton of fun. If you have any interest in speakers, this is a great opportunity to come listen to a variety of different designs. I'll try and find a silly hat to wear so anyone that wants to say hi can find me. I know a few people off of the forums were considering or have build some of their own speakers, this would be a great place to showcase them. I'm not sure if any of them were near the Seattle area or not, but either way it should be a cool place for anyone interested in home audio.

[Fr34k]

I briefly remember reading through your build log of your home audio, but I can't seem to remember to what extent you built your speakers. Was it like a put it together yourself kit, or did you have to go down to wrapping and gluing the voice coils, etc? I've been into car audio so I only know about reconing subwoofers, not so much about the mid range speakers but I assume that mid range drivers are almost identical in build as subwoofers. I'd love to go to this if I was within 2k miles XD.

[Isiolia]

I've only built my Tritrix so far, and I live on the wrong side of the country for this one, but it sounds like it'd be fun.

I briefly remember reading through your build log of your home audio, but I can't seem to remember to what extent you built your speakers. Was it like a put it together yourself kit, or did you have to go down to wrapping and gluing the voice coils, etc?

As a general answer, DIY speakers tend to be built with commercially available drivers. A big difference from car audio or subwoofers is the crossover. For cars, you usually just use a prebuilt crossover for the mid/tweeter, whereas for home audio the crossover is (optimally) designed for that specific combination of drivers, baffle configuration, enclosure, and so on. Obviously, that's quite a bit more complicated, and much, much harder to do well.

While there are some kits available (the speakers I built are a common one), what's a lot more common are fully documented designs. If I recall, kareface built NatPs, which don't exactly have a kit (this would be the closest I can think of).

There are far fewer actual designers of speakers than builders, but believe me, it's still a fair amount of (ultimately satisfying) work to build based on a proven design.

If it interests you, the HTGuide forum, or the forums on Parts Express both have active, helpful communities.

[kareface]

Yep, they're the nat's. The link in my sig (click the image) will highlight the process I used to build them. I haven't decided on the ones I'm gonna build for the contest, one of the pairs at the top of my potentials are:

http://uwtechguy.com/mini/new.jpg

Only I'd be building them with seas drivers.

[Fr34k]

Ah I see so the main thing is that after designing everything how you want it, you build the crossover to match instead of having the crossover and let's say a set of component speakers which are probably set up for an infinite baffle situation which most speakers will be in. I see I see, very interesting.