You too can have the best loudspeakers in the world
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- Опубліковано 29 лип 2023
- Speakers not audiophile enough? You can have the best loudspeakers in the world. Watch the video and find out how...
CREDITS
WEM Vendetta - WEM Owners website wem-owners.com/
HH en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HH_Elec...
Jimi Hendrix - From Wikipedia: Original photographer unknown - e24.se, attributed to Scanpix trelleborgsallehanda.se
Leak Sandwich 600 - Retrotech Audio www.retrotechaudio.co.uk/leak...
Malcom Jones - Falcon Acoustics www.falconacoustics.co.uk
Wilmslow Audio wilmslowaudio.co.uk/
Crossover - Graham Audio www.grahamaudio.co.uk
Loudspeaker Design Cookbook www.google.com/search?q=Louds...
Metallica copyright issue www.google.com/search?q=metal...
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You have just unlocked a stream of memories. Back in the mid 1970's I made a matched pair of stereo speakers bought from Wilmslow Audio. I fetched them myself. They were KEF kit 3s, three drive units. With help from a mate we built them in my Dads garage, and of course they were the best speakers in the world, and I have still got them!!
I’ve ordered drive units from wilmslow audio.
Eee, bah gum! I remember the Wilmslow Audio catalogue c.1977/78 - lusting over things i couldn't afford as a spotty teenager.
Wilson Audio Chronosonic XVX
No, you can’t biamp or triamp them. Flawed design.
Yes! I have build a pair of TL's myself and a pair of horns (somewhat the opposite of TL's). Both pairs are whitout any doubt the best ever speakers built in their own specific qualities and still perform their magic in Amsterdam.
So spot on!
I'm still chasing to relive the sound that came from the Altec Lansing 12" woofers I built cabinets for that had horn tweeters with exposed crossover components that sat on top of the enclosures. Those speakers rocked all the houses I inhabited during my college years. I eventually sold them to a rock band, since they were too large to fit in my car when I left school. Now I'm thinking it was the memories of cranking tunes outside on big grass lawns with a keg of beer, a bushel of oysters, throwing the Frisbee with friends and smiling at the coeds in cut off shorts walking by that makes me think that no other speakers have sounded as good as those Altecs. In reality, I'm not chasing an improved sound, I'm chasing the youth of my past.
And our ears are getting worse.....lol
@@will7its Sadly, you've got that right! My hearing aids are my most expensive piece of audio gear I own. And a bird watching walk in the woods with my spouse proves she is the one with superior hearing. "Can you hear that high pitch call". "No, please give me the binoculars so I can try to look at the bird you can hear." She hears better than me, but I'm the one messing with audio gear. Go figure. lol
@@eddents The Irony of the audiophile is when you can finally afford quality, you can no longer hear it......😹
What you say is so true!
I've never owned "store bought enclosures", but boy have I built quite a few different cabinets. I started out with single 12" "full range" speakers in a very pleasing sized box but way too small to get the bass performance I wanted. This was when I was around 16. Then I read about bass reflex cabinets and cut some ports into the too small boxes. The bass was better, but everything else sucked.
A new neighbor moved in next door and one day I heard the most magnificent loud and clean sound coming from his house. I got to know him and it turned out he used a wall in his living room as an infinite baffle. There was a large open stairway on the back side of that wall. Each channel had 2 EV SP15 speakers and an Altec 500 Hz horn. I'd never heard anything like it before. The sound levels he could achieve were unbelievable and I'm surprised nobody called the cops...but he was a cop, so maybe that's why. Sometime later, he decided to replace the SP15s with JBL LE15s and sold me 2 of the EV speakers for next to nothing. This was in 1967.
I used a guide from Electrovoice to "design" properly sized bass reflex cabinets. I was just out of high school and living with my parents at the time. My dad and I cut up the wood and built my cabinets, which were huge. I had them in the basement and when nobody was home, I cranked them up. These were the best speakers I'd ever heard, with the exception of the neighbor's infinite baffle driven with all McIntosh gear. I brought my girlfriend (now wife) over to hear them and she proclaimed them to be the best speakers she'd ever heard.
After we got married, I build a listening room in the basement of our new house. It featured an infinite baffle with 1 SP15 and 1 Altec horn on each side. Now these were the best speakers in the world. I had also built my preamp, power amp and electronic crossovers from scratch and they were the best too.
When we moved to our next house, there wasn't any wall that could be used as an infinite baffle. Someone at work showed me a catalog from a company in Seattle that offered various speaker kits as well as plans. Speakerlab was their name and they offered a set of very detailed plans to build a clone of the Klipschorn as well as a kit. This was a woodworking nightmare from hell with all the compound angled cuts and many pieces to make the folded horn. A pair required 5 sheets of 1/2" plywood and 2 sheets of 3/4" walnut veneered plywood. I bought the plans and built a pair. They were beautiful and looked just like the real thing. I used my EV SP15 in the bass bin and the Altec horn along with a new EV tweeter. These now were the best speakers in the world and even my old neighbor with the infinite baffle said so when he heard them. The only problem was that when friends heard them, they wanted a pair too. I think in total I built 5 pairs for other people. This was in 1978 and I still have them today. They're now bi-amped with home built electronic crossovers and lateral MOSFET power amps. My most recent upgrade was the addition of DSP equalization. I'm old now and I know there are better speakers than mine, but the built in low pass filters in my ears probably couldn't tell the difference.
A lot of people talk or dream about using a wall as an infinite baffle but your neighbour walked the walk. DM
Great story!
Thanks for the inspiration!
My low pass filters are down to about 10kHz.
Active crossover and bi amp is the direction I'm heading.
My dad, when he was a teenager still living at home (around the mid 1950's), and after obtaining permission from his parents (my grandparents ), proceeded to saw two big square holes in the wooden floor and placed two DIY speaker boxes on top; he used the entire under-floor crawl space as an infinite baffle. Superb bass performance, so he tells me. Fortunately my grandparents approved of that kind of initiative; my dad did lots of DIY audio builds when he was young.
I built my own design headphone amp before they became available commercially; I still think it is the best headphone amp 😬👍
Oh yes, I built my own best headphone amp in the world too. DM
I imagine that the entire household had to 'enjoy' your father's musical tastes...
@@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx He only played classical music, which apparently they all liked. He had 3 elder sisters and 3 elder brothers; being the youngest member of the family by a few years I think most of his siblings had already left the home, so likely only both my grandparents had to "put up" with his music. It was a a small traditional worker's house they lived in, I remember it well; so no escaping the music. Those speakers had been removed before I was born though, so I have never had the chance to either see or hear them. When my dad married my mother he bought a pair of KEF Chorales, which to date are still performing nicely at my home after he passed them on to me. He's got some KEF LS50's now himself.
Would have loved to hear a bit of Bruckner in that house
@@james9789 Wouldn't have happened; my dad was and still is a Bach / Vivaldi / Telemann / Händel kind of person, and then only instrumental...
My mother on the other hand, is more of a Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest kind of person. But they both like Spanish 16th Century and African traditional. I like all of the above, plus 80's/90's indie & alt rock, shoegaze, and recent Japanese rock. I managed to get both of them into Dead Can Dance 😁; first they hated it, now they love it.
Been doing this for years. DIY speakers have changed my world. Buidling speakers especially suited for the environment they will be listened to makes a world of difference.
Your videos are pure joy. Can´t wait for the next one. On this particular topic, there is no way I would ever venture into building a pair of speakers (kit or no kit), but if I did, it would surely be due to your compelling arguments...
Always appreciate your videos! I have taken a slightly different approach with my listening. When we moved to this house, it came with a sound system that was well beyond anything I would've put together (Krell amp, Krell pre-amp, Sonus Faber Concerto speakers and a REL sub). The Krell needed repair (dried out capacitors) and the room needed to be re-arranged for better placement. Prior to this, I didn't have any systems of any note, although my brother had owned a few that I'd enjoyed listening to from time to time. The sub died shortly after moving in so I replaced it with a modern REL equivalent, not for music but for surround entertainment. I listen in 2 channel for music and 5.1 for movies. I am absolutely ecstatic with the 2 channel performance. Having tested it out as thoroughly as I can, there is nothing lacking to my ear. As such, the ONLY thing I do when I listen to it now is simply enjoy it. I primarily listen to prog rack, some very specific classical concertos and Julian Lage (a jazz guitarist). Listening to the delicate work of a 3 piece jazz trio really makes the hairs on my arm stand up, especially with quality recordings.
A friend of mine, on the other hand, is always talking about upgrading his setup (2 channel, vinyl with a tube amp), to the point where I'm not really sure how much he's allowing himself to enjoy the music he owns. TLDR: if you're happy with the music you're hearing and can't pick out any artifacts, then stop chasing upgrades and enjoy the hell out of it.
I must say that it’s refreshing to find and old fart, like me, who started this journey in the 70’s. You are much smarter of course. My first speakers where Crazy Eddy’s Acoustic Phase, which were garbage. Then I made my own which were better. After that I have got speakers like: EV, Altec Lansing, Infinity Slopes, Infinity Kappa 9, Roger Studio one and now B&W. Nothing like those I made. Thanks for the memories Sir.
I build my own speaker for my band when I was 16 years old. Always fiddled with electronics in the late 90s. This brings back good old memories.
That was the most fun I've had watching a UA-cam video in a long time! Thanks for sharing!
I built kit speakers when I was high school. They were from a Seattle company called Speaker Lab. I liked the company because the built their own speaker components included spinning the voice coils and magnetizing the drivers. I built the cabinets in the wood shop at school. They were nothing fancy; just 2-way speakers with 8" woofer, dome tweeter and sealed cabinet of the appropriate volume. I ran them from a vacuum-tube integrated amp with about about 25W/channel, but the setup actually performed better than what most kids my age had. I actually don't remember much else about the system. I don't even remember what I had for a turntable, but remember playing nothing but vinyl. :)
With a fondness that can only be born of nostalgia, your video reminded me of my years during the 1980s aspiring to construct the ultimate "high-end" speaker system. My Bible was Edward T. Dell, Jr's Speaker Builder magazine. With my favorite issues of this invaluable resource dog eared and highlighted to near oblivion, I time and again struggled through the arcane stages of cabinet and crossover design, parts purchasing, woodworking and finishing. At the zenith of my hobbiest years I once mounted an 8" polypropylene woofer into a rosewood transmission line cabinet supporting a curvilinear electrostatic element with a passive 6 dB/octave crossover. Considering my total cost was little more than $200, its successful comparisons to an early 1980s Magneplanar MG-1 owned by a close friend convinced me that I'd indeed built the best speakers in the world.
I just discovered your channel, and I love it. What I cherish the most is your down-to-earth, no-bullshit attitude. Thank you, and kudos for that!
Don't worry. My commenters keep my feet firmly on the ground.
Very refreshing. Thanks. Built the transmission line PRO-9 monitors from Wilmslow Audio about half a century ago! Gave a very good result. Everyone was very impressed because until then no one had a concept of what Hi-fi is all about. Been listening to transistor radios! PRO-9's eventually were discarded due to moving around.
I just love this. Starting in the early 70:s with no money and big dreams. Many speakers have past and now i'm planing to build my last speakers, a pair of JBL L250 copys.
Excellent video. Thank you sir.
Ahh, the memories… my Dad had a workshop with all the tools (radial arm saw, drills, fasteners, etc.). I managed to order a book on how to build speakers (this was the 70’s - pre- internet obviously).
I perused the information and came up with a design. I reused some Radio Shack mids from a friends old speakers, bought a Phillips Dome tweeter and an 8” woofer from somewhere. I don’t recall where i got the crossover from.
Anyway, I assembled the cabinet, gave it a beautiful finish and framed and covered the speaker covers with some material I found in my mother’s sewing room.
They looked fantastic!
I installed a 1” strip of wood on the front underside of the speakers so they would sit tilted slightly back.
Excitedly I hooked up my 20 Watt Realistic (a Toshiba that sounded like 50 Watts) amp, put a record on my Dual 510 and…
They did not sound as I had hoped/ dreamed.
The bass was completely anemic. Mids and Highs were ok.
The point of my long ramble is that no matter how disappointing the results it was a very satisfying venture.
I then turned my ambitious thoughts to building a pair of 12” Karlson (open baffle) Enclosures. I even managed to get the plans. (I still have them somewhere although they can be found via a brief google search.) Alas, I never got around to building them.
My son has excellent woodworking skills so perhaps one day soon we could build a set together.
And just maybe he too will get to experience the joy of building your own speakers no matter the outcome.
Great!! Took me back to my twenties when I did build my Hi-Fi speakers (from a kit) , and also a bass speaker for my bass guitar (yes, I played in a band) - that box was huge and weighed a ton, but did the job, just fitted in the car.
I've recently discovered your channel and I'm really enjoying your videos. Please, keep it up!
Brave man... admitting to that phase mistake. We've all done daft things but most of us keep quiet about them!
Great video! Love seeing different speakers and the differences between them.
Hello David, best channel ever..
I’ve upgraded and redesigned crossovers, and have upgraded drivers, on stereo speakers in the past, but I’ve never built any from scratch.
(I stink at woodworking).
I have a few books on the subject that just sit on a bookshelf, but the one you mentioned sounded intriguing, and a seemingly good buy at $50, but no current plans for new speakers, since I currently have 2 sets of floor standers already. I had to chuckle when you mentioned the 4x12”’s. Back when I played guitar, more years ago now than I care to think about, I picked up a Laney LC-50, which was a 50 watt 1x12” combo with 2 6L6 output tubes. The problem was that it had this really annoyingly crisp and bright HH speaker in it, so I got my hands on one of the 12” Celestion speakers that was same as the ones in the old Marshall 4 x 12 cabinets, and I put that speaker in the combo instead in place of the HH speaker, and then, problem solved. 😉
So many comments to dig through…assuming people have already mention using it and was great to see it in the description. But I also got my start using “The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook” by Vance Dickason …. No idea what version they are on now…
I used it to design and build subwoofer boxes for cars…. Sealed, ported, band pass ….. all that jazz. MDF was hard to come by those days.. early 90s…
Thanks for the great walk down memory lane
You are a likable chap. I enjoy the way you encompass your life story into a well mashed out focus on making your own speakers. All in under 12 minutes. Thank You. :D
I've built myself quad speaker 3 way with diy cross overs with good phase impedance and spl. To my ears they are the best in the world 😅
It was certainly a steep learning curve without books, kits etc. just public info on the internet. I've taught myself building and cnc-ing enclosures, xsim, rew and how to use umik1 and measure impedance with a usb sound 'card'. Used high quality cross over parts. Also made sure the room curve measures well at listening position. Even applied some room treatment. I've probably sunk 2k euros into it but I really enjoy worlds best music on my worlds best audio system tweaked to my tastes!
I’m quite happy with my 35yo Polk 10s, thank you very much. They sound great.
When I was younger I had to have a pair of Pioneer HPM-100 to have a great bass. Loads of tinkering with the electronics of the (then) 25 year veterans to try and get the best sound out of it -- and yes, that did involve a new cross-over design!
A few tears were shed when I sold them, these beasts were simply too big for my room, but good memories all 'round.
Back in the '70's, while in the Army stationed near Munich, I got a pair of Pioneer CS-911. They were a four-way speaker. They sounded great with a 15 inch bass and two "super" tweeters. I retired them a few years ago and got a pair of Klipsch. I still have the receipt. They cost $360.00 back in 1976. And that was discounted for GIs at the Audio Club.
Still have my HPM 100s. Still sound great 45 years later.
I built my own car stereo setup with my choice of drivers and tweeters Also made up my own crossovers using charts and books I found on the subject Not bad results but I always learned something new which I love to do still. Still amazing alpine demo TA with dozen 6x9s in the rear prior to subs coming to the forefront of car audio I still believe it would rock today 😁🎵🎵
My Dad build his own speakers when he was in technical training school (in electronics) for his first job out of high school. I have them now and they still sound good. My Wharfedale Diamonds are arguably better, but these old boys still work well. They've got Richard Allan 12-inch woofers and 8-inch mid range, with Philips tweeters. The crossovers and cabinets Dad built himself. My wife hates the things but I love 'em
Excellent video! Tapped into my early wishes to build my own... Alas, I never did as I was always seemingly too busy, but I really wasn't. Wishing I had. Looking to build some open box speakers now.
Informative and quite humerous. Brilliant! Thank you for this terrific video!
I built a pair of >6 ft. Voigt pipe speakers this year. Wonderful project. Love ‘em.
You too have the best speakers in the world.
Thanks for a great presentation! I'm proud to have owned a number of the best speakers in the world!
There are great DIY speakers out there. For (retail). under a grand, you'll get drivers and crossover parts better than anything at that price on the audio market. For the price of some 3- way midline cerwin-vega, I ended up with drivers from scan-speak and peerless. 5% tolerance crossover parts. They weren't t the greatest in the world, but the performance for the money was major league. Transparent,, detailed and impactful.
I'd never have audiophile approved validation in any reviews, so - I'd have to be satisfied on their own merits, and no one else's opinion of them. There is a great satisfaction in DIY.
My first speakers were a pair of Acoustic Research ones, bought in 1975 using a Thorens turntable and a Cambridge P50 amplifier, after that a pair of Spendor SP1's with a Quad 33 and 303, then I had a week working at Linn's factory outside Glasgow where I had a demo of their then new Kan's and as soon as I got home I bought a pair of those, only I could never drive them hard enough living in a London flat to make them sound as good as in the demo room. I very quickly traded them in for a pair of Harbeth LS3/5A's which suited me perfectly until I fell for a pair of Quad 7710's which, 35 years later, are still standing on the old Kan stands in my sitting room ... I might not have built them myself, but to me they're definitely the best speakers in the world.
I had once a big diy 3-way loudspeaker. I built it my self and it sounded great.
It had a 10" woofer.
Now I have a 2-way loudspeaker with a 4" woofer, not diy but it sound great too.
I made a pair of spiral horns and they are very good but struggle in the low end. I then made a pair of large well braced slot ported reflex enclosures with early 60’s 15 ohm concentric 8” full range drivers and they sound sublime.
I, too, have fond memories of building speakers. As a "starving" student in the early 70s, I built a pair of bookshelf speakers for use in my dorm room. My amp wasn't very powerful, so efficiency was paramount for competing with the more expensive gear in the dorm. I used one 3-way Utah 8-inch speaker for each enclosure, which I made out of 3/4-inch plywood, and a substantial duct tube. The fake "walnut" finish looked awful, but the sound was that of the best loudspeakers in the world!
Love the background A.i. images. Very easy way to have neat backdrop.
Just discovered your channel. Great videos! Thanks very much!
I am not inclined to build my own speakers; however I suffered through the Master's presentation as I waited for the ladies to show up. And, in the end, they did. Loved it.
I'm worried they're going to leave my channel and make their own show. DM
@@AudioMasterclass maybe they'd give you a job, though they might prove to be tough taskmasters. I guess it depends on the tasking.
@@grumpy9478 They'd probably have me slaving away in a small dark room writing their scripts. Hang on, I do that already. DM
I indeed have also built 'the best speakers in the world' (with help from my Dad). Made with 5" Vifa Woofers and Philips Ribbon Tweeters with some random cross-over from a local electronics chain in Australia (Jaycar). Designed using a BASIC computer program from a book (Designing, Building and Testing Your Own Speaker System by David B. Weems). 25 years and still going strong!
I live in Australia and build speakers and I use Jaycar woofers. Their 10" woofer is amazing.
@@Justwantahover, Nice!. Indeed my
Philips Tweeters, speaker stuffing and binding posts were also bought from Jaycar, though the Vifa Woofers were from Radio Parts.
This is where I am now, on a father-of-two-kids schedule, but I have the book and I'm excited.
I own the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, and it is amazing.
8-inch dual cone driver from Goodmans or Wharfdale (can't remember which) in a cabinet built to the drawing that came with the driver. Only one required to go with the Armstrong 127M valve tuner/amp and the Garrard SP25 with Decca Deram ceramic cartridge. The best set-up in the world in about 1966.
I wanted to try the same driver in a drain pipe, popular at the time, but never got around to it.
Auratone cubes i once copied as additional monitors, they worked fine and did the job, saving a lot of money. Still a fan of widerange speakers and/ or 2 way speakers.
My dad built two x 8" woofers (kef) not sure what make the 2" tweeters where,but these where the best heavy bass crisp tops quite big deep boxes ,20 years later i removed the 2",treeter and replaced the whole with a thick cardboard tube As port used them as bass ,a mate of mine still has them goung strong ❤🇬🇧🍀🇮🇪
I've designed and built a few speakers - a 3-way 8-inch transmission line system which sounds quite good except the titanium tweeter I used sounds very open but can also be "tizzy" on some material- maybe I'll change to a soft dome at some point; I use these at my office. The bass is very good, very "un-boxy" and with great transients. I built a couple of 2-ways, with SEAS or ScanSpeak drivers, some are biamped using MiniDSP- all of these sound pretty good. I am currently building a pair of 3-way active Bluetooth towers using some low cost drivers. So far these sound awful - boomy bass- but some iterative design will likely fix that. There are going to go to a young-ish person who wants to listen to loud music.
Thanks for the great video. It brings back memories of my subwoofer construction.
The only speaker I've built is a subwoofer, back in the 1990s. It has a very nice driver, and the cylindrical "cabinet" is a two-foot-diameter Sonotube--a cylindrical concrete form used to pour footings for construction foundations. Though it's made of cardboard, the Sonotube is exceedingly thick and heavy, able to provide structural integrity. And its cylindrical shape ensures that there will be no flexing of the cabinet as sound pressure rises and falls inside the cabinet (since such a response to pressure would require the walls of the cylinder to stretch rather than flex, which even heavy cardboard is not willing to do), which is something you need to worry about when building speaker cabinets with flat surfaces that may flex under pressure.
I downloaded a public-domain computer program that calculated the length of the port needed given the cabinet dimensions and a few speaker specifications. I made the end-caps for the subwoofer out of 2.5-inch solid oak, put the speaker in one, and a six-inch-diameter PVC pipe (the port) in the other. Standoffs (legs, essentially) allowed the speaker to point down, while the port pointed up.
As a final touch, I covered the cardboard tube with black cloth and stained the oak plates to match the room's decor. It stands over four feet tall and sits nicely next to the screen in my home theater.
And just as you'd expect, it is absolutely the best subwoofer in the world.
Very interesting!! I'm still looking for my desert island speakers, after 25 years as an audiophile i've decided to buy one last pair of speakers and make do. I've tried building my own with good results but nowhere near top audiophile/Studio speakers! My choice will either be PMC, ATC, TAD of Wilson Sasha 2/DAW.
That's a wonderful story. Sometimes we forget to check the basic stuff such as a driver being out of phase. Which makes me wonder there must be quite many audiophiles out there with speakers connected with wrong polarity.
You might be surprised if you knew how often I encountered that on service calls ... usually for "sudden loss of bass"... go figure.
I built my first set back in the 70s. ElectroVoice SP12B. To me they were the best, especially when listening to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Stones, ....etc. etc.
Oh yes, I built two pair of speakers back in the 70s. For the second pair we didn't have any foam to put inside, so we dismantled some pillows and problem solved. Fond memories indeed.
yeh I remember playing in groups and building 4x12 cabs for my guitar, then I opened a hifi shop and listening and comparing educates the ear,. something very important if you have love of classical music or Pink Floyd I do remember selling the jim rodgers ls135/a, does anyone remember RAM speakers, they were hot . I sold KEF, Mission, B&W, Celestion, Wharfedale and some American brands too but the Brits made the best speakers. Much later I did build my own amplifier and I recommend it to all hifi enthusiasts, it's not too difficult.
Not exactly stereo monitor/speakers, but I had an experience when looking for something to amplify my guitar when I was a teenager in the very early 80s.
My mum had an old stereogram, one of those radio record players with a function to play another record after the first one via a stack feature. Of course it could only play one side of an LP but I think people were so amazed that this thing could play more than one side of one record at a time when it was built, I’m guessing mid 60s, that nobody minded that they had moved on to the next LP before finishing the first. Remember kids, records were supposed to be played one side and then the next in order. No shuffle.
Anyway, the crappy Bakelite/plastic tonearm was broken somehow and it was impossible to get a replacement. Our family had also bought an NAD, Nakamichi, KEF setup so the old stereogram was no longer required.
I noticed that the amplifier in the thing had tubes, and being a young guitarist who could only afford a pretty grainy sounding Yamaha guitar amp (solid state sounded pretty blah back in the day) I wondered if I could somehow use this, rather low wattage, amplifier.
Now, I knew nothing about impedance, levels or RIAA curves. What I did was created a jack socket that went in right where the cartridge, if you can call it that, was hardwired in.
Wow. The creamiest, most gorgeous distorted tone I’d ever heard came out of the ‘full range’ 8 inch drivers.
I did a bunch of recording with that stereogram, which I’d sawn in half and cut the legs off leaving me a cube about 2 feet on all dimensions. It only had one sound, but boy. It was a good ‘un.
I moved on as soon as I grew up a bit and bought a Fender Twin but I could never get that chocolate, smooth but distorted sound I was getting from the Franken-gram.
I probably couldn’t march it for anything now, it was 40 years ago but I do wish I still had that thing. Maybe it wasn’t as good as I remembered, but to me, at that time, it was the prefect guitar sound.
Awesome video,I think you once mentioned this was in the pipeline, and your bang on the money ! DIY audio is a great journey and you WILL find " the best audio in the world" along the way. My carpentry skills aren't anywhere near the cricket ground and are best described as 'poor' so my Mordaunt Shorts needn't worry !......Cheers.
Hey i came back to your video to say your right.
I own a the PMC Twenty5 26i, they cost 11'000&.
So i thougt you just havent heard this quality thats why you say you can build better ones.
But now i started to build my own speakers and i have to admit, he is 100% right!
Ive never heard something sounding sooooo gooood!!
I will sell my PMC's!
I thank you so much! ❤☺️
I built my forst pair of speakers when i was 13 years old.
I got hired to clean out a warehouse for the local Datsun/Nissan dealership.
They said i could keep anything I found.
There were 40 pairs of brand new Nissan factory car speakers. About 2/3 were 6" and a thirrd were 4". All were just single cone, full range drivers.
I bought four sheets of plywood and made two huge boxes. Took an entire day to cut out 80 holes!
I learned about ohms and even bought two cheap crossovers to separate the 6" from the 4".
Tool a while day to solder so much wire!
And in the end, the result was totally worth it! They sounded absolutely terrible. Probably the worst speakers ever made.
But they were big and allowed me to start a DJ business that eventually paid for college.
And they made me save my money as fast as possible to buy better gear!
I sold those speakers to a middle aged stoner named Biff after about a year and he loved them. LOL
The last live music I heard was composed, played on a guitar and sung by an up and coming East Anglian artist in my small office. I looked straight at her, of course, so I guess heard the same thing you have described live. We were talking about recording her in a room with an amazing natural echo, which will add controlled stereo ambience to an otherwise mono recording. I certainly won't be adding any mid-range 'bump'. (BTW as I'm not a professional and have vintage gear I will be using two to four preamped mics into an A3340 at 15 ips and a separate digital recorder, and mixing the result down to stereo using a 43-y-o A+H mixer. I guess you won't be impressed with that!) Sorry, I was trying to comment on your post about the near field hearing effect dead centre.
I enjoy you sense of humor. Since I've never been able to build anything worth a damn, I just worked harder and bought my speakers. I've always been partial to English speakers, despite the fact that I live in the US. My favorites were the ProAc Response 3 that I bought in the late 80s, maybe early 90s. Today, I can't afford them, so I bought the Wharfdale Linton Heritage and they sound fantastic. My old ears can't tell the difference between $20k and $50k and up, so I'll stick with my great sounding Linton's because they are "they are best speakers in the world".
I’ve worked with ProAc speakers professionally. Great sound and very tough. DM
@@AudioMasterclassHow can you know that is a great sound if you are not able to ear the difference between capacitors and coils from different brands in the crossover ?
Love the tongue in cheek presentation in this video. I have gone this road before and suggest a 4th path. Pretend like you are going to build your own speakers from the ground up and, at the end of the day, DON’T DO IT! There is a reason for this madness and it is simply that trying to design your own speakers teaches you about the various aspects of speaker design. This comes in handy whether you buy an off the shelf speaker or a kit.
For example, I am a fan of open baffle (OB) speakers. Cabinet design is relatively simple because you are mounting your drivers on a single panel and I love the OB sound. However, OB speakers need to be around 3’ from the front wall. It is also hard to get deep bass out of these designs unless you are using large drivers mounted on a large panel. There are ways to reduce the size of the speaker, and that basically comes down to a hybrid design where the tweeter and mid-woofer are in an open baffle and the woofer is not. There are generally 3 choices (sealed, ported or passive radiator). My preference would be passive radiator as (to me) it offers the best compromise of sound quality , reasonable size and bass extension. I would also tend to prefer bi-amped 3-way speakers where only the woofer is powered because you generally need a fair amount of power to get the most from woofers, Class D amps work well in the bass region and are cheap, and finally, powering the woofers allows you to use much lowered powered amps for the tweeter and mid-woofer.
All of this came from researching speaker design. Part of building the best speakers in the world is knowing what you want and the considerations in the best design to accomplish it. This knowledge allows you to make better choices whether you buy or build your speaker and informs you of what you should be looking for because you know the compromises in a particular type of design.
Wonderful story, thank you!
I agree it took me over a year to learn how to build a decent speaker but I mostly learnt for fun so it's possible to do it faster. Now I can't imagine buying speakers because they got bad value compared to anything I want to build. Its complete freedom, I can do small speakers with deeper bass than anything on market sacrificing sensitivity or I can do monitors that will play reference levels of volume or even 106db without much of a compression if I want to. Cost of components is not to high. I even order enclosures from carpetner because its cheaper and better than buying flat packs which supeised me.
Sounds like you really have "a feel" for speaker enclosures. Would you start a UA-cam channel?
Two Altec 211 bass cabinets (normally seven feet tall, from a movie theater) on their sides, with two Altec 515Bs in each, two JBL 375 drivers on hartzfeld lenses, four Heil Tweeters, two on each side, tri-amped. After hearing this, people either a.) wanted the same thing or b.) sold their stereo system and bought an AM transistor radio.
Great episode (As usual)!
You too can have the best UA-cam channel in the world - yours
Thank you, I do my best. DM
HEAR! HEAR!
7:55 I think I bought my Wharfedale Dovedale 3 kits from Wilmslow Audio in 1972. After several weeks of amateur woodworking and bodging I thought they sounded superb. I still have them.
This has triggered a search for Wilmslow Audio in the first edition of Wireless World I ever bought - October 1971 (I had just started at University). I used to love the ads in there. There's a Quad ad (before the 405); SME 3009 (I have one now in my Transcriptors Hydraulic Reference); Garrard AP76 (it's all I could afford in those days, with Shure M75ED), and an ad for the wonderfully named Wayne Kerr, of bridge fame (Cables: Waynkerr Surbiton). And an ad for the Sinclair Project 60, an ad by Nagra seeking a Junior Service Engineer, but no Wilmslow Audio. I wonder where I saw their ads.
They used to advertise in "practical wireless", if i remember correctly. About 50 years ago! Mercy!
Never thought I'd see the day when Malcolm Jones' Tabors were mentioned on YT. I built mine from Wilmslow Audio kits in 1978. I used 3/4" flooring grade chipboard, 1/8" hardboard as a veneer, lined with bitumous felt panels & weigh 50lbs each. They were used for 10 years until I could afford better. I recently pulled them from storage & they still sound good. The only advice I'd give is please audition your kits before buying, in my case a friend had already built some Tabors, there's nothing more frustrating than disliking your creation, after spending so many hours on them.
Ah, those bituminous felt panels, and Aquaseal No. 5. DM
Back in the late 80's I heard good things about Gradient Avantis, but they were too expensive and hard to find, so I never got round to actually trying them out. A few years ago, I found a used pair for 120€ and bought them. They do sound good and they do even look good to my girlfriend, so I'm very happy with the speakers. All it took was 30 years for the price to come down. Next, I'd like to find a pair of ESS AMT 1Bs, to replace the pair that was destroyed by my narcissistic father, just because he could. Now, those were sweet speakers, I really loved them and I do miss them.
Still have my Leak Sandwich 600s Good grief must be over or close to 50yrs old still sound good to me.
If they work and sound good there's no reason to change. DM
Fun hearing about the guitar speaker build. I built disco speakers in the 70's with Goodmans Axiom 12" drive units in open back cabinets. Poor bass and no top - ugh! Many modern music PA systems still sound poor on bass - just one harmonic note, "boom boom boom". The bass guitar is often never properly heard.
This video was a howl and so much fun. Not often you can stir people to try their hand at DIY speaker building, but designing them also? Ok. No, it isn’t far fetched, but this is assuming they don’t work 12s most if not all of the week which negates having much time for this endeavor. I admire your zeal sir. No one can fault that even if it has a satirical tone attached. Still fun nonetheless.
My best speakers in the world are a pair that I found in the loft. They were a bit dusty, but cleaned up nicely. 🙂
Congratulations. You found an easier way. DM
@@AudioMasterclass LOL! Exactly, and cheap too! 🙂
The problem with kits is that you don't know if that particular speaker is going to give you the type of sound that you're looking for. Just because one person thinks the design and overall sound are great doesn't mean you'll feel the same way. If you're going the pure DIY route you better have the correct woodworking equipment and be skilled at making cabinets (otherwise it's a lost cause) plus you need the equipment to measure the frequency response of each individual driver so you can design a crossover that works with those drivers.
I made speakers as a teenager. I had a big technical book on speakers I didn't understand and no money. The drivers were whatever I could scrounge from broken radiograms. I truly thought they were amazing. I don't think they were than now, though they must have sounded nice compared to every other low-fi item my parents had in the house. Years later I have them mounted in my garage. And the original muddy drivers have been replaced with simple twin inline 6" speakers that are plenty good enough for the garage.
What about Bose?
I've been building speakers for years, decades. I used to build from scratch, but I haven't kept my knowledge up enough to do that, and relearning is not something I want to partake in.
So, I've been building from kits. There are so many high end kits available, that for me, it doesn't pay to build from scratch anymore. Modern DIY kit designers have come a long way, and the end results of kits, are speakers that easily outperform commercially available speakers that cost substantially more.
My current kit, the late Jeff Bagby's, Auricle monitors (RAAL tweeters, SB Acoustics mid), sitting on a pair of his woofer modules (not subwoofers) , with about $1800 USD invested, easily rival commercially available speakers for $10,000, without exaggeration.
But even given that I'd have to spend over $10K on the commercial market to get something better than my speakers, I am still aware that I do not own the best speakers in the world. My rich cousin owns a pair of Von Schweikert Ultra 55 speakers, at $100,000.00, that easily stomp my speakers, and every $10K speaker I've ever heard.
I’ve owned my fair share of “audiophile approved” speakers over a period of 40 years, then stumbled into the rabbit hole of DIY building - and damn, but you’re right: every single pair of the hundreds* of those was the best in the world - until the next.
*not an infinite number, but more than I can remember.😂
Many years ago when Radio Shack was still something like it was supposed to be in the US, I bought tons of parts from them.
At the point that they were getting out of that game, I went around town to all the locations still open and bought all of the speakers and electret condenser mics I could find. Many times I'd be digging around in the storage areas since they were already transitioning into the joke they have become.
I made several mics and speakers from all that stuff I bought on the cheap.
It's a rewarding experience if you have the ability to pull it off.
I wish there was a store like that around today. Now if I need parts like that, online is basically my only option. It really takes some of the fun out of the process.
What's it like to be a no likes Johnny?
I sympathise with your situation but it was inevitable because education in the US and UK has been falling behind for a long time and you can't expect somebody being paid to flip burgers will be able to tell you how a transistor works or to be able to read the markings on a capacitor. Your only option may be to move to the Netherlands where they still have the capacity to do such things.
@@factorylad5071 Hmmm... not sure that education in the UK at least is inferior these days. I went to a state school in the 70s/80s and was never taught a thing about electronics. It had a fine computer lab (Commodore PETs in 1980), so was advanced for a comprehensive.
Tandy, as Radio Shack was branded here in the UK, always seemed quite pricey compared to homegrown electronics shops. I suspect that online is better and cheaper than what Tandy would be offering.
@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx That's interesting. I remember that branding on some of their their stuff in the US as well. I haven't heard that name in years.
@factorylad5071 I can't really speak on education elsewhere, but in my experience, it hasn't been that great in the US for years. I was lucky enough to go to private school until 5th grade. So, what we call middle and high school in the US was essentially all just remedial work for me.
However, I do see your point in the decline of the store. Most of the time when I would go into a Radio Shack for parts, the employees didn't even know what I was buying at all.
Employment in the US has been a strange animal for a long time. Companies don't want educated employees, they just want minimum wage workers that they can exploit. But that, of course, is an entirely different conversation altogether.
I built a pair of Tabors, too, in the 1970s and still have them. They were in storage for years but during the pandemic I replaced the tweeters and crossover capacitors (thanks, Madisound) and had the cabinets painted white by an auto body shop. Quite the mod look with the black components. They are definitely the best speakers in the world. (My world, that is.) Now connected to an APT Holman preamp and a Hafler DH-200, they are my main system with a Boss Allo2 streamer. Thanks for the great stories of your exploits in speaker building. You brought back many memories and it was good to know others had Tabors as info on them is scarce. If you don’t mind my asking, what did you upgrade to?
B&W 801. Still have them. DM
I’m looking to build some speakers too! I know you are right
I always find it amazing how every reviewer always touts the best speaker in the world, at least once a week ... and they're always different.
But, yes, I've been modifying and servicing speakers for a lot of years now and the one thing that is *always* true is that every speaker can be improved with a little patience and skill. There's just nothing like seeing a labour of love come to life right in front of you.
It's really about how much you want to spend, trying to figure out some bell curve of speaker performance to price. Unless you have endless pockets. Understanding and applying knowledge will get you only so far. Are you going for "flat" or "musical" sounding, probably your choice as well?
@@isaac.anthony
Suggest you also read the second part of my comment.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 you make me wish i hadn't read anything you said.
@@isaac.anthony
Sorry to hear that. But you really should read the whole thing before responding.
@@isaac.anthonyWhy not buy a speaker with low distortion that will eq well with quite flat response and eq it if you want colored sound? It will be cheaper
Thanks Paul... What speakers you guys used with the other boys ....
I Love this channel.
I bought a pair computer speak at cost less than 90 (including tax), and audio quality is excellent, unbelievable.
I'm currently on a similar journey to try building my own tube-based guitar amplifier. I made the mistake of saying out loud, "how hard can it be?" and the audio gods have been having a good laugh at me ever since as I plow my way through the most amazing array of technical jargon and deep-dive engineering books I've dealt with in a long while. However, I'm sure that when I'm done, it will be the best guitar amplifier in the world, so I have that to look forward to.
It will be, absolutely. DM
I've traveled that road and your absolutely right on the outcome...cheers !
100% yes. Some of the best speakers I've ever owned are in fact diy.
i have kef Q60. Still my best pair speakers
I just bought a pair of Spendor BC1 's. Far cheaper than you could make ( even if you could get the parts!!)
50 years ago I heard them in a showroom in London up against many speakers and it far outperformed all of them
They are perfect for me.
But how much better will they be when you get an upgrade kit? DM
@@AudioMasterclass They're good enough for me as they are . Only cost me £250 ( with genuine stands, at the correct height!)
My first speakers had twin eight inch co-axial drivers. They weren't good. Then I built a pair of speakers using Isophonic drivers from a junked Telefunken console stereo. They sounded amazing. A while later, I acquired a pair of Altec-Lansing 515's and built a pair of A 7 bass horns. I added a subwoofer, which I built using two JBL fifteen inch drivers. I own the best speaker system in the world, or so I think.
. Same build type here. Copied (without plans) the JBL 4560 horn loaded bass cabinets. Couldn't afford the JBL drivers so I chose the Electro-Voice 15's. Horns were all Peavey in Peavey cabinets.
No crossover, full-range signal to both. Peavey had internal protection & attenuator.
I was a working pro-dj & those speakers kicked ass compared to almost anything then.
Acid Jazz, Funk & Brass 🔈🔉🔊
So I went over to the Wilmslow Audio site to have a look around. Their description for the SM212B speakers state that these are for use equally by professional recording studios and home audiophiles. I thought monitors were supposed to not flatter the sound, or is this what audiophiles are after? (I wouldn't know because I am not one :-)
My guess is that the listener gets a sound similar to what was heard in the studio. But, taken to extreme, audiophiles would have to buy Yamaha NS10M Studios. DM
Wow, saw the title and the speakers in the background (at the beginning of the video) and was fascinated by them.
Can you tell me the name? Thanks.
I have built amplifier's and speakers. I found a UA-cam video on open baffle, which got me curious. So I built some with some cheap things and some Motorola tweeters rear facing wired out of phase and no crossover. They reflected off screen ( sound now in phase ) . I did use equalisation as are inefficient at low frequency..
But anyway they sounded quite good and it appeared the sound came from the wall and not the speakers.
My normal speakers are a Dali at a few thousand $$$
I think it was more financially practical to make your own speakers 30 or 40 years ago. I hoped to make speakers a few years ago and after a lot of research, realised it would cost twice as much as buying similarly spec'd new ones. I made a few amps and preamps, they cost around 400 each in components alone. And took 3 years to really get the circuitry right. I don't regret the time and they are the best amps I've ever heard!
difference is what is the patience, know-how, and engineering worth to someone these days. The kits out there are hit or miss and entirely dependent on the skill of the customer (particularly with cabinet construction). The proverbial "price:performance" ratio hits hard once you exceed 2K for bookshelfs/stand-mounts and 4k for full range floor standers (the type you DONT need sub-woofers to fill out).
I'd rather build out a tube amp or solid state design publicly available than risk pissing away a crossover or cabinet resonance; the room correction is already hard enough to edge around with and without software.
Well, the thing is, with a 400 diy kit, you will be getting the "same quality" of something 2 times this amount... That is the point of diy, I guess. Today is even easier and cheaper than it was 30 or 40 years ago to assemble a kit...
I don't know if I misunderstood you, sorry...
When I build a set of speakers, I start with an inexpensive, pre-assembled crossover and let that limit the range of drivers that might work well, which then determines the box size. So far, has yielded 2 very different sets of the best cheap speakers in the world.
Good plan. DM
Happy with my modest entry level Dali spektor 2
I built speakers twice. The second was heafty transmission lines built from kits. Thay sounded terrible! The first used a dualcone single driver. I just read up what the cabinet volume should be and then knocked them up from plywood. Everyone I knew for the next few years told me thay were amazing and they were.
Wow, you just reminded me of the late 70s helping Dad on the kitchen table to glue speakers together. They were a second room pair. He was good at woodwork and finishing them but their single RS Components drive units had little treble and sounded excessively hollow. I could not justify keeping them so they will be in a Lancashire landfill now 😢
I have a pair of KEF 104/2 speakers I bought new in 1995, and I just had the woofer surrounds replaced. I wouldn't know where to upgrade from these.
Still use the LS3/5a Wilmslow Audio copies in the bedroom which I built forty years ago after my A-levels. Then it was the WA SPL1 monitors with Morel drive units yadda yadda which i used for twenty five years and which then became THE BEST SPEAKERS IN THE WORLD! But now, I've *ahem* acquired a pair of factory built Mirage speakers plus stands, from Canada. Holy shit. These things blow the socks off anything home-made. Problem is, I've now also acquired a pair of 15" Tannoy dual concentric drive units...which are up in the loft but which will of course, in time be used as the basis of my home-designed BEST SPEAKERS IN THE WORLD (Mk II).
Hi "Master". How on earth do I know what "crossovers" my DIY hifi speakers needs or should have?. Kindly if you could dedicate a stream on this topic. I'm in progress to build a pair of big speakers something like "Kappa 8", but better I hope. I'm searching for an open and detailed "wall of sound" that fills the whole room without having the volume at full blast. Listening mostly to guitar rock, jazz and blues. I think I have sufficient power amplifiers for heavy load, 2 pcs Primare A35 mono blocks 800W - 8 ohm. All the best.
For this I would recommend a loudspeaker building forum. You'll find more information on this very specialised topic than I can provide. www.google.com/search?q=loudspeaker+building+forum
I have 7 pair of DIY speakers, most from kits or open source plans. I'm not that hard to please though. All I need is double the amount of headroom than my peak listening requirements, and low *audible* distortion. The other requirement was 3-ways, for full range performance, whether that be a 3-way speaker that reaches into the mid 30hz range, or a two-way with a subwoofer to the same end. My desktop speakers are 12" that also are for the room as a whole. I basically just have a desk up in between my house system with the speakers toed-in roughly 45 deg, along with a pair of 12" subs.
Are they the best speakers in the world? No, but they are more capable than the recordings that would pass thru them, with the best recordings being audibly flawless to my ears. When I go to audio shows, or listen to friends systems, I would not trade what I have for any of those. I also would not trade my nearfield habit for the best whole room system. I don't like sitting in the middle of a room by myself for any task and I would not listen to music nearly as often as I do with what amounts to a studio arrangement with all the access to my gear within reach.