How to Fail (and Succeed) at Building a Speaker
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- Опубліковано 16 лют 2018
- Skip ahead some if you're just interested in seeing a speaker being built with reclaimed electronics and a Chinese bluetooth receiver. Watch from the beginning if you want to see me fail at veneering MDF, it's a right hoot, let me tell you!
Kirby Meets Audio: / @kirbymeetsaudio
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Music:
Hyde - Free Instrumentals
Acoustic/Folk Instrumental - Mumford & Sons Inspired
Acoustic Instrumental - Mumford & Sons Inspired
Acoustic/Alternative/Folk/Rock Instrumental - Mumford & Sons Inspired
CC BY 3.0 - Розваги
Awesome video! Thanks so much for the shoutout. Shaping the speaker grills using cutouts on the drill press is a great idea!
Cheers! I appreciate it! You've been a great inspiration into getting me to build speakers! I have another video coming up sometime in the spring/summer where I'm building one a lot better than this, so hang tight! 🙂
I tried following Kirby's videos on how to design speakers... and it felt like he was leaving out important stuff, almost deliberately.
Javier da Rosa
Why would he do that... That makes no sense.
@justanerd Then why do "tutorials"? His video is misleading.
Javier da Rosa he makes his living by selling completed speakers or speaker build kits. If he gave out the exact instructions on how to just make his designs then no one would buy his speakers or his kits. It’s a brilliant business plan actually. You see how there built and how they look in the video and so when you want to make them you have to spend $5 on his plans. I’ve built several of his speakers and trust me the few bucks it cost for the plans, which are emailed to you in a couple minutes, are a few dollars well spent.
I like that you included your “mistake” and how you learned from it. You just got yourself a new subscriber !
Cheers! Welcome to the channel!
totally ay!! good fella . i learn by learning of others mistakes aswell !!
I appreciate that you show failure, whether or not it was your own fault, and keep rolling. I'm sure most of us know the teaching pain of failure.
As a woodworker, technology and audio enthusiast, I really enjoyed this video. Learning new techniques is inspiring.
Nice!
Neat detail on the grill, using that splatter screen and stamping it to shape.
Cheers! That's actually the detail I'm most happy with, I really appreciate it!
This video inspired me to make a diy speaker. And you made me think that failure is not the way to make you quit on what your doing. Your awesome.
Simplicity of this build makes it more fun. Thanks
"Will it anger the audiophiles on UA-cam, We can only hope" ! Bwahahaha
Slight cringe but I got over it lol. Awesome build though!
Nice build. I think even audiophiles can appreciate the work you put into this.
Yhe threaded inserts and speaker mesh were nice touches
This one of the most inspiring channels I'm subscribed to. Every time I watch a video, I feel inspired to make something. Keep up the great work!
That WordArt over a dumpster is beautiful. Stuff like that really makes me love your videos even more!
Thanks for sharing. I like the upcycling. I've played with a few computer speaker systems like this. I've never been impressed by the quality from these systems. I prefer to use circuits from old flat screen TV's or old powered subwoofers. I have found a few TV's with separate audio amp modules. Even if the audio amp is on the main PCB it is usually placed in a simi-modular block where it can be cut out and made into a module. If you use a powered subwoofer from a home theater audio system, they use a regular speaker with a simple filter circuit to create "base" audio output. These powered subs almost always use a powerful IC amp like a TDA××××. Just find the audio input for the IC cut the copper input trace and add your line in input from a Bluetooth connection there.
My go-to Bluetooth module is the KRC86B-V4.0 they aren't the cheapest modules (usually $5-$8) but they always work.
I haven't created any audio related content on YT. The last BT speak I built I installed 2 power supplies with a relay. I leave the Bluetooth module powered up using an old 5V charger inside the enclosure. Then I used the "EN" (enable/Bluetooth connected) pin of the KRC module to connect to the base of a NPN transistor through a 1k resistor. The NPN's collector/emmitter grounds the coil of a relay that connects mains to an upcycled power amplifier. The benefit of this arrangement is that I can connect to my Bluetooth speaker any time I want from anywhere in my house. I am not worried about it drawing a bunch of power all the time because it's just a small 5V switching supply that has power until I connect via BT, then the 35V 2.5A supply kicks in.
Thanks again for sharing,
-Jake
This guy puts actual effort and time into his content . UA-camrs take note
Cheers! I appreciate it!
@@SwitchAndLever no problem man keep it up ! I might use your design to make a speaker of my own !
Thanks! You give me an idea for my little Portable bluetooth speaker... And yes I do keep electronics scrap all the time just in case needed anything spare parts. 👍 Nice gaining some info here
All of the effort and even a drill press (available at every garage) for that spectacular sound...
LOVED the press to deform the mesh. Awesome idea!
(I just connected a USB charger to my USB Bluetooth receiver and plugged it into an extra set of speakers. Now my workshop has bluetooth music. ..except the bluetooth receiver stinks, and isn't reliable)
Great video. This is a project I have been envisioning for some time. Brilliantly put together.
Exceptional narrative, video and craftsmanship.
Helpful vid. If you are going to paint mdf, even on the back, I recommend applying sanding sealer and sanding with 220 and/or 400 grit. Then, when you paint a few thin coats, the edge cuts won't be nearly as obvious. Primer/filler tends to shrink in my experience.
I LOVE YOUR VIDEO MAN, THAT GOES EXACTLY TO WHAT AND WHO I AM, THANKS FOR SHARING
Thanks for a beautifully shot and entertaining video. Just enough humour too!
Amazing teaching, get back up when you fall down. Don't stop trying. Also can I just say you're one of the most underrated funniest guys on UA-cam. I love your jokes and references. More please 😊
Haha! Thank you! I know my humor isn't for everyone, so I'm glad at least someone gets a kick out from it!
well done on finishing it, and thanks for sharing what is a satisfying result!
Don't know if there is somewhere in all the comments a mentioning about sealing MDF but something that I used for a cabinet was a glue/water mixture. 1 part glue and 2 or 3 parts water just that thick so you can apply it with a brush. Let it dry and it should not be visible but the MDF turns hard enough to not absorb so much paint,sand the parts, repeat if needed. Great video!
This is a pretty impressive build! Well done! (loved the innuendos thrown around :P )
Nice work, thank you for sharing your experience!
Thanks for share not only your success but also your fails to learn with you.
Your videos are always fun and inspirational! Thanks for making it!
Great video, really like the brass plate usage too.
Great video, although I'm really into the sound quality side of things and build my speakers based on this, I can appreciate a budget oriented build that reaches the goals of the builder. Sometimes things are simply done for fun. The audiophile community can be a finicky one, probably because we're so picky😁.
Thank you, and thank you for, unlike many, not missing the point of the video.
Love it Daniel! I'm glad you shared your fail along with your success. I suspect you'll have the veneering sorted out soon enough!
Minor fails I may hide, if there's not much but sloppiness being learned from them. This kind of major stuff I'll always be transparent about! It's funny though how much people seem to like seeing my failures 😄
Nice build! This is awesome
Very nice. For tricky situations like putting the nuts on I have one of those telescopic pen things with a magnet on the end. Bluetack might be better in that it won'e spin as soon as the thread engages and tightens. It is invaluable for picking up screws you drop and even getting them out of the boxes they come in or those storage suitcases. Where it really shines is putting panel pins in. You can hold the pin in place with the magnet end and hammer away without smashing your fingers or fussing with long nosed pliers or looking around in the bottom drawer for a comb.
Great video. Amazing Build!
I like your simple and clean design. I have a small amp that has Bluetooth and a few speakers that it can power. They are a bit larger than yours but I’m using your speaker as inspiration for a simple design.
Cheers! Make sure to also check out Kirby, who I mention in the video, for more clean design inspiration. Would love to see what you come up with :)
Nicely done! 👍👊
Nice and instructive video, thanks for sharing 🙂
first time watching this channel, love the intro
This is a great looking speaker!
Great video, nice build and a fun project indeed... I also love that you don't anoy people with "dont forget to subscribe"
Keep up the good work!
If you scroll down into the music setting in settings on iPhone you can scroll down to eq and mess with those to get more bass if you want. Great video
You can get LED's with a little metal collar around them. It will mask the chipped paint job. Well, for what it is you made a good job there.
It's a perfect speaker for the kitchen, bathroom or elsewhere were some background music is needed without having to move the HiFi.
"How to fail" sums up my life pretty well~
this vid is very helpful, i learned a lot by watching it, thanx
Great work! and failure leads to success !
Great build and great video
Thank you!
If you use hide glue for the veneer it can be moved or removed with heat. It often saved me being able to get out an air pocket or remove a part.
Hide glue? 🤔
Nice video and message!
I don’t think there is any problem with the enclosure. Rather, if you put a little more money in the components, i think it would sound very well! Of course, i have’nt forgotten about the budget goal. Keep up the great work!
excellent video!!! congratulations
That is a really cool project though! Fails are part of the process.
Great video as always. Love your channel.
Cheers, I appreciate it!
Your wiring was pretty good, better than I would of done. Mistakes are part of making something, its not the mistake thats important, its how you fix it
Okay, I love your channel intro. Haha
Very good!The wood looks more like Mahogany than Walnut. Nice shot of the Schwebebahn in the snow at 3:30.
Mark Fogleman that’s what I though. Mahogany is a bit oily so that could have contributed to the varnish problems.
It was bought from the supplier as walnut though, and at least the mahogany I've worked with is lighter than this.
The snow shot is stock video I downloaded, wish I could take credit 😄
Switch & Lever it’s a shame you decided to practice scoring 3 pointers with it, I’d have been interested to see if you’d given it a light sanding to key the surface and a couple of additional coats of varnish it would have been ok.
I sanded one part lightly with 600 paper actually, but the results were so disappointing considering that the varnish had so deep peaks and valleys I didn't really continue. I simply wasn't in good enough of a mood to try to rescue it. It was supposed to be a fun quick project and instead just turned into a headache. It literally took me more than half a year until I started work on the white speaker 🙂
Nice video, informative and entertaining. I recognized the Loschwitzer Brücke in Dresden at 3:30.
nice work man...the grill part was really smart that how u made the extra part
Great job!
Cool project 😊
One of the best video ever!
Little bit of a tip, use Zinnser B.I.N. with a roller or a similar type product to coat the MDF before painting it. That lets you get an even, incredibly glossy finish without the usual garbly grain-raising that MDF usually experiences when encountering any kind of moisture and paint
Very cool video.
The solder sucker! One of my favourite tools.
That and solder wick.
Indeed! I really wish I had a hot air station though, would make all this desoldering so much easier!
Harmon Kardon...not bad for discarded speakers. That was a great bit with how you shaped the mesh. Good video!
I think they're actually Dell desktop speakers, but manufactured by Harman Kardon. Cheers! Glad you liked it.
Loved the video
Where can I find this switching audio jack online? I'm having a hard time finding one..
Nice man. I'm gonna reuse some speakers from a pc sound system and I will make a portable one, I hope it will work.
youre a legend mate id be on yor team any day . and as for audiophiles ... hmmmm
11:34 most studio monitors or other nice indoor speakers often don’t have grills, for example, one of the best studio monitors out there is the Yamaha hs8, which does not have a grill
The "best" Studio monitor, yes
I really like the tip on your hot glue gun. What brand?
No clue, got it out of a drawer at work. It comes with replaceable tips though, so you could look into ones which have that.
Nice job you have some skills, a couple thoughts, first I am sure you know it but I didn't recall you mentioning it in the video but the box volume is 100% determined by your driver parameters, it is very important for bass response. Second, for the blotching, I am not sure if you used water based or oil base but I usually use oil, first apply what is known as a spit coat, 5 parts denatured alcohol to one part shellac. It seals the wood and allows for a much more even finish.
Fun build with recycled parts and an epic hammer and anvil episode. Better Videography all the time...Loved the interludes and anti-expletives! ;-P The BT was interesting but MP3's are bad enough already (take a look on an O'scope). I'm still an *_Old_* analog Tube guy at heart. Thanks Daniel for all the great projects and time you put into them for us.
I'm just happy if it plays music, that's all. If I need high quality I'll don my headphones. I don't actually care all that much for high quality audio from speakers. Glad you liked the video!
In the words of the pessimist, "If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again." :-)
I consider myself neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a realist. I recognize that failure is inevitable in some situations, sometimes purely by chance, the important thing is what you learn from it :)
tom7601 I’m seriously going to steal this saying! :)
tom7601 If at first you don’t succeed, lower your expectations.
Switch & Lever
If I remember right, Adam Savage (Myth Busters) had a Tee Shirt that said "Failure Is Always An Option."
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
You should make a 'behind the scenes' or a 'making of' type video. Anyway, great video as always 😊👍
Haha, nah, it's enough work to shoot the project in itself. Maybe if I can find someone to shoot me as I work, that could work out. 🙂
If your happy with the looks and the sound then it's a success!
Best tool ever for starting nuts, a plastic nut spinner - you press the nut into the round end which grips the corners, then you spin the nut down and pull the tool off. I got a couple as a cover gift on an electronics magazine ages ago
Sounds interesting, but I don't have one, and I'd wager most people don't either. May have to look into getting one, but knowing myself it would just end up kicking around in the bottom of a toolbox not being found when needed, and I'd just resort to hacking together something like I did here :)
I found out the EQing the signal input helps a lot for the "quality" of the music.
Great project, I thought at first by the title you were building a speaker, you know with magnets and diaphragms. I have a bunch of old equipment I need to re-purpose, perhaps I'll build something similar.
Yeah, that's the issue with the word I guess. A lot of people call the speaker drivers/element just speaker as well. Personally I don't consider something a speaker unless it's actually built into something 🙂
Wow! I'm pretty young still but honestly I love making stuff myself so I wouldn't be surprised if I made this for my room.
Rikdigt cool video dock. (I hope you are swedish else I just read you're boxes wrong haha)
That was great!
The speaker turned out well. You should shorten some of the wires inside the cabinet to make the interior wiring a little neater. I also liked the bit of Engrish we got to read. I love the reference to "USB sucket" and "Blueto oth player".
"Pause for Engrish", I LOLed!
i done some thing similar. From blown up pc speakers i salvage amplifier and use center speaker from 5.1 for housing and 3 speakers. All was instaled thrue speakes hole. Power up from wall 1m conecting cable with 3,5 jack. Its more loud that normal radio and with some treble corectiom not bad sound.
Your great! Subbed!
Thank you
You know, that was cool. The body of speaker is more than a box to hold everything. Like a Stratovarius, the shape, and material its made of determin the sound quality. What woud a Statovarious sound like if it was made of MDF?
I did something a little similar to this once... I took a decent pair of speakers and shoehorned a 2x50w class D amp into them... not bad but I wouldn't mind actually building a portable class D amp at some point that has decent sound and is loud enough for most situations...
Wondeful fail and end product!
How can I find one of these 'switching' audio jacks?
FYI the best glue for veneer is contact cement.
Also use a file at about 45° angle to the corner/edge you are cleaning up. So 2 boards together if corner of joint is pointing straight up your file will be completely flat horizontally. When you have filed about 1/2 way through take the round smooth part of a screw driver or just a wooden dowel to burnish the veneer over. It will roll the thin veneer over the corners seams will become invisible
Great title, if I had made a video for all my fails, boy that would fill their hard disks.
Can you send me the link of the switching audio jack
pretty cool! you could have substituted the usb connectors with wires, fixed the board flat on the bottom (although im pretty sure you had a reason for that one) and put some audio insulation inside (it improves the low frequencies). Too bad about the veneers though, it would look pretty cool. congrats!
Yeah, I could definitely have done that. I actually wanted the USB jack in there for future compatibility, in case I wanted to put a better Bluetooth receiver in there. In all honesty the one I put there was not particularly good, just a super cheap eBay one.
I would love to see a bigger speaker, tuned to frequency's with a flat bass port a the buttom an seperated high freq and bass drivers. And maybe that flat bass port with RGB LED light?
Fun 2 hear and C! THX
That's a really-really weird place to find 5V and tap it from - the audio coupling cap in the input! - I'm really wonderng how on earth that worked, seen from an electronics perspective - i would expect the amplifier to be really unhappy about that and som serious bluetooth-processor noise on that particular channel.
Yeah, I figured that would be a risk, but in this case it worked out. It does get some awful mobile phone distortions with the phone closeby though. Had to shoot the 3.5mm scene with the phone on airplane mode for it to work properly, so it needs a longer cable to get the phone away from the speaker.
In the end a DC-DC converter from the 12V jack would probably be a better choice.
You could also get a bluetooth thingie designed for use in a car that would already expect 12v or even take it apart and switch out the regulator as the device is probably using 3.3v internally anyway.
Yep, but would've meant more money again. If you're going to not do an absolute hack job it's probably better to just get a proper bluetooth amplifier board to begin with.
you sure the problem isn't with that audio wire that you used for the 3.5 jack? it doesn't look to be the shielded kind but a cheap 3 wire put togheter, so it might be taking in the radio signal
but...but...I need to know what happened to with the veneer? Did the glue soak through to the surface in places thus affecting the finish? Was there some type of oil on the veneer you used that need to be acetoned before applying the poly? Your finish product looked great and the Ikea grill was a huge success.
I honestly don't know. I tried sanding it down lightly, but realized that if I could have sanded through the varnish without going through the thin veneer anywhere it would've been a miracle, a very time consuming miracle. I think the problem was more in the finish than the veneer, maybe the varnish was old, or I didn't mix it up enough after it sitting on the shelf for a while, I dunno. Usually I thin my PU varnish with mineral spirits before applying, but for some reason I didn't this time, so maybe that could've helped. Oh well, I ended up playing basketball with it and a garbage bin, good news though, only took three tries from across the room to get it in! 😄
30% from the 3pt line is still pretty good! My guess would be the thinning and more coats...nice to know you are human though.
The glue soaked through the veneer, and the poly would not take to the glue, you could try sanding off the poly, and seal with shellac, and then topcoat with poly, or more coats of shellac. Or the poly was old and had started to polymerize in the can, which will also cause the issue.
I think more likely the latter, as I've use oile based poly over glue (well, glue/sawdust home made wood putty at least) with no issues in the past. The can may have been old though, and coupled that with not thinning it as I usually do could've been a recipe for failure. Oh well :)
I'm guessing old poly since oil based finishes should be fine over most glues. Although almost nothing works over silicone. I agree that you should be able to salvage it, but let it cure for a couple of weeks or more, sand smooth, and then use new poly.
Отличная работа. Очень понравилось. Красиво и профессионально.
Inte (alls) det bästa ljudet, och inte den snyggaste ytfinnishen, men kul var det, det tror jag säkert! Har byggt flera liknande högtalare bara för skojs skull som sedan kasserade eller gavs bort efter något år när jag tröttnat på dom.
Poängen var som sagt inte bästa ljudet heller. Vet inte vad du har för problem med ytfinishen dock :)
What program did you use for the 3D Modeling?