DIY Speakers

A little while ago I got bored with sitting watching television catching flies in my mouth, so I decided to do something different. Mt Everest had already been climbed, so I figured I might as well make my own speakers. After all, the raw material cost of your average high end speaker is about 1/6 the retail cost so there was money to be saved.

A slight problem is that I have the woodworking skills of a dolphin, but then I came across the website of Seigfried Linkwitz, may the sun shine always upon his pate. SL, if I may call him that, was the designer of the Audio Artistry Beethoven, a speaker which won Stereofool's Speaker of the Year a few years back, he also designed the Linkwitz/Riley crossover. I heard a pair once and loved them. SL was offering plans to build a similar speaker to the Beethoven, but taking advantage of improvements in drivers, and using fully active crossovers. And not costing $27,000 greenbacks. Check out his site at www.linkwitzlab.com, it is a goldmine of valuable information and contains all the dipole theory I'm too dumb to repeat here.

Best of all, the actual woodworking side of it seemed pretty basic. The Beethoven is a four way open baffle speaker with dipole operation up to the tweeter crossover, and a separate sub tower. When I heard them, they seemed to combine the openness of electrostatics with the dynamics of normal speakers. And it seemed to me the best box was no box.

The speaker on SLs site is called the Phoenix, it comprises a main panel and a separate sub. He recently added plans for a smaller speaker called the Orion, which had the same theory behind it, but with better drivers and all in one piece. I also pinched ideas from the Arvo Part dipole project at www.htguide.com.

Whilst my intention was to build a Beethoven clone (and I still may) I figured I'd start with a cross between the Phoenix and the Orion. I call it Bob so that if I get drunk and start writing backwards I can still spell it properly.

So I read, pored over stuff all over the Internet, scratched my head, read some more, plotted, planned and pored some more until I decided I was ready to build my first DIY speaker.

I'd love to say that it was hugely difficult, and fraught with seemingly unsurmountable problems which I only overcam by dint of rat cunning and talent, but it wasn't. It has all been very easy.

And so I present... Bob.