How to Build Custom Speakers

Step 4 Select your kit or components

Using the resources listed in the previous step you can begin the process of selecting your drivers or kit for your speaker building project. Speaker builders constantly debate over the best drivers, and can rarely agree on just one winner. That being said, there are some brand favorites in the field that have proven themselves over time, again and again, as DIY speaker builders have used them in their designs around the world and been happy with their performance. The LDSG is an excellent resource to figure out how the drivers you're considering stack up to the competition.

Some factors to consider when selecting drivers are:

• price
• reviews
• history
• the kit designer
• design specs and requirements
• sensitivity db

The best resources for investigating the factors listed above can be found right on the retailers website, in the manufacturers technical documentation, and on the LDSG.

Take your time in learning about what technologies and speaker components you'd like to use. When making your selection about tweeters alone you can choose from, horn tweeters, soft dome tweeters, inverted metal dome tweeters, coaxial drivers, ribbon tweeters, bullet tweeters, flared tweeters, and piezo tweeters.

Check out Madisound's drivers page to get an idea of what the different technologies look like.

Some of the most well-known producers of speaker drivers are:

• Focal
• Seas
• Morel
• Usher
• Accuton
• Vifa
• NHT

I primarily build with Focal brand drivers. I do so for no other good reason other then for the story I told in Step 2. I've always been very happy and impressed particularly with Focal's Audiom TD5 tweeter, the TC 120 TD5 tweeter, and "W" cone line of woofers.

The speakers that are being given away feature the following drivers from Zalytron and plate amp from Parts Express:

2.5 way MTM Towers:
(2) JM Labs 6VE3251B woofers
(1) Focal TC 90 TD5B tweeter

2 way TM Bookshelf Speakers:
(1) JM Labs 6VE3251B woofer
(1) Focal TC 90 TD5B tweeter

12" Sealed Subwoofer:
Zalytron 1201PL
Dayton SA100 100W Subwoofer Amplifier

Comments

[gazoutg]

After a power problem in the electric line some of our appliance have blown off. One was a dvd/Ipod surround system. we tough about buying an audio/video selector (like a yamaha or Harman Kardon) but the guy at the shop said those would blow off our current speakers (the one that came with the surround system). My guess is he was trying to trick us into buying a new set instead. So is there something I should know about the drivers wattage and impedance before I link em together. If you build one with multiple drivers like in the last photo, what should you know first? do you link them in parallel or in serie? Thanks

[Dude567]

That guy was telling you a crap load of lies. Does plugging a 40 watt light bulb into a lamp that had a 60 watt light bulb in it cause the 40 watt light bulb to be damaged? No, it doesn't. The same is true of speakers. You won't "Blow them," but plugging a speaker that draws 20 watts into a ten watt amp will cause distortion, and the amp might not be able to power them efficiently

[bmcnabb]

Distortion is what causes speakers to blow. You are actually more likely to blow a speaker by sending too little power to it than you are with more power (and you can always turn an amplifier down). As for linking speakers together; most home theater amplifiers are designed to run at 8 ohms. If you run two 8 ohm speakers in series you will end up with a 16 ohm load. That's fine but the speakers will require twice as much power to achieve the same volume as one of the 8 ohm speakers by itself. If you run two 8 ohm speakers in parallel you will end up with a 4 ohm load. Running a 4 ohm load with an amp that is designed for 8 ohms per channel can fry your amp/tuner. Impedance DOES matter. ;)

[gazoutg]

ok so he was really lying us since I wanted to do reverse:
plug low watt speaker on a bigger amp....

[neon41]

yeah pretty much, same principal with car audio, always run an amp that is more powerful than the max rms of the speakers. what happens with a lower power amp is called "clipping" which causes flat spots at the peaks of the signal, which causes a speaker to hyper extend, which will kill them very quickly

[endesereth]

Hi i am fairly new at speaker building, the first thing i am to create is a custom subwoofer. I have a receiver running at 8 ohms, but the amp and the sub that i am going to create has an impedance of 4 ohms. Do i need to worry about this. or do I have to get a new receiver running at 4 ohms? (which i am gonna get a new one, i am upgrading to a 7.1) Thanks for your help.

[Tv1996]

what you could do is wire 2 speakers into each terminal, then the impedance would be cut in half. I am 12, so I am not one hundred percent on this.

[ramon_omar]

Wiring them in series will sum their impedance but wiring them in parallel will not change the impedance in any noticeable manner.

[mr.colm]

hey I have a budget of 133 to put a speaker toghether it would need to be 100w and have 4 12" speakers in it What speakers would you recomend

[CathoHolic]

I wonder. What type of speakers are you planning to use? Full, mid, tweet, woofer, subwoof, midbass? then it'll be easier to narrow down at least a 6th of the selection