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Build Your Own Subwoofer
Gerard J. Pinzone writes "Here's a page that details the construction of a homebrew subwoofer." Another in a long line of "You can, but should you?" projects.
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I just want to see how he hacked a router to do that.
Kidding...I'm not that much of a geek.
I would have loved to see him try to build one out of parts of a microwave, stove, dishwasher, and drying machine while using a fridge to house it.
See what happens when you have old episodes of MacGyver on tape?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
This is some guys expierence making an ENCLOSURE. I got excited, wrapping a cone w/ wire, finding a good permenant magnet. NOPE - This is something that MANY MANY people have done. It is making a subwoofer that would be the challenge. Then again, making a proper enclosure isn't easy...
Next time get the title of the article right!
The DIY section on avsforum also has some info.
DIY subwoofers is another place to start.
In fact a google search yields about 16,000 results with the words "DIY" and "subwoofer".
Which brings me to...
Is this really news?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Sure, it's great that the guy documented his project so others could replicate it, but it might be more useful if he mentioned how he calculated the optimal port length. Specs on resonance frequency, Vas, power handling, and other things might be nice as well. Or why he chose a ported sub rather than an isobaric or sealed design or something else. Not that there's a correct choice, but knowing a little bit about how and why he made his decisions might help others down the line.
This sig intentionally left justified.
People have been doing this for a long time (Building ENCLOSURES, not subwoofers). All those little bassheads that you see going down the street with civics shaking the windows out of your house do it themselves. It's simple and easy, and most companies that sell subwoofers provide very detailed and specific guides (more than that page) about port length for ported boxes, volume calculations, building materials, construction methods, and countless other things. And boy, MDF is a bitch to work with.. you need a carbide blade for the saws, and screws strip SO easily. Not to mention MDF dust is very carcinogenic (search around google) and smells bad. Expect this thing to stink up wherever you put it for a while. Most of the guides are in PDF format (For car audio) from the major sub manufacturers' sites: www.kicker.com www.rockfordfosgate.com etc Forque (Chester Bochan)
Building a sub is a great project. As a single driver speaker, it requires no crossover, and therefore is relatively easy to design/build. Plus, with some careful planning, you can get amazing results.
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I've built a couple Subs based around the Shiva Mk II driver this guy used, along with a 250W plate amplifier from partsexpress, and it is amazing. Easily produces useable bass down to 20 hz in a sealed enclosure (F3 of something like 17.3 hz in a 1.7 cu ft. box, if I remember correctly...). An adire sub kit easily rivals subs in the $1000-$1200 range.
Listening to one of these explains why audiophiles don't like those Sat/sub computer multimedia sets, and tend to call them a "bunch of crap". None of them produce any useable bass below 50-60 hz, and a lot of HT systems are designed such that the sub only STARTS playing from those frequencies down.
Having said that, I don't see why this is front page news on
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
This isn't even a good explanation for how to create a subwoofer enclosure. It is completely missing any information on the critical variables that describe the attributes of the low frequency driver as well as the procedure for designing the enclosure and crossover network to work with the driver to produce an optimized system. You can't just throw any old speaker into a given enclosure and expect a decent result. If you don't design the enclosure around the Thiele-Small parameters for the driver you put in it you are basically throwing the driver into a pretty box and ignoring the most important factors...how the completed system will perform.
And I wouldn't be a good slashdotter if I didn't mention are several computer programs that help with the design of speaker systems. They are really helpful for designing a subwoofer. I used such a program to design the subwoofer in my car.
Just take a gander at the king of all subwoofers they made out of an old hard drive motor at MIT!
Software piracy is victimless theft.
... where are the Lego guys?
I own the 4th and 5th editions of this book, and it has everything you would ever want on enclosure design. You can pick it up from Crutchfield, or I'm sure Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. should carry it.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
One 26 inch home-brew subwoofer, coming right up!. They built it with the driver from an ancient hard drive. For those not up on Norse mythology, moljnir (several spellings seen) was the unstoppable hammer of the gods, carried by Thor himself. I'd say a building-shaking sub comes pretty close to that description. ;-)
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I'm no acoustic engineer, but it seems you'd have to do some calculations to make sure the resonant cavity matches up to the speaker. I don't see any evidence that he's done any calculations whatsoever. How would you go about determining the optimal size and shape of the cabinet? Or does it not matter on such low freqs?
This has to be the worst Slashdot how-to ever. There is absolutely nothing geeky about doing it blind like this, especially considering how much information is available about doing it the right way. So kids, don't do this at home; do better!
He didn't even build a good case, as far as can be told by that article. Maybe a good looking case, but if he didn't design the cabinet using simulation software, it's very unlikely that it's a good sounding case.
In case you're thinking of a similar project, a good page with all kinds of information and links for designing and building your own subwoofers that actually sound good is here.
Here is a page of freeware loudspeaker design software and links to more. And another such page of speaker design software is here.
Ooooh, for a moment when they said "Build your own subwoofer," I thought they meant out of spare parts at home.
Actually, he meant, out of parts taken from another subwoofer...
See what happens when you have old episodes of MacGyver on tape?
MacGyver could break out of a turkish prison with a straw and a toothpick...
about 300 people out of my 1400 member highschool could have gotten alot out of this article..or rather the comments. they all seem to be of the mind that you can throw a pair of 15" subs in a plywood box and throw it in the back of your car, and then they wonder why it sounds like an amplified fart when the bass hits.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
In the 20 or so years that i've been listening to them, subs which use relatively small, high-excursion drivers in a sealed enclosure have been the best, especially for percussion. They need more power, but it's worth it.
Ported subs just don't seem to have the *punch*, and it's tiring to listen to music which has a lot of info near the resonant freq of the port.
I read at +3, so I might not have seen a link to this project. Have no idea if it is any good, but it's certainly cheaper than many other options.
(For those not wishing to slashdot OSDN, it's for gspeaker, a gpl software for determining speaker enclosure sizes)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You're much better off scrapping the whole cone idea and go for a vane/cylinder design. They're much easier to build and often give much better results in a homebrew situation. Try here for some explaination: http://www.mindspring.com/~sdinc/pages/td_new_fam. html
matguy(.com)