Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Speaker Box Design Which speaker enclosure type to use? Loudspeaker & Acoustic Engineering Design

speaker enclosure design

To give you an idea of the time and effort that can go into building a 'nice' pair of speakers, see New Speaker Box Project - Part 1. Not that they are 'new' any more - they were built in 2001, and upgraded to ribbon tweeters about 5 years later. They are in daily use to this day, and have failed to disappoint in any way. Not at all, but they do sound very good with all types of music (along with video sound tracks, etc.).

speaker enclosure design

Building a DIY Speaker: Cabinet Design

The volume of the rear cavity is a compromise between speaker efficiency and size, with smaller sizes generally being more desirable in applications using mini or micro speakers. Unfortunately, a small rear cavity volume will create large changes in the air pressure in the rear enclosure due to the movement of the speaker diaphragm. These changes in the air pressure will inhibit the movement of the speaker diaphragm and thus limit the volume of sound produced from the front of the speaker. A balance between compact size and minimum pressure changes is desired when designing the rear enclosure volume. Constructing a rear cavity depth approximately equal to the speaker diameter is a good starting point for mini and micro speaker applications. At the same time, increasing the projected area of the rear cavity will allow for a reduction of the cavity’s depth, while maintaining the volume of the cavity.

Speaker Box Lite:

Attaching drivers and connection panels is irksome, because the screw holes will become useless after only a few insertion/ removal attempts. The use of Tee nuts or similar is essential, and even they should be glued in place or they may fall out during assembly (or disassembly should changes be needed). In some cases, it may be possible to use a waveguide to load the tweeter and allow operation to a lower frequency, but these can be difficult to design and build for the hobbyist constructor.

This "lofipi" 3D-Printed Speaker Streams Lo-Fi Beats via a Raspberry Pi — or Generates Them Itself - Hackster.io

This "lofipi" 3D-Printed Speaker Streams Lo-Fi Beats via a Raspberry Pi — or Generates Them Itself.

Posted: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:36:02 GMT [source]

Make your own Speaker Box Design. It's very easy!

Mostly, the 'disturbances' caused by non-aligned acoustic centres will be less than those from the driver, so it may be a moot point. It's worth noting that locating the acoustic centre is not a simple process. I set up an experiment in my workshop, and it's fair to say that the results were inconclusive at best.

The time delays involved are usually short (less than 200µs is likely to be typical). In some cases, a minor tweak to a passive crossover (shifting its nominal frequency a little for example) can achieve good results. While it's certainly possible to calculate the shift needed, it's usually simpler to do it experimentally (some might call this 'voicing' the system - a fancy name for a bit of trial and error). The sealed enclosure is very common, and can work very well if the internal volume is calculated to match the speaker's characteristics. The Thiele-Small parameters of the driver will show that optimum performance requires an enclosure of just the right size. If it's too small there will be a pronounced bass peak, followed by a sharp rolloff at 12dB/ octave.

inch Subwoofer Box Ported Slot on the Front Panel

If the baffle is sloped backwards to achieve time-alignment, you will be listening to the drivers off-axis, so their off-axis response has to be good enough to allow this without causing response errors. It's no accident that some midrange drivers (as well as some tweeters) have flat sides or a curved profile on the tweeter surround so the two can be located as close to each other as possible. This isn't done for fun - the two sound sources need to be as close as possible to ensure minimal destructive interference (combing effects). Deep bass reproduction ideally needs a fairly large diameter driver, or high (sometimes unrealistic) linear excursion. When a single driver has to cover from bass all the way up to the tweeter's crossover frequency, there are inevitable compromises.

Impedance

However, transmission line enclosures are difficult to design and tune properly. In addition, they can become large and require a high level of acoustic knowledge to get the desired results. The vent allows some of the sound energy that would normally be absorbed by the air within the box to escape. This energy is then redirected back into the room and adds acoustic output to bass frequencies, increasing low-end response.

Subwoofer Box Avatar Audio AVATAR SVL-1547 D2

The 'acoustic labyrinth' type of speaker is a (fairly serious) extension of this principle, with the length of the 'tunnel' often used to create a transmission line to reinforce bass frequencies. These cabinets used to be very popular amongst DIY constructors, but seem to have fallen from favour over the last decade or so. Part of the reason is that they are difficult and expensive to build, and the results may be rather disappointing after you've gone to all that trouble. Concrete has been used, sometimes with tiny pellets of expanded polystyrene foam to reduce the mass (so the box can actually be moved), sometimes only the baffle may be concrete. Different types of plywood are used (and no, birch ply (for example) should not sound different from some other tree species). If one box sounds different from another (identical other than material), then the material is not damped properly.

Woofers

Tiny speakers break a barrier for sound - Phys.org

Tiny speakers break a barrier for sound.

Posted: Tue, 28 Nov 2017 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Unfortunately, the tweeter used in this design did not measure close tothe data sheet at all and required pushing the crossover frequency up. Ultimately the dip at 4kHz is fixable but thecost required outweighs the benefit. For the purposes of thisarticle, I’m going to walk you through one of my Do-It-Yourself speaker designsto give you an idea of what is involved and what I have learned so far. Please note that the project covered heredoes not represent a great value but is meant to show the process of designinga loudspeaker for yourself.

When complex filters (often with equalisation) are performed, the system has to use at least 24 bits or low-level detail may be lost as it passes through the processing chain. This article also (deliberately) avoids making any recommendations for drivers. The driver that one person loves may well be hated by others (often for obscure and illogical reasons for both 'love' and 'hate'). There's also the issue of availability - there's no point recommending a particular driver that's only available in one country, because no-one else will be able to get it easily (if at all).

For the purposes of this designanalysis, a 2nd order crossover was designed which approximatelymatches a Butterworth filter target. Additional response shaping elements were added where needed to meet thedesign requirements. This circuit wasdetermined based on using a 2nd order low-pass for the woofer,band-pass for the midrange and high-pass for the tweeter. Due to the response anomalies and differencesin sensitivity, additional elements were added. Clearly, vented enclosuresallow significantly more power handling above 20Hz but there is no free lunchhere. Group delay is severely affectedby the vented alignment and this means that vented enclosures are sometimesconsidered to have a less desirable transient response.

The secondary advantage of using a waveguide is that it moves the tweeter back from the baffle, and can help to 'time align' the woofer and tweeter. Waveguides are discussed in the contributed article Practical DIY Waveguides (a three part article). Designing a waveguide that does the things you want (and none of the things you don't want is not a trivial undertaking.

When building your own systems, these are generally secondary, and the extra cost of adding an extra brace or more damping material is small compared to the overall cost of the project. I love the fact that this tool invites you to input parameters such as the speaker’s dimensions, internal volume, and port details (including port dimensions and port length). One of the best things I really loved is that I can use it on different platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux; it brings simplicity and efficiency to both experienced and beginner loudspeaker designers. One of its standout features that I really loved is the 3D box drawing tool, which enhances the visual representation and aids in accurate construction, saving you a lot of time. Furthermore, I loved its crossover design functionality, making it a versatile tool for sound engineers and enthusiasts alike.

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