help for a "newbie",anyone?

if you are in bangalore...check with Siva as his company is into supporting the DIY community as far as speakers go and will have the parts you need. Ronnie has just completed his DIY speakers. benks is about to do the same...Junia could help out as well. There is viren(in Delhi) who could be of help to you...all on this forum.

talk to all of them.....

Manek.

dear shakir,

building a sub is no easy job, but not impossible either too...sourcing drivers from SP road will not help you in any way, if you are serious then it will involve a lot of time and money. BTW are you planning for a active sub or a pssive sub...my humble advice would be to avoid spending money on your power house as any kind of passive sub will not add punch..and active will over power your power house.

Here is a good place to hang out for diy subwoofers.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=63

Shakir,

The easiest way for you...given the budget constraint, look at Dainty drivers (they are available in SP road)...they have 8" drivers.

But is the 8" driver really the solution ? I would say you will get better result if replace your philips powerhouse speaker with a better speaker...say a simple MTM speaker with Dainty 6.5" drivers can be made for as low as Rs.5000/-. If you are insistent on using 8" woofer...make the speaker a three way..

This will not just improve the bass, but the overall sound of your setup.

Cheers
Siva.

hmmm..well, i'm pretty satisfied with the hi and midrange frequencies of my philips.its just the bass that i feel is lacking.i was thinking of a sealed single driver unit with a passive radiator.has anyone tried that here?it is supposed to give tighter bass than a ported (bass reflex) system.
another question..what happens if i replace the passive radiator with another speaker,but wire it to opposite polarity?(lets say that this woofer i'm making is connected in the tri mode system[a single woofer is connected to +ve terminal of one channel and the -ve terminal of the other channel thereby giving mono bass o/p] )that way, the 2 speakers are always out of phase with each other.it is essentially doing what the passive radiator does, but here,the so called "passive" radiator is actually "active".any opnions on that?

Siva has a point and is worth considering, the powerhouse speakers are among the worst I have seen, especially the lower end (515?) powerhouse models - the tweeter is just a placebo, being lifted from a cheap peizo buzzer design - so the "midrange" ends up having to serve out the entire range and fails miserably at it. The bass port is tuned to too high a frequency to artificially boost mid-bass. You can try sealing off this port to get a tighter and more natural bass. However the cabinet and baffle has very poor construction and lends horrible coloration to the sound.

I remember helping a friend make diy speakers with Bolton drivers for his powerhouse. This was at least 8 years back. The speakers made a huge difference. The amp section of the system is no great shakes either. He finally sold it off and bought some sonodyne amp and a sony cassette deck to go with the speakers.
Is this a some new model from Philips? I thought they had discontinued them long back. The older models I remember were pathetic to say the least.

thanks for all the suggestions guys!i really appreciate the help.it might do some good to let you know that my budget is something like the end threads of a shoestring!
i really dont think i have the means to junk my philips speakers completely.i still feel that by adding a sub( i plan to spend 1K max on making it...i have all the wood and the tools,so cabinet construction will be "in house")i'll be able to breathe some life into my old speakers,and probably extend their life for a couple of years.besides, i dont have much time.college starts in september!!
say,does anyone know how much the Dainty drivers will cost.
also,could anyone tell me what exactly the advantages of DVC drivers over single coil ones are?ok,u can wire them in many more ways than a single coil one.then what?how does that help?
and what about crossovers?will i get a good one in SP road(passive) or will i be better off making it on my own;inductors and all?
please clarify on the passive radiators.will i get them anywhere near here?

shakir....1K for a sub is extremely small....how will you drive the sub ? if its a passive one I dont think your powerhouse amp can do the job......I would suggest put that 1K into the bank and save some more for better speakers. Build on it slowly....

well Manek, 1K is small for a good Sub, but my imagination is all fired up by the challenge of making a decent active sub for 1K! I think something to complement the likes of powerhouse should be doable in 1K... woofers from SP road should be available for less than that. An amp kit similar to the one used in powerhouse should be available for 100-200 bucks.. infact the power amp IC used in powerhouse is 25 bucks The challenge might be the DC power supply - that would run up a significant portion of the bill.
Shakir's attitude needs to be appreciated... afterall it balances out the other school of thought that simply cannot live without their VDHs and Siltechs

ravi,

if it can be done...then its worth a shot :-) I never thought it could be done !
manek.

It can be done but with a smaller woofer.
the last i remember the price of a pretty decent looking dainty driver cost around 500-750 bucks(8 inch to a 10 inch).

The amplifier module can be had for 140 bucks.
don't know abt the output or whether they can drive big woofers to low freqs.

Sachi

seriously ! this is a learning experience for me !
wonder what kind of amp module we are talking about ? benks ravi, can you tell me ?

Manek.

I agree with Manek. I guess that is too less a budget for a sub…….Even DIY. For this budget you can get an OK driver. What about electronics and the rest of the story? You will get a resonating boom at best with such a compromised set up. Guys lets be realistic here…..why push somebody into a hole? I guess most of us out here have gone through all this.

am not saying that it would sound phenomenal..
what am saying is that what you find in mass market scomponents like in sony, panasonic,phillips are pretty easy to replicate..
however, the power supply is the challenge..especially when u want to keep costs down.
u get okay drivers yes, but when u are looking in the sub 1k region you can't expect more than that.
but, the overall budget would be a lot more, the labour costs, peripherals like adhesive, screws, wood and damping material.
i saw amplifier modules that you get on SP road(ask around in the shops near the entrance of SP road), but have no idea how good they are cause i have not used it..this was more than 3 years ago.

You can make one with a driver of say 5.25 or 6.5 inch driver.
bigger than this and the amp will not be able to drive it in this budget region.
Cheers,
Sachi

square_wave, get with it... he has stated his budget and requirements clearly.. if he is partnering it wiht a powerhouse, this is sufficient. Its not worth spending on a 10k sub for a powerhouse that was 10k to start with.

Manek, the amp is an IC with integrated pre-amp and power-amp sections. The IC by itself is decent and puts out 30W in bridge configuration with 1% distortion, so we can expect a little lesser power at 0.01% distortion. Nothing to write home about, but similar performance as mass market systems.

thank ravi...but you think this will better his setup or just add more boom ?

manek.

Manek schrieb:

thank ravi...but you think this will better his setup or just add more boom ? manek.

Only after building it can you find this out.

Manek, I understand your point. But am not sure if low price subs can always be taken to be boomy and whether expensive subs are always required to control boom. If we just stroll down SP road or ritchie street we would hear beautifully deep and tight bass coming from cheap local built speakers. I guess a lot depends on the driver characteristic (not necessarily correlating with price), and enclosure acoustics - a good sub enclosure can bring out the best from a cheap woofer or vice versa. Ofcourse more expensive subs would have better distortion and power handling, resulting in more vivid bass, but I feel boom can be controlled if we are careful in choosing the driver and the enclosure even within budget.

wow! i never thought that i'd generate such a lot of interest with my insignificant lil project compared to what u guys are toying with (such expensive equipment!)
let me tell u another thing.the philips is model no aw567 and it cost us 6.5K some 10 years ago.back then,when compared to our broken old bpl it was like heaven.i remember, i use to spend a lot of time just looking at it because it looked so amazing....augh..i think i'm straying a lil off topic here.

as i was saying..i just want to add another single driver sub to my setup..where did new amps come in from?its going to run off the powerhouse.and coming to a crossover..why does it have to be expensive at all?its just caps and inductors(isnt it?...the simplest ones of course,which i'm pretty sure what my philips uses).i have noticed one peculiar thing about my amp.i cannot push the volume beyond a little less than half way to the max without it feeling like the speakers are maxing out and going to ,maybe explode or something!that is what got me thinking about an extra sub actually.if i increase the load on the amp it should be able to take it pretty well.i'll just have to push the volume higher than i used to to get the same "loudness" and since i can still push it more than half way,i should be OK.
any opnions on that?