DIY Budget MTM speakers for Home Theater

hydrovac

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My HT room has gone mostly unchanged for the last year or so. Several equipment upgrades, but the room was mostly left alone.

Having completed the amps build,
the other thing I am contemplating about is to get a bigger, more dynamic sound. Since I built my theater in, I've been using the same DALI speakers.
They are decent speakers, 5.25"/6.5 mid/bass drivers and soft domes. Decent speakers for nice living-room/media-room
type applications and seem to be giving acceptable output, but as I've upgraded other parts of my system with preamp/processor, separate amps, and big subs,
the main speakers are now a very limiting part of my system.

What to Do?
Obvious answer is to build bigger in-wall type speakers.
Because I wanted a false wall; I'll need to make very large baffles, but very shallow cabinets, and they'll need to recess into the wall cavity.
Besides being able to go scope, I can nearly eliminate boundary effect, lock dialog into the screen, and have a more uniform sound field for all the seats. I wanted perfectly-matched LCR's.

So, I thought to experiment with these full/extended range speakers lying with me. I procured couple of horn loaded tweeters to rig up constant/controlled directivity speakers.

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The higher efficiency of the drivers, and using two of them, in addition to a tweeter seemed to me like a good combination to deliver some good results... and then the subwoofer below 80 HZ can manage the rest.
Can anyone give some input regarding what I have said: has anyone tried sealed design with these drivers will any of the DIY MTM options give me a much better performance and quality than my current front speaker setup,
taking that below 60/80 Hz is mainly handled by the subwoofer, but I dont mind helping the sub with some dynamic bass from the front speakers as well.

That's it for now. I'll put some numbers together and update. For now, feel free to weigh in, ask questions, etc. This is very early in the design stage.
 
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Doesn't look like any of the members here is going to chime in, so I'll take a stab at it.

Hi Hydrovac,

are you going to measure the drivers?

I am not as of now, If all else fails I will attempt to measure.
Based on the previous experience with Philips Hi-Q, decided to build acoustic suspension enclosures with some 44.8L. (22.4L per speaker, my friend John calls it Avogadros enclosure)

So, the cabinets are being built with some old plywood lying in my store room. I am not particular about the finish, because they are going to sit behind the screen in a baffle wall.

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Dusting my power tools, which were not in use for quite some time.

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The Jasper Router Circle Cutting Jig is ideal for the speaker maker. Designed primarily for making smaller speaker cut-outs, particularly for tweeters and mid-ranges.
It can also flush mount speaker drivers converting a plunge router into a precision circle cutting device.


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Perfect size round hole... the final joint is cut with a hack saw blade.

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Checking the fit

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Cutting the second hole.

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Slot for the horn cut with jigsaw.

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All the drivers in place.

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The specs indicate tweeter crossover at 4kHz 12dB/oct... have to figure out a simple Xover.
 
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