edjosh23’s 1993 Lexus SC

This page is to introduce the Fostex FE207E.  For breaking in the driver I am building a small bass reflex enclosure that is 35liters and tuned to 45Hz.  There are three ports that are 4" long.  The small size of the ports raises the port resonance to about 1300Hz.  These drivers will only be in this enclosure for a short amount of time.  A perminant enclosure will be used shortly.Also, I have installed a pair of Planet-10 Hifi's Phase Plugs.

Thanks to Gateway Sound in Atlanta (http://www.gatewaysound.net/) I have a very nice pair of Audio Nirvana Super 8 Cast Frame drivers.  My original idea was to build an enclosure that could work for both the AN drivers and a pair of Fostex FE207 drivers that I also got from Gateway Sound.  I decided on an MLTL design that Scottmoose posted on diyaudio.As usual I'm building with 3/4" Baltic Birch.  The design is (interior) 54" tall an 82.5in^2 area, with a 3" diameter port 1" in length placed 2" from the bottom.  The driver is located 19.125" from the top.  As always all of my dimensions are based on irrational numbers.  Not only the cross section, but the placement of all braces as well.  Haven't done any official weighing, but they seem to weigh about 70lbs.I tried something new with this build... diffusers.  Directly behind the driver I placed triangular strips of BB.  This can be seen in the pictures below.  Do these actually work???  I have no idea, I would have to build the exact same enclosure again without them to really tell.Without any series resistance or BSC these lack bass.  You can tell that its there, but the level is not anywhere near the SPL of the rest of the frequency range.  These drivers have a rising response, but seems to have calmed down a bit.  These have a very wide soundstage, the widest of any speaker I've ever owned.  Perhaps they come as seeming very detailed due to their rising response, but they are very detailed and lifelike.  Both male and female vocals really shine.  From my listening thusfar I would say male vocals really set these apart from other loudspeakers.  Ray Lamontagne sounded wonderful.  During my listening with a nice little DVD-A of Diana Krall I noticed some chimes that I had never heard before. I'm going to try to add some more series resistance to try and get these speakers give me the bass that I should be hearing. Pictures below:

I figured it was time for me to stop using cheap Radio Shack equipment and get some quality stuff. So I recently purchased a Fluke 17B multimeter. This model is fold in China, and I got it off ebay. It was very inexpensive, infact shipping was more than the multimeter, but total it was still much less than other multimeters with its capabilities and accuracy. It comes with a pair of regular test probes, along with tweezer probes, and a separate probe for temperature. It works well, is accurate and I like it. I also recently bought a new soldering iron. Infact this i guess would be considered a soldering station. It is the Circuit Specialist CSI-STATION2A. It is a very reasonably priced digital variable temp iron. Brian (BWRX) from DIYAudio highly recomended me this iron. I got to use it for my first time when building the next piece of equipment on this page. The iron worked great, the variable temp really came in handy when I suddenly had the solder large components. The iron heats up quickly and on the digital display it will display the tip temp while warming up. I like. Since I decided it was time to get serious I figured I needed to start testing speakers. Not only T/S parameters but frequency responce also. So I got the mic & preamp kit from Vikash at Mad About Sound. I soldered it and screwed it into its little box and looks nice, unfortunately haven't used it, but I will update when i have used it. Picture Time!

I recently found this thread on DIYAudio. After spending hours reading it, I decided to ask around for a ps1, luckly DJ had one laying around. It was not the SCPH-1001 that I was looking for but it was still a PSOne, a SCPH-5501 to be exact. I tore it apart and found what I was looking for, the AKM4309AVM. I was able to pinpoint the right and left outputs, pins 15 and 16. I followed the traces to some DC blocking smd caps. At this point I decided to purchase a pair of BG "N" 4.7uf caps and a pair of Caddock 22kohm resistors, ended up buying them from Brian Bell (BrianGT), since he lives near by and I don't like Percy Audio's policy on making small purchases. I picked the components up from him yesterday. After coming back home I spray painted the PS1 and after letting dry for a couple of hours I removed the smd DC blocking caps and replaced them with BG "N" caps and made RCA outputs. By following Mike F.'s website it was all pretty easy.

Planet10 has recently been designing a small horn that can hopefully compete with the Hornshop's horn, for the FE108Sigma. Anyway, Dave has posted many versions of plans on his website Planet10 Hifi and on different forums. Being an avid DiyAudio member I followed the thread and grew very interested in the project. I have wanted to build horns, and although the BIBs are horns, they don't have all the horn folds... etc. Anyway, I wanted a pair for my dorm, and I was going to need sheilded drivers, but the fostex sheilded drivers don't work quite as good in horn enclosures due to their higher Q. I asked Dave about what would happen if I fitted a Fe127 into a Frugel-Horn and he said it would work fine, just be a little bass heavy. I have no problem with bass heavy speakers, especially since my tube amp is a little bass shy, perhaps the combination withh make for some a balanced frequency responce.Anyway, here are some pictures, grouped by the day of work.

Thanks to a recent thread on DIYAudio I decided to try out a BIB. I don't really want to make a pair of 6' loudspeakers using drivers that I already owned, so I decided to use a pair of Tang Band W3 871s that I had laying around. GM calculated the enclosure for me and talked to me for a bit about floor loading and different stuffing methods. I decided I would try those methods out in this build. I decided to use GMs suggestions and have designed a floor loaded BIB. Below is a small blueprint that I drew up while it was raining (I was unable to build them so I drew this up). After a bit of work my design changed a little bit. The supra-baffle was going to be removable using 3 screws that were mounted inside the cabinet. After placing the front baffle I realized I would never be able to take the front baffle on and off. Constuction is finished and painting began. Almost finished...

Kookaburra After reading the thread on DIYAudio I decided I should try this preamp. It is an interesting deisgn by Russ White of Twisted Pear Audio. The preamp is digitally controlled and there is no pot in the signal path. The pot adject the voltage of the semiconductor. Adding pots in the signal path is never a good experience and usualy concludes with the purchase of a very expensive pot. This way a cheap pot can be used and will not disrupt the signal in any way. Well on 3/10/2006 I recieved my kit. It was well packaged and very well organized. Each component is well labeled with its part number on the circuit board. The semiconductors came in a nice little protective case. The circuit board is quality and has a giganic ground pad, almost the entire bottom of the PCB. The connectors that came with the kit are a bit odd, but should be usable. When I recieved the package I was unable to really look through everything because I had to go to a soccer game. I was able to look at it later that night and was very happy. I was also able to take some pictures, after I found a website that tought me how to braid 4 wires. Here are some pictures of the packaging. Assembled Board In Chassis

Another one of my good friends has come to me in search or car audio. This friend, Frank, is quite mechanically enclined as has quickly learned how to install some car audio, and has done some pretty extensive research, which I was happy to discuss with him. He came to me with a budget and some specifications in mind, and I pointed him in the right directions. After some discussion of the VAS and FS of the new Dayton Reference HO 10" and 12", we decided on the 10". I talked to Frank quite a bit about finishes and what direction he wanted to go with on this box. He decided that he liked the real wood finish, and wanted to different, by putting a stained plywood enclosure in his car. I liked the idea and decided to go to Home Depot. After pulling down every sheet of .75" Oak plywood, we decided on two nice looking sheets that would be needed for the enclosure. I decided that I would make the box a little bit larger than needed for this subwoofer. Considering the whole point of car audio is to have lots of bass, I don't think there was really going to be much of an issue if there was 1db saddle. I decided on a 1.44ft^3 box, which after the vent and bracing was closer to 1.3ft^3 box, tuned to 27hz. I'm a big fan of slot ports, not only do you not have to worry about the airy port, but that way I don't have to buy anything to make the port, instead I can just use the extra wood. After some designing I got to work. Unfortunately it was extremely cold, and a bit wet outside, so I decided not to do very much work, but I did cut all the the pieces, which look very nice. I came back inside to do measurements on the driver, to make bracing, and checked over my design, and waited for a warmer day. Throughout the week, bit by bit the box has been put together. I'm taking my time with this, and it looks great and the build quality is very good, if I must say so myself. Below are a couple of pictures that have been taken, unfortunately I was unable to take pictures throughout the entire process because my camera was out of batteries and I'm too lazy to get more AA batteries. More work was done

For my birthday I decided I wanted to build a tube amplifier. I finally decided to go with the S-5 Electronics K-12G kit since it was so inexpensive. I recieved the the kit today. It looks very simple, but I'll be modifying it slightly thanks to Volt Second. Here are some initial pictures. I've recieved all of the components, but Radio Shack didn't have the diode I thought they had, so I'm going to have to go searching at another nearby electronics store. FINALLY!! After 4 months of trying to have time AND money, I finally made it over to the Metal Supermarket. I got everything I wanted. I came back home and did as much work as I could. I must say, I did really well with my table saw, but not very good on my drill press. I have 4" tall corner blocks, I managed to cut each one to exactly 4.00" says my caliper. Here is a picture bellow, kinda hard to see. There is also a picture of move aluminium. I also decided to build a preamp, Kookaburra on page 12, so I will not install the alps pot on this.

A buddy of mine turned to me to build a subwoofer for his car. One of his other friends works at a local car audio shop and was able to give him discounts on Alpine products so my friend bought a pair of Alpine SWX-1242D. These are some massive subwoofers. They wanted a giganic enclosure, but my friend was not going to give his subwoofers the full 10cubic feet they wanted. We settled on 4cubic feet that would fit well in the back of his Explorer without much movement. He said he wanted to be able to hit low notes so I designed the box to about 27hz, that with cabin gain I think should deliver nice lows. The enclosure is a bass reflex with dual vents. I wanted to stay away from port noise so I decided two ports would be good and symetrical for onlookers. Grant, budracing8, decided he would get his box rhino lined, it turned out great, so my friend agreed to do the same. Below are some plans. Some Construction Done with construction, time to move to Line-X. Picking up the box from Line-X picture with the new owner

I finally convinced one of my friends, Affan, that he needed some speakers, so he came to me for some consulting. We agreed with his budget and since they were going to be mostly near field and near a CRT, the fostex fe 127s would be best for him. He ordered them and brought them to me the next day. We played around with them a little bit and were ready to put them in some nice boxes. I told him to figure out how much space he had so we could design a box, after fumbling around for a couple days I was told of GM's (diyaudio) TLs for the 127s. It was originally designed for a tube port, I did my best to change that to a rectangular vent. I ended up being about .5" off, but found out after Affan and I had glued the vent on. The boxes are still in construction, but they are to a point where we can listen to the speakers. So I finished gluing the sides on and brought the boxes inside. Plugged them up and haven't stopped listening to them yet. They still need many more hours of brake in, they have been braking in for about 5 days now and they are getting better but I think there are probably about 100hours more till they are really broken in. The bass is good, the highs are great, a tad harsh right now. The detail is like nothing else. I have not had time to compare them to the wr125s, but the bass is signifigantly better in the wr125s. I've got the speakers on my computer design right now, and these are not small boxes, I feel a little small next to them and my 27" monitor, but I'm happy to say these guys sound beautiful, and I'm a little jealous. My camera is having trouble right now so I could only squeeze one picture out of it, so here it is. Update: The speakers are fully broken in and sound great, the harshness has gone away. GM's design delivers nice tight bass, but doesn't have the ouput that my friend is looking for. These will need to be paired with a subwoofer.

I bought some Tand Band W6-1139sc from a local speaker store to try them out when I had some extra money. I'm hoping to build them soon, here is a plot comparing types of boxes. Well on Friday night I picked up the wood to work on Saturday. Saturday morning I got to working. I had a little trouble cutting the front and back baffle. I had to cut a 2'x4' sheet in half on my table saw which is very small. I got through it the best I could and did all the contruction. I have to decide on a table top, this is a bed side table. These w6s hit much harder in this box and in the 1ft^3 box I had them in earlier, this is about 2x as loud. After hooking up the sub I tried a subwoofer test sound track, about 10 seconds into the song my mom comes running to my room to turn that off it is going to make things fall off the wall. Here are some pictures.

I got some pioneer B20FU20-51FW from Parts express and started breaking them in. They don't sound that bad actually and they seem to have pretty good low end extention. These were taken with my cell phone the morning after recieving the drivers, sorry for the poor quality. Project pictures More Project Pictures

This page is for my TB W3 871s. I wanted some surround speakers, and decided these would be a good choice. Dave (Planet10) from diyaudio suggested building aperiodic enclosures. I worked on the project a little today. Unfortunately I retired the aperiodic boxes, I had a slight router mishap which ruined the boxes, but atleast I learned how not to use the router. after making lots of small cuts and test fitting. These are the old boxes, only took about 3 minutes. And now the room with lots of unfinished projects I did a little more work. Here is some test fitting Here is a little project I did for my philosophy class