Found a new side hobby (sadly), build thread up soon.

Budget Loudspeaker Forum!

If this ever ends in a GB i am defintivly IN!

Ok time for an update… Some stuff took longer than expected to arrive but they’re mostly here. However all the build have been delayed because the M4 hex head screws used to secure the speakers have not arrived. I can buy some screws locally but the ones I ordered are black and look better on a speaker.

Here we have a bunch of components from parts-express, you can see the ammo box, the compact and the small pelican case, some speakers, amplifiers and other electronic components.

Here is the second order from parts-express and a bunch of items from China, including a healthy amount of 30Q from banggood, speakers, amplifiers, a bunch of Bluetooth receivers, and a couple audio tapers (stereo potentiometer for controlling volume.)

As a side project I’m building a ammo box speaker for a friend, he wants to get the loudest possible and very long runtime speaker under $150. It has 2 pairs of Rockford Fosgate 2-way 4” speakers designed for auto use, these are quite cheap so the sound is just ok at best, but they get very loud. First thing we did was cut the 4 holes using a hand drill and a Milwaukee hole cutter, then wrapping the inside with sound dampening pad to reduce rattling and hollow sound signature. Speakers are not installed yet as we are waiting for the M4 screws and nuts to arrive. The amplifier draws 30 watts at maximum volume which is extremely loud, with 8x 18650 it should provide almost 3 hours runtime. At a decently high volume it only draws 7 watts, and normal listening volume around 3 watts. I didn’t know speakers can produce this much sound with so little power.




I have bench-tested some of the speaker and so far things looks pretty promising, however as I analyze the components I realize they won’t be as easy as I thought, lots of cables and connectors to deal with.

Oh you would be surprised how much volume you can get from very low powered amplifiers… IF the speakers are capable of this!

I once built a “one tube amp” delivering a glorious output of 850 milli Watts. On backloaded horns with 98dB/W/m that was enough for orchestral music in a normal living room….

I’m driving a pair of old Monitor Audio MA700 Gold II’s with a 3 watt per channel tube amp Even though the speaker’s efficiency is only 89db, it’s loud enough for near-field computer use.

MA700s - I remember selling them in the 90ies! Good little speakers, but I recall these were not soooo easy to drive. Needed low internal resistance/high damping factor amps to really shine.

This my ever changing computer setup

Monitor Audio MA700’s
Tube Cube 7 amplifier
Parasound P/HP850 Pre-Amplifier
Parasound 1000A Power Amplifier
Schiit Audio USB DAC
Velodyne SLP 800 subwoofer

Nice setup, Glenn!

My current computer setup consists of:

- PSB Alpha B speakers

- some cheap 10” Velodyne sub

- Onkyo mini receiver

  • FiiO Q1 USB DAC

I’ve got better speakers, but they don’t fit on my desk. :slight_smile: One of these days, I’d like to try something with ribbon or flat panel leaf tweeters, just to hear what all the fuss is about. I like clarity, but I don’t like bright sounding speakers for near-field listening - too ear fatiguing.



I’ve heard that the T7V from adam audio are amazing.
They beat everything at that budget price point.

Thanks. These look great, although I’m looking for passive speakers - something along the lines of Chane A1.4 or Emotiva B1. Lots of great speakers out there, and not enough room in the house for them all. :slight_smile:

I ran some KEF Columns way back in late ’60’s.

7ft tall. 14in by 17 in 3\4 marine ply outers with 1\2 in same, Baffles etc interior.
ALL walls lined with lead sheet “waffled” (free from demo job I did). Base Reflex. B139 x 2 in each with mid’s, B110’s and T27 tweets. Custom X-Overs to match.
Controllers were 2 x 30W LEEK. Pre/Power amps. Still have one of them…Headphones were STAX Electrostat’s. Nowadays I still use Yamaha Electrostats for my Classics. Mahler. Sybelius, etc.
They around the smoothest output you can hear. Leave the digital crap for dead.
You could “feel” the bells on Tubular bells.
and 1812’th, the booms were so realistic.

In army I was REME did maint on Artillery, Missile, and field gun transports.
have stood in with 8in Field battery. Firing in line. IE Radar controller.
One after another continuously at flying sock targets.
So I Know the true sound of cannon.
Try the sound of Corporal and Honest John Missile launches. Nuclear ground to ground. (Yanks).
And Thunderbird (English) High altitude Ground to air for incoming missile protection.
Standing alongside the launch controller with earsets on. They were huge.
I was Attached to Nuclear Missile Battery’s for 5 yrs in W Germany in late ’50’s, early ’60’s.
You lot don’t know the half of it. Now the 50 yr? secrets act has cleared we can talk about things
I was in Berlin. West. Before the Wall. (Started building in ’59) Watching them build it. Was just wire pre that. and they (Eastern European Commie’s) used to shoot the women and children as they tried to get over/ through the wire. and wall.
Bastards.

We slept with the warheads in concrete bunkers under our Barracks in W.German camps…
In those day. NOBODY knew the consequences. Just wear a roentgen tag at all times.
Changed colour when you needed a scrub and change of gear.

Oh for the good old days hey.

Why passive?
You prefer the coloured “nice” sound?

Makes it easier to add a sub and control the crossover point.

not sure why you think that.

If you have a sub that takes XLR all you have to do is run the cables through the sub and to the speakers.
Also some subs have a high pass to the monitors so you don’t need to bother with tweaking a crossover point, it does it for you.
If you want to use a sub that only has RCA you can use an audio interface like the 2i4 that has both RCA and XLR outputs.
Nothing easier than simply plugging the sub into your audio interface.

Most people buying passive speakers want the “nice” sound that the speaker designers and amp designers built for, rather than the flat/accurate response that studio monitors give.

Frequency response curves of the two speaker models I mentioned above are pretty flat.

Well they’re not bad, but they will still be affected by the amp you use, noise in the wiring going to the speakers, etc.
You also can’t really tell how coloured the sound is by simply looking at the freq. response.
Good studio monitors are still a far better option than any passive speakers.

Your own room acoustics are going to color the sound, regardless if you use active or passive speakers, so you’re going to end up having to play around with EQ to bring it all in line anyway.

Flat response speakers sound sooooo Flat :slight_smile:

The recording you are listening to is Eq’d to death by the producers so what is the difference?

Lastly our ears response is no where near flat or accurate.
Bottom line, buy what sounds good to YOU, not what some spechead or audio/trade magazines tell you to buy.

It’s called a reference monitor for a reason.
Having a flat response means what comes out of your speakers is the same as what came out of the speakers of the producer (within reasonable limits)
The EQ from mastering is what they WANT you to hear, that is NOT the same as having post-EQ introduced by defects in your equipment, which is then applied on top of what the producer made.

Our ear’s response not being flat is completely irrelevant.
The point of a flat speaker is to have an accurate representation of the source audio.
This means that if the audio was recorded with a flat mic and played back on a flat speaker it will have the same frequency response as the original audio (or as close as possible) as if you were listening to the source directly with your ears.

I already talked earlier about if he was buying passive speakers for the coloured sound.
A lot of people buy passive speakers because they prefer the “customized” sound which is more pleasant to listen to as opposed to the sharp, accurate, mistake-revealing of a studio monitor.
.
This may be very difficult for you to understand, but a simplified explanation is if the audio source is X, your speaker output should be X or 2X, not something like 3x^4+15

It’s not difficult at all for me to understand.

I sold Hi Fi for 20 years and you?

Exactly.
There are so many variables with trying to get the “exact” sound from what was actually heard in the studio that unless you have an exact same size room, wall coverings, etc. it’a all a shot in the dark.
Then add mastering, A-D/D-A conversion, phase shift, compression and on and on.

How many times do we hear a producer re-master a recording because what came out was not at all what they intended when they finally gave the final mix to the music label.
It’s all a crap shoot.

Buy what you like, EQ it how you like.
It’s all good.