Latest Project

[Brian Bunge]

So I've been wanting to build myself some new speakers for quite some time. And I've also been wanting to build some curved cabinets as well. Well someone contacted me about building some cabinets and helping out with the crossover design for some drivers he already had and he also wanted curved cabinets. So we worked out a deal to swap off some labor. He'd work up the CAD drawings for me to offset the added labor of the curved cabinets vs. normal rectangular cabinets. The best part is that the same basic cabinet will work for both of our designs.

So these are an MTMWW design with some LCY ribbon tweeters, Seas Excel 5" mids, and Scan Speak 7" woofers. The mids and woofers are not ones I've seen before. They are both 16 ohm versions so that wiring in parallel yields an 8 ohm load.

So here are some pics of the skeletons of his cabinets. Once the sides are attached the cabinets will be roughly 48"H x 9.5" wide at the front baffle and 5.5" wide at the back and 15.25"D.





Here's one of the cabinets next to my current, andhuge, MTMWW's.





Mine will be an WTMWWW and won't require a mid enclosure. There will also be a WWT/MWW center channel. There will also be a smaller TMWW tower and WT/MW center, and all speakers will have an 8 ohm load. One really annoying friend is also asking for a bi/dipole surround but we'll see if that happens or not. The drivers will use either 2 or 4 RS180's for woofers, the RS52 2" midrange and the RS28a tweeter.

Oh yeah, and there will be a curved cabinet subwoofer, too!

[mayhem13]

Excellent looking design with good bracing. What will you use to laminate the side panels?

[Brian Bunge]

Thanks for the compliments! The sides will be 3/4" MDF with grooves cut into the back side so that it will bend. I did a small test piece yesterday and I can tell with a few brad nails in place it'll work quite well.

[flavo cadillac]

i really like those and thought of building something similar myself from the gamut design. im curious how those are held together now though from the front and back? it doesnt look as tought there is a rabbit cut in. did you use dowels?

nice job so far

[Brian Bunge]

I used wood glue, a few clamps, and some brad nails.

[DRB]

Curves look good on women, Bunge.

Beautiful work as always. Is this your own design? (i.e. have you made the dive into measurements and software?)

[Brian Bunge]

Hi Denton! Yes, curves do look good on women! They look good on speakers too. My wife says so. She's out of town so I emailed her the pics last night. She loves them so far.

I've got some preliminary crossovers based on some work a friend did for me, but I also have an engineer at work who will help me with measurements and crossover design. I've had issues getting my measurement setup to work properly (I assume my old laptop has something to do with it), so he will see if we can re-create his measurements with my setup as well and go from there.

[Anthony]

Brian, what are you using for measurements? I have spent a lot of time with the free stuff (and researching the pay-for) stuff and might be able to help out.

I am just now (a year later) becoming comfortable using Speaker Workshop. Sound Easy gets good reviews too, but you have to verify your soundcard will work with it.

Great work, as usual.

[Mike P.]

Nice work, Brian! Have you decided on how they will be finished?

[Brian Bunge]

Anthony,

I have a Nady mic (Behringer clone) and an M-Audio MobilePre. The engineer buddy at work has been using ARTA with great success so that's probably what I'll use. He's showed me it a few times and it looks very easy to use. He does all his xo design with Matlab. I've also got an older version of LspCAD that I have played around with a bit but haven't done any full fledged designs with it yet.

Mike,

The speakers pictured here will be finished in a figured cherry, but my own speakers will hopefully be finished in Macassar Ebony. After seeing the veneer online my wife has vowed that's how these will be finished. At just over $400/sheet doing a whole 5.1 system with it is going to be quite an investment.

[Mike P.]

I just looked up Macassar Ebony and I can see your wife's point. Wow! Can't wait to see pics of the finished product!

[Brian Bunge]

Yeah, it's some beautiful stuff. I'd really love to buy all that I need at once, sequence matched so that the grain pattern will be the same for the towers, center, surrounds and sub. But That's looking to be about 3 sheets worth of veneer. I'm not sure I can rationalize spending $1200 all at once....just on veneer!

I'll definitely post pics when they are done!

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Well done, Brian, stunning work as usual! Man oh man, the things I could do around here if I could wood-work... But alas I'm but a poor wiring guy...

Regards,
Wayne

[Brian Bunge]

Thanks, Wayne! I appreciate it! I sure do wish I could get rid of these big towers. It sure would help out the veneer fund!

[superchad]

Very nice! I love that sorta Dali, Usherish rear cabinet design and it has a ton of internal benefit and I cant wait to see finished product!

[Brian Bunge]

Thanks! Oh, and here's a pic of what the subwoofer enclosure will look like!

[DasBot]

Beautiful cabinets.. But why limit yourself to passive crossovers? All that time and money spent just to make more compromises.

[Brian Bunge]

Everything is a compromise. Even active speakers. It's all a matter of how much money you want to put in the circuitry, then the 6 channels of amplification, etc. Also, this is to be a commercial product so an active setup would not be very feasible.