(Part 2) Best products from r/diysound

There's a switch on the back of the Behringer amp tl pick from stereo or mono. Set it to mono, and both channels will be driven by a single input: Same thing as a Y cable, but with fewer parts.

Your list looks pretty complete, but that XLR cable won't do you much good with a typical receiver unless it also has an XLR output (most are RCA outputs).

The Behringer amp can accept XLR or 1/4" connections. If it were me and my own system, I'd get something like this:

Hosa CPR-201 Dual 1/4" TS to Dual RCA Stereo Interconnect Cable, 1 Meter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000068O16/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Cfd8CbWWVZMT4

Split the pair and put half in a drawer for when you get a receiver with multiple subwoofer outputs, or decide to rent some full-range PA speakers to piss off the neighbors with.

Speaking of PA: Handles are glorious things for enormous and heavy boxes. If you can work some into your design, I think you'll be much happier when those monsters inevitably need moved.

There are a few different approaches you could take, but given the gear you're starting with I'd opt for a 5-channel Class D car amplifier. They run off of the 12v batteries you already have, and can generally handle the 2-ohm load of your midrange/tweeter combo.

You could go for 2 of these, bridge one of them for the subwoofer, and build/buy crossovers (one high pass filter for the sub, and one low pass filter for the midrange/tweeter), but there are several drawbacks to this approach for your situation.

1. TPA3116/3318 chips like that are much happier at 24v (vs 12 from your car battery) - you could run 2 12v batteries together, but that might get heavy
   
   
2. You would have to have separate crossovers. Ideally you would design and build them to specifically match your speakers, but that would require measurement, multiple iterations, and would be more trouble than it's worth given the speakers you're starting with.
   
   
3. You ultimately wouldn't get the power you're looking for.
   
   
   So, benefits to the car amp (something like this or this) -
   
   
4. Integrated LPF and HPF, so your crossovers are contained in the unit
   
   
5. More power than the other approach
   
   
6. A lot easier to adjust the gain. Your midrange/tweeter assembly is more sensitive than the sub, so with a passive crossover network and amps without a gain adjustment, you would have to use an l-pad or something to balance them, or design a crossover to compensate for the difference.
   
   See what 5-channel, Class D amps are available in your country and go from there!

You aren't worthless. Hell, the fact that you are even interested in doing things yourself is encouraging. You just need to be patient and scour CL and FB Marketplace for stuff people are practically giving away. Then, tear those things apart and build them into something good. Nobody hates you. You just need to consciously make the decision to wait for the stuff you want. First thing; get either one of those little Nobsound NS-01G chip amps or a stupid cheap old AVR used. That gives you a decent amp to start with. After that, look for cheap speakers you might not actually like, but could tear apart for drivers or crossover parts.

LEARN TO SOLDER. It's absolutely the most important skill you can have if you are serious about DIY and reclaiming stuff. A cheapo soldering iron kit is like $15 bucks on Amazon. This is actually the best deal because you ALSO get a multimeter, which is the OTHER thing you really need to know how to use.

Once you get that, you can tear apart all sorts of electronics and BUILD your own stuff, and save TONS of money through the years, AND learn a valuable skill as well.

Don't get discouraged. I'm sorry if I came across as harsh. It's just frustrating to see a person who obviously cares about getting good audio sort of shoot himself in the foot over and over.

In order to have true surround sound, you will need an "audio receiver". A receiver takes in several different inputs (3.5 mm jack, RCA inputs, HDMI video and audio, bluetooth), and then you select which input is played over the speakers. The receiver will take care of amplification, so all you need are bare speakers and wire.

You should check out this Yamaha receiver

You can use a good receiver for decades, so I suggest investing in a good quality one. I own the predecessor to the linked receiver, and I really like it.

It looks like your subwoofer can actually amplify and power your speakers, but you won't get 5.1 surround sound. The best you can get is left, right and subwoofer. Also the input looks kinda tricky because it's bare wires. You'll need something like this to get the audio input to work.

If you can afford it, I recommend going for the receiver, or I can give you more detail on how to hook up the subwoofer-only amplifier. What device are you getting music from? Smart phone jack, DVD player, computer?

I looked up the specs on the Philips website, and am 99% sure you can do exactly what you suggest to get the speakers working. However, the subwoofer will be a problem, since it's a passive model (meaning it doesn't use an internal amplifier, instead relying on one built into the receiver). High-quality separate components expect the subwoofer to be self-amplified, so there won't be any way to plug that into a new receiver.

There are a few ways around this. You could add an external amp to the subwoofer - either a car audio amp, or a subwoofer plate amplifier (which could even be built into the existing box, if you're handy). But the easiest is to just buy a different sub. The Philips sub is an 8" model that only goes down to 40 Hz - essentially the bare minimum you can call a subwoofer without laughing yourself to death. You can buy a better sub for less money than you can get that one working:

As a bare minimum, the Polk PSW10 will work in a normal home theater setup and will be at least an equal to what you have. All of the reviews of this sub are pretty negative, but the main complaint against it is a lot of wind noise through the port at higher volume - this can be corrected in two minutes with a screwdriver. Just take the amp off the back, remove a little stamped steel grill from the inside end of the port, and put the amp back. With that change it becomes an incredibly good value for a basic system.

For a tiny bit more money, the Dayton SUB1000 has a better reputation and is supposed to reach a bit lower. I've never heard one, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra over the Polk, because you'd be better off saving up for...

The BIC America H-100II is a tremendous step up over either of those two. It's still cheap for a subwoofer (if you do some research you'll quickly find this is one of those "off the deep end" things, and you can spend used-car money on subs), but it's somewhat more powerful and covers a much wider range than anything cheaper.

Now, if you feel like dropping some money into home theater stuff and want to get seriously good equipment, I'd be tempted to offer some additional suggestions. But if you just want to get back up and running without spending a ton of money, and maybe get a bit of an upgrade along the way, those three are good options.

The Dayton Ultimax seems to get great reviews on diysound.org, although there are probably others in a similar price range that you could compare against. Various Beymas and the Eminence LAB12 come to mind. EDIT: I don't know of anyone selling cabinets specifically designed for them, which might be a significant advantage for the Ultimax if you don't want to do the design and construction from scratch yourself.

That plate amp is probably not overkill for the speaker, but might be overkill in terms of normal listening levels. It doesn't hurt to have extra headroom if you can afford it...

... Although for the same or lower price, I'd go with something like this or this for greater flexibility. You can use cables like this to hook it up. Those will lose the noise reduction benefits of a balanced connection over XLR, but then again, you wouldn't have had it in the first place with an amp that only takes RCA. A pro audio amp like the inuke will let you upgrade the rest of the signal chain to balanced if you feel like it at some later point.

I'm going to throw a slightly different perspective here. You're definitely going to want a well designed cab and I'm not your man to assist with that.

However, what I do know is the electrical side of it and can advise that a car amplifier is your most efficient route. Converting voltage is inefficient and simply not worth even trying. Your battery will be dead in minutes.

Specifically you're going to want a "Class D" amplifier if you're running on batteries. My money goes on Alpine as they're reliable, strong, clear and often cheap for what you get. Consider the MRV or PDX ranges particularly.

You'll want to decide if you want to go volume (=LOTS of batteries) and get a bigger amp or play it safe and get a smaller amp. I feel like the latter is a safer route but do remember that car amplifier outputs are measured at 14.4v and you'll only achieve ~85% of that with a battery on its own.

Once you assume a Class D amplifier is also 80% efficient you can start to guess at the length of time it'll run at full chat on your battery. Consider Alpine's MRV-M250. It's the smallest single channel I could find them offering at 250W RMS (@ 2 ohms, 14.4v). At 12v that's ~85% of that figure so 212.5W. 80% efficiency means that'll draw 270W. P=IV so P/V=I, 270W/12V=22.5A.

Using this web-based calculator you can see that even to get that to run for an hour, you're going to drain a 106AH "leisure" battery which (by the time you've rounded that up to the more standard 110AH battery size) is a whopping 350x175x190 (mm) and 22kg, not to mention £80/$101.

Saving you the math, the next biggest class D rated at 300W RMS total (75Wx4), the MRV-F300 drains 126AH!

If you do eventually decide to do so, make sure to use a couple of car speakers in series on it (to get 2 ohms). I rate Pioneer's low depth offerings or old JL kit for volume. You'll also want some more range so 6x9 might be an option.

Frankly though I can't see you lugging 35KG of audio around a festival!

I googled, and if https://www.amazon.com/Jensen-3-Speed-Stereo-Turntable-Cassette/dp/B00579LW06 is your system, you'll just have to recognize that it has limitations, and if you get serious about collecting vinyl upgrade in the future. The Amazon listing shows an output of 2 x 2 watt RMS, so it isn't going to help to buy different speakers.

It does show an RCA line output in the listing so if it truly is a line out you can get another amp and plug it into that and just try out the same speakers. I qualify that statement with truly, because sometimes units like this only line out the CD player, so it wouldn't help you with your vinyl or tapes.

Personally, I wouldn't invest too much money on trying to upgrade this unit and just save up to buy something better. AT most, I'd grab one of these, connect it with an RCA cord to the line out and use the speakers that came with the system. Ive used a couple of these amps and they're pretty good for the price.

Yeah here, I'll copy another comment I posted over /r/diyaudio.



> I had purchased a bunch of Paracord for sleeving, but was unable to fit the whole (as in both strands) wire through the hollowed out para. So it sat for a while, until I watched this video and had the idea to sleeve each wire individually and then do that inverse wrap method thing where it twists itself together. Worked absolute wonders. Just make sure you zip tie one side tightly together so it doesn't undue itself. Once it was done I threw on some heat shrink and attached the banana plugs!
>
> I already had everything except the Paracord, and this stuff can also be purchased on Amazon, but Parts-Express has been good to me so you're getting their links instead!
>
> Speaker wire
>
> Paracord
>
> Banana Plugs (Don't even consider compression fit plugs, they suck!)
>
> Zip ties
>
> Heat shrink
>

The crossover was the complete unknown for me when I built the Sprite. I wanted to make is way harder than it is. Please don't sweat it.

Here is a video on assembling some random crossover. Basically a glue gun is your friend.

If you look at my image of the open back and zoom in on the right side you will clearly see the 4 components are hot glued together and then glued onto a small piece of 1/8in mdf, that was so I could just glue it all in at once for final assembly. First hot glue the 4 components together...then...The outside wire joint is just twisting all 4 wires from the components tightly together then soldering the twist and cutting off the excess wire after I soldered. The left joint is the 3 components Paul specified twisted with the hot wire from the amp and soldered, then excess is cut off. The 100u capacitor 'output's wire goes straight into a connector that is glued down. The other end of that connector has the wire from/to the speaker.

The test shot also shows the crossover assembly pretty well if you zoom in.

Please note the left and right inductors have a perpendicular orientation. This is on purpose. You can Google inductor orientation in crossovers and get more info and discussion than you ever wanted to read.

The amp I used is KNACRO TPA3116 2.1 Subwoofer Amplifier Board DC12-24V HIFI Digital Amplifier Board 50W + 50W + 100W
. There were like 9 when I first posted this build, and that hadn't change for weeks, looks like one left, I am guessing some Isettas are getting built.

I ordered and returned a Yecco board, it was garbage. Loose components on the board and It had horrible static on the sub channel. I also got the Douk Bluetooth amp to try. The Bluetooth on the Douk does not work very well as it breaks up very easily. Sound is fine. I'll find a use for it at some point.

Hope this helps.

Easy, get something like this and connect it with a standard audio cable to this, or do the job of both with this.

Use something like this to power that, and you have yourself a portable stereo system, that you can attach any passive bookshelf speakers to. It would be easy to attach that equipment inside a wooden/plastic box, and create a mechanism of sorts to clip or strap down the speakers, so you have an easy to carry package.

When done with portable use, detach the speakers, carry them over to your 5.1 setup in the living room or whatever, and place/reconnect them for use there.

Noctua NF-R8

Neutrik SpeakOn NL4 (4 Conductor Twist Lock.) (These connectors goes on the 10 or 12 awg speaker cable for your subwoofer speaker cable. One plugs directly into the NX3000/NX6000 and the other plugs into your subwoofer. You will only need two conductor for the speaker cable but you will need to BRIDGE the output of a channel for your subwoofer. There will be four connection points within the connector. +1/-1 and +2/-2. You will want to use Output A of Channel 1 with the connector wired in +1 / +2 to obtain output from both Output A and B. That's super easy to follow, right? Heh.)

Neutrik SpeakOn NL4 Speaker Jack (4 Conductor Twist Lock you install somewhere on your subwoofer enclosure)

RCA Stereo (Pair) to 1/4" TS (Tip-Sleeve) Jack (For AVR LFE output to NX6000 channel inputs)

Hurry up and finish that build! ;-)

If it's for an art installation, you could try some tactile transducers. They're fairly cheap, and you can put them just about anywhere. Just stick them on a flat surface, and it turns it into a transducer. They can be easily hidden, so they're great for things like art installations where aesthetics might be more important than sound quality (they sound fine, but probably wont have the same fidelity as regular speakers.)

Try looking around on Amazon a little bit, there's quite a few different kinds to choose from. Most need an amplifier, but you can always pick up a cheap one. Depending on what amp you choose, you should be able to use pretty much any portable music player. Just look for an amp with a 3.5mm input (AUX) and you should be good to go.