Acoustic perfection

As pretty as JBL's copper domed speakers looked, they all sound sub optimal in my opinion. Either way, I needed a pair of bookshelf speakers. It was junior year of high school and I decided to buy myself a gift, a project.

The transducer selection was quite a difficult process, until I saw the prices. I sorted from low to high and filtered by full range speakers on parts express. I settled on the Tymphany TC9FD18-08. Not the optimal for good bass reproduction, but high frequencies were decent, at least in the on axis response. overall nothing a good box can't fix.

While I waited for the parts to arrive, I plugged in values into winISD, a speakerbox modeling program. I got a final box size of .494 cf and a rectangular port of 4.7cm by 8.2cm with a length of 42.86 cm.

What I realized, was that because I do not have a marketing team, this box will end up being ridiculously huge. after modeling it in Autodesk Inventor, based on the materials I had laying around, I started building.

No braces were added, besides the angle wedges. I can't find pictures of the assembly, I'm not sure where they are, I'll add them later if I do find them. I put silicone bathroom sealant on all the joints, then tacked them together with a 22awg nail gun. The completed speaker looks something like this:

 

What can I say? Even with only a 3.5" driver it sounds better than any bookshelf speaker at best buy. I certainly did not expect it to sound so good; I would have worked harder on the bodywork in hindsight.