Engineering Student

[Bruce Weldy]

Wow.....my last 5x5 BB was $23 and 4x8 was $32.

Find a lumber supplier. I use a wholesale place - the guys that sell to the cabinet shops, etc.

[el_ingeniero]

I got a full sheet of 1/2" AC (Auraco) Plywood, looks like 4-ply - the two edge layers are half thickness so there are 5 layers total but only 3 full thickness layers. Cost $44.

When/if I build the TT long-style I'll try to get some 5-ply AC.

Wow. Auraco price had gone up a few bucks since the last time I bought some. At that price range I would rather call the lumber yard for some BB.

I can't believe you don't have a Menards within an hour of you. You could get full 4'x8' sheets of BB for $48 from there.

[rcko]

So my mids are 5.25" square, and there isn't enough room on the TLAH plans to put 8 of them vertically.

I want to put 9 mids vertical on the TLAH. How can I modify the plans to put 9 x 5.25" drivers = 47.25" minimum height?

I'm concerned that just lengthening it will mess up the acoustic design.

[Tom Smit]

Did you get the plans for the TLAH? The answer that you're looking for is in the plans!

[rcko]

I did get the plans. Are you recommending I build the 72" tall TLAH pro? I was concerned that it may have been designed for 8" drivers with different characteristics.

Also, I saw: "The preferred mid-bass driver size is 4 inches, but you can go a bit smaller or a bit larger if you desire, making the cabinet longer if larger drivers necessitate it."

[Tom Smit]

There's part of your answer!

Yup, I'm making you look!

[rcko]

Wow I feel silly. It happens.

"If you need to make a longer box for more or larger drivers keep the top and bottom dimensions the same."

Trust me, I have read the document a few dozen times, both front-to-back in its entirety and skipping/skimming around to connect pieces of information when I was unclear about something. Somehow that sentence never made it to my brain.

Since I have a 5.1 receiver, and only a 2.1 setup, would it be reasonable to make each speaker 2-channel (1 channel tweeters, other channel woofers) to drive 2x100W to each TLAH side? Rather than a crossover I suppose I would design high pass or low pass filters for each channel.

[Tom Smit]

Wow I feel silly. It happens.

"If you need to make a longer box for more or larger drivers keep the top and bottom dimensions the same."

Trust me, I have read the document a few dozen times, both front-to-back in its entirety and skipping/skimming around to connect pieces of information when I was unclear about something. Somehow that sentence never made it to my brain.

Haha, now worries, happens to all of us at one time or another.

Since I have a 5.1 receiver, and only a 2.1 setup, would it be reasonable to make each speaker 2-channel (1 channel tweeters, other channel woofers) to drive 2x100W to each TLAH side? Rather than a crossover I suppose I would design high pass or low pass filters for each channel.

Nope. Put the filters in the cab as per the plans, and just run a 2.1 until you're ready to expand to 5.1

[rcko]

Looking at components for the crossover.

This polyester film capacitor is rated to "100V" but when I take a closer look at the data sheet, it shows that for AC, the max voltage is lower, and dependent on the frequency. How much do people worry about this sort of thing when buying capacitors?

[rcko]

Finished these speakers today. Installed 9 woofers and 9 tweeters so both were 8-ohm loads (made crossover easier).

Used this crossover: http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdet ... er=260-148

Kind of glad it only had 9 tweeters instead of 12. The speakers sound great already, but they're rather bright. Needed to turn down treble on my computer output a lot, otherwise I got a slight headache after awhile. Also, the speakers are very loud. My receiver puts out 110W/channel and it didn't come close to maxing out the drivers capacity for loudness. I had to (and did) put in earplugs to test it at those levels (very loud).

Also I need to seal the boxes better, air is leaking out the sides and it buzzes a little bit. Humongous improvement over what we had before though.

Doing this again, I will never buy drivers I can't find impedance/SPL curves for. Taught myself how to use PCD7, but skipped building my own x-over because I didn't really know which components to buy (and dont have curves for the Jamo tweeters). Inexperience makes it so I'm not sure what caps/inductors are high enough quality when I'm searching digikey or mouser.

[67baja]

I have also built TLAH's with the Sony drivers and am very happy with them. The Sony's sound better as they get break in. The type of crossover you used is different than what is in the plans so I don't know if you are missing out on better sound. Also 4.5k is probably a bit higher than you need using the bigger Jamo tweets. I would think 3k would be better sounding since the Sony's response gets a bit erratic at 4k or so. That being said, I crossed mine over at 4k and would have liked to cross lower but my little Goldwood tweets would not have performed well at 3k. Anyway, good job on the build!

How about some pics?

[rcko]

No camera, sorry guys.

Anyways, used a 3K crossover (Dayton Audio) and it actually improved the mids/"lows" a lot, but the tweeters are still super loud. Even after disconnecting the woofers the tweeters still make me cringe and hurt. Those Jamo's are something else I guess.

Used Realtek HD Audio Manager (my computer audio control panel) to cut 4k -> 8k -> 16k as much as it would let me. This helped but its still quite loud.

[Gregory East]

Possibly you wired up the woofers all in series by mistake? ( making the amp struggle to produce the lower end )

[rcko]

Reasonable suggestion, but no, I'm much more familiar with electronics than carpentry and I'm sure I did them in a parallel-series combination: 3-3-3

[Gregory East]

ok, next question would be the polarity being all correct,

series + to -

parallel + to +, and - to -

clutching at straws here but it's hard to credit the eq being impossible to dial in without something being messed up.