Assembling a DIY PC Speaker System

[Julio Franco]

I was bitten by the audiophile bug at a relatively young age, however I never got around to exploring the ins and outs of audio equipment as console gaming, computers and photography consumed much of my free time over the past two decades. Recently, however, an opportunity to further tinker with my sound system presented itself and I couldn't pass it up.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1925-diy-pc-speaker-system/

 

[Uncle Al]

Back in the days when Radio Shack was young, fresh, and full of electronic's geeks I built quite a few speakers using cabinets I made and speakers I purchased. It was quite an education and a heck of a lot of fun. Sadly, RS went away from their humble beginnings and so many of today's kids will never enjoy the "hands on" education as we did ...... what a pity .....

 

[m3tavision]

Thank You Shawn..!

It is a nice basic wetting of the necessities. I've built several home studios. When handmade, they always seem to have a warmth about them. Gave some old speakers to a nephew when he went away to college, and it turns out his whole floor sat in front of his computer for movies, football games, etc.

 

[DelJo63]

a mini Class D power amplifier

OMG it's been decades since working with this stuff -- shades of high school electronics

What are the A B C D classes anyway? see
https://circuitdigest.com/tutorial/classes-of-power-amplifier-explained

 

[DelJo63]

Back in the days when Radio Shack was young, fresh, and full of electronic's geeks I built quite a few speakers using cabinets I made and speakers I purchased. It was quite an education and a heck of a lot of fun. Sadly, RS went away from their humble beginnings and so many of today's kids will never enjoy the "hands on" education as we did ...... what a pity .....

I remember boxes of raw components on the floor against the walls and digging like a dumpster-diver to find the "goodies"

 

[Bullwinkle M]

For a minimalist system, I have LSR305's with the SMSL M100 DAC

I don't mess with ASIO drivers / Foobar or JRiver players

For best sound quality, I just set VLC for "Windows Multimedia Device Output" > (Tools / Preferences / Audio / Output Module)

For Windows settings, Dac is then set to the highest "Exact" multiple of the music's sample rate for "USB Output"......44Khz / 88Khz / 176Khz or 352Khz X 32bit "Exclusive Mode" allowing applications to take full control of the device

Optical out only gives me up to 44Khz/24bit without the option for a higher (exact) multiple

Analog volume control is not necessary as I just leave the DAC set to 32 bit and use the digital volume control

VLC only plays sample rates up to 352Khz

Windows 10 plays higher sample rates but resamples them down to whatever sample rate Windows 10 is set to

KLite media player simply crashes and refuses to play high sample rates

Each version of Windows defaults to a different stock sample rate

different motherboards also can affect the default sample rate

Optical outputs only support PCM and do not bypass the internal hardware drivers in Windows and limit me to 24 bit 192Khz with all of my DAC's

I could go on & on but what you cannot determine what you are hearing based on the sample rate you set OR the sample rate of the sound file you play

EVERYTHING in the chain affects the output

I can play 5Mhz DSD files in Windows XP and 768Khz uncompressed PCM WAV files in Windows 10 just fine, but you must understand what each and every setting does to the audio and what each component in the chain is doing with whatever version of Windows you are running

 

[Squid Surprise]

Sounds like a lot of work - but if you love what you do, then that's often a plus (I'm looking at my 7,541 piece LEGO Millenium Falcon as I type this!)...

I simply have the Logitech 5.1 z906 speaker set... sound very nice to me, and when I'm watching movies, my PC is wired to my Denon Receiver and 7.1 speakers...

 

[Mr WW]

I followed the same childhood path and thought the same for my pc setup but then cracked voor a KRK pair.

 

[grvalderrama]

Great article. I just have a nice Audio Technica headset plugged to my Sound Blaster X-fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card from my desktop pc, for rich and plain sound experience. Movies and console gamming rely on my 7.1 Jamo speakers system, Tannoy subwoofer connected to my Denon AVR, all together they can go loud without losing that crystal clear sound quality that these well-renown brands enjoy.

 

[Stoly]

I thought you were actually going to build the speakers.

This is more like just connecting your current set to an amplifier. Done...

I used to actually build speakers and amplifiers when I was in my 20s.

Still nice read.

 

[captaincranky]

@Julio Franco Some fun facts you might like to know about audio & photography. Bot are affected by the "inverse aquare law", which states, if you double the side dimensions of a square you quadruple its area....and..... the square root of 2 is 1.41, give or take.

Air movement is dictated by cone excursion. Simply put, the larger the driver the more air it can move. The inverse law attaches to circles as well, bu you multiply the radius squared rimes Pi (3.14 give or take) to find the area.

In practical terms a 16" driver might have to move 1/8" to produce "X" amount of bass output, an 8" driver would need to move 4 times as far (1/2") to produce the same amount of bass. When you get down to a 4" "sub-woofer", the cone excursion will of necessity be 2" full inches. It should be readily apparent why you don't get decent bass from small drivers, improvements in flux field length notwithstanding.

Now if you only want to double of halve the area of a square or a circle, you must use the square root of two as a constant (1.41)

Since each full stop on a camera lens translates to half the light being admitted, it's obvious that that area must be half or double the previous area.

Which explains rather handily why the "F stop" numbers on your lenses are numbered the way they are. While the aperture area is halved with each stop, the applied ratio goes by the square root of 2. Hence F1 (length to diameter equal).

F 1 to f I.4 (half the aperture area obviously) Then F2 (1,4 times 1.4) F 2 to 2,8 is 1.4 times 2, and so forth.

As far a speaker brands, I haven't heard a Japanese audio company's speaker which caters to "the western ear". Brands such as Klipsh are a better choice, both in sound profile and efficiency..

FWIW, I had JBL "Stadiums" as my front speakers (2 x 8" woofer 4" mid. 1" tweeters" and the 3 way system annoyed the hell out of me. I swapped them out for a 2 way Klipsch "|Icon" series (2x 8" woofer, and a single 1" horn driver, )and they're way, way, better, and way, way louder for the same input power as well.

I don't have exponent characters on this 4 dollar keyboard, or an upside down question mark either, sorry. Pi x R2 comes out kind of crappy, if not unintelligible.

BTW, the standing wave length of 30 Hz bass is something like 32'. Thus you need at least 16' to a wall or partial .phase cancellation will occur.

Since standing wave length and resonant frequency are interdependent that should serve to explain why pipe organ "stops" (individual pipes), are numbered in feet

 

[Windstriker]

Um this is in no way DIY. Essentially you scraped your speaker system in a box and then purchased some passive speakers and a amp. This is what you call a basic stereo set up. You did not make anything just connected premade products together. Don't get me wrong, kudos to ditching the Logitech speakers. This set up definenty should sound much better. Just dont represent it as DIY. Now if you want to dabble in DIY. Go to parts express and purchase a speaker kit. It could turn into a fun hobby.