DIY Speaker Build - Troels Gravesen's Poor Man's Stradivari

Maybe a stupid question but are all the filters and RePhase work not subject to the position and toe-in? I am months underway to optimize the speaker position, and still get minor improvements every now and then. I have all the gear and manuals for REW filter application ready to go in the drawer but am afraid if i do this now and change the speaker position i have to do it all again.
Am i worrying for nothing?

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My mistake, I had assumed that because yesterday you wrote:

No worries. I got into the Rephase side of things late yesterday afternoon, so the second second set of filters were applied initially just with minimum phase, and finally with Rephase adjustments once I wrapped my head around the process.

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Yes, they are, but fear not.

REW will tell you if your speakers aren’t equidistant from the listening position, it can also tell you if your toe-in is the same for both speakers. What it can’t tell you is optimum toe-in for your particular speakers. Only listening can do that. A couple of the suggested test tracks will give you a very good gauge as to whether it’s about right.

The best approach, I think, is to spend the time getting the distance and toe-in to the listening position as precise as possible (as you have presumably already done), then proceeding with the REW measurements and corrections.

It turns out my distance and toe-in didn’t need any adjustment. Well, I wasn’t about to try moving one speaker by a third of a millimetre and the other one even less!

If the differences get into centimetres, then adjustment will be needed, but if you’re careful about your speaker setup, you should already be within a millimetre or two anyway.

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Wow, i did not know that. Yeah my corrections over the last two months were in mm. Sometimes i change them a lot just to reference them back later where they came from to confirm their position over and over again. So 10 cm extra from the wall, 10 degree extra toe-in or -out. I keep ending up at the spot i came from.
Thanks for your reply on this, i am gonna start REW and look forward to another step to the best image/stage i can get with my stuff!

@Graeme_Finlayson , thank you for sharing your journey with us. I have greatly enjoyed every step along the way, including the slight diversions. I hope the process only adds to your satisfaction now in the end result.

I am glad I posted my DIY speakers a long time ago, because now I am not sure I would dare display such pedestrian efforts. :slight_smile:

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Thank you!

Don’t beat yourself up. Some of my early DIY efforts wouldn’t even have reached the lofty status of pedestrian!

This project has been 5 years in the making. I’ve had the drivers and crossover components, carbon fibre and resin since 2018. I even cut out the horizontal cabinet sections back then.

It’s taken me 5 years to pluck up the courage to progress with the rest of it. I’ve racked my brain about how to curve the cabinet surfaces, how to integrate the curved end caps, how to fabricate, fit and trim the top and bottom stainless panels, plus all the challenges of laying the carbon fibre, building the resin coats and finishing off to get that nice polished look.

I’ve made it look easy, but I’ve lost sleep figuring out how to do it and there has been an enormous amount of frustration and enforced patience along the way!

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Hats off to you sir, but that’s why Stan is such an important part of this build; he made you complete it by letting you walk him around and allowing you the thinking time you needed…

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Some further tweaking - I haven’t delved into @OCA’s deep phase rabbit hole yet. Post COVID ā€œbrain fogā€ is making anything remotely intellectually taxing nigh on impossible to comprehend. I couldn’t even work out how much carbon and carbon/polyester fabric I needed to reskin the ZRTs, so I gave up and listened to some music instead.

I did, however, manage to rustle up enough brain cells to sort out the bottom octaves a bit better. With ~91 dB sensitivity, 12 mm of linear excursion available on the CA22RNX, and a bucket load of gain still available on the Benchmark front end, I pulled the overall bass up a few dB and lifted the 20 - 40 Hz region up to more or less the same level as the rest of the bass. I also tweked the room curve a little in REW.

Corrected vs target (before):

Corrected vs target (after):

The difference is on the one hand quite subtle, and on the other quite staggering. It’s not bass-heavy - far from it. I’m really not into overpowering, heavy bass. Everything just sounds so much more together. Bass guitar and double bass sound richer, but the overall effect on the sound is so much more. Switching back and forth on the fly between the 2 filters in Muse - the filter without the bass and sub-bass lift sounds a bit ā€œhonkyā€ in the midrange.

With the bass and sub-bass lift, it’s just perfect.

I can’t believe that once-upon-a-time I was the kind of purist who decried DSP. The improvements it can bring to the overall listening experience and enjoyment (after all, isn’t that what it’s all about) are simply huge.

I’ve been too busy enjoying the sound to do much else, but finally this evening, I got aroud to properly drawning out the template layout for the plinths. More progress to follow…

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sorry mate, you had to; think about the WAF… it should never leave the remaining free braincells…

Handsome still! I’m sure your partner finds you so. Also remember wisdom of Red Green…

" If it ain’t broke, you’re not trying."

oh wait…

" If women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

Great build!

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It’s been a heavy, hectic work week so not much time for progress other than thinking and sketches. I spent the late afternoon/early evening roughing out the 5 mm thick aluminium template for the plinth top and bottom panels. Track saw with an Alu cutting blade for the basic shape, then hole saw for the port clearance holes. Some corner radiuses to cut and some holes to drill, but it’s the weekend and I’m back in my happy place.

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Sounds like you have fully recovered from COVID now at least and raring to go again.

I have now found our first bit of shared DIY kit, and it’s a lowly bottle of WD-40 :rofl:

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and an occasional Brewdog product…

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:rofl: I have lots of WD-40! Original, contact cleaner, cutting oil, dry PTFE, lithium grease etc…

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why doesn’t that surprise me at all… we silly people have 1 can and are lucky, Graeme on the other hand… :rofl: :rofl:

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Got my Brewdog advent calendar today!

I’ve also discovered a local micro-brewery which produces some very fine ales and besides bottles, also supplies them in refillable 2 litre stainless steel ā€œgrowlersā€.

Spending tomorrow afternoon at one of their fortnightly beer garden/taproom events :grin:

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Would like to go there too… slightly jealous…

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a can per day???

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Absolutely! A surprise can per day from December 1st until Christmas.