So as I have upgraded a few components over the last few months I now have some spare bits of kit stored away, 1 x pi, 1 x HifiBerry Amp+, Celstion F1 bookshelf speakers (From a time they still made hifi speakers). So I have decided to turn the speakers into a combined endpoint.
I plan to mount the pi and HifiBerry in the speaker enclosure of one speaker so its hidden away. Ordered in a mountable DC socket and wire to hook power up to the outside of the cabinet, along with a reversible mounted usb socket so I can use a wireless usb adaptor also mounted on the outside.
Then its rewiring the external speaker connectors from the crossover so the crossover will be fed by one of the Amp+ outputs not decided on left/right yet. Then rewire the speaker connectors so they can act as a patch to the other speaker from the amp.
Only issue I invisage will be making sure the crossover does not get in the way of the boards and maybe be adequate ventilation. I guess I’ll have to remove the current wadding to ensure its not a fire hazard.
Will likely go for dietpi so I can have Spotify as well as Roon bridge.
Won’t get chance to start until next weekend but looking forward to the challenge.
So this is now done, Took me a bit longer than expected but I am really happy with it, a nice neat little solution Was very nervous about drilling into a pair of fully working speakers but its been worth it.
The pi and hifiberry amp is neatly stuck to the inside of the left speaker cabinet using velcro fasteners so its easily removed if I need to reflash the card. I got all the wires pretty tidy inside given there is not much room to work in. No pictures as having got it all working reluctant to open it up again unless I really need to. The wireless adaptor works really well having it mounted on the outside of the speaker cabinet via a reversible usb a2b surface mount adapter and a2b cable inside. I did scuff the cabinet a litte drilling the holes but its nothing major.
Disconnecting the crossover from the connectors was pretty easy so i could then turn the connectors to outputs to the satellite speaker. Just need to get some neater speaker cable with bananas plugs and its all done.
Sounds pretty good for a 20 year old budget book shelves and now fully independent powered one/two box system for Roon and Spotify. Not sure where to put it yet. Probably give it my daughter as her first foray into a half decent system.
Looks good. I have a pair of these in one of the bedrooms but didn’t realise they were that old! They were downstairs in the kitchen for ages though so not really surprised.
A while back I built my own mono Roon Speaker from a spare centre speaker I had lying around unused. No surgery on the speaker was required. It had a split crossover so I drove the woofer from the left channel and the tweeter from the right, so using the full power of the IQAudio Amp+. I then set Roon to mono the signal in DSP and it worked a treat.
Was thinking about doing this using one of the Beocreate boards. That way, you pull the crossover out and get DSP based crossover in the digital domain… May do it one day
I was considering using a Beoceate but the cost was more than the speakers cost originally and I had the hifiberry doing nothing. But its got me thinking about creating another and buying some 2md hand speakers and you can use two of those per speaker if needed and link them by the optical and make them truly active, which is appealing. This DIY thing gets a bit addictive.
Your probably right they are probably not exactly 20 years but not far off. I had them in my first purchased flat in the London area which was 1999 or 2000 so not far off. Got them as an interim between a pair of B&W floorstanders which would not fit and Monitor Audio Silver Bookshelves I ended up getting.
I kept getting distracted by speakers that were a little on the high side. I did think some KEF Q15 would work nicely and they can be had for reasonable money.
Yes, you should always avoid spending £2000 on a pair of active speakers with a certain reputation for unreliability! The cost of the Beocreate is only justifiable if you have some good but old speakers around to use (which is the whole selling point of the Beocreate). Otherwise, decent active speakers can be purchased from only a few hundred (£ or $) upwards; just add a Pi or a Chromecast to Roonify them.
I have ended up changing the USB wireless dongle to be an Edimax ew-7811uac so I can get better throughput. Took me hours to find the correct version of the driver to download and build to work on the 5GHz channels. But its done and nice and speedy now.
Neat project! Too bad there are no pictures of the insides!
I’m a big fan of modifying old electronics. I just added a microcontroller to an old Carver tuner so I can control it remotely. I’ll write it up soon and then post a link in this forum.
The bug has me now. I need a speaker for my bedroom. So next pay day I am buying a Qacoustics 2000Ci, Its a centre speaker so going to convert it. Its the ideal size for my bedroom, it comes in a nice gloss white and I can pick one up for about £50. I know how they sound too as I have one already in my AV setup and they are very good for the money. I am going to get the new Amp 2 from HifiBerry which is higher output than the old one and handles hires just debating buying a new pi3 with inbuilt wireless 5Ghz or use my last first gen b+.
Question on your next project, the single speaker: How do you get the left/right stereo into mono? Does the Amp2 have a setting for this, or can Roon do it with DSP?
I’m looking at a few options such as bridging the amp so its mono output . Been chatting to someone on the hifiberry forum and that’s what they did and it works for them but is not a supported method . Or I have found some Alsa options to mixdown. As I want Spotify as well as Roon I can just rely on Roons DSP to do it.
2nd one done. Mono speaker for bedroom. Using 2nd hand Qacoustics 2000ci and raspberry pi3 b+, HifiBerry Amp2. A little easier to do as it has in built wireless so only one hole needed to be drilled. And did not need to rewire the binding posts just disconnected them from the crossover and used some terminal blocks to connect to speaker wire from the Amp2. But not sure the wireless signal is strong enough to get 5ghz through the case. It was fine outside but struggles inside. So may have to settle for 2.4ghz.
Roon DSP downmixing to mono found out how on this very forum. I feel I need to do some EQ to balance it out a bit for music but need some advice here as I don’t really get EQ.
Courier managed to damage the cabinet in the lower left so some touchup required to sort that and the back where I added the power socket.
Pretty pleased it does sound pretty good to and way cheaper than any other RAAT speaker endpoint I could buy to fit in the bedroom. No I need to work out how to get Raspotify mono on it to. I think this might be a bit too hard to achieve.
