Building the best surround sound system for my roomate wasn't really my plan. I just wanted to put together a decent speaker that would work for background music. But in the end, I got a little carried away with the design process... I had an extra home theater receiver sitting in storage and figured I could make something pretty easily for her using it. Rachel initially thought that something small like a Bose home theater system (type) of speaker would be fine. She knew better than to get Bose, but liked the general size of some of their designs. So, that was the goal...I wanted to make a small, but better performing speaker than Bose offered A lot of thought went into the design; although they are incredibly simple I wanted them to sound good and did not want to spend much money on parts and materials. The speakers turned out really good… I mean, I was surprised by how musical they were. If speakers could be this good with pretty cheap parts, how good could I make them if I went all out on the design and parts quality? So, I chose low distortion and expensive speaker drivers. Then I worked on making the speaker cabinet inert and resistance to cabinet resonance. The cabinet took some time before finally settling on a complex layered cabinet that uses a round inner chamber. There are no flat walls inside the cabinet accept for the back wall where the binding posts attach. Deep grooves are cut into the walls of the inner chamber resulting in what looks like an accordion of wood on the inside. It’s extremely well damped, dead, and controls the back wave of the speaker driver very well. Try the knuckle rap test on it… your knuckles cracking against the surface will be the only sound heard. The speaker cabinet is incredible.. It may not be easy to build; but it was worth the extra design effort as the musical presentation was just awesome!!!!!
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