if you're anything like me you probably spend a lot of time in peaceful Solitude
contemplating the mysteries of the universe and when you're not doing that
relaxing at home with a glass of white wine listening to the soothing melodic
tones of your favorite artist on a high-end speaker
setup but when it comes to home audio
our high-priced off-the-shelf designer models really worth what they cost or is
it possible for someone without a lot of experience in audio engineering or even
woodworking to put together a set of speakers that can stand up to them for a
fraction of the cost let's find out
shall
we tunnel bear is the simple VPN app
that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet to try
tunnel bear for free check out the link in the video description we set out to
build a set of trrix MTM TL speakers
that we bought from Parts express.com this kit is one of the
simpler ones and often recommended for people just getting into DIY audio and
it checks off a couple of key boxes for us promising high audio Fidelity at a
relatively low cost and while it's too early to say much about sound quality
the cost comparison looks pretty good by
by building our own cabinets rather than buying prefabbed ones we shaved almost
$100 off the price even after accounting
for buying our own construction materials and renting the tools we
didn't have making our total cost around
a quarter of what I paid for the kef Q
500s in my home theater that we're going to compare against so let's get started
our cabinet is slightly different from the one that would be supplied by Parts
Express as we ended up adopting some modifications suggested by regalian
o.com if you're interested in reading about his experience building the same
speaker set and a more in-depth guide to construction check out the link below we
built both speakers out of one 4x8 sheet
of MDF board cut into 2x4 strips for
ease of transportation we first marked out all the pieces we intended to get
out of each sheet then cut them with a combination of the table and circular
saw a good Carpenter will tell you measure twice cut once and while that's
undeniably great advice here in the studio we tend to follow the cut pray
love then keep on cutting philosophy that I learned from that doctor that I
used to visit back when I wasn't covered by the company Health Plan I don't know
if I'm going to let Tyler write these scripts anymore anyway once we cut all
of these we needed to put holes for the woofers and and tweeters in the cut of
wood that will be the front of the speaker I'm sure there's a specific name
for that piece but I don't want to baffle you or me with too much audio
terminology so we'll just call it the front we used a router and a jig to get
the circle cuts and recesses if you want
tips on how to make your own jig for doing circular Cuts like this check out
this link with all our pieces ready it's
time to stick them together we want to leave one side off the cabinet for now
so that we still have access to do all of our wiring Pro tip it's very
important to drill pilot holes which we totally nailed and to use cabinet screws
with counter sunk holes in the first place so you don't have to go back and
redo them to end up with a more clean look with our cabinet fully constructed
the next stage is to put together our crossover the crossover is the part of
your sound system that takes the single input signal coming from your stereo
computer TV or what have you and that breaks it up into multiple output
signals containing different frequency bands that are then sent to the
specialized loudspeakers best equipped to handle them our trrix kit contains
two woofers and one Tweeter woofers
handle lower audio frequencies while tweeters are designed to handle the
higher end of the spectrum you can learn more about this here the tritrix uses a
second order crossover which means it uses a double filter to separate out the
frequencies one to the woofers and one to the Tweeter when building a crossover
with multiple inductors it's important to set them up so the inductors don't
talk to each other this has nothing to do with our constant fear of a machine
Uprising by allowing Electronics to communicate but rather to do with
preventing the two coils from creating Mutual inductance by being orientated in
the same direction in order to avoid that we're going to lay one horizontally
and the other one up vertically then once you've soldered all
the connections between your inductors capacitors and ground you can place the
crossover in the cabinet Mount your speakers and wire it all together to
avoid Having excess wire cluttering up your interior drop wires down from your
speaker and cut them at the appropriate length to meet up with your crossover
the woofers in this system are wired in series which means their resistance is
added together increasing the overall resistance that the amplifier sees and
letting it run cooler and more efficiently after the wiring is all
taken care of we just stuff this baby full of nylon fiber and seal it back up
at this point a master Carpenter might go straight into painting or covering
the cabinets with vinyl but we're going to have to do a little bit of cosmetic
tweaking and much like my aesthetician
our primary tools are going to be polyfill and a power sander now that
these speakers look a little more like the version I saw on Pinterest it's time
to find out how well they perform our three lucky volunteers were blindfolded
and subjected to these speakers and my
q500 and they were then asked if they could tell which was which and to score
the audio quality on a scale of 1 to 10 first one sounded like sharper like the
high notes are like all a little bit clearer but the second one it sounded
better in the low but the it was just kind of drowned out in the mid let's go
the first one like an eight okay and then the second one like a six okay I
think first one was better think it's t of louder and more sharp second one was
kind of more dull and I think I'd rate them probably a seven and a six the
second set was okay in the highs and the but still a little cloudy to me and it
was in desperate need of a subwoofer for me I'd give the first one like 7 and 1/2
and the second one like five and a
half okay so there you have it in the end our subjects could tell the
difference but our DIY build came in only slightly beneath the speakers that
I spent a large chunk of my YouTube money on for my birthday earlier this
year so if you're looking to put together an audio system I'd recommend
saving a considerable amount of money by putting it together yourself although I
would add the caveat that if you really want to make sure you end up with a
solid final product it's probably worth it to pick up a kit with pre-cut cabinet
pieces unless you are extremely confident in your woodworking
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10% so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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