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when lg reached out to sponsor a video about their new generation of xboom

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bluetooth speakers we said okay lg

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we'll take your money on one condition the xboom pl7 has to be

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way better than anything we at Linus media group can build ourselves for the

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same price this doesn't actually happen that often with sponsored videos but

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lg basically said lol

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come at me bro the fact that you're watching this video means that we have

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come at them so stay tuned and see how

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we built our own bluetooth speaker using

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off-the-shelf components and a little bit of can do spirit

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oh and also how it ended up comparing to the lg xboom pl7

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first we need to lay out some ground rules number one is the size if we built

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a speaker the size of a microwave and called it a portable bluetooth speaker

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killer that's kind of a cheap shot on the opposite end of the spectrum making

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a smaller speaker something closer to the size of lg's xboom pl5 or pl2 would

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have made our lives much more difficult and meant a guaranteed compromise on

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sound quality on our part so our diy speaker will be roughly the same size as

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lg's pl7 number two is cost we could easily spend thousands

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of dollars and hundreds of hours to

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handcraft an artisan bluetooth speaker

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but in the real world if you're doing something like this for yourself you're

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usually trying to turn money you would have already spent into a fun project or

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save a buck an xboom pl7 retails for 179.99 at lg.com so that gives us a

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pretty good budget to work with if we're targeting mid-tier bang for the buck

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components you'll find everything we use listed in the video description by the

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way as for our labor cost i asked matthias to track his time for

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this project to find the true cost of the diy method to give ourselves a

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fighting chance we settled on bc's minimum wage which converts to

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10.73 cents u.s per hour

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though to be clear even at that rate we

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do not expect to beat lg in this regard

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finally when it comes to sound quality we want to be on par if not better than

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the xboom now we didn't crack open an

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xboom like a technology omelet to see what secrets lie inside but by reading

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the packaging and peering through the speaker ports we were able to put

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together a pretty comparable spec sheet

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getting on to the actual speaker now matthias being a bit of a design nerd

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spent a couple of hours scratching down ideas and doodles eventually settling on

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a retro modern scandinavian aesthetic it's clean and smooth with an arching

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silhouette now we would have loved to have a beautiful brushed aluminum

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exterior to go along with the wood features but unfortunately we really

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couldn't justify the cost so we altered the design slightly to

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allow for 3d printed features for the drivers we went with a pair of

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2-inch 8 ohm full range speakers and a single 1-1 8-inch tweeter we would have

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preferred to have a tiny two inch subwoofer instead of the tweeter but

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unfortunately those were both out of stock and over budget

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having a design goal to work towards we then set out to model the various

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components in fusion 360. one of the more important parts of the design is

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the speaker housing and we opted for a ported design in hopes that it would

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improve sound quality using online calculators we found the total volume of

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air and how long of a port we needed to

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at least theoretically prevent sound buffeting which landed in the

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neighborhood of 428 cubic centimeters

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and about 25 centimeters long so

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that required a little bit of tweaking to the original design

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after the initial housing design was completed it was time to do some test

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prints to see how everything worked it was then updated to accommodate the

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tweeter 3d printed checked for clearance issues

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shrunk due to the aforementioned clearance issues then finally 3d printed

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one last time and sanded with 220 grit

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next the small air gaps where the wires feed into the drivers were filled with

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hardening putty and the tops and bottoms of the housings were then epoxied

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together and left to cure it's finally starting to look like a

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speaker we did a similar modeling and printing

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process with the external part of the speaker except that it was too large to

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be printed as one monolithic unit so we split the design into three pieces that

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could be glued together later they're a little rough but we're gonna

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have links to all the parts in the video description if you guys want to download

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and play around with them once all the newly adhered components

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cured they were sanded to 400 grit then primed with etching primer to assist in

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filling in the ridges after the paint dried some of the larger divots were

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filled in before re-sanding to 800 grit this time and then it was finally

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reprimed painted matte black and finished with a satin clear top coat

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meanwhile we used our glowforge to laser cut all of the wood pieces and then

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sanded them through the range of grits up to 800. two coats of butcher block

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oil made the wood grain more pronounced then once dried we gave them three coats

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of satin wood varnish and after the third coat they were lightly re-sanded

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to 800 grit to get rid of any grain rise before spraying them with their fourth

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and final coat the front and back panels were then glued to their inner

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counterpart that slots into the top of the external housing and due to a slight

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oversight the screw holes in the housing and on the speaker grilles were drilled

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and tapped after everything else was finished now

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originally we were planning to use a well-reviewed chinese amplifier board

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from dam goo but since it shipped two weeks late we had to find an alternative

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matthias ended up sacrificing one of his personal cheap bluetooth speakers to

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harvest the board from inside it but then at the last possible second the

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damn goo board arrived and matthias hastily installed it only a few hours

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before right now a few hours ago before filming

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it's bluetooth 5.0 it supports up to 40 watts of total speaker power it requires

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no soldering to work with and while it doesn't have a built-in battery

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management system or an aux cable input at eight dollars i think we can forgive

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some of those deficiencies anyway it only cost us another six

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dollars for a type c charging board for our twin banks of four genuine 18650

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cells and after some last minute paint repairs and

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finishing touches the whole project is for better or for worse

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done i'm actually really excited about this like

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come on guys it's not perfect there are definitely some warts and a

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handful of design changes that would have been beneficial

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but we've already blown our time budget on this one and it's time to

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judge the result like many bluetooth speakers you pair it

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by holding down the button on the bottom which is actually also the volume knob

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and it automatically shows up in your bluetooth devices list and gives a

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notification tone through the speaker to tell you that you're connected which

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leaves only the big question

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how does it sound i feel like you know i'm in my i'm in my

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listening room you know i need my glass of wine oh wait

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no i don't oh lttstore.com water bottle

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hit me with some jams

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this is my jam

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okay cut it for now

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i don't know what surprises me more the deficiencies

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or how surprisingly adequate it is all things considered the base is a

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little muddy to do it again i think there's no way we can compromise and

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leave out the subwoofer absolutely not although

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in fairness you know even though this was absolutely a first attempt for us

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you can really tell that the porting in the back does help enhance it it just

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lacks the clarity that we would get with a proper base focus driver i feel like

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the tweeter's not contributing much either if anything the highs are a

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little harsh and the base is a little muddy

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but if i were to compare it to just like kind of a cheap bluetooth speaker

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i think we're in really good shape here as long as we don't mind

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you know the weight and some warts this is this is some excellent use of hot

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glue by the way 100 10 of 10 approved you haven't actually listened to a pl7

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yet have you so matthias has listened to his own

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speaker but has only evaluated it in a vacuum

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i'm like i'm really excited

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i think we got a little wrecked son

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that is it's pretty tight

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here turn it down here hold on hold on

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okay matthias in fairness to you

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your highs are more articulate

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but almost in a way that's like imbalanced and a little detrimental to

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the sound and you can absolutely tell where the

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engineering went into i mean that's the popular sound profile right

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is that that like bumpy heavy like bass heavy

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sound and it's right in the name right x boom

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they definitely got us and we're not smaller or we're not the

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same size even

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did you just say close enough

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a little bigger

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the lgx boom go pl7 is linked in the video description having the sound tuned

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using meridian audio technology results in less distortion at the highest

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volumes for our great listening experience if you want to see how meridian makes their 100 000 speakers

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you can click this video right here by using the internal air pressure to

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move the external dual passive radiators the xboom pl lineup can deliver more

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bass to give superior full range sound in a compact package and it features

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ipx5 water resistance oh we didn't even think of that for ours and up to 24

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hours of battery life it's got led lights that pulse to the beat of your

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music we didn't think of that either and you can control your speaker with

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the lg xboom bluetooth app okay

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well hey at least we were cheaper sort of the

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total cost of parts before shipping and taxes came to 139 us dollars which

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is by no means cheap but is still slightly cheaper than the xboom go pl7

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weighing in at 179.99 although in fairness after the battery

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the single most expensive line item on our project was

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the time involved to make it 62 and a

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half hours apparently by matthias count

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so using our labor calculation of 1073 times hours that comes out to a massive

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670 dollars and 63 cents bringing the

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grand total of our diy adventure to a staggering

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809.72 cents how could we have shaved that down maybe maybe sand it a little

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less

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don't use three different materials um

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you know maybe spend more on having like a subwoofer

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and like spend more on your drivers and maybe a little less on your scandinavian

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design although you know what i personally think it looks wonderful even

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if you know it ended up getting its butt kicked by an off-the-shelf solution it

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hey it really says you know i care you know that's what it

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says so in closing if you want to spend the time to design and build a bluetooth

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speaker the way you want it while also having a diy project that can last

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anywhere from a few hours to days or even weeks then

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hardy matthias recommendation thumbs up two thumbs up

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two thumbs up especially if you love playing around in

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cad software as for our original goals

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well i mean you could make an argument that we did

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okay as far as size is concerned but i really can't recommend following our

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design as a cost-saving measure unless you just really love making things and

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ignore the time factor and unless you really know what you're doing beating

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the sound quality of a properly balanced and tuned solution like the pl7

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isn't going to be easy thanks again to lg for sponsoring this video check it

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out on their site or at the link in the video description it's always great when

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we can use sponsor money to go on an adventure like this isn't it

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yep that's that's 800 of lg's money hard

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at work right there thanks lg i will treasure it always