when lg reached out to sponsor a video about their new generation of xboom
bluetooth speakers we said okay lg
we'll take your money on one condition the xboom pl7 has to be
way better than anything we at Linus media group can build ourselves for the
same price this doesn't actually happen that often with sponsored videos but
lg basically said lol
come at me bro the fact that you're watching this video means that we have
come at them so stay tuned and see how
we built our own bluetooth speaker using
off-the-shelf components and a little bit of can do spirit
oh and also how it ended up comparing to the lg xboom pl7
first we need to lay out some ground rules number one is the size if we built
a speaker the size of a microwave and called it a portable bluetooth speaker
killer that's kind of a cheap shot on the opposite end of the spectrum making
a smaller speaker something closer to the size of lg's xboom pl5 or pl2 would
have made our lives much more difficult and meant a guaranteed compromise on
sound quality on our part so our diy speaker will be roughly the same size as
lg's pl7 number two is cost we could easily spend thousands
of dollars and hundreds of hours to
handcraft an artisan bluetooth speaker
but in the real world if you're doing something like this for yourself you're
usually trying to turn money you would have already spent into a fun project or
save a buck an xboom pl7 retails for 179.99 at lg.com so that gives us a
pretty good budget to work with if we're targeting mid-tier bang for the buck
components you'll find everything we use listed in the video description by the
way as for our labor cost i asked matthias to track his time for
this project to find the true cost of the diy method to give ourselves a
fighting chance we settled on bc's minimum wage which converts to
10.73 cents u.s per hour
though to be clear even at that rate we
do not expect to beat lg in this regard
finally when it comes to sound quality we want to be on par if not better than
the xboom now we didn't crack open an
xboom like a technology omelet to see what secrets lie inside but by reading
the packaging and peering through the speaker ports we were able to put
together a pretty comparable spec sheet
getting on to the actual speaker now matthias being a bit of a design nerd
spent a couple of hours scratching down ideas and doodles eventually settling on
a retro modern scandinavian aesthetic it's clean and smooth with an arching
silhouette now we would have loved to have a beautiful brushed aluminum
exterior to go along with the wood features but unfortunately we really
couldn't justify the cost so we altered the design slightly to
allow for 3d printed features for the drivers we went with a pair of
2-inch 8 ohm full range speakers and a single 1-1 8-inch tweeter we would have
preferred to have a tiny two inch subwoofer instead of the tweeter but
unfortunately those were both out of stock and over budget
having a design goal to work towards we then set out to model the various
components in fusion 360. one of the more important parts of the design is
the speaker housing and we opted for a ported design in hopes that it would
improve sound quality using online calculators we found the total volume of
air and how long of a port we needed to
at least theoretically prevent sound buffeting which landed in the
neighborhood of 428 cubic centimeters
and about 25 centimeters long so
that required a little bit of tweaking to the original design
after the initial housing design was completed it was time to do some test
prints to see how everything worked it was then updated to accommodate the
tweeter 3d printed checked for clearance issues
shrunk due to the aforementioned clearance issues then finally 3d printed
one last time and sanded with 220 grit
next the small air gaps where the wires feed into the drivers were filled with
hardening putty and the tops and bottoms of the housings were then epoxied
together and left to cure it's finally starting to look like a
speaker we did a similar modeling and printing
process with the external part of the speaker except that it was too large to
be printed as one monolithic unit so we split the design into three pieces that
could be glued together later they're a little rough but we're gonna
have links to all the parts in the video description if you guys want to download
and play around with them once all the newly adhered components
cured they were sanded to 400 grit then primed with etching primer to assist in
filling in the ridges after the paint dried some of the larger divots were
filled in before re-sanding to 800 grit this time and then it was finally
reprimed painted matte black and finished with a satin clear top coat
meanwhile we used our glowforge to laser cut all of the wood pieces and then
sanded them through the range of grits up to 800. two coats of butcher block
oil made the wood grain more pronounced then once dried we gave them three coats
of satin wood varnish and after the third coat they were lightly re-sanded
to 800 grit to get rid of any grain rise before spraying them with their fourth
and final coat the front and back panels were then glued to their inner
counterpart that slots into the top of the external housing and due to a slight
oversight the screw holes in the housing and on the speaker grilles were drilled
and tapped after everything else was finished now
originally we were planning to use a well-reviewed chinese amplifier board
from dam goo but since it shipped two weeks late we had to find an alternative
matthias ended up sacrificing one of his personal cheap bluetooth speakers to
harvest the board from inside it but then at the last possible second the
damn goo board arrived and matthias hastily installed it only a few hours
before right now a few hours ago before filming
it's bluetooth 5.0 it supports up to 40 watts of total speaker power it requires
no soldering to work with and while it doesn't have a built-in battery
management system or an aux cable input at eight dollars i think we can forgive
some of those deficiencies anyway it only cost us another six
dollars for a type c charging board for our twin banks of four genuine 18650
cells and after some last minute paint repairs and
finishing touches the whole project is for better or for worse
done i'm actually really excited about this like
come on guys it's not perfect there are definitely some warts and a
handful of design changes that would have been beneficial
but we've already blown our time budget on this one and it's time to
judge the result like many bluetooth speakers you pair it
by holding down the button on the bottom which is actually also the volume knob
and it automatically shows up in your bluetooth devices list and gives a
notification tone through the speaker to tell you that you're connected which
leaves only the big question
how does it sound i feel like you know i'm in my i'm in my
listening room you know i need my glass of wine oh wait
no i don't oh lttstore.com water bottle
hit me with some jams
this is my jam
okay cut it for now
i don't know what surprises me more the deficiencies
or how surprisingly adequate it is all things considered the base is a
little muddy to do it again i think there's no way we can compromise and
leave out the subwoofer absolutely not although
in fairness you know even though this was absolutely a first attempt for us
you can really tell that the porting in the back does help enhance it it just
lacks the clarity that we would get with a proper base focus driver i feel like
the tweeter's not contributing much either if anything the highs are a
little harsh and the base is a little muddy
but if i were to compare it to just like kind of a cheap bluetooth speaker
i think we're in really good shape here as long as we don't mind
you know the weight and some warts this is this is some excellent use of hot
glue by the way 100 10 of 10 approved you haven't actually listened to a pl7
yet have you so matthias has listened to his own
speaker but has only evaluated it in a vacuum
i'm like i'm really excited
i think we got a little wrecked son
that is it's pretty tight
here turn it down here hold on hold on
okay matthias in fairness to you
your highs are more articulate
but almost in a way that's like imbalanced and a little detrimental to
the sound and you can absolutely tell where the
engineering went into i mean that's the popular sound profile right
is that that like bumpy heavy like bass heavy
sound and it's right in the name right x boom
they definitely got us and we're not smaller or we're not the
same size even
did you just say close enough
a little bigger
the lgx boom go pl7 is linked in the video description having the sound tuned
using meridian audio technology results in less distortion at the highest
volumes for our great listening experience if you want to see how meridian makes their 100 000 speakers
you can click this video right here by using the internal air pressure to
move the external dual passive radiators the xboom pl lineup can deliver more
bass to give superior full range sound in a compact package and it features
ipx5 water resistance oh we didn't even think of that for ours and up to 24
hours of battery life it's got led lights that pulse to the beat of your
music we didn't think of that either and you can control your speaker with
the lg xboom bluetooth app okay
well hey at least we were cheaper sort of the
total cost of parts before shipping and taxes came to 139 us dollars which
is by no means cheap but is still slightly cheaper than the xboom go pl7
weighing in at 179.99 although in fairness after the battery
the single most expensive line item on our project was
the time involved to make it 62 and a
half hours apparently by matthias count
so using our labor calculation of 1073 times hours that comes out to a massive
670 dollars and 63 cents bringing the
grand total of our diy adventure to a staggering
809.72 cents how could we have shaved that down maybe maybe sand it a little
less
don't use three different materials um
you know maybe spend more on having like a subwoofer
and like spend more on your drivers and maybe a little less on your scandinavian
design although you know what i personally think it looks wonderful even
if you know it ended up getting its butt kicked by an off-the-shelf solution it
hey it really says you know i care you know that's what it
says so in closing if you want to spend the time to design and build a bluetooth
speaker the way you want it while also having a diy project that can last
anywhere from a few hours to days or even weeks then
hardy matthias recommendation thumbs up two thumbs up
two thumbs up especially if you love playing around in
cad software as for our original goals
well i mean you could make an argument that we did
okay as far as size is concerned but i really can't recommend following our
design as a cost-saving measure unless you just really love making things and
ignore the time factor and unless you really know what you're doing beating
the sound quality of a properly balanced and tuned solution like the pl7
isn't going to be easy thanks again to lg for sponsoring this video check it
out on their site or at the link in the video description it's always great when
we can use sponsor money to go on an adventure like this isn't it
yep that's that's 800 of lg's money hard
at work right there thanks lg i will treasure it always