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AUDIO FORUMS >> D.I.Y. >> Advice on building plaster speakers.
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Message started by Mike Ruiz Serra on 09/27/21 at 18:22:05

Title: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by Mike Ruiz Serra on 09/27/21 at 18:22:05

Hi there, I'm a furniture designer based in NYC working with experimental materials and manufacturing techniques.

My best selling collection over the past few years is made using a combination of recycled paper fibers and plaster as a binder. Since starting this collection, I've been dying to build a set of speakers using my fibrous plaster material for the cabinets. My reason for this is that one of my biggest inspirations for this collection was mid-century Elipson Loudspeaker designs. They were using a material very similar to what I'm using, and I would love to build something that is a homage to what they were doing many years ago.

I've built some speaker cabinets with this material in the past with some success, but they didn't sound as great as they could have due to my lack of expertise in this realm. After discovering Decware and the wonderful community surrounding efficient single driver systems, I decided to pursue this endeavor more seriously.

I'm about to order a Decware SE84UFO as the heart of the system I'm building. I would love to hear peoples thoughts about what drivers are best suited for this project. I would also really appreciate some tips on calculating the best cabinet volume and port dimensions and how these things will be affected by my spherical cabinet design.

Below I'm attaching links to simple cad sketches of what I'm thinking for this cabinet, photos of previous speakers I've built with this material, a link to my website with my furniture work, and an article on Elipson for those who are not familiar. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

https://ibb.co/mhnCnBX
https://ibb.co/tsF3S2R
https://ibb.co/sRvnSnm
https://ibb.co/wCbnpxZ
https://mikeruizserra.com/Collection-1
https://www.inner-magazines.com/audiophilia/elipson-a-loudspeaker-that-made-new-music/

Title: Re: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by Donnie on 09/27/21 at 21:28:55

Howdy Mike!

Can you elaborate a bit more of what you are wanting to achieve?
How big of a driver do you want to use?

My absolute first thought would be some sort of Lii driver, probably in a 6" or a 8" but that is assuming that you want to go that big.

Are you going for a good looker or a really fine sounding speaker?
The calculations are very doable, even a idiot like me can get things pretty close.

So give me as much info into what you are wanting to achieve.

Title: Re: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by Mike Ruiz Serra on 09/27/21 at 22:52:27

Hey Donnie,

Thanks for the response! I'm thinking either an 8" or 10" driver. The Lii Crystal 10 looks amazing, but I would want to make sure that this sort of cabinet would be appropriate for that driver before spending that much. I'm curious how the Crystal 10's compare to Lii's lower end offerings. I'm also looking at the Seas Prestige Fullrange drivers, but there doesn't seem to be as much info on this one online. It's important to note that the driver must be able to mount from the front. in terms of sound, I'm hoping to achieve an excellent midrange, and enough bass to not need a subwoofer in most settings.

As of now I see these as more of a "looker", and an interesting addition to my furniture offerings. But with that being said I want to source high quality components, and do everything I can to make the cabinets work harmoniously with the drivers. I imagine most of my clients and friends haven't been exposed much to real high fidelity sound systems, I would love to build something that may pleasantly surprise them and introduce them to this world. Hope this helps!

Title: Re: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by Donnie on 09/28/21 at 04:22:50

Mike,

Look at these.
https://www.parts-express.com/Tang-Band-W8-1772-8-Neodymium-Full-Range-Driver-264-893

They are high quality drivers that are designed for fairly small enclosures.

Another idea that I am going to throw out at you would be perhaps building a 2 way speaker using a 8" driver and a Tweeter mounted above. It could have a very simple crossover of just a capacitor on the tweeter.

I have a good idea of what would work for that also.

Title: Re: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by Beerfab on 09/29/21 at 15:46:10

I would contact Clark at Blumenstein Audio.

Title: Re: Advice on building plaster speakers.
Post by EdwardT on 10/01/21 at 14:56:34

Those cad sketches remind me of Soundsphere speakers from the 70s. They incorporated a down firing woofer with tweeters around the sphere and weren’t awful sounding.