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Apple are offering me Apple Music for £2.99 p/mth for 6 mths and I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it.
The only reason I could see for it would be to try and download hi res versions of tracks I already own/ripped, and maybe name some of the nameless/orphan tracks I’ve got in my library, which I’m (still) hoping to port over to my nas so I can stream it everywhereBut are there other benefits?
Let me know -
eBay? It was a big selling model. However, what's the problem, have you taken it out to have a look at the foam surrounds, cone, suspension, wiring? Many things are repairable.
Am interested because one of my Wharfedale woofers has distortion. I can replicate the noise when I tap the cone, think it needs reattaching to the surround and replacement woofers aren't obviously available. -
Hello, I realise this community may appreciate the following.
After a few drinks with a good friend, I got pitched on the best DIY speaker setup they had ever achieved—single full-range driver, nice big front-facing port. A bit of decorator’s caulk, and Bob’s your uncle. I decided to take a break from the intense DIY I should have been focusing on and spent the weekend—almost a year to the day, actually—building these slim bookshelf speakers that pack a punch, using the Dayton Audio 3" Full-Range Polycone driver. The bang for buck on these is off the charts.
A trip to B&Q got me the wood, and they even cut the sheet to the right width for me, which was great since almost all the speaker parts are the same width, with just a few exceptions. Walking away from the till, I realised we’d only been charged for the cuts. Absolute win-win.
I borrowed a friend's skill saw and set up on the balcony. It took a while and produced a lot more sawdust than I was expecting. Note: I wouldn’t recommend doing this in socks in hindsight. But it was simple enough—until I had to recut everything all over again after realising I hadn’t accounted for the width of the saw. Oh well. Let that be a word of warning for anyone else. Thankfully, I had plenty of spare board.
Onto the finishing. I drilled holes for the plugs and the driver using an interesting medieval drill attachment—a solid 12" bar that lets you fix sharp pointed cutters to it. Absolutely lethal, but it was my only option as the sun had set, and I was determined to finish within the weekend. I needed these speakers!
Assembly happened the next day, Sunday. I used the contents of an old teddy bear, along with some upcycled packaging foam, fixed in place with a hot glue gun. This was a bit of a finger-in-the-air exercise, but I think I did a good job. Attaching the drivers to the sockets was awkward—soldering everything together tested all my high school know-how, but I’m relieved to say the connections are still holding! Despite my best efforts, blasting a fairly objectionable Oasis track while finishing off a bottle of port with the neighbour, who drunkenly insisted there "wasn’t enough wall of sound." I agreed—you need a down-firing sub to get that.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind. Next was the caulking—semi-permanently and importantly sealing one side of the speaker boxes. Pilot holes first, then screws gingerly fixed to avoid splitting the chipboard. (I recommend avoiding the corners and instead screwing into the middle of the edges to prevent splitting—something I only figured out by the second speaker.)
For the second side, I used a trick: masking tape around the panel while caulking the edges of the box. This allowed me to re-open and adjust the stuffing or tweak the port length to dial in the sound.
Total build cost: about £15 per speaker. But the experience? 10/10. I’m convinced you’d struggle to get this level of quality at a similar price point.
For amplification, I went down the experimental open-source, low-power route—using a Raspberry Pi with a Pi IQAudio DigiAMP+ hat. It does like to restart itself occasionally, but overall, it works 100% of the time about 80% of the time. Which, for free software that links to Spotify, lets me load my own uncompressed audio files, and can be managed via a web browser on my local network, I’m pretty happy with.
I’d recommend this route to anyone looking for a fun weekend (or two) project. Happy to share more details if anyone’s interested!
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A trip to B&Q got me the wood
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Hey @branwen sure, would be more than happy to provide the plans and a list of componets and tool. Circular saw is probably the most important, keeping edges true 90deg. Only really need a drill and a hole saw afterwards. Drop me a DM
I would like to say that's intentional phaha @gbj_tester
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Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new
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@coppiThat
Straight out the book, that one, innit. Top curve, Fig.2.
Joking aside, these speakers come from an era when the driver’s Thiele and Small parameters were correctly used to design a vented box to suit the driver and give a particular response. They probably sound very controlled and balanced.
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