Loud bluetooth speaker

[SentinelAeon]

Hello,

A while ago i made a nice bluetooth speaker for a person - it consisted of 2x50W bluetooth amplifier, a Dayton audio TCP115 8 ohm (amplifier suplied only 30W to the woofer because of it being 8 ohm) and some cheap 4$ chinese tweeter. While he is happy with the speaker, he now asked me if i could make another speaker, but louder. It will be a 12L or 15L enclosure or could go even bigger if necesary.

So what i need now is two:

1) A woofer for 30€ or 30$. It can be of any size, as long as bass is decent and sensitivity is great.
2) A tweeter for 15€ or less.

Amplifier will be either 1x50W or 1x100W. Bass is important but F3 can be as high as 60Hz. Sound quality is always welcome but is not that important, the most important is loudness. The way he explained it to me is he uses this speaker ony his farm, his friends come and they have a picnic. Alcohol use is involved. So yeah, loudness is the most important. I have seen some really nice woofers in that price range that could give me as much as 10dB increase over dayton TCP115 8 ohm. I hope you can help me.

[Chris Roemer]

IF you redid your build as an MTM (2 8ohm woofers in parallel - for a 4ohm load) you'll gain +6dB in sensitivity. Box size will double.

[tomzarbo]

You could also look into a few of the pro sound speakers PE sells. Very efficient but not as much bass, sounds like what your friend needs.

TomZ

Sorry, I didn't look to see that you were already considering a pro sound speaker. I need to have a talk with Capt. Obvious.

[SentinelAeon]

More than 1 woofer isnt an option because of the cost and battery drain. I am looking for a single high efficient one. The best i found so far for under 30$ is this:

https://www.soundimports.eu/en/dayto...o-pa165-8.html

92.9dB at 8 ohms and will get me down to 65Hz in 15L box. Anyone found anything even better ?

[a4eaudio]

I think you should reconsider Chris Roemer's suggestion. The cost isn't relevant if 2 TCP115's cost about the same as 1 high-sensitivity driver. Some Class D amps are 2-ohm stable. If you could find one, then two TCP115-4s in parallel would give you sensitivity of 92.8db.

Also, search the forum on power supplies and watts. Regardless of what the amp says, 50w, 100w, 200w, it is constrained by the power supply. A 12v power supply will get you about 10w into 8 ohm speakers regardless if the amp is rated 100w or not.

[SentinelAeon]

I am using 25V power suply which is max for those amplifiers.

As for 2 TCP115-4 ... true, it will give me more power but will also draw more power and battery life is an issue here ..

[SentinelAeon]

Ok so beside pa165 dayton, there is also this speaker, has better bass but about 3dB lower sensitivity. Same price, but will be easier since most my amps give full power at 4 ohm and pa165 is only 8 ohm version. Not sure though.

https://www.soundimports.eu/en/dayto...RoCMgMQAvD_BwE

[LOUT]

Compared to a single speaker, a pair of speakers that end up equaling about the same sensitivity shouldn't draw more power or battery-life. I think a pair of TCP114-8 should be about as loud and efficient as a single DC130B-4, but the pair of TCP115-8 will cost a little more but also have more clean bass headroom so if you WANT to push them even louder, you can. The pair of TCP115-8's will also allow deeper bass from a smaller box compared to a single DC130b-4.

The PA165-8 can still get louder on fewer watts because of its ridiculous efficiency, but its low XMAX (because it's a midwoofer) means it'll probably run out of clean headroom around 100-102db....a little louder than the DC130b-4, but a decent ways behind the pair of TCP woofers.


If you want to compare woofers' bass output, using a free box/cabinet simulator will probably show more accurate results than simply comparing the speaker Frequency measurements...because a lot of their bass output will depend more on the box+port and woofer combination rather than just the woofer's FR specs.
I'm only guessing you might be comparing their FR specs because you mentioned the DC having better bass than the PA165, which I think only happens if you're limited to a pretty small box while looking for deeper bass (which you've already said isn't a huge issue for you) or maybe if you're comparing their FR data.

[SentinelAeon]

Im using QSpeakers program for every speaker to look at their bass, calculate port, etc.

I still do not understand how 2 TCP115 can draw as much power as 1 PA165 and be louder at same power. TCP115 8 ohm is 81.9dB. If we have 2 TCP115 8 ohm that is 84.9dB for 2 speakers. PA165 is 92.9dB. So that is 8dB louder. Even if we add another 3dB because TCP115 are in parallel so impedance together drops to 4 Ohm, PA165 is still 5dB louder. Which is about 50%. Did i calculate something wrong here ? 2x TCP115 and 1x PA165 have the same price, its 2x14€ vs 1x29€.

Ok so i have to decide between this two options. It would be problematic indeed if PA165 runs out of juice at high volume because of bass, causing distortion etc.

My next order will be about 10 TCP115 woofers and i might aswell order one PA165 and test it myself. I should be getting a dB meter right about that time so i can compare which is louder.

[SentinelAeon]

Could you help me go through the woofers on soundimports to help me decide ? I found some more nice woofers of similar price that might be better than PA165:

https://www.soundimports.eu/en/sb-ac...20pfc30-8.html

https://www.soundimports.eu/en/monacor-spx-200wp.html

[LOUT]

I still do not understand how 2 TCP115 can draw as much power as 1 PA165 and be louder at same power.

I said 2 TCP115 should be about equal power and loudness as the DC130B, not the PA165, and the pair of TCP115 should have more headroom (both wattage-handling and XMAX) if you want to push them farther. Looking again, I must've mixed something up and gotten that equal power/volume part wrong though...it looks like the pair of TCP115 are less efficient than both the DC and the PA.

The PA165 should be louder watt-per-watt than either the pair of TCP115 or the single DC130B, but the pair of TCP115 should still have more headroom for clean bass while the PA165 will probably run out of clean bass somewhere after roughly 5-15watts. I think the pair of TCP115's might be able to stay pretty clean up to 50-60watts.
I think the PA165 or DC130B-4 should help toward the longest battery-life because of their higher efficiency, but I have no idea by how much nor if it'll be a meaningful amount.

[SentinelAeon]

I might aswel order both tcp115, PA165 and DC130B-4 and test them and see what i get. The amp i am using right now gives no audiable distortion on any speaker i tested, even on maximum volume. So if PA165 gives no distortion, that would be great. If not, DC130B-4 has great sensibility, about 3dB lower than PA165. If all else fails, i can go to TCP115, might even use 4 ohm version.

I have even been playing with the idea of putting woofer on 1 channel and then on channel 2 do a crossover of tweeter + some loud full range. Ofcourse that would mean frequencies of tweeter and full range will be doubled and sound quality will be far from optimal. But for this particular person, the way he told me, he really cares about loudness. And the way he described me his parties, for some reason i imagine drunk people running around with their underwear on their head. I kind of cant imagine them caring that much about sound quality. Even my parties, when people get tipsy, they just want to hear their favourite song from youth as loud as possible and to have some bass (even if its 1 note bass) so they feel it in their chest. Battery life might be less important since i got some cheap cells and will prolly do a 6S2P setup. Right now the person has 2x25W amp, TCP115 8 ohm and he said the speaker lasted him 3 parties without charging. I dont know, i guess i will know more when i got all the speakers and can hear them.

As for enclosure, i think about 15L will be perfectly fine. He said, i dont care about the size, i just have to carry the speaker from my house a few meters to the place. And that he will never use that big speaker for anything else, like going to the beach.

[SentinelAeon]

I said 2 TCP115 should be about equal power and loudness as the DC130B, not the PA165, and the pair of TCP115 should have more headroom (both wattage-handling and XMAX) if you want to push them farther. Looking again, I must've mixed something up and gotten that equal power/volume part wrong though...it looks like the pair of TCP115 are less efficient than both the DC and the PA.

The PA165 should be louder watt-per-watt than either the pair of TCP115 or the single DC130B, but the pair of TCP115 should still have more headroom for clean bass while the PA165 will probably run out of clean bass somewhere after roughly 5-15watts. I think the pair of TCP115's might be able to stay pretty clean up to 50-60watts.
I think the PA165 or DC130B-4 should help toward the longest battery-life because of their higher efficiency, but I have no idea by how much nor if it'll be a meaningful amount.

Allright, i ordered some 100W and 200W amplifier. PA165 is out of the question due to it being 8 ohm, which will only get like 25W out of the amplifier. So i was browsing the store and came to a conclusion that for this price, DC130B-4 is the best bet. I am trying to calculate the difference a friend will use compared to his own speaker. I will write it down so please correct me where i am wrong.


OK, so his old speaker was TCP115 8 ohm, 8 ohm cheap tweeter and 2x25W amp. My measurements show that this amplifier probably gave out about 20W into TCP115, so that is half its rated power.

His old speaker: TCP115 8 ohm is 81.9dB at 8 ohms. But since we only use half its power we remove 3dB from the final equation.

His new speaker: DC130B 4 ohm is 92.1 dB at 4 ohms, which is 89.1dB at 8 ohms. Lets assume i will be able to use its full 40W power with that amplifier. So that alone is 7.2dB difference. But we also have to include that 3dB because TCP115 8 ohm was ran only at half power so difference all together is 10.2dB, which is double the loudness and should be noticable.

Can you verify my calculations ? Ofcourse this is only on paper.

Also as far as port goes, i have 2 options: 1 is deeper bass and flat frequency ilne, which is great for quality. But on the other hand, everything under 60Hz is deep and if i raise the enclosure frequency, i get about +5dB boost under 100Hz which means more loudness. And comment on that ? Calculations in attachment

[Millstonemike]

Using two woofers won't draw more power unless you increase the volume. But they do give you more SPL when you want it. Go with a 4 ohm woofer (or ywo 8 ohm in parallel). That's the only way to achieve the max wattage rating of the amps. You may also have a gain issue. That is, at max volume, the KAB's might not have enough internal to take a phone's signal and drive it to the max output capabilities of the amp.


Hoffman's Iron Law: Box size - woofer efficiency - Bass extension. You can only optimize two of the three parameters. For example, some Goldwood woofers (low price) are efficient with decent low end extension but they require a large box relative to other drivers. The Goldwood GW-205/4S will extend down to 55 Hz (F3) with 90 dB efficiency but requires a 0.5 ft³ box.

The Tangbang W5-1138 extend down into the low 30's in a 0.25 ft3 box but efficiency suffers at 82 dB.

[SentinelAeon]

Could someone comment on what i wrote ? Is DC130B 4 ohm best for this price and which of the 2 images would you choose if loudness was more important than bass ?