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The Harmonious Table Radio 2.1 Sound System
I have a friend at work that I’ve been wanting to make a radio for. I envisioned a 2.1 system for her, and completed the subwoofer awhile back using a Peerless SLS-P830945, 5-1/4" subwoofer in a tall-but-small tower enclosure.
Here is the link to that post: Harmonious Table Radio Subwoofer - Techtalk Speaker Building, Audio, Video Discussion Forum (parts-express.com)
I finally finished up this project and it sounds quite nice. The amp and preamp are both AliExpress units. The amp advertises as 80 watts per channel for the stereo portion, and 100 watts for the sub portion. There is a low-pass filter, and not TOO terribly high like some of them. It blends fairly nicely.
The drivers for the radio are the Peerless TC9FD18-08 drivers that PE sells and were recommended to me by a few folks here at Tech Talk, although I’ll be darned if I can find that thread. They’re a decent, even-steven sounding speaker… and although I did add a LR filter to it, they didn’t necessarily require it. For the price, they’re pretty sweet.
Here is a before-and-after of the Frequency Response… Red with filter, Blue without.
I didn’t go too crazy with it… I didn’t see the sense as it could be put any number of places, nightstand, shelf, kitchen counter, etc. It’s just a buyout 0.21 mH iron-core coil paralleled with a 5.6 Ohm 10 watt resistor.
I tried a different finish… something that isn’t veneer this time. I was inspired by my niece Summer-Lace, who made some wooden coasters finished in faux Marble for us and they look realistic. I decided to try this on this radio, and it came out pretty good I think. There is a technique to spraying the stuff, but it’s not too hard.
It’s 24 volts at 5 amps coming in from a power brick to get the maximum output from the amp. I brought that down to 12 volts with a Meanwell DC-to-DC isolated convertor for the preamp which needs constant voltage to keep the FM stereo presets in memory. It’s a decent preamp, and it does have knobs, but it’s got it’s issues too, they all do.
I have to play with it for a good week or so to shake it down and make sure everything is working well before I hand it off, but I think she’s going to like it. Between the radio and the sub, it sounds more like a home stereo system, not just a radio. I’m sometimes amazed at how nice fairly inexpensive drivers can be made to sound.
I'll try to get dimensions here soon.
As always, I have to thank all of you guys for the great advice over the years, I draw upon it each and every time I put one of these things together, trust me!
TomZ
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