DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[captainjack115]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[QUOTE=rmeinke;2070850]

Home Depot cuts it for you so I get all my XPS from them... sure makes it easier (just ask buke9!! :- ). I like the 1" the best for all but the smallest panel. I've been treating both sides with 2 coats. Using a hair drier to make the process so faster. I can coat and dry a set of panels in less than an hour otherwise it can be a slooooow process.

Ye!

I suppose I can ask the folks at Menards if they'll cut it for me, even for an extra charge. They're just up the road for me, whereas Home Depot is nearly 80 miles.

Well I messed with one of the Ultras last night to compare it to a Thruster. On the corrugated plastic highs were better on the Thruster, OTOH bass seemed better on the Ultra. At one point I held the Ultra up to the wall (common drywall) and did a pink noise test. Pretty even response to 31hz, as expected highs were down.

Took a look at that Merritts Supply site that Mayhem13 recommended. It does look interesting, however I will have a space issue to deal with for a while. I'd be very curious to see if others on this forum give that stuff a try.

Jack

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Yes, I saw that feature on a photo of the Ultra on P.E.'s site.

I did try giving it a turn when I first opened the box, it didn't seem to budge for me and I thought I might break it.

Jack

Same here Cap'n... mine would have taken a high amount of pressure... felt like I would break it if I went any further.

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[QUOTE=captainjack115;2070895]

I suppose I can ask the folks at Menards if they'll cut it for me, even for an extra charge. They're just up the road for me, whereas Home Depot is nearly 80 miles.

Well I messed with one of the Ultras last night to compare it to a Thruster. On the corrugated plastic highs were better on the Thruster, OTOH bass seemed better on the Ultra. At one point I held the Ultra up to the wall (common drywall) and did a pink noise test. Pretty even response to 31hz, as expected highs were down.

Took a look at that Merritts Supply site that Mayhem13 recommended. It does look interesting, however I will have a space issue to deal with for a while. I'd be very curious to see if others on this forum give that stuff a try.

Jack

Ouch... 80 miles. No HD for you. I like Menards better anyway and the foam cuts easily with a nice utility knife so not too much of a pain.

Honestly, I can see the Thruster possibly surpassing the Ultra on your corrugated plastic... it is more damped than XPS and the extra force applied by the Thruster could give an advantage on that particular material... its possible; especially if played at higher SPL. The Ultra's floating motor design reduces the spurious panel noise on "noisy" materials like treated XPS. It is quieter on XPS and allows more detail to be revealed. If the corrugated plastic is what I think it is, its pretty damped.

I want to try the NIDA-CORE but its almost $40 just to ship so an expensive "trial"... hoping to find it or an equiv locally. THEN I'm all in on that one. Sounds like they could work wonderfully. Hmmmmmmmm....

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

http://www.merrittsupply.com/product...lain-h8pp.aspx

Here's where I get mine. Sorry I don't have any leftovers to send you. Trust me when I say it's incredibly rigid and can easily be selectively or completely damped with ease.

Thanks for the consideration Mayhem... appreciate it! Will be looking locally for sure. Have to think that there will be other products fairly close in materials and construction. One can only hope... :(

[captainjack115]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[QUOTE=rmeinke;2070961]

Ouch... 80 miles. No HD for you. I like Menards better anyway and the foam cuts easily with a nice utility knife so not too much of a pain.

Honestly, I can see the Thruster possibly surpassing the Ultra on your corrugated plastic... it is more damped than XPS and the extra force applied by the Thruster could give an advantage on that particular material... its possible; especially if played at higher SPL. The Ultra's floating motor design reduces the spurious panel noise on "noisy" materials like treated XPS. It is quieter on XPS and allows more detail to be revealed. If the corrugated plastic is what I think it is, its pretty damped.

I want to try the NIDA-CORE but its almost $40 just to ship so an expensive "trial"... hoping to find it or an equiv locally. THEN I'm all in on that one. Sounds like they could work wonderfully. Hmmmmmmmm....

The replacement Thruster arrived today, I put it on the same old corrugated vinyl, same size and did a stereo pink noise test, full range, no EQ. (See Photo)

I have to say, I seem to be getting more favorable results from the Thrusters over the Ultra. It could be that the Thrusters are a good fit for the material I'm using, just as you said. After I ran the full range test I connected the Thruster pair into my regular system and ran the subwoofers with them. I could have listened all day, very nice. Thruster panels sitting on the floor, I still need to do something about that, some sort of soft suspension. I have to get the duct tape idea out of my head, even though it works well.

The NIDA-CORE looks interesting and even promising, but.............. We're all in the same boat. (Pun intended). I don't want to spend the money for the experiment, plus I really have nowhere to store it.

Jack

[opadave]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Hi all, it looks like I'm the noob here. First off thanks to rmeinke for all of your posts I've been following your instructions/wisdom and it works! Got some of the project xps from HD
sanded and doped it with the PVA/water mix - 2 coats and tried some dinky transducers I got to play with. I think they are the DX13 something--or-other...13mm. Anyway they sound really good. I did give them a listening test at every step in the prep and they just kept sounding better! And this is with the ones thar cost $2.75!?! Wow!

Ordering the big guns!

Someone questioned about did we try this on DT foamcore. Yep - same process, sanding and doping etc. It sounds pretty good - not much on lows but mids and highs were smooth and clear. It is, however woafully floppy - would need some type of backbone and frame.

My question on mounting - could they be mounted with some small neodymium magnets to a frame - 4 unevenly spaced locations? I have a bunch from some destroyed macbooks. Those little buggers are STRONG!

Sorry to go on so long but this is way cool and I want to catch up!

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Hi all, it looks like I'm the noob here. First off thanks to rmeinke for all of your posts I've been following your instructions/wisdom and it works! Got some of the project xps from HD
sanded and doped it with the PVA/water mix - 2 coats and tried some dinky transducers I got to play with. I think they are the DX13 something--or-other...13mm. Anyway they sound really good. I did give them a listening test at every step in the prep and they just kept sounding better! And this is with the ones thar cost $2.75!?! Wow!

Ordering the big guns!

Someone questioned about did we try this on DT foamcore. Yep - same process, sanding and doping etc. It sounds pretty good - not much on lows but mids and highs were smooth and clear. It is, however woafully floppy - would need some type of backbone and frame.

My question on mounting - could they be mounted with some small neodymium magnets to a frame - 4 unevenly spaced locations? I have a bunch from some destroyed macbooks. Those little buggers are STRONG!

Sorry to go on so long but this is way cool and I want to catch up!

Welcome to the DML panel magic thread! No thanks needed to me, it has been a community effort; building on top of what has been done, sharing experiences and hopefully... if even occasionally... improving as we go.

The magnets mounting idea is intriguing. Be cool to be able to unmount the panel in a frame and remount with a different panel/exciter combination. But my fear is that the magnet to metal fastening might cause noise. These things are way more powerful than what you would expect for such a small device. But I think its worth a try. Maybe even a small paint or ??? would reduce the noise of the metal:magnet yet still be strong enough to hold the panels in place? Definitely worthy of a little weekend experiment!

I think I missed the DT foamcore reference earlier. Does DT stand for Dollar Tree?? Had to do a search on "DT foamcore" only to arrive at the dollar tree site and a black panel 24x30 for...yeah... a flippin' buck. Is this what you were referring too?

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[QUOTE=captainjack115;2070974]

The replacement Thruster arrived today, I put it on the same old corrugated vinyl, same size and did a stereo pink noise test, full range, no EQ. (See Photo)

I have to say, I seem to be getting more favorable results from the Thrusters over the Ultra. It could be that the Thrusters are a good fit for the material I'm using, just as you said. After I ran the full range test I connected the Thruster pair into my regular system and ran the subwoofers with them. I could have listened all day, very nice. Thruster panels sitting on the floor, I still need to do something about that, some sort of soft suspension. I have to get the duct tape idea out of my head, even though it works well.

The NIDA-CORE looks interesting and even promising, but.............. We're all in the same boat. (Pun intended). I don't want to spend the money for the experiment, plus I really have nowhere to store it.

Jack
[ATTACH=CONFIG]58430[/ATTACH]

Ohhhh common' Cap'n... more boat references!?!? (pun) Your better than that!! :-) I didn't laugh out loud but I did giggle.

Do you have a smart phone? There are some accurate RTA apps with 1/12 octave bands for better resolution. I played with the lower res RTA's and found them to be misleading in some ways as greater summing in larger bands hid deeps and peaks by averaging them. Once I got a higher res. RTA ($4.99) I was able to apply accurate EQ and this single action REALLY took the panels to another level for me. More more balanced and "technically" better performing. Still liked listening to them unEQed for its simplicity and the idealistic notion of removing "unnecessary" components. But every time I went back and forth between EQed and unEQed I could not help but note the improvement.

I would reserve the Ultra's for the XPS panels... that would be a better use for them. I might also prefer the Thrusters on plywood as well but it was close... at least on small ply panels.

[dlneubec]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Rmeinke,
Have you seen anyone try twin wall polycarbonate, like this stuff?

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/roofing-soffits-gutters/specialty-roofing/6mm-opal-4-x-8-twin-wall-polycarbonate/p-1733268-c-5819.htm

It also cones in 8mm thickness.

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/roofing-soffits-gutters/specialty-roofing/8mm-opal-4-x-8-twin-wall-polycarbonate/p-1733312-c-5819.htm

Obviously, much more expensive than XPS panels.

[captainjack115]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Someone questioned about did we try this on DT foamcore. Yep - same process, sanding and doping etc. It sounds pretty good - not much on lows but mids and highs were smooth and clear. It is, however woafully floppy - would need some type of backbone and frame.

I think that may have been me.

I messed with the dollar store panels a few years ago. At that time it never occurred to me to coat them with anything. What I remember most about the sound was that voices sounded like an echo.

Jack

[captainjack115]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

[QUOTE=rmeinke;2071034]

Ohhhh common' Cap'n... more boat references!?!? (pun) Your better than that!! :-) I didn't laugh out loud but I did giggle.

Do you have a smart phone? There are some accurate RTA apps with 1/12 octave bands for better resolution. I played with the lower res RTA's and found them to be misleading in some ways as greater summing in larger bands hid deeps and peaks by averaging them. Once I got a higher res. RTA ($4.99) I was able to apply accurate EQ and this single action REALLY took the panels to another level for me. More more balanced and "technically" better performing. Still liked listening to them unEQed for its simplicity and the idealistic notion of removing "unnecessary" components. But every time I went back and forth between EQed and unEQed I could not help but note the improvement.

I would reserve the Ultra's for the XPS panels... that would be a better use for them. I might also prefer the Thrusters on plywood as well but it was close... at least on small ply panels.

No smart phone here. How about the Ipod Touch?

I have an Ipod Classic cradled into a Pure-i20 D to A converter/charger. Been thinking about getting rid of the Classic for the Touch. Am I right in assuming that I can download the RTA app for it?
That old and cheaply made RTA I'm using is sorely outdated and doesn't have much in the way of range and resolution. Besides that it a real pain to drag it off the self, plug it in to an outlet, then string the microphone out into the room.

I've tried to listen to the panel without EQ, and they're really not bad, but they sound more enjoyable and realistic with EQ. I'm not above tweaking to get the results I want.

Jack

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Hey Jack! Yeah, I use my sons older Touch for RTA and different signal generators so all is well with the Touch.

I didn't mean to say that the panels are not good sounding without EQ. I enjoyed them for some time without. I'd still listen to them unEQed over many other speakers. :-)

[opadave]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

I think that may have been me.

I messed with the dollar store panels a few years ago. At that time it never occurred to me to coat them with anything. What I remember most about the sound was that voices sounded like an echo.

Jack

Yeah, the white stuff sounds lousy with the paper on and not much better with it off, but sanded and doped it was pretty nice. My panels are 15X20 (inches) - sound good but definitley not very stiff.

[opadave]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

rmeinke: sorry, it was dollar tree, 99 cent store foamcore, the cheep stuff! I'm in southern Cal - they're at every strip mall. My idea on the magnets would be to place 4 or so on the perimeter and 4 on a frame. I think that GE Silicone II as an adhesive would hold good be a little flexible and damp vibration. I would leave the driver as is.

So I volunteer...since I have all of that....now for a frame....

Cheers, Dave

[rmeinke]

Re: DIY Flat Panel Speaker Love

Rmeinke,
Have you seen anyone try twin wall polycarbonate, like this stuff?

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/roofing-soffits-gutters/specialty-roofing/6mm-opal-4-x-8-twin-wall-polycarbonate/p-1733268-c-5819.htm

It also cones in 8mm thickness.

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/roofing-soffits-gutters/specialty-roofing/8mm-opal-4-x-8-twin-wall-polycarbonate/p-1733312-c-5819.htm

Obviously, much more expensive than XPS panels.

Hey Dan, missed this one... I believe some folks over at AC had tried these years ago and they were over over damped and not terribly ridged/hard. XPS, birch ply and double cushioned cardboard, have risen to the top over the years and are the current leading materials. Cardboard has dropped off a bit due to a rolled off last octave but a little EQ could improve that aspect. On my list to try.