How To Build "The World's Best Speakers" - Are Flat Panel Speakers Really Any Good?

hey everybody i'm going to start this video right off by saying i'm a skeptic and i'm a little bit dubious of the claim about the world's best speaker but it's not my claim i saw the speaker design on the tech ingredients youtube channel i'll leave a link to their video on these down below and they claim that they are the world's best speakers and they're not very expensive to build so i thought i'd put their test to my ear and see if i agreed that they really are the world's best speakers so i picked up all of the parts i'll leave links to those down in the description below as well if you'd like to follow along and i'm going to build them today and i'm going to take a listen and see if i agree if these really are the world's best speakers or not let's get started let's go over the main items you're going to need to build these speakers the first is this project foam board that you can pick up at your local big box store apparently this stuff is the secret sauce to making this work because it's both very lightweight and very rigid it's not like styrofoam that has a lot of play this stuff is really really stiff but it's also about an inch thick and apparently those three properties are what makes this the ideal candidate for the body of the speaker now a foam board all by itself can't make any sound so we're going to be gluing these audio exciters to the back of them these are made by dayton audio and i'm using the 40 watt version that are 32 millimeters in diameter they offer a wide variety of sizes and shapes but on the tech ingredients channel they say it doesn't really matter which one you choose they all sound more or less the same when used in conjunction with this foam and finally you're going to need a small amplifier to drive these exciters i'm going to be using the fosse audio bt20a i like this one because it's got separate treble and bass controls and it offers a bluetooth connection so i can stream music straight off of my phone to these speakers so the first step in the construction is to round off these corners and you want to give them a four inch radius so i've got this bucket here that has an eight inch diameter i'm just going to bring it in so that it's really close to each edge leaving about a pen's width or so and then we'll just trace around the bucket right along the edge with these corners marked you can cut them out with a utility blade like this i found it's easiest to make several shallow cuts going a little deeper each time and don't worry if it's not perfect we're going to clean it up in just a minute next we're going to use some 220 grit sandpaper to smooth over the corners and to clean up those edges you're not looking to make it perfect but just round over those corners so that they're nice and smooth the next step is to dull this shiny surface that's on here we're going to use a random orbital sander again with 220 grit sandpaper [Music] all right so with this all shaped and sanded we are ready to consider how to mount it and the recommendation is to drill a small hole here and another small hole here into which you can put a cotter pin like this now these cotter pins are nice because the metal arms will extend far enough into the board to support all the weight but it will give you a nice loop to put a piece of string or fishing line through which will allow these to be suspended completely in the air so that they can vibrate freely they need to be able to vibrate as much as possible so that they can produce the best sound possible so this is the epoxy that i prefer to use but i'm filming this in the winter time and it can get a little bit thick when it gets cold it's kind of chilly out in the garage so one quick tip for you is you can put these into a water bath in a sink for a few minutes to warm them up and then they flow a lot easier i'm just going to use the cotter pin to mix them because since the cotter pin is going down into the hole anyway let's may as well go ahead and use it to mix it up i wanted this to be as runny as possible so that's why i warmed it up because i need to be able to let it drip like that off the end of the cotter pin down into that hole so we'll fill each hole with a little bit of epoxy first and then we'll drop the cotter pins in so i'm just scooping up a little bit of the epoxy at a time and then letting it drip off the end of this cotter pin down into that hole so let's talk a little bit about the placement of where we're going to stick our driver on the back of this panel intuition says ah stick it right in the center that's going to sound great but they did some testing on the tech ingredients channel and they found that there are going to be some frequency ranges where things get a little muddy in if you place it straight in the center whereas if you place it off center then a different set of frequencies kind of can get a little bit muddy and so i'm going to put one in the dead center of one panel and one i'm going to put off center at the three-fifths and two-fifths position that is i'm going to go three-fifths of the way up from the bottom and two-fifths of the way in from the side and the result of that is that one panel is going to have a slightly different frequency response than the other panel but the blend of the two is going to make for a nice sound now these panels are 24 inches across and if i want to go two-fifths of the way from the from this edge over towards the center that's going to be right about 9.6 inches which is right about there and if i want to go three-fifths of the way up from the bottom that's going to be it at 14.4 inches so that's going to be right about there so this right here is where i want to center my driver so placing these little exciters is really easy they come with this very strong 3m adhesive just peel off this backing cover and then place it directly with the center of this directly over the center of your mark that you've placed also pay attention you want to have your wiring leads pointing down so that it's going to make it so that the wires just hang naturally down off the back of the speaker all right here we go i'm going to place this one and all you need to do is line it up and place it press it in and you're done that adhesive really is strong enough i can pick up the whole panel now just by picking up this exciter now i'll just tie a short piece of string from these two mounting points and then we're ready to test this all right i've got both speakers hung up behind me and i've been careful to make sure that the wiring behind them is pulled back from the drivers so that nothing is going to buzz or touch the backs of the panels they are just floating completely in space i've got some royalty free music here and i'm about to hear them for the first time and we'll find out if these really are the best speakers in the world i'm still dubious here we go we'll start with some classical and then we'll work our way up from there holy cow i'm sure my mic is not doing this justice those sound amazing okay so it sounds good with cello um let's try something else it's another cello song of course that is unbelievably good um i'm kind of speechless [Music] there's plenty of volume to fill a full three-bay garage like this the clarity is outstanding [Music] it's maybe a little how do i say this it's missing a little bit of the central part of the body of the tone almost like the treble is up too high but i can turn down my trouble here which only cuts the really really high stuff it is missing a little bit of the meat of it boy but it's pretty balanced let's try something with a little bit more of a beat to it [Music] it's unbelievable um i won't say they're the best speakers in the world but they're the best speakers you can build for this kind of money they are unbelievably inexpensive very easy to put together and oh my goodness do they sound good the most amazing part to me is the sound stage it's a big open feeling sound they project better than most bookshelf speakers that i've listened to it just feels like i'm actually there although the tonal reproduction is maybe not quite as good as some bookshelf speakers in particular the low end is a little bit lacking but i think that's because of the size of the panels that i used in the example video on tech ingredients he did two different sizes he did the 24 by 24 and then he also did a 24 by 48. that's loud and i believe the 24 by 48's produced a lot more of the low end a lot more bass i may go ahead and add some 20 24 by 48s to these they sound amazing they really do let's try some others i'm gonna pull my microphone off here and i'll try and hold it where i think you'll get the best sense of what these things are doing [Music] as a quick comparison let me turn off the bluetooth on my phone and let's hear that same song out of my phone speakers [Music] we turn the bluetooth back on and we'll switch back to the speakers [Music] yeah i just can't get over how good these speakers sound they are outstanding let me bring you in closer and show you them while they're working they vibrate a ton which is of course what makes the sound [Music] [Music] i have to admit i'm completely blown away these are better than i expected i won't go so far as to just call them the outright best speakers in the world but they're probably the best bang for the buck speakers given what they cost to build they're really inexpensive and they do sound amazing hey if you've liked this video you can tell me about that by hitting the like button down below and if there's something you saw that i could have maybe done differently or you've got a suggestion for something i could do in the future let me know about that down in the comments and if you'd like to see more content like this of course you can think about subscribing but there's no pressure there and as always thank you very much for watching [Music] them for the first time i've loaded some royalty-free music onto my ipod here ipod haven't had an ipod in like nine years right let's try this again yeah let's see it hey everybody i'm going to start this video by saying i'm skeptical i'm skeptical skepta now placing these is really simple they come with some very strong 3m adhesive on the ring here you simply peel oh that's too bad tor well that stinks

Channel: AmplifyDIY

Views: 1,083,200

Keywords: DIY Speaker, homemade speaker, foam board speaker, pink foam speaker, flat panel speakers, panel speaker, DIY Speaker Build, worlds best speakers, audio exciter, audio exciter speaker, worlds best speakers by tech ingredients, homemade speaker system, dayton audio exciter, DIY Speakers, homemade speaker bluetooth, dayton audio, DML Panel speakers, dml speaker, diy homemade bluetooth speaker, diy speaker kit, Best speakers for music listening at home

Id: gGzNkUmPdXc

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021