DIY Passive LCR sound bar

Hey zero. There's been chatter of soundbars, but I can't say I've ever seen a DIY version. I think this is partly because most DIY'ers can't be bothered. But also because they're a bit gimicky. If you find something that works let me know. Lots of people ask about them.

 

My suggestion is to buy a pair of Fusion 6's, as well as a single Fusion 6 Center ( plus the respective flat packs x 3 ) .



Lay the three end to end & pretend it's a soundbar . When the wife isn't looking / pull the end units out ( put them on stands ) & enjoy a good listen .

If the average ( per channel price ) of about $130.00 is beyond the pale // then I think you are at the wrong HT forum .

 

Continuing on with suggestions from DIYSG ( while using $130.00 as a single chnl budget ) , you could buy 3, Volt-6 concentrics for a bit less than $400.00 ( and then build the appropriate sized sub-enclosures for them within your single bar) .

 

On the other hand - if the size is a real problem, DIYSG doesn't have too many options. You could go with something like this http://techtalk.parts-express.com/showthread.php?244673-Helium-a-true-micromonitor built into a single cabinet. I don't have the time to find the details right now, but they're in that thread. You give up a lot of sensitivity compared to the pro-woofers in most the DIYSG designs - not to mention the controlled directivity of the waveguides - but it seems to work pretty well.

 

Well okay then ( going off-site for some inspiration ), here's what I come up with ( at @ $75.00 per channel / without any cabinetry ) ;





I would build 3 of these little "beauts" and then ( as before ) simply lay them out flat ( to implement the horizontal sound-bar concept ).


A few notes, LouC ( RIP ) used 3 1/2" Peerless woofers ( that were "buyouts" from Parts Express ) / these are NLA .


Here are the urls for the original parts ( click the pics ) :





Here are the urls for the substitutions that I would use :





Here's the network that I would start with ( & then adjust as necessary from within Xsim ) .






PS : A very large THANK-YOU ! goes out to Rob Elder for hosting LouC's web pages and making them available to the rest of us .

 

One thing I have seen thrown around a lot is whether mounting MTM vertical speakers horizontally will cause issues. The consensus seems to be that it will have a lot of issues if you are sitting on the edges of a wider seating area, but if you are in the main listening position(s) there is a lot of discussion whether it is ok (some say don't worry, others say don't try it even though lots of commercial soundbars work this way).


Basically the MTM vertical layout has nulls (where the two woofers and tweeter interfere with each other) above and below your head. When the MTM is rotated horizontally the nulls are then in a horizontal plane across the seating area.


Placing three horizontal MTMs in a soundbar configuration might cause you to have some very nasty nulls.


Offsetting the high freq. tweeter above the horizontal axis of the woofers is supposed to help control the interference and nulls. This can be seen in a bunch of speakers designed specifically as center channels. It is hard to know what will fit in your soundbar area, but the offset tweeter design is only marginally taller than the MTM configuration. The problem can also be made better or worse based on the crossover design.


Tux (and others) can probably have a much deeper conversation regarding the horizontal MTM, but I just wanted to throw it out as a possible issue, before you spend a few hundred dollars on new speakers and it ends in disappointment[SIZE=78%]![/SIZE]