DIY Floor standing speakers for beginners

Are you a beginner and thirsting for a DIY speaker project? You landed to the right place! The idea of this project is to make use of minimal power tools (just a drill and a jigsaw needed) and also to keep the cost down. Ideal setup for someone who wants to begin exercising their DIY skills. If you want detailed instructions on how to build these speakers, just go and watch this video on YouTube. Here you will find the technical stuff: parts list, dimensions, etc.

Dimensions

To make this box I used 18 mm thick MDF. Now, I got many complaints that in US you can’t find 18 mm MDF, but rather 19 mm, which is 3/4″ MDF. To please everyone, here’s the dimensions for both types of boxes:

18 mm thick MDF

  • Front and back: 960 x 230 mm
  • Top and bottom: 290 x 230 mm
  • Sides: 290 x 924 mm
  • Braces: 194 x 290 mm

3/4″ thick MDF

  • Front and back: 37.8 x 9.06″
  • Top and bottom: 11.54 x 9.06″
  • Sides: 11.54 x 36.3″
  • Braces: 7.56 x 11.54′

For the braces just make a cutout in the panel so you can make a frame-like looking piece.

Speaker baffle dimensions floorstanding speaker DIY

Just above we have a mockup of the speaker box, and the dimensions where everything has to go. One side note. If you are using 3/4″ MDF, and therefore 19 mm thick, the braces are offset by 1 mm, but doesn’t change anything.

Parts list

Following table contains affiliate paid links:

ItemUSEurope
Peerless by Tymphany SDS-P830657 (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Peerless by Tymphany DX20BF00-04 (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio BPA-38G HD Binding posts (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio DMPC-8.2 – Capacitor  8.2 uF (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio DMPC-4.7 – Capacitor  4.7 uF (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio LW18-50 – Inductor 0.5 mH 18 AWG (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio IC182 Inductor 2mH 18 AWG (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Dayton Audio 8.0 Ω / 10 W – Resistor (x4)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Muhwolle damping / Polyfill (1 kg/ 2.5 lbs per box)Parts ExpressSound Imports
Precision Port 3″ (x2)Parts ExpressSound Imports

The damping material is not something optional. Sometimes it’s nice to have, but here it’s mandatory. Tall speakers have problems with standing waves, and in this case it’s no exception. You need damping material to minimize the standing wave inside the box.

Crossover

Here is a diagram with the crossover design:

crossover design

There is not much to say about the crossover design. One thing though: if you find 20W resistors, you can use a single 4 Ohm 20W resistor instead of the twin 8 Ohm 10W resistors in parallel.

Conclusion

The speakers turned out nicely, with good frequency response for the price you are paying. Even though we are using cheap drivers, we compensate by designing a large box and try to achieve good bass response as well.

DIY speaker project

Play’s down to 45 Hz, which is pretty respectable for the speaker size and price range. The speaker plays linearly and goes pretty low, but don’t expect ear bleeding volumes. Because I know some of you like to crank their speakers up. All-in-all, this DIY speaker project is a nice package for the money.