Is Speaker Cabinet Hardware Important?

Quality parts can make a difference to;

- sound

- ease of use

- long term enjoyment

General Installations:

Determine the installation conditions first;

Speaker Installation: A

Speaker installation can be made much easier depending on the speaker cabinet hardware that you choose.

Attempting to install box speakers onto a wall without a purpose made mounting bracket is an outright pain in the neck- I should know, I've tried...

To find the right brackets and mounting hardware go to Tools & Tech Aids - Installation tools, test equipment, speaker repair and replacement tools. Enter "speaker brackets" in the upper right search box at Parts Express.

Speaker Installation: B

If you are concerned about the actual mounting of the speaker driver in the speaker cabinet you should use hurricane nuts and bolt sets.

These are cheap and readily available from Parts Express.

The hurricane nuts are made of metal, and press fit into the back of the front baffle. Then the bolt inserts into the hurricane nut and can be tightened with as much torque as the steel and your speaker flange will accept.We will update our list if we feel your recommendation is of value to our readers. See items below:

Speaker Cabinet Parts you May Need to Build Speakers:

The following is a list to aid you in finding the parts that you need for your speaker project.

Each of the items has a text link to the page containing the item or a link on that page. Some items tell you where the item will be found. Read the list carefully for best results.

1. Speaker Design Plans

2. Speaker drivers

3. Speaker Box or Speaker cabinets, go to Speaker Cabinets - Build your perfect speaker cabinet or buy them pre-made here.

4. Vibration cones or isolation cones. Speaker Spikes Go to Speaker Building - Build your perfect speaker.(Also known as cabinet feet.)

5. Speaker Driver mounting bolts -click text link above to go to Parts Express.

6. Hurricane nuts –seat into the wood from behind front baffle. Metal inserts for mounting bolts. -click text link above to go to Parts Express.

7. Terminal Cups (optional) -click text link above to go to Parts Express.

8. Binding Posts -click text link above to go to Parts Express.

9. Binding Post Mounting plates (optional) -click text link above to go to Parts Express.

10. internal speaker wire

11. Passive Crossovers and Crossover Components (optional)Speaker Parts - Build your perfect speaker with the right speaker cabinet hardware.

12. Solder for connecting internal wires Speaker building parts Go to Parts Express here.

13. Speaker Grills Speaker Building - Build your perfect speaker with our parts and supplies from crossover components to full kits.

14. Speaker Grill Cloth Speaker cabinet hardware - Build your perfect speaker with our parts and supplies from crossover components to full kits.

15. Speaker foam for repairing loud speaker surrounds (the foam around the edge of the cones) Speaker Foam repair kits - Repair your speakers.

When building your speakers you will need to match up the speaker impedance and driver response curves.

Correct speaker driver matching indicates that the midrange, bass, and tweeter drivers are picked because they will complement the behaviors of one another.

Speaker Drivers and How to use Speaker Driver Integration in your speaker design:

If your midrange driver has a ragged response around 2500Hz you will need to pick a tweeter that can crossover low around 1800 to 2000Hz. And, you would want to use a fairly steep crossover slope like a 24db per octave slope.

This would keep the raggedness out of the playing range of the driver.

The output would be much lower as a result of the slope. But keep in mind you may still need to do some smoothing in this region depending on the steepness of the slope and the severity of the peaks and valleys in the response.

The other option here would be to correct the ragged response with filters within the crossover network.

This is a very common practice but my thought has always been to use the flattest response and lowest distortion drivers possible and keep poor response out of the optimal playing range of the speaker driver.

Off axis response of the drivers you plan to use - need to coincide with your design goals. The off axis response of all drivers needs to be similar near the crossover point.

You would not want beaming from one driver and a wide dispersion from the other occurring close to the crossover position.

This would make speaker driver localization much more evident. This can be determined by examining the off axis response curves of the speaker driver measurement data.

A few Notes about some of the Speaker Parts listed above:

These are often sold together as a set. You can buy the terminal cup that includes binding posts already installed. This method usually dictates cutting a hole into the back of the speaker cabinet and installing the terminal cup. Your DIY speaker cables will attach to the binding posts.

If you plan to use separate binding posts – often high quality posts will be mounted directly to the bottom or rear of the speaker cabinet. The only extras you will need are two holes in the cabinet for the posts. This is my preferred method mainly because I like the idea of getting a higher quality binding post for my DIY speakers than what typically comes stock with the terminal cups.

Speaker cabinet feet and isolation cones:

I think cabinet feet are fairly important primarily because the speaker will need a stable platform to sit on. These should be very rigid to avoid rocking back and forth that can be caused by very large bass drivers. Adjustable cones are my speaker cabinet feet of choice. Speaker Spikes - Build your perfect speaker with our parts and supplies.

Internal speaker wire:

The wire in the speakers is an important speaker cabinet hardware part.

It is important because you should not bother wasting money on expensive speaker cable.

We have some simple and cheap DIY speaker wire recipes on this site – take advantage of them and spend money on other stuff like better speaker drivers.

Crossover Components:

Other articles here delve into the topics of speaker crossovers in more detail...

The crossover is an important speaker cabinet components subject and much thought and care should be given to this design element.

If you have additional comments and suggestions to add for necessary speaker cabinet hardware, add them below on the form provided.

Peter





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