Thinking about building an Auratone clone. Best speaker to use?

[Thaddeus]

Hey,

I want an Auratone clone for checking my mixes when they sum to mono but I don't have 250 bucks to spend. I thought I'd pick up a decent midrange biased single speaker and build my own little grotbox.

Anybody else done this? What speaker would you recommend for it? Most of the 5" car speakers I see have tweeters built in, I'm really looking for something that does it all with one cone.

Thanks in advance.

Thaddeus

 

[Thaddeus]

I picked up some Alpine component speakers, 6.5 inch or so, not 2 way, not 3 way -- just a cone and a magnet. Frequency response is a little more generous than the specs on the old Horrortones but not by too much. I listened to them in the store... lots of mids, de-emphasized highs and lows. Perfect.

I'll post pics when these are done.

 

[RFR]

Look forward to it. I have a set of Alpine co- ax spkrs I was wanting to do a similar thing with.

 

[Thaddeus]

First speaker enclosure in process... solid oak.

 

[Thaddeus]

I have no idea why the picture is 90 degrees c-c. It's not when viewed in any other medium but this BB. Sorry folks.

Edit: fixed.

 

[Thaddeus]

OK, the thing is done, except for finish, which can wait. I have no idea how it sounds yet, I need to go make up a cable that sums stereo to mono so I can feed it off a headphone jack. I'll post back later...

View attachment 91955View attachment 91954

 

[Thaddeus]

Rats, wrong speaker. It's whisper faint when being driven from a headphone jack. I need to amp it or swap it out. Amping it could be counterproductive unless it's hella clean....

rats rats rats rats rats

 

[JG96]

I have a diy horrortone myself and I just drive it with a Lepai power amp for the time being. Definately not the cleanest but I paid 4 bucks for it. You can build some fairly simple op amp driven power amps on the cheap if you are handy with a soldering iron.

 

[mjbphotos]

Rats, wrong speaker. It's whisper faint when being driven from a headphone jack. I need to amp it or swap it out. Amping it could be counterproductive unless it's hella clean....

rats rats rats rats rats

Well, duh, they don't make powered speaker cones! Powered speakers always have an amp in them.

 

[Thaddeus]

Picked up a Dayton APA150 power amp at a pawn shop last night. Really nice little amp, and has a bridged mono mode, so I won't need to use the Frankenstein summing cable with the resistors soldered in.

Gave my latest mix a listen and immediately saw some problems with some of the track levels that were obscured when it was in stereo -- I had been using the stereo imaging as a crutch to manage track separation and relative levels, without realizing I was doing so. So this thing is going to be useful. It was very very clean sounding.

Only problem isn't really a problem, per se... I'm going to have an 'extra' Horrortone since the speakers came in pairs and I am just making up two since it's only a little more labor. I guess I have a spare for the day I do something stupid and blow it out.

 

[mjbphotos]

Can you not run that power amp in stereo, as well? Build the other speaker box, and have the option for mono or stereo.

What DAW do you use? Reaper has a neat mono/stereo button on the master track, great tool for checking mixes in mono.

 

[Thaddeus]

I may go that route. i was comparing the new speaker I built to my powered Behringers and it seems pretty comparable. maybe I'll just use the homebuilts exclusively and trigger a mono comparison in the DAW when i want to evaluate the mix that way...

 

[BroKen_H]

Don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed a difference between a stereo pair of speakers running mono, and a mono signal through a single speaker. There are subtle differences in the way your ears perceive the signal. OTOH, this is home recording and we're not looking for perfect, just damn close.

 

[mjbphotos]

Don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed a difference between a stereo pair of speakers running mono, and a mono signal through a single speaker. There are subtle differences in the way your ears perceive the signal. OTOH, this is home recording and we're not looking for perfect, just damn close.

What if you stack the speakers on top of each other? What you may be hearing is the left-right difference in your hearing. You can always go to mono playback, then turn the balance control full left or right, then you'd only have one speaker working.

 

[BroKen_H]

Exactly, I turn one speaker completely off and just face the single when doing mono checks. Now I have the new Behri splitting mixer and I can turn off individual speakers. Great new toy on a lot of levels.