Hi i have just purchased a lovely marantz 5200 just b4 the price hike. now im reasonably new to home cinema, i have a set of fronts, my trusty rotels, and i have a set of jpw mini monitors for the rears. i havent really got enough money for the centres, could prolly get some cheapo ones, but i would rather wait and get some good ones.
Basically my question is, can i use normal bookshelf speakers as centres, what are the implications of doing this? i need 2 anyway as the marantz is 6.1, and i have some decent speakers lying around.
Aslo im planning to desighn my own subwoower setup, i know a bit about enclosure design, and amp design. what are the requirements for home cinema subs, power, frequency range etc etc
cheers for any help
Originally posted by wassap
Hi i have just purchased a lovely marantz 5200 just b4 the price hike. now im reasonably new to home cinema, i have a set of fronts, my trusty rotels, and i have a set of jpw mini monitors for the rears. i havent really got enough money for the centres, could prolly get some cheapo ones, but i would rather wait and get some good ones.
Basically my question is, can i use normal bookshelf speakers as centres, what are the implications of doing this? i need 2 anyway as the marantz is 6.1, and i have some decent speakers lying around.
Aslo im planning to desighn my own subwoower setup, i know a bit about enclosure design, and amp design. what are the requirements for home cinema subs, power, frequency range etc etc
cheers for any help
First, you can use practically any speaker for rear centre channel, but not for the front one. As that's always near the TV, it must be magnetically shielded.
If funds are tight, Richers have the Ditton DC12 on online exclusive offer for £30. Never heard it myself, but the spec looks OK, and it is Celestion who have a good name. May be worth taking a chance for that kind of money.
As for designing your own sub - if you use a sealed enclosure it's fairly easy. Pick a decent driver, designed to work well in a small sealed enclosure. There are a few, but the Titanic Mk2 is an obvious candidate (as well as Shiva, ACI, and a host of others).
You usually have to import these into the UK though, so by the time you've paid postage and packing and the added customs and VAT, it can get quite pricey - for a 250W plate amp and a Titanic12 for instance, would probably set you back around £300 or so. Add the cabinet and finishing materials, and you are probably looking at somewhere around £400. You'd probably have to double that to get a shop bought unit of equal capablity though! (depending on your design of course)
Power - depends on size of room, how low and loud you want it, efficiency of the driver unit you pick, type of enclosure, etc etc.
As a ball park guess, I'd say you wouldn't really want to go much below 100W at the very least (but it depends on many things).
Frequency range is 20-120Hz (or more), but in reality very few subs can stay flat down to 20Hz, despite some of claims they make. It's arguable whether it's really necessary either, as very few soundtracks have any content below 30Hz, and getting down to a real 20Hz is expensive.
Have a look at sites like www.subwoofers.org, and diysubwoofers etc etc.
To be honest, while you can certainly make a subwoofer for less money than you'd buy one for, the only real savings come at the higher end (in fact the higher you go, the bigger the savings can get). You may be able to make a subwoofer for say £300 or so, that you'd have to pay £500 for as a ready made unit, or make one for £500, that trounces the shop bought unit at the same price, but don't expect to be able to make a decent sub for £75 - I'm afraid it just doesn't work out that way.
If you look at things like the Paradigm PDR10 for £150, it's doubtful you'd be able to make one for that, let alone make any worthwhile savings against it.
MMm I actually was gonna use a 8 inch rockford fosgate that used to be in my car, used to work well in a really small enclosue, but i just wanna know what sort of frequencies to tune to, i also have a very nice sony car amp lying around aswell, i was just going design a powersupply for this amp so i could run it off the mains and whack it with the sub, i have heard a few home cinema subs, and they really did not sound that good to me, just noise more than anything else.
Do i really need a sub, my speakers handle bass quite well.
Thanks for all ur help
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