DIY Pro Audio.....it worked!!!!!!

I had 4 of raul's 8" cans to do something with and I wanted to try pro audio but was hesistent because I have heard people say it is hard to balance the system correctly. I gave it a shot anyway and came up with a great pro audio system for cheap, so here is what I used.

4 8" raul cans

2 eminence HF drivers part number ASD:1001. These run 50 watts rms with frequency range from 2.5kHz to 20kHz.

2 eminence alpha 6 mid-bass drivers. These rms at 100 watts with a frequency range from 110hz to 8 kHz.

2 eminence 2 way crossovers model pxb2:3k5. The crossover frequency is 3.5kHz with 12dB/octave LP
and 18dB/octave HP. These are not cabinet ready, just the board.

2 Selenium HM11-25 Exponential horns.

4 mb quart rce 216 grills.

I installed the crossovers in the cans with the alpha 6's. That can has 2 sets of speaker terminals, one for the power in, the other for the tweeter out. The cans with the HF drivers have just the one set of terminals. I had to make a template to mount the horns correctly.
I ran the whole system in parallel to achieve a 4 ohm load to my amp. It is nice because you only have 1 wire to run up your tower. I am pushing the system with a fosgate 300s amp, it is 300 watts rms bridged at 4 ohms.
Once it was up and running I about crapped my pants. It was so loud and clear compared to any car audio I have ever heard. It was not harsh at all standing on the swim platform with the volume way up.
For all of you who are itching to get into pro audio, this system works and sounds great. The only downside is that you don't get the lower frequencies out very well. I got all of the parts from www.partsexpress.com
I can't wait to for my first ride to hear the speakers, I will let you know how that sounds!!

Sounds cool,
What was your total cost?

Anti-theft device?

Bruce,

I got the 2 alpha 6's on ebay, $46.00 for both including shipping.

From Parts Express:
6 pairs of binding posts: $41.28
2 Eminence asd1001 $52.36
2 Eminence pxb2-3k5 crossovers $64.00
2 Selenium HM11-25 horns $14.60
Shipping $7.97

The MB quart grills I got for free from local dealers.

Raul's cans, on ebay I think they are like $60 per can including clamps, so say $240.00 for cans and clamps. I recieved mine as a gift and don't know how much they paid for them.

Also add in speaker wire 30' for $15.00, quiet kote sound dampening spray, about $12.00.

I had the amp already, but only paid $80 bucks for it a couple years ago.

So total with amp $573.21

I was also curious abotu the Alpha 6's . It was a matter of time before someone tried this. It is amazing how much louder/clearer you can get w/ pro-audio equipment. Do you have any pics of the enclosure. How much do you think the total system weighs?

Niiice. Do you have any additional pictures?

Here are a couple more pics:

Parts:








I will take a pic next weekend of my finished product on the tower, but it basically looked like this, just with different speaker terminals.




Pic of horn with HF driver attached.

KJ - awesome job! Got dB? Now you do in a big way.

I think what you'll find is the horns are so insanely efficient they way overpower the mid's. PartExpress has awsome support and they can get you what you need to tone the horns down.

Duane/NVS1.net and Skylons new stuff has 8" - 10" mid's and they can't even keep up with a horn and probably have crossovers that "tone down" the horn. Basically you can tune it to what you like now.

Great to see another pro-audio DIY project, it's been a while.

looks interesting. looking forward to hearing how they sound.

I was thinking about getting a pair of pro audio tweeters and mounting them in a can on my tower just for the rider as the mids are very difficult to get out 80 feet. I could do that crazy cheap and I bet you could hear it way out there. There is a 400 watt tweeter for like 25 bucks at http://www.speakerex.com/MP1165.html I think I may do that now.

Nice KJ! Good job. I seriously considered going with the Alpha 6's. I bet they work great. I'm finishing up a DIY project using 2 Beta 10's, one at each end of the tower in their own Baltic Birch box, with 1 HF driver/horn in it's own smaller box mounted in the center of the tower. Using Raul's clamps and spray-on bedliner for the boxes. The Beta10 boxes are big, but having them at each end of the tower leaves a center walkway for headroom, since the center box is small. I hope to replace the Beta10 boxes with custom 11.25" aluminum cans at some point, but the boxes will get me going for now.

Definitely let us know how they sound on the water. The mid-bass may be overpowered by the HF drivers. If you're not already, you might consider using an L-PAD to attenuate the horns so the Alpha6's come through with more mid-bass. You can buy L-PAD's that look just like a potentiometer (a single variable knob), but don't change the load impedance. So you're effectively "turning down" just the HF drivers, because they are so much more efficient than the mid-bass drivers. Sorry if that was info you already had. Again, nice job!

Hyrum, just buying a HLCD and putting on the tower will be mroe annoying than anything. The frequecies that the driver reproduces can be very high and will be ear piercing and sound horrible by themselves regardless of how you cross them over. They need to be paired up with another driver capable of producing lower frequencies.

They sell a horn driver that does 800 to 20,000 frequency responseI wonder what that would sound like. It seems to me that there is no good way of sending out midbass 80 feet overpowering the engine and wind noise you would have out there riding without having a large woofer and box pointed out there. So even if you had some low frequency drivers you couldn't even hear it out there anyway. you would just be hearing the higher end of the box reguardless of what drivers you had installed. why waste your time and money on it.

Thanks for the replies. When we were standing on the swim platform with the volume up, the midbass was suprisingly louder than I thought it would be. The system definatly leans toward the higher frequencies, but the midbass sounded very strong as well.
I just need to find some aluminum cans that fit 10" drivers to complete the system.
On another note, these HF drivers are not as harsh as I thought they would be. They sound very clear and will not be too harsh for those riding in the boat. This weekend should be the first ride so I will tell you how they sound.

this set up got me thinking it might be a good idea to add one or two hlcds in addition to the pair or boss 530'sim currently running. really the only purpose would be for the rider. seems like in addition to the crossover i could run them through the front channel of my line driver and use the fader control to turn them down? would this be advisable?

Hyrum, they do make compression drivers that will play a ltitle lower but they are very expensive and remeber that frequency response is on a curve w/ the higher end and lower end being at differnt sensitivity levels.

KJ, have you listened to the 2 Alpha 6's by themselves? With a frequency response that goes up to 8kHz, I wondered if they would sound OK by themselves. Originally I was considering running 2 pair of those, wired for two 4-ohm loads, but I wasn't sure if I'd miss the highs behind the boat. If you get a chance to listen to them without the HF drivers, let me know what you think.

Fl SurfLover,

They sound ok by themselves, but you would miss some of the highs behind the boat. I would run those instead of 4 car audio speakers, but I would try to get some HLCD's to pic up where the alpha 6's leave off.

The only practicle way to project sound is to fit the drive unit to a horn. Everyone has noticed how efficient the high frequency units are compaired to their direct radiating counterparts.
Mid and bass horns are equally efficient and act just like HF horns giving the sound directional control ideal for projection.

The major drawback is that the horn mouth area has to be about 4 square feet for mid down to 180hz and ideally 40 square feet for bass down to 50 hz.

Perhaps someone will come up with a huge fiberglass mid horn with a coaxial hf horn designed to fit across the entire tower.