How I made my Bamboo DML Speakers
3D Printed DML build parts: www.typicalben.net/s/shop
(Skip to 13:30 if you just want to hear them in action or check out • My Bamboo Panel DML Sp... )
Latest DML Speaker Build: • 3 Way Floorstanding Hy...
These are my first attempted to make DML speakers that sound AND look good. I should probably experiment on cheaper materials first but once I have the idea I tend to be a bit impulsive...
My panels are made from 2.5mm thick carbonised bamboo plywood, and I've coated them with danish oil to bring out the natural grain a bit. They're hanging on customized bamboo clothes racks I found on Ebay - I didn't want to hang them on a wall as they really need room to breathe (like most speakers they sound better when you move them away from the wall) for best results.
The panels are powered by a single 40w Dayton Audio exciter per channel, with no fancy electronics needed. They run full range, although due to the limitations of panel size and other factors, really need to be accompanied by a subwoofer - in my case a Canton 10.3 powered unit that rounds out the sound nicely.
I've started to experiment with bracing the panels for less flex (stiffness is desirable) and my next steps will probably be to progress this aspect of the build further.
Overall, while they're not perfect, I'm pretty happy with my first DIY audio project and in fact I already have my next DML speaker project underway!
Dayton Audio Thruster 40w Exciters: amzn.to/3hXv0P8Bamboo Ply: plyco.com.au/products/bamboo-...
I haven't read through all the comments, however, hearing the bad acoustic echo in the room makes me question all of it.
Pin of shame 😄
Real nice setup you made, thanks for taking a time to make this video !
Thanks Jorge, glad you liked it!
Stumbled onto this video researching DML Speakers for myself. Thank you for such a wealth of information in this video! If you ever decide to do a "Step by Step" I'll be watching for sure!
Hey Shaun, thanks so much I appreciate it! I’ll be documenting my next build soon which are a bit more fancy than these. Good luck with your panels if you decide to build some!
like wise
Very nice use of TechIngredients work. I have watched all of their KZheads on these sort of speaker, and it’s nice to see a more presentable version. Thank you for taking the time to produce this KZhead.
Thanks very much! I agree the TI videos are great but I just don't have the space (as you can see) for a huge array of panels, no matter how good they might sound!
Thank you bro, now I can further improve my DIY Speakers project.
Sounds nice. I would not shy away from this design. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks James!
Even without sub, panels sound great!
Thanks 🙏 it’s more noticeable in real life though. I need a better mic 🎙
I dig that whole eastern vibe you got going on that setup.
They look great ! 👍🏼 Dope painting too.
Thanks 🙏
Resonant points come from sustained reflections on physical spacings at specific frequencies. Reflections are caused by sudden changes in density (impedance changes of material and air) at the edges. Parallel edges guarantee resonant points. There are very good reasons why violin outlines have progressive curvatures with both convex and concave. They have evolved such that no one note is more resonant than another. They even have curved "S" slits on the interior to break up transit distances.
Hi Robert, thanks for that it's a good point. One thing I notice when looking at frequency response charts of DMLs is that they all tend to follow the same or similar pattern of peaks and troughs - presumably this is just a function of using rectangular panels of similar dimensions and aspect ratios. There's obviously a lot of complexity in this topic but I wonder if significant improvements can be made simply by having 4 straight edges, none of which are parallel (like a slightly wonky rectangle)? Might be a a good thing to experiment on with some cheap materials.
The strongest resonances will come from the first reflections from a side or a corner. Remember a 90 degree corner acts as a reflector back in the same direction. I put a cusp on the edges opposite the exciter to prevent reflections. Also with two exciters, you will similarly get both peaks and nulls from the wave interaction on the panel, plus comb filtering in the air from each source.
Dig em. Sound great. Coolest vid iv seen for a while.
Thanks a lot!
Clothes racks are an excellent idea for stands
Thanks Chris. They do work really well. The nice thing about hanging panels is that you don't have to worry about the frames vibrating.
What I find funny is that the 2/5th 3/5th rule almost perfectly matches the golden ratio. Don’t know if that means anything I just find it to be a funny coincidence.
Just searched Gloden RAtio of Sound on KZhead and found me a new rabbit hole. Thanks!
It's literally the point of the ratios
In the original video on how to make these, that is how they chose the ratio in order to test. It worked for them... I wish I could remember who did those videos but if you look around lots of this type of video mention them. Good luck.
It seems the panel dimensions should be golden ratio as well
@@carlfranz6805 tech ingredients :)
cool idea with the stands!!
Thanks. I’m not much of a woodworker so this seemed like the best option for something I didn’t need to build from scratch!
Nice job Mate. Good DIY Congrats👍🇦🇺🍺
Thanks 👍
This is great. And look so much nicer than insulation foam board.
Thanks a lot!
Hello Ben, just wached your video and honestly i was impressed of what you made and presenting it on the video itself! Very simple to assimilate material, easy to do and nothing to make your wallet empty. By the way i love travel photos. Many congrats for the russian vehicle at 15:53. I wonder where did you catch it... Hope to help you out with the board materials... probably you didn't try with OSB sheet. Yes! A low quality material itself, but! The OSB sheet are made of different size particles (as anyone can see). It's cheap. It is not very stiff, but the particles in it are capable of different resonances due to their random size and thickness. Technically OSB is better for making loudspekers than everyone's favourite MDF. Maybe difficult to make the finish with it's ruff surface. MDF boards are easier to work with, but thicker and heavier. The speaker box resonanse frequency will be more focused. Even plywood and particle boards are better for speaker box materials...
Hey Jordanka, thanks so much! The car photo I took in Kyrgyzstan on the Pamir Highway. I didn't know what OSB was but I recognize the look. It sounds like it would be quite 'dead' though wouldn't it?
Without an enclosure, a cabinet or box, sealed ( Infinite Baffle) or ported (Bass Reflex) the low frequency waves, which are very omnidirectional, affect the low frequency waves from the opposite side of the soundboard by being out of phase with them and literally canceling them out. In general, the higher the frequency the more directional the sound so midrange and up frequencies have less effect from one side of the soundboard to the other.
Hey Joel, thanks for clarifying! That makes sense - it's going to be hard to get a decent measurement in my smallish living room then I suspect.
@@TypicalBenYT You can reduce the reverb quite a bit by either covering the walls behind the panels with a sound deadening material or build a conventional speaker type enclosure you hang the panels in front of with the interior covered in sound deadening material. This cleans the sound up quite nicely and removes the 'auditorium effect' the omnidirectional nature of the speakers produce.
I was thinking about this as well. Planning to put some foam deadening on the wall (with 6" of overlap all the way around) behind hung panels. So since mine are 24" x 24", I will do 36" x 36" behind them.
These look so much better looking than the polystyrene ones Ive seen and no doubt will last a lot longer too.
Very cool. So many ideas..I suppose ya could do a but of artwork to March your beautiful picture above you tv
bamboo, yes! i have a couple decades in dsp acoustic modeling. you should be able to reference the super easy math for modes and nodes on a "2d rectangular membrane" if you want insight into the spectral properties. placement works like touch harmonics a guitar string, at ratios relative to integer divisions/vibratory modes. if you put the transducer right in the middle, you're cancelling out all of the odd harmonics because the center is at a peak in all of them :) bars like xylophones are often struck around 0.224 of the length because it excites a lot of harmonics at that position. i don't know if you want to place to cancel as many or excite as many modes as you can, but given the lousy frr curves of the transducers i saw, it might not be such a big deal :) acoustic reverberation simulations use 1/4 the wavelength as the minimum frequency a flat surface will reflect, so i guess times the longest dimension by 4, and figure out what that is at ambient temps :) i'd be interested to see if that theory corresponds with anything you measure. "40hz" hmm... i saw one guy with 6 foot high panels.. so you want a perfectly rigid panel that doesn't flex for ideal production. i wonder about ways of producing bamboo plates, but practically, i'd solidly back the bamboo with ultraboard or similar foam for the lightest rigidity. someone was reporting their ideal thickness of foam but it would have to do with how stiff the material is, and i think the laminate ought to work well. someone else mentioned calibration apps. or if you code, make a waveform with a flat frequency response (eg. white noise), record that and apply the difference to what you can generate with the test signal and placement for the flattest curve, if you want to spent more time doing that :)
"you should be able to reference the super easy math for modes and nodes on a "2d rectangular membrane" ". Where can I get that? I am quite a numerate person. I've got so many questions on these types of speakers. There seem to be different solutions and different opinions on what the best solutions are. Initially I intended to copy the styrofoam panels from tech ingredients until I realised that he had chopped the top and bottom off his frequency response curves. If the lightest and stiffest was the best, I would bond carbon fibre to foam, but the website of PUI speakers (also made in Dayton!) says "A material’s ability to bend affects low frequencies from 10 Hz to 250 Hz (bass) and mid-level frequencies from 250 Hz to 4 kHz (midrange). Materials that are more flexible will typically yield higher output in these ranges." So what do I do? the 2.5mm bamboo had tremendous ability to bend (perhaps 100 times the E compared to foam but 1000th of the I value), but he said they were useless in bass response. And he said making them stiffer actually IMPROVED the bass response. I don't know what to believe. I also suspect that damping (as in pure foam) is necessary to reduce the amplitudes of the unwanted resonances, but too much damping would mean very little sound. ??????
@@robtristram8395 :) i had a look shortly after i wrote that... my source was a music dsp site (one of the primary ones at a u.s. university.. not ccrma at stanford, but "the other one"... it's upsetting because the site has always been one of the first returns on relevant topics but i cannot find it.. it was very old html with a solid coral color b/g.. can't find the bugger..) the only resourc ei have for that algorithm now is my own source code, i'd have to plug my disky in :/ bug me again and i'll dig it out (jsut in through th door). apart from that... rigid is good.. ideally, you want a 100% rigid plate with no flex, any flax would add a say.. a "phase delay" to some part of the signal. weightless, perfectly rigid.. "chladni plates" exhibit the modal resonance i was writing about, and this is about placement on the plane; an ideal rectangular plate can be treated like a 2d string.. so you can figure it out brute force using integer harmonics (probably "true" for lower resonances). ultimately, these speakers won't give you excellent bass response because they don't have the amplitude.. if they vibrate 1cm, that may be loud for high freqs but not for bass. and the freq. response curves of the transducers suck across the board... i was surprised how "flat" he managed to get them, so, it's probably not worth the computations unless you enjoy that sort of thing. maybe someone new has "ideal 2d rectangular membrane" stuff (falstad? or he's just got circular.. which is another option).
Atomictraveller: thanks for all of the insight. Have you tried this before? I'm curious as to what people with DSP experience think of these kinds of speakers.
very nice job ,i have been toying with a hanging mine like yours to get a better sound
Hey Paul, thanks! How are they setup now? I actually have some rigid frames ready to go for another pair I’ll be building in a week or two.
@@TypicalBenYT Go to PaulFarley 007 on KZhead to see the demo i am using a sub and looking get away from it. The amp is the key the one i am using doesn't have the range .one knob is sub and the other for everything else
those are beautiful. cool idea with the bracing. there must be a good way to make a dml subwoofer
Thanks! I'm not too sure about the subwoofer - I mean, I love the idea of it, it just might be a bit impractical from a panel size perspective. It's on my radar to try in the future but I haven't seen anything convincing yet online.
@@TypicalBenYT (1) what if you enclose the area behind the diaphragm? Like a drum. (2) what if you make an enclosed box with an opening (like an f shaped opening like a violin or like a guitar hole and then place the vibrating diaphragm inside the box.
You mean for a bass panel? Some kind of enclosure (or just side wings like you see on some open baffle designs) could help as it would negate the front/back wave cancellation. The downside is that it loses it's "flatness" which is one of the things that makes it appealing (to me at least)! Now if mounted on a wall, you'd just need to seal in the sides a bit to get a similar effect.
I built my kitchen cabinets from bamboo ply....from Plyco. Awesome company to deal with. I think I'll build me some of these........
Hi Ben I've made some for myself and family and friends they are all over the moon with the sound, as good as any expensive speakers, if you follow the instructions from an earlier comment of mine about the plastic speakers you will be amazed at the sound. Regards Steve...
looks great!
Thank you for sharing, Ben. You' ve addressed some of my questions as I think about setting up a DML speaker system, including the need for a subwoofer. I'm pleasantly surprised that plywood works so well. My naive thought was that opposing grains in each plywood layer would affect sound quality. Thinking about it some more, plywood probably makes sound more consistent one panel to another. A question: sound spreads outward from the back of a panel as well as from the front. So, how is sound quality affected by ... distance from the wall, wall surface (would it help or hinder quality if wall has a sound absorber panel behind speaker panel, or if wall is, say, brick)? Finally, your voice recording suggests that your listening room has some reverberation, just like mine will. Soft furniture helps. Have you experimented at all with sound absorbing materials on your walls? (My wife is resistant and totally rejects the idea of anything on the ceiling.)
Hey Hume, glad you found it interesting. Regarding the sub - Increasingly I feel that this is the best solution. I’ve seen several people claim to get good bass response but I just don’t think you’d get that smooth, round low end like you can with a subwoofer. I think I’ll try a large panel ‘dml sub’ as a project but I don’t think it will be a great solution really. You’re right about my room. The panels definitely benefit from being pulled out into the room - an advantage of using the frames rather than hanging on the wall. When out 3ft or so there’s a nice 3D image to the sound. I haven’t given too much thought to treatment - the reflections seem much less of an issue in person - much more noticeable through the mic. I will see what I can do when I’m 100% happy with my panels though. What are your plans for your panels? Construction?
@@TypicalBenYT My plan is extruded Styrofoam insulation panels, but I do like your plywood idea. I think I would go with something thicker than the lazer-board though, even at the risk of losing some trebble, and use a subwoofer that kicks in at about 160Hz. I have a frame in mind too since accidental contact with another object can affect quality, and the styrofoam panels are fragile. I am thinking of a 600mm*1000mm panel with rounded corners suspended with fishing line inside an all-round wood frame 700mm*1100mm. www.bunnings.com.au/bastion-1200-x-600-x-30mm-xps-multi-use-insulation-foam-board_p0139535
@@TypicalBenYT I built a pair with XPS foam and paired them with a sub woofer and an old pair of Boston Acoustics A60's and the sound is excellent with them all firing together. I don't think that a good dynamic range is reachable with DML panels alone. The lower end is best supported with a sub woofer and it is hard to get the clarity on the high end without a good quality tweeter. Where I've found a DML really shines in obviously in the mid range and for acoustic instruments in particular. Again, with a combination of traditional speaker together with DML's, the sound is quite superb.
Nice..gives me idea.. You know what you should do get some nice japanese artwork on the panels.. it would blend nicely with your sideboard.
So love this. Reminds me of the old Magnaplaner electrostatic panels (which may still be around for all I know), but they were terribly expensive & very inefficient. First DIY's I saw were made of omni fissured avoustic drop ceiling mineral tiles, but I never heard the result. So I'm curious, would a different hanger impact the sound, maybe something thin & strong like fishing line, or something flexible like surgical tubing, bungie cord, or HD rubber strips? Also, do ya think a 3D design could be routed (either symetric like dart board rings, or asymetric) w/o negatively impacting sound quality? Lastly, I used to work with a lot of composites and laminates and was wondering what you thought of things like honeycomb cardboard w/ rigid or semi-rigid backing & face (anything from cardboard to carbon fiber), or maybe Okoume plywood? I have a set of four 45 year old mirror imaged Dahlquist DQ-10 phased array speakers that are two stacks of two and your srt up immediately had me thinking of something between that and the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. 😊 Maybe craft larger panels and hang one above another? Curious what if any overall size range has on sound quality? This is gonna have me busy in the shop for a while. Thank you! 🙂
Thanks for sharing
Holy echo chamber Batman! Those speakers look amazing! Lots of echo in that room though
Yeah listening back to this it does sound pretty bad. It never sounded like that in person though - I think there must be a fair bit of compression somewhere in the recording chain - mic, software etc that made it sound a lot worse than it actually was.
Great vid! I just disassembled a one hundred year old baby grand piano… thinking of building an acoustic guitar from the soundboard. There is plenty of old wood left.. thinking of building DML speakers as well. What would you think of guitar- like bracing on back of the sika spruce for better performance. Using curved part of grand for a subwoofer enclosure! Thank for the great vid! Euey Duffy
Wow amazing. I’m not sure about the soundboard panel honestly. It might be great but I wonder if it would need additional damping to sound good. With speakers, you don’t really want sustain I’d think. Super interesting experiment though!
We used a mix of serveral materials and some tricks used in a violin and quitar
Maybe try a super tweeter to the backside. With a toogle switch to turn on and off. In phase and out of phase
I really like your mounting solution and panel material. It makes for an attractive speaker for a living space. I made a pair myself after seeing the Tech Ingredients video. In my case I used one inch thick extruded pink Styrofoam panels two feet square, so about 25mm thick and 60 cm square. I used two exciters for each panel. I used two per to get 8 ohm. The exciters are about 5 inches apart centered around the 2/5's 3/5's point on both speakers. I wonder if using two exciters improves the smoothness of the sound. DML's work by exciting a wide range of vibration modes in the panel and having two exciters might result in a broader, and therefore smoother response. The sound is really amazing! Mine roll off at about 160 Hz, so I paired mine with a 10" subwoofer, which adds the missing bass. After doing a bit of research, I realized that DML's are dipoles and that accounts for the bass rolloff. The way to improve the base of a dipole is to make it bigger. Frequency rolloff is naturally about 3 db down at the wavelength where the panel size is 1/4 of the wavelength. That's 160 Hz for a 2 foot panel, 80 Hz for a 4 foot panel, and 40 Hz for an 8 foot panel. I am working on a new build using a half inch thick honeycomb panel that's aluminum core and carbon fiber skins, mostly just for fun really. I suspect the extruded styrofoam might be a near optimal material actually given that it has a nice balance of light weight, decent stiffness and low cost, but it's not beautiful and it is very fragile. Anyway, the DML speaker thing is great fun and pretty amazing sound quality. It's very cool to see what others have created.
Hey Steve, thanks a lot. I haven't tried the Styrofoam materials at all (so far) - I should probably do so to at least test my plywood panels against as I haven't seen any specific A/B testing at all. I'm currently working on another pair utilizing multiple exciters per panel (and multiple panels per channel) for more overhead but also to keep the impedance reasonable like you have. I think I'll start with one exciter at 2/5 3/5 and then move the other around to see where I get the smoothest response. That's really interesting about the dipole nature of DMLs and the bass rolloff frequencies. I assume your dimensions refer to the panel's longest side. That would put my 3-foot tall panels at around a 120Hz rolloff which sounds about right. The new panels sound interesting - I have thought about carbon fiber but the panels are quite expensive in any decent size - I'd love to hear how your honeycomb ones turn out though - good luck with the build!
Thanks for those those thoughts on roll-off and dimensions, Steve.
@@TypicalBenYT Well, I built up the carbon fiber honeycomb panels. I was concerned when I first received the panels because they tended to ring when tapped. I was afraid I would run into resonances with the built up speaker, and that turned out to be the case. They really are quite bad compared to the foam. Whenever a tone is struck that causes the panel to resonate, that sound ranges between muddy, tinny and boomy. It was an interesting experience, but unfortunately not a success. It makes me wonder if a panel made from a material intended to act as a sound absorber might work well. Something like Homasote for instance.
@@stevefoster6047 thanks for the update on these - I was hoping for good results as it sounded like another good option for a 'living-roomable' panel material. Your thoughts on sound-absorbent materials would seem to agree with the 2nd Tech Ingredients video, in which he gets the best results out of the acoustic ceiling tiles!
Nice iteration Ben. As you say, a bit thin. A different approach might be as I did. 1500mm high x 400mm wide frames of mdf with a rigid spine to attach the 4 exiters to. So 4 separate sections of 300mm squares using Coroplast sign board, held on the edges by duct tape. I chose to mount the rear of the exiters to a spine for two reasons. I'm not convinced that freely hanging exiters off Coroplast would last very long, and the weight of the exiters would tend to deform the panels. The second is that surely a fixed exiter shouldn't add its own movement into the mix. Ok, the spine itself will vibrate a little, but it shouldn't colour the sound if it's well damped, which mine are. There may be other avenues to explore in this regard, but for the moment, I'm quite satisfied with the sound. I shove all kinds of genre through the things and they acquit themselves well... I had my son listen to Enigma, a piece with some quite deep bass. His view was that "it's all there", which from my son is quite a complement. I feel the treble is a bit down, although bass is, if not abundant, very satisfying. I'd hoped these would be truly full range, but they're not. The treble lacks the sparkle I expect from familiar tunes on my other more conventional speakers. Hoping I can fix that by introducing a tweeter with a crossover cap. I'm not at this stage going to wire in an inductor to separate the bass because I think these exiters seem to roll off naturally, and a tweeter should add just a little sparkle. I may have to fiddle with the crossover point, but that's all part of the hobby. I particularly like your idea of thin bamboo panels, or perhaps I might try that other notorious hardwood, balsa. Dollar for dollar, these things are unbeatable for such ancient low-tech speakers...
Sorry just to clarify, do you have small panels per speaker, mounted in a 1500 high frame? I am also going to use a spine in my acrylic panels - also using acrylic to maintain the transparency. Like you I find it just makes sense to transfer as much energy as possible into the panel and not waste it moving the driver itself. The 40w exciters I have for that project also have large, heavy magnets so the support will come in handy.
@@TypicalBenYT Yes, that's essentially correct Ben. 300mm square panels x 4 with supporting framework for each. Dimensions 450mm wide x 1500 high with 4 x Bunnings plywood feet. Very basic. Duct tape to secure the panels. Later on I intend to wrap the things with acoustic cloth for aesthetics. Watching more of your videos has given me a few ideas. I checked out the AER Goldy. They look sensational with their minimalist design, but reading the blurb I detected a faint whiff of hyperbole and a smattering of confirmation bias. Typical humourless Germans. But what do I know...? I think a spine is pretty much essential. "Like you I find it just makes sense to transfer as much energy as possible into the panel and not waste it moving the driver itself". You put it better than I did....;) I'm in Perth Ben. Whereabouts are you if I may ask? I can send a pic but not sure how unless by email. Mine is itsonlyme (at) optusnet (dot) com (dot) au. I won't pester you if you wish to maintain your privacy, but my email is there if you're ok with it all....
@@TypicalBenYT Just out of interest, I have little idea about how to take frequency response measurements. I can see much of what's required by watching your video, and it seems you need a particular mike, some program/hardware to generate the sound sweep, and computer to display results?
@@logotrikes yes pretty much. I am using the REW software, which is free/donation software for windows. It generates the sweeps/tones and records the measurements. Ideally you’d want to use a calibrated mic. I have the Dayton audio IMM-6 which is the cheapest one I could find. It comes with a code to download a calibration file which you load into the software and allows it to adjust for the characteristics of the mic. Other than that it’s just getting the right cables.
@@TypicalBenYT Ok, much appreciated Ben. I'll make some enquiries...
The bigger the panels the deeper the base. Positioning of the driver also affects base response. Dual drivers affect base response. Positioning dampers in various places alters the response better than bracing. Tech ingredients did a video on this also, they have a series on the dml panels.
Yeah the only problem with big panels is that I don’t want big panels. I’ll take a 2.1 setup that actually fits in my room and has great bass thanks to the sub. A big DML bass panel up on the wall would be cool though if it actually worked…
@@TypicalBenYT I have been looking into these for a while now first as curiosity but now I need to build a set as my new place is a classic old building and I don’t want to hack up the walls or ceiling for speakers etc. What is of primary interest about them is the possibility to make them look like art works by either painting them or setting them just behind a painting. I have a couple of spots I can hang some very large paintings.
@@anomamos9095 Nice. I guess you’ve probably seen it but there’s a thread on DIYAudio where people were getting decent results using stretched canvas art with a small panel in it.
I got a pair of 8 ohm 25 watt speakers and tried them on various things, A larger round melamine serving platter , Not very loud and a bit flat and tiny A rectangular softish plastic serving tray. A bit louder and better sounding but no cigar. A cheap painting canvas on wooden frame, FAIL A very large and heavy hunk of perspex panel. a bit better than the round platter. A CHEAP foam body surfing board I got from a dollar store in the toy isle. PERFECT! With all the others I had to crank the levels up to match the normal speakers, with the body boards I had to turn the levels down on the DMLs and up on the others I have them hanging from a picture rail and they don't look too stupid but I will see if I can hide them behind a painting or reshape and paint them.
Please make a recording, I'd love to hear what a DML surfboard sounds like.
@@TypicalBenYT kzhead.info/sun/i9VpfMeBpayhaqs/bejne.html
I was never a fan of those stupid foam ones hanging from the ceiling these are brilliant beautifully design!
Me either. They might sound great but I don’t want to look at them!
have y’all ever heard of paint? You can even cover them in a light fabric.
@@petergoestohollywood382 only thing that make these look good is if you hung them in your mobile park trailer and told your neighbors come look what i did for $20.
Interesting approach. How does the treble sound? Also, I suggest sound samples of music that we are likely to be familiar, so we get a better idea of how they sound.
Thanks Geoffrey. The treble is very smooth on these,m. It does drop off above about 12khz however. I am going to try to improve this response in my next pair. I have posted another video with some music and plan to put some more up when I get some time.
Maybe try a super tweeter on the back side with a toggle switch to turn on or off.
Very beautiful execution Ben. So do they create any soundstage or imaging? Also it appears that the panels are aiming down a bit into the room. I would imagine this affects your on axis freq. response. Have you played around with the panel tilt? Thanks for sharing!
Hi, there is definitely quite a good soundstage apparent with a nice sense of depth, provided you bring them out from the wall a bit of course. Imaging isn't particularly precise within that stage though. DMLs are quite diffuse by nature I guess - it's a very pleasing overall sound but will probably always lack precision to a degree.
@@TypicalBenYT now that you say it, it makes sense regarding the imaging.
I'm a new sub as well ty for all your hard work
Thank you!
Hard to tell how they sound from your recording, but they fit in nicely with your decor!
Thanks, that’s a big part of my goal actually!
I’m planning on building some soon
Nice - it's a fun project and I'm sure you'll be impressed by the sound you can get!
Thank you for the video! Any subjective comment regarding DML vs +/- same price cone speakers?
That’s a good question. I built these for around $300aud and I’d say they probably sound better than anything in that price. I have a pair of ~$1000 floor standing speakers and I slightly prefer the sound of my panels, except that the cones don’t require a subwoofer to sound ‘complete’. My goal is to improve the panels to the point where they’re convincingly better than my floorstanders, if possible.
FYI!!….40w exciters (do) generate really good mid-range bass when you connect more than one In series…try it out.
Ben, what are your thoughts on the DSP? I am thinking about getting one as well to round out the peaks and valleys. Does it work well? Is it easy to work with? Also looking forward to your next acrylic video. The first one was really good . . .
Hi Greg. It's a little fiddly to set up (but I haven't tried any other brand to compare) but seems to work quite well. I think a lot of it's effectiveness will come down to how accurately you can measure your speakers in the first place, as you'll be applying equalization based on that measurement. With that in mind, it might be best to set up the system as well as possible, take measurements (L/R) from the listening position and then EQ based on the response at that location. I based mine on a ~1m measurement but as I've mentioned in the vid - I'm still learning!
@@TypicalBenYT Ben, I know what your next video should be . . . How you took your bamboo speakers and used DSP . From just the raw sound and then how you “tweaked it” to give the best quality sound from your speakers. I am sure others that use even “Normal” speakers could benefit from how to setup DSP. And it doesn’t matter if you are a beginner at it, we all learn through the journey. Just a thought . . .
@@ProductivePM Yes it's actually already on my 'videos to make' list as I'll have new speakers in a new room and will be re-doing it all from scratch. I'm also looking into DIY room treatment ideas to try out. It's all going to be a bit slow though I'm afraid as we've just moved house and I need to fit this stuff in where I can... Thanks for the suggestion, I'm glad you're enjoying the videos!
@@TypicalBenYT That’s awesome Ben. As for room treatments, take a look at a video by DIY Perks that he creates sound treatment panels from 2nd hand towels that work better than expensive acoustic tiles. You could add treatments in the color of your panel frames (maybe that’s too much gold). ;-). All the best buddy!
Listening to an audio demonstration via KZhead on a iPad is a bit like listening to a Dad joke from an acquaintance instead of watching a live standup comedian. But in comparison to the other DML examples I have heard on the iPad via KZhead these are not the best example, they have a quality of a tiny cheap speaker in a Pringle’s tube. This effect is primarily caused by the rigidity of the material used which is why foam board sounds so good. I believe in the series by TI they tried sound absorbing ceiling panels and got an ever better result than foam board. Another KZheadr has tried various treatments to the foam board such as cloth and paint. Cloth seems to have little to no detrimental effect on the sound quality. Paint especially if it is a hard drying one has some detrimental effect but very slight.
I’ll make a pair of Pringle tube speakers if you’ll give me feedback on them.
@@TypicalBenYT . If nothing else you will learn how to make the worlds second worst speakers. The worlds worst are whatever it is the fit into small TVs.
@@anomamos9095 “How to make the world’s 2nd worst speakers”. I dig it.
I have been asking this without any reply as of yet. But, in regards to mounting the panels to minimize the impact it would have on the sound, would it not make sense to use the exciter itself as part of the mount? The Dayton exciters I have seen seem to be just a metal disc at the back with no real effect on the business end. Would this surface not suffice to act as a mounting plate, to a rod assembly like a table lamp type setup?
I haven't tried this but I don't think it would be a good idea. The problem would be that you'd be hanging the entire weight of your panel off the exciter, and this would pull the voice coil out of alignment. I suspect that the optimal setup is actually a soft clamping of the panel around the edges, and supporting the back of the exciter in the way that you describe, so that neither the exciter or the panel are dependent on the other for support. When I figure out the best way to soft-clamp the panel while holding it in place, I plan to test this.
By using different mounting techniques, materials, and lots of modifications on the transducers including close to 5 years of experimentation, you hear the current version of my own design on my tiny YT channel.
in next videos please use rock music, melodic metal etc
Great speakers. 16:00 Looks like a "Lada" or "Shiguli" ? :-)
Thanks! Quite possible, it was in Tajikistan.
I built these out of end-grain balsa and another set out of insulation foam. The result was 'OK' but zippo bass. Good fun to trial, but I do not use them
i think the overall sound and base response qould benefit from the driver been not swinging free in the air, but to be mounted like on the wall or so. Then the base would go complete in the panel, instead of the magenet swinging.
Possibly. In my next pair the exciters will be braced from behind with a rigid frame. It’s not easy to set this up using a free swinging frame though. There isn’t really a noticeable different between letting it hang and physically pushing it against the panel (with my hand) but it’s probably better to some degree - just have to manage frame vibrations coming from the driver which isn’t an issue in this current design.
Can they play frequencies above 15 000 Hz and what about the timepoint when different frequencies hits the ears? Will these speakers create a kind of reverb sound?
They naturally have a peak above 10khz then drop off above that (don’t remember the exact slope of these ones). Am currently experimenting with dipole tweeters to address this. Basically all areas of the panel produce all frequencies (to an extent) so it’s not like multi-driver speakers where the time alignment can be out between tweeter and kids for example (obviously if you add a tweeter then you have to worry about that again). Nah not revert. If you hear that in the recording it’s the room/ mic placement.
@@TypicalBenYT Thank you for taking the time to answer. Btw the speakers look great!
A beautiful Chinese style black lacquer cabinet braced on either side by these modern style natural wood tone "speakers". It is your home but to me that screams "no!" and that, mahogany red floor..... I however like the bamboo ply idea and seems to work well enough. They look good in and of themselves, stands included.
Lol thanks for the interior deco advice. The cabinet is standing in the the TV unit I sold, as I was moving house (in fact I have now moved).
Have you experimented with moving them a lot farther out into the room?
Hi Robert - no not yet. I can bring them to about 4ft from the wall but that’s about it in the current space. I am actually supposed to be moving soon so hopefully there will be more room for these. They are apparently fantastic when given lots of breathing space.
How did u make this I didn’t see anything
Very interesting.
Thanks a lot!
Hey Ben - any thoughts on the best ways to remove an exciter from a panel and reuse it? Ordinary double sided tape is nowhere near strong enough and the stuff on the exciter instead is designed to stick forever, making it almost un-pry-offable… Thoughts?
Not really! I’ve pried one off with a blade but it damaged the panel surface. I think maybe some kind of solvent to remove the adhesive might be the way to go but again it depends on the surface of the panel.
@@TypicalBenYT thanks. in this case, a panel of paulownia. Which despite sounding Polish is an Asian wood little heavier than balsa but a lot stiffer. It's commonly used as cutting boards in Japan, and breaking wood in martial arts clubs everywhere...
@@user-xb4nn6ql5l Wow that sounds interesting! Are you removing the drivers because it doesn't sound good or to put new ones on? Also I wonder if a good technique might be to lift a small part of the adhesive with a blade, then get a few drops or soapy water underneath - I know it can work on regular tape.
@@TypicalBenYT interesting-I’ll try that. It didn’t sound great because the panel I used was too small. An attempt at a cool little Bluetooth player… but my question is more about a theory I want to test about using several exciters on one panel. If it doesn’t work, I want to be able to recover the exciters for the Next Big Thing…
@@user-xb4nn6ql5l yeah understood - I need to figure this out as well, can’t keep buying new ones for every experiment!
I have been thinking of this kind of speakers, one thing I’d consider looking at is sacred geometry and the Golden Ratio. Everything is connected....have you looked at Cymatics? Makes sense to me, if certain frequencies create specific patterns then maybe a shape based on sacred geometry would work well. 😁🙏
Good video
Thanks Jesse 🙏
Did you try different types of woods ?
Not yet. I’d like to try some kind of tone wood at some point though.
@@TypicalBenYT It's easy enough to try different materials. Just hold the exciter against the slab and listen. While you're at it, try it on a window, the wall, a table, a wooden bookshelf. Be sure to move it around like a doctor with a stethoscope to find the 'best' sound.
any temperature build up
Where did you buy the bamboo panels ?
From a plywood supplier. Plyco in Australia.
Mine the went down to around 40hz but more pronounced at 60hz using the tone generator test aps.
Wow interesting. I will give my other plywood sheets a go. They must be a similar size to yours.
What size were your panels? I'm starting a project, and would like to get the size correct.
@@qua7771 kzhead.info/sun/dpqKgsmvmqmQnoU/bejne.html
@@qua7771 If you're asking the other commenter, he made a video where he said they're 2'x4' panels. Mine are 40x90cm as I wanted something more living room friendly.
@@TypicalBenYT Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate any new advice on this topic. The DML thing is new to me. I have been using Kef speakers in my system for over a decade. Since the 80's I have been interested in Magnepans. I have never pulled the trigger on purchasing them due to the impracticality of the cost vs the non-conventional design. They typically place them 3 ft from the wall. As for DML, it seem to be the answer to a dream. I don't care for the appearance of the 2'x2' design. I'm considering proportions following the golden or silver ratio (maybe 15x24, or 12.5x30). I don't know how changing size effects the sound, in terms of efficiency, soundstage, frequency response, etc. For home esthetics, of course size is an issue, but at what expense. I have a fairly small theater room, (converted bedroom) that I use for theater, with Dolby Atmos 9.2. I currently am planning on using sheets of foam core board, which comes lined with paper. I'm not sure what thickness to buy. I'm considering suspending it with thin bungee string, weather stripping, or spandex in a frame, or stand of some sort. Any comments are more than welcome. I apologize that this is so long.
Nice. Im gonna use Balsa. and fishing line.
Balsa should be good! I’d like to get some to compare actually.
Really just a giant mid range speaker.
Maybe what manufacturers like to call ‘full range’… but the mid range is where it shines for sure. The acrylic panels I’m playing with tend to have a bit more zing in the top end… I’ll see how they come out and think about possibly adding a super tweeter down the track.
Add a second one per panel and your bass will increase quite a bit.
I'm curious if you tried hanging the panels so the length is going left to right. I would think this would make a big difference in bass since the length of the panel is not as effected by the weight and tension of hanging the way you have it. Perhaps a cut from the 3/4 mark on the bottom to the half-way mark on the side would give a different resonance due to differing lengths on the panel. I'll subscribe for now in anticipation of watching your next video on this topic.
Hi thanks for the idea. I haven’t tried it at all as it’s not an easy fit in my living room! It would be interesting to see if the orientation has any effect. Something to measure for sure.
Can't really get a good idea of the resl sound from these for obvious reasons. People of a certain age,like me, might think they look a bit like Corby trouser presses though 😊
I had to look that one up but it seems pretty apt!
I guess larger board gives a bit better low end. I suggest 60cmx120cm is the minimum size.
Thanks 🙏 I guess the question is ‘can you make enough bass to do away with the subwoofer’? If the answer is no, then I’d prefer a smaller panel anyway. If it’s yes, I might have to consider it!
Yes! you can, with more than 1 exciter and a bigger board.
@@MyChannel737 have you done it? How low does it go?
@@TypicalBenYT Got the new bass puck. Ranges from 20hz to 80hz. My board got 40hz but more pronounce at 60hz. kzhead.info/sun/dpqKgsmvmqmQnoU/bejne.html
following the Dayton instructions (which can be downloaded from their site) exciter placement should be at 2/5 height and 2/5 width of the panel, NEVER in the middle. Bass response might be compromised by your choice of placement of the driver.
He did both, you didn't watch long enough didn't you?
Your english is so good... You almost sound like a Kiwi! LOL! Nah... Great video... Off to get my own bamboo clothes rack!
Say it ain’t so! And thanks !
Hey Ben, I am a Hobbyspeakerbuilder from Germany and your video is great but it lacks what the most videos about DML do; Measurements of the Nearfieldfrequencyresponse (usually 2-5cm from the Membrane), Farfieldrsponse (1Meter in anechoic chamber or gated). A good Capsulemicrofone should be good enough, but ideally calibrated because these small Microfones deviate a little bit. Can you add both to your next video? Thank you. If you need some advice please let me know, I am pretty sure you can find me on Facebook. Cheers Nik
Hey Nik, thanks for the advice. I'll message you about it soon!
What is the 2/5th 3/5th rule in regards to building this speaker?
It's generally accepted that you shouldn't place the exciters at a point half way between parallel edges of the panel - this is to avoid reinforcement or cancellation of frequencies who's wavelength corresponds with that distance. So you'd usually want to mount the driver off-center. I'd encourage experimentation (in fact I am currently doing just that myself) but I know that dayton audio (who makes a lot of exciters) and others tend to recommend placing them 2/5 of the way along each dimension, so 2/5 down from the top and 2/5 in from the side) as this is supposed to give the smoothest response.
@@TypicalBenYT Thanks for the quick response!
I wonder what would happen if you hang the panels from top and bottom by rubber or silicone cord of some kind.
Hey Oleg, do you mean suspending them without making holes in the panels somehow? Or with holes but with elastic materials to allow greater movement?
@@TypicalBenYTI meant Elastic elements at 4 corners.
@@olegloginov6328 It would be an interesting experiment. I have thought before about building a frame with maybe 10cm gap all the way around the panel and sort of 'lacing' it to the frame, which might work well with elastic. It would be fully suspended but presumably the elastic would provide some damping as well.
@@TypicalBenYT Exactly what I was thinking 👍
Has anyone tried balsa wood? It is light and stiff. I am thinking of building a set for fun.
actualy there are exiters for bass as they are in some cars and are just vibrators attached to the metal of the body work and they make bass i had a saab 95 aero and unless you knew what they were you would think you have conventional subs in the back
Interesting. Are they similar to the ‘Bass shakers’ you can buy from Dayton and others? They’re designed to shake the back of a seat to make the bass feel bigger, but I do wonder if they’d work on a panel…
@@TypicalBenYT they dont shake the back of the seat but rather the the rear panel of internal metal perhaps they are from dayton audio i dont know but unless you knew what they were you would swear there were two subwoofers in the back
Before you buy any PARTICLE board,tap your finger nail side and hear the vibrations, it should have low,mid,hi put your ears close to check again, exiters work differently in low and high volume,use Separate amplifier to control other speakers and woofers 😎🤜🤛📚📕📒📖
awesome I'll copy you
nice design and build but only under certain circumstances I can't imagine these panel speakers replacing conventional speakers at all. They seem more like an interesting soon to be passing "fad" than anything.
Yeah conventional speakers aren't going anywhere, but I do believe it possible to refine these further within their niche and achieve great results. I mean, electrostatics have their place and have been developed to a high level so it's not exactly 'cones or nothing'. That aside, they do make for a fun project and I enjoy the process of building them!
I want to ask what is the name of this driver?
Hi Hoang, I'm using the Dayton Audio 'thruster'. It's a 40w, 4ohm exciter.
Cool call them Magnabam
Nice.
It’s not about bass. Clarity is the most important thing in my opinion.
the bass...I mean
For Sound test hear to Dire Straits album 'you and your friend',,,, GREAT WORK 😎🤜🤛💯🌋🌋🌋
Good suggestion. I’m going to tweak these a bit more and will include this in the next demo!
8 people disliked this..... clowns.
Turn it up crank up the music.
The answer to making a fantastic sounding speaker is on the wall above the TV....
I’ve had this comment a few times now - will need to try it out.
Not trying to be overly critical but just giving my personal opinion, if it helps. If you were hanging them on a wall or making it seamless with the wall I can see outweighing benefit to the panel/DML type setup. Otherwise, you are much better off with a traditional dual speaker box in the same space as your existing setup. I saw Techingredients video but quickly moved on knowing there are major downsides in the long run. 1) By definition DML is a multisource speaker therefore your imaging and movie source localization is gonna be poor because there are multiple sources at anything above bass frequencies depending on the size of the DLM speaker board. 2) DLM speakers, again by definition are mainly a harmonic resonant acoustic source, which is the opposite of a traditional speaker/enclosure (not subwoofers), which is designed ideally to not have any resonant frequencies. That is, an ideal speaker will speak whatever frequency the amplifier throws at it equally loudly, and speaker manufacturers try to achieve this by making the moving mass as light as possible, separate speakers for highs and mids, crossovers, light weight surrounds, the goes on. All this means is, only highly specific music is gonna sound very good with DLM speaker board, and most everything else will be mediocre at best, poor quite often, if one is picky about music that is. Which leads to 3). 3) DLM board is a single fundamental frequency resonant speaker, just like a single cavity musical instrument. Therefore if you tune your speaker size and driver position to match a single resonant cavity music instrument such as guitar, a specific singer's vocal box, flute, violin so on, you should get amazing sound amplification relative to your input power. At any other frequencies, you lose that gain. So if you want to continue experimenting, in addition to variable driver position, try adding mechanically coupled metals, board cutouts, etc. to add new harmonics. Other than for learning about acoustics I see no benefit in a DLM speaker assuming space is not a constraint. Let me know if you think I'm worng, I am learning about these aswell and I never tried a DLM setup =)
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful reply! You're not wrong in that the panels do have some serious downsides. They definitely have a unique sound though and I find the concept interesting enough to want to experiment with it and see how good I can get them. The 'floorstanding' design also means I can move them around / bring them away from the wall etc. 1) This is true and is probably just something I'll have to live with if I keep the panels. So far I have only used them for 2.1 channel music so I can't comment on how they sound for movies. 2 & 3) I wouldn't compare the panel to a speaker enclosure due to the reasons you've mentioned - it's more comparable to the drivers in a traditional speaker and some of the same rules apply weight, stiffness and material are all factors determining how a panel will sound). As far as resonances go, the graphs tell the story - there are obvious peaks and troughs in the response but there are many of them, not just a single resonant frequency that dominates the sound. I've done some quick tests on a rigidly mounted acrylic panel similar to that in my acrylic DML video and the results are so far encouraging, and I have some more ideas that I haven't yet tested, with the goal of further smoothing the overall response.
You need square panels. The shape does matter. When you make them rectangle you lose a lot of base and even mid range.
I’ve never seen square panels recommended anywhere. Have you tested them? I don’t necessarily think they’d be worse than rectangles but I can’t see any advantage either.
Every single thing I've read says the exact opposite of your claim...
I think it's probably a function of your room. Because you have a ton of echo and reverb, the speakers don't sound good to me. Impossible to tell with the way the room itself sounds.
Hey Jason. You're right I do need to get some room treatment (I've moved since making this so I'll be sorting out my new room soon). The reverb you hear in the video isn't as apparent in person though actually so it might be partially due to the camera placement (not too far off the back wall). In both cases there's definitely improvements to be made.
I made portable version so of these so that i can move them to backyard or camping ..here is my build link kzhead.info/sun/lp2Qnperll-Hhn0/bejne.htmlsi=YkYHWrT_DtlwbwNk
Oil tuning!
I don't know what this means but it sounds interesting...
The bamboo messed it up man...
That's not the 2 fifths 3 fifths. You need 2 fifths from the side 3 fifths from the top
You’re joking, right?
Those are really cool.. but also really ugly. Sorry man.
All good, it's always going to be subjective I suppose!
@@TypicalBenYT Well they might look a lot better in person. Good video none the less!
More showing and less telling would be much better.
There's a reason he used the foam board and not bamboo. Sound.. you have no base because your bamboo is too Ridgid and dense. They look amazing, but they sound.. blah. The foam on its own may look blah but sounds amazing. It's finding a happy medium between looks and functionality.