Making my own speakers?

[Pablo]

My wife wants to get rid of my old stuff in the living room because she doesn't want to take up the room. (It's an old JVC & some mall pinnacles. Everything in my signiture is downstairs). So I thought of in wall speakers, but then thought, "why not build my own"? I was thinking of maybe turning my fireplace mantle into a speaker. I was thinking of maybe using a couple of small full range speakers. It's about 6' wide, so I should have plenty of room. I'm not really looking for unbelievable sound, just something for either background music at a dinner party, or for my wife while she's doing housework stuff.

Anyone ever try to make something like that into a sound machine? Any comments? Good idea? Dumb idea?

[unc2701]

could be interesting... check out:
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32212

depending on the depth you could put two quarterwave pipe enclosures on their sides, bottom to bottom (see pic- circles are drivers, rectangles are ports).

[Pablo]

I'm actually part of that thread, that's what got me thinking about it. Your drawing is almost excatly what I drew yesterday. The problem is that I am working on a pre-determined size, and designing from there.

I was thinking the drivers on the ends pointing up (or forward), and the ports in the middle pointing down (it would be nice if you couldn't see anything). The height would be my biggest concern. A 12" tall mantle would look a little funny. I would think 6" would be the max I can get away with and make it look nice. Using 3/4" material, I would only have 4 1/2" to work with internally.

How would I shape the pipe? What shape should it be? What driver can I use that will give me enough sound (volume & quality)?

[unc2701]

how deep can you get away with? (wall to front edge of mantle)?

[Pablo]

I might be able to get away with 8" (I have to break out the tape measure). I was planning on rebuilding the entire wall where the fireplace is. Currently it's just a straight mantle maybe 5" deep. The fireplace is pretty big, probably about a 4' openning.

Right now the wall looks like crap. Old painted panneling. Looks like the old owners tried to build some kind of stereo thing (there are these stupid cloth covered boxes on each side that I'm assuming used to have speakers in. And some stupid shelves that are kind of built into the wall [it's strange]). My plan is to rip the entire wall down (on both sides of the wall, my bedroom fireplace is opposite this one), and rebuilding. So I can probably get away with demensions a bit, but it still needs to look like a mantle that belongs.

Again, this just poped into my head the other day, so it's not something I'm definetly going to do, but it sounds like a fun project (I love building stuff).