[aidos]

OT but it seems like a good place to ask:

this week I’ve been looking into making a wireless speaker similar to a Sonos play:1. In terms of the streaming mechanism is was going to use a raspberry pi running as a snapclient, wired to a class-d amp board and a, say, 3” driver. I thought I would find a load of projects using a pi + amp + driver in a small box combination, but I must be looking in the wrong place.

Does anyone have any top tips of examples of setting something like this up? What amp / driver combination to use? I’m not looking for anything amazing, and I’m sure round 1 will be a learning experience, but any help appreciated.

[JohnBooty]

If you want a box with two tweeters and a woofer for some really legit sound, here's a design from a superstar of the DIY speaker design world:

https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/isetta

He mostly just lays out the speaker and crossover design; but as he mentions a search for "TPA3116 2.1 amp" will give you lots of results on Amazon, AliExpress, and Parts Express.

PE's forums are good, lots of people have tackled similar projects:

http://techtalk.parts-express.com/forum

For anybody else interested in this hobby, there are lots of fantastic kits out there, primarily for bookshelf/tower speakers and subwoofers.

https://www.diysoundgroup.com

https://www.parts-express.com/cat/speaker-kits/286

The product page for the C-Notes (a fantastic value at $100/pair!) kit has a build video which gives you a great idea of the process and the tools you'll need. Process is similar for any flat-pack kit.

https://www.parts-express.com/c-note-mt-bookshelf-speaker-ki...

Of course you can also go as far down the DIY hole as you like, designing your own electronics and selecting drivers, etc.

[jimnotgym]

I would love a C-note or the Overnight Sensations. Unfortunately UK shipping is a bit pricey! $90...

[JohnBooty]

The C-Notes are still a bargain at that price!

There's about $80 worth of drivers in there, which is bonkers for a $100 kit that also includes crossover parts and MDF cabinets.

For comparison, the $130 Overnight Sensations kit contains about $55 worth of drivers. That's a good deal, and consistent with other DIY kits... and it illustrates what an outlier the C-Notes are.

(The reason why the C-Notes are so affordable is because Parts Express and Dayton share corporate ownership, so presumably they're about to source those Dayton drivers for next to nothing)

FYI there's an MTM (two woofers, one tweeter) version of the C-Notes coming in ~45 days for $100/speaker ($200/pair)

[jimnotgym]

I need to hunt around for a cheaper shipping forwarder I think...

[neya]

I have built my own wireless bookshelf speakers using a combination of GE5654 Tubes, TPA3116D2 [0][1] and customized woofers and tweeters (Rosewood finish) [2]. I have to say, it really came out much better than I expected. [3]

Here's how I did it:

Last year, I visited Taiwan and China, I basically went to scout for speaker suppliers. I shortlisted a couple, but I realized, the popular they are, the pricier they are - regardless of the quality. Then, I realized something shocking. Actually, most speaker manufacturing is done in Nanjing (and one more location starting in N, forgot). These factories just stick the brand names on top and license it to these "big brands". And you pay a premium for that. So, I visited one direct supplier in Nanjing. It was a very small shop. I just walked in, placed an order for a pair. The whole set of 4 speakers (2 woofers and 2 mid-ranges) costed me in total of $200 US roughly. I purchased two 6.5" aluminium cone woofers and 2 golden capped full ranges. I like woofers with large Xmax, so I bought these for bass units.

You can purchase from AliExpress too, although it's slightly pricier. But most speakers from China, contrary to popular belief, are very very high quality. In fact, the consumer audio space such as Sony, Samsung, etc. use much lower grades than what's normally found on AliExpress.

As for amplifier, buy a half-decent board. Strip out all the cheap components, spend 3x the price of the board on really good quality components. For the TPA3116D2 board, this place is a good start [4]

Hope this helps. Cheers.

[0] https://www.instagram.com/p/BplhIIqHNhl/

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpl71mUHLbm/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm02F4OgAwX/

[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bppl-dsHWuW/

[4] http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/diyaudio-com-wiki/252663-tpa3...

[steve19]

Can you share some links to aliexpress speakers that have the same internals as yours?

[neya]

I was able to find the full range I used, looks pretty close. Probably the same: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEW-MODEL-Audio-Labs-Top-end...

I am not able to find the woofers, probably need more deeper digging.

[squarefoot]

There are many projects of bluetooth amplified boxes using class-D modules including BT receivers. Searching for "diy bluetooth speaker box" on Google Images returns some interesting results. You just need then to find the suitable amplifier without BT and stick the RPi inside the box. A word of advice though: the Raspberries have a sub par audio output which isn't good for music, so you may want to consider either a different SBC or an external USB sound card, as even the cheapest will sound a lot better than the RPi on board one.

[voltagex_]

I wish I had half a million bucks to dump into Snapclient - it's so close to being good, but needs some automated way to get the multi-speaker delay down to a good level.

In regards to your project - it depends how many sub-projects you want to spawn. I've got https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1... hooked up to my PC and some old speakers - 3.5mm jack, USB DAC and Bluetooth support. It's variable voltage up to 12V (I think). Funnily, if you supply it with 5~7 volts, you'll get a "low battery" audio cue - despite there being no battery connector anywhere.

The newer version of this has the volume knob in a silly place.

[aidos]

Do you remember what you ran into with the multi-speaker delay? I managed to get it all working pretty nicely on my 2 speaker test.

[voltagex_]

I don't remember, but one client was wired and once client was wireless and I couldn't get it working.

I've heard AirPlay "just works" but have never tried it.

[paulgerhardt]

HiFiBerry is a good place to start: https://www.hifiberry.com/build/guides/hifiberry-streamer-in...

[sbradford26]

I worked on almost the exact same idea for my senior design and the audio output from the dac built into the pi is terrible. The HiFiBerry board was a life saver.

[jradd]

I've had a lot of luck (good and bad) with the ESP8266 wifi module for little applications similar. I'm interested in trying something like ESP8266Audio[0]

[0]: https://github.com/earlephilhower/ESP8266Audio