I sent Mike this link I got from Deon Brown about Friendly Pressure over in England. I included the following note:
“I would like to hear your thoughts on what he is building.
3D printing the tweeter waveguide is not something I had considered. There is no reason we can’t print our own horns! Interesting…”
Mike’s reply:
“Printing a simple round waveguide, which I’m guessing this is, is one thing. Printing a large horn with set dispersion and strength to match is another. Small stuff like this sure, but our 17 wide horns? There’s just too much properly engineered stuff out there for us to even start with this without one of us taking tons of classes to learn higher order maths and such. It’s like why we don’t build our own amps, we could, but the return on investment and time involved simply isn’t worth it, imo.
A small format monitor like he’s building sounds like a fine idea. For example, we know we can go far with passive crossovers and while designing them is not my strong suit, Justin from unSCcruz is very good at it/has the software and measuring tools.
My approach to design is not to build literally everything ourselves but to use what makes good sense overall from the diy world. Our horns or the crossovers in the middle tops are perfect examples of off-the-shelf DIY tech that we do not build ourselves. We use DIY tech as a means to an end.”
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Yup.
Bravo Mike. Well said.
Another way to say this is, we are designing cabinets in Fusion 360 (using the free student version!) and building boxes out of 1/2″ plywood because this is where our comparative advantages are and where we can contribute the most value. We build and test all of our concepts out in the real world. Once we are satisfied with our final product, we release all the specs free of charge.
Releasing Open Source speaker cabinet designs – with the correct information on how to load and tune then – is our business model. We are not in the business of designing 3D printed horns or teaching how to build custom amps. We stay in our lane. And our lane is the actual final product: The best sound systems that anyone can build themselves. All that is required is access to plywood, standard wood working and electronic tools and the world market for sound equipment. Little Bass Heads Sound Systems (LBH Sound) is changing the world by giving away our speaker designs along with all of the info needed to have them sounding tip top.
