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Just recently helped a friend complete his first DIY subwoofer. He is happy with the sound so far and the design leaves room for a driver upgrade for even more output. I went and made this design a bit different as far as the looks go for the port. We went with a triangular shaped port instead of a slotted port or traditional round one. The port is going out the front and speaker itself is offset by an 1 off center to complement the look. For a $15 dollar sub, it sounds pretty good, it doesn’t go to low, but does at least hit the 20hz area nicely.

Here are a few pics of the sub.

Clamping for the triangular port before cutting. That was a challenge to clamp. Only the first baffle has been attached so far.

Front of box with second baffle attached.

First coat of primmer applied. This really helps seal the MDF up, and makes getting rid of the fine lines easier. Granted there is a lot of sanding involved.

Back of box with sub amp hole cut out.

A closure look at the triangular port.

First coat of paint with cheap spray paint. (Note never use cheap spray paint, it sucks period)

Second coat with much better quality spray paint. It actually doesn’t dry in the air.

Harley will need to upload the other photos he has on his camera. But that includes the final look with sating lacquer applied. Over all it sounds good, leaves some room for improvement and he is happy with the results.

So I came across an interesting thread over at Anandtech forums talking about Apples expose. This link came up in the thread that clones the expose functionality on windows. I must say it is pretty useful so far.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ayubx003/dividebyzero/2009/01/05/expose_for_windows_vista_clone.html

I been pretty busy with various things lately, my little projects on the side such as the arcade controller, Repairing a few pcs for various friends, some gaming time on the xbox 360 for a change and I finally am RMAing my LMC-1 audio processor to take care of an issue with the LFE out. It is tough to be without that as I have to make due to listening to the tv speakers for now. bleh!

In other news I am playing around with the newest beta of gallery 3. Its a total revamp of the open source software that brings it to the web 2.0. So far I like it a lot, now to just put it to use.

So today it is currently the hottest day of the year so far at a nice and toasty 111 degrees outside. And what I do to stay cool? I go and work on another sub project in the garage with a friend of mine. It is for his home theater and I happen to have a few extra 12″ subs laying around. It should sound good once we are done with it. A good deal bigger than his current sub which falls of a lot around 40hz.(can you even call that a sub). Any case I need to get some pics of the build in progress along with some pics of the controller before I start to glue it all together.

I finally hoped onto facebook and that has consumed a bit of my time lately. Nice to be able to network with so many people I known over the years. Any case, purpose of this update is to talk about the second arcade controller I am putting together. I will get some pics of it in the works. This designed will be different as it will have a top that will come off. I will make use of ribbon cable to neaten up the wiring and I will definitely stick to using a new wired controller. The PCB is just that much easier to work on for the new revision versus the older revisions.

I shall also be taking many more photos this time around to document the build process. I will have a couple pics uploaded tomorrow. I also have my hardwood of choice I am going to make the top out of. It is called Purple Heart and I picked up at wood workers source today. That and a couple of extra clamps and some clear coat. Yes the wood is actually purple and a wonderful hardwood to look at.