The woofers were designed to be in a car door, or in an "infinite baffle" as a sound engineer would say. I figured an over-large sealed box would be a close approximation. It would also leave me the most options for trying a port later, if necessary. I measured the maximum room I could sacrifice on my bookshelf and started sawing.
Unfortunately the sound was rather lame. In my past experience with subwoofers, reducing the box size would increase the amplification of the bass sounds. Making several boxes of various sizes would involve too much ass pain, so I tried adjusting the volume of the box instead of the size. Filling it with crap, in other words. I grabbed a 24 pack of the most cost effective individually packaged non-compressible fluid I could find, and started experimenting.
While personally fulfilling, it only improved the sound marginally. My memories of how much I quested for these particular speakers for my car would not let me rest, so I moved to the next phase... porting!
I consulted several port design calculators, and decided that 1 1/4" pvc conduit would give me the most tuning options for my box size. I started with a port length of about 10", bought a hole saw, and crossed my fingers!
I attached the port with an airtight, but temporary seal to allow for adjustments. Much to my surprise, they sounded incredibly freaking awesome just as they were! No adjustment required! The sound was very even, and the bass was incredible! I took full advantage of my ridiculous luck and immediately sealed everything up permanently with liquid nails.
Now on to the aesthetics. I've been a real Portal nerd lately, and I've seen a lot of cool Portal-themed projects around the webs, so I decided to join the party. I wanted to emulate the look of the gun itself, and many of the other objects in the game (turrets, robots, cameras, etc.). It had to be white. It would have a seam so it looked like it was made from 2 parts. It would involve something that looked like a moving part.
I puttied, sanded, and grabbed my rattle cans...
Cutting down or building up an actual seam would take waaaay too much work, so I masked and painted a crisp line in flat black, then added some shading for depth with my airbrush. I also added rings of craft foam under the speaker grills to add some color, and hint at the portals themselves.
Satisfied with the cabinets, I moved on to the tweeter mounts. I wanted to do something that was reminiscent of the co-op robot characters from Portal 2, so it needed a rounded, layered shape and some structure of black rods. Checking the parts pile I found some thin wood and 1/2" copper water pipe. I bought end caps for the pipe, and drilled holes to mount the tweeter and route the wires. I thought it might look cool if the exposed tweeter wires were part of the design (convenient since the crossovers are external)
I went to borrow a staple gun from my dad, and ended up getting an awesome idea to top everything off! He suggested running the wires through some clear tubing (that he happened to have) to bulk it up, and protect it from the staples. I think THAT is what really pulled it all together into my original idea of how I wanted it to look.
Here's the finished product, freshly stapled. I've been using them for a while, and I'm super pleased! They make great explosive BOOMs in games, and make music sound beautiful. I started using them as a sort of studio monitor to play Rocksmith (which I fully recommend) and they continue to impress.
Next, I start on the props for my Borderlands Gunzerker costume. Stay tuned!
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