[Frank] had wanted a portable Bluetooth boombox for a while, but when he did some price comparisons he found that they are pretty expensive. He decided to take matters into his own hands and modify two products he already had — into what he wanted.
The guts of his Frankenstein-boombox come from a Toshiba 3D Soundbar — a great product, but not as durable or portable as he needed. He then took an old mini guitar amp and started hacking the two together.
The soundbar features 4 speakers and a sub woofer — plus the amp and wireless capabilities of course — so [Frank] opted to just use the case of the guitar amp with the soundbar’s innards. He took some measurements and then built up a wooden support for the speakers inside the amp. He’s also sealed off the tweeters sound cavity from the main SUB to keep the sound nice and clear.
In addition to the Bluetooth control — the unit also comes with a remote. Can you spot his cleverly hidden IR sensor?
What we also like about this project is his colorful narrative as he explains his process — it kind of reminds us of [Arduinoversusevil’s] video on his Accurate-ish Pneumatic Cylinder Positioning. You can just tell he had an absolute blast hacking this together.
For another unorthodox Bluetooth boombox — have you seen this potato cannon?
Next step making the knobs on the front control the inards via a microcontroller?
Next step!
I wonder how it sounds now that the speakers (esp. the sub) are no longer in a tuned enclosure. The box looks way too big for that size speaker, and I doubt it’s sealed.
He may have been better off leaving the subwoofer in it’s original enclosure and mounting it to/through the main baffle.
Source: 9 years experience fitting car audio
It actually sounds less deep but way tighter. Streaming audio via Bluetooth from any android phone (direct or DLNA, whatever it may be) using any free music equalizer with “virtualization” features makes it offer an incredibly wide soundstage at good volume level. Gotta be honest, I am “baffled” too! (It’s sealed btw)
Please do not call a single woofer a sub or subwoofer unless it is truly subordinate to a set of woofers, mids and tweeters. Most of the home theater stuff out there should be properly marketed as “five mid and high range speakers and ONE WOOFER”, no subs or subwoofers at all.
5.1 or 7.1 is MONO in the bass region. Now experts will say that it isn’t needed because of the separation of the speakers, ears etc. How then can I hear the direction of some honkys whip booming bass blocks away. 2 channel binaural will convey that to the listener. All of multichannel with it’s solo woofer couldn’t try.
I would question the integrity of that original woofer’s design other than suspension basics, because anything that looks cute and booms a chunk of bass is good design nowadays.