New Sony Xplod Speakers.

As is any engineer, I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to electronic equipment. When I was in high school, my old 1987 Dodge Raider (192,000 miles!) had a brand new Sony Xplod system in it featuring MP3-CD Playback. I know this is commonplace today, but at that time it was quite a novelty. When my car was sadly retired last year (I got tired of breaking down) I donated the car to BOCES to be a 'learning tool,' but I first removed the speakers and receiver. This of course leaves a problem (besides me having no wheels); what do I do with those perfectly good speakers?

The answer came when I broke my old Aiwa 'home theater' system. I put that in quotes because while it could amplify 5 channels and provide a subwoofer
Aiwa NSX-MT720 Center Channel
output, it couldn't decode anything (Dolby Digital, DTS, etc). Furthermore, at >0.9% harmonic distortion, it sounded all right at low volumes, but never very good at high. Anyways, I upgraded that to a Harmon Kardon AVR-330 Reciever, which is a beast in comparison. That upgrade left me too poor to buy new speakers, and I had a hard enough time justifying purchasing the Harman even when the Aiwa was broken; how can I rationalize the frivolity of a new set of speakers (well, i could, but the Bursar would think otherwise). Honestly, the main speakers from my Aiwa system are very decent. They can hit 100W and sound very good. No one really cares about the surround speakers. Leaving the main channel speaker- the most important speaker when it comes to watching movies, which I do a lot of.

The old Aiwa center channel speaker is one of those 'full-range' type speakers that really only produces 300-10,000Hz, and none of it well. It sounds like the audio is coming out of a cardboard box. So, I've decided to build a new center channel speaker using the Sony Xplod speakers and cross-overs. I've always wanted to build my own speaker(s). So here's my chance.

Before starting the project:

The main event: