Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 11:37 am
Hi All,
My name is Ben, and I'm with a small (tiny) company called Beanstalk Audio in Beltsville, MD. I built my first DIY speaker in a high school electronics class about 20 years ago, and have had a passion for alternative designs and "Giant Killers" ever since. Our shop started as a rapid prototyping and engineering shop working on a few different projects but we started working on more and more custom audio projects. We recently completed a twin chamber tapped horn big enough to fill a 80% scale Tardis. We have also built some very interesting mass loaded quarter wave transmission line subs.
Anyway, our company enjoyed building speakers so much that we decided to make an attempt to enter the market with a proper production ready product and see what happens. So, we started researching, and after many internets, we came across the work Siegfried Linkwitz has done and were intrigued enough to build a set of LXMinis. As soon as we fired them up, we stopped the search and focused on building a smaller, more shippable version and tweaking a couple of the areas we thought could use tweaking. We flew out to see Linkwitz last week and got his support to bring these little guys to market. If anyone has a pair of LXMinis on the forum, btw, please let me know. I would like to share some of the things we found in our iterations. If you don't have a pair of LXMinis, please build them ASAP. So good.
Aside from the introduction, I wanted to offer up our shop and expertise if it is needed. We have two 150 watt lasers than can slice very cleanly through half inch ply. 3D printer, CNC Metal Milling (down temporarily until we can find an Okuma Tech to diagnose a tool change error) and have a pretty wide range of CAD/Cam expertise I'm always happy to share. Just a way of contributing to the community, not looking to sell services or anything. Always happy to just talk shop if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
Anyway, that's us. If we are too commercial for the forum, I totally understand. The last thing we want is to be a nuisance.
Cheers.
Ben
My name is Ben, and I'm with a small (tiny) company called Beanstalk Audio in Beltsville, MD. I built my first DIY speaker in a high school electronics class about 20 years ago, and have had a passion for alternative designs and "Giant Killers" ever since. Our shop started as a rapid prototyping and engineering shop working on a few different projects but we started working on more and more custom audio projects. We recently completed a twin chamber tapped horn big enough to fill a 80% scale Tardis. We have also built some very interesting mass loaded quarter wave transmission line subs.
Anyway, our company enjoyed building speakers so much that we decided to make an attempt to enter the market with a proper production ready product and see what happens. So, we started researching, and after many internets, we came across the work Siegfried Linkwitz has done and were intrigued enough to build a set of LXMinis. As soon as we fired them up, we stopped the search and focused on building a smaller, more shippable version and tweaking a couple of the areas we thought could use tweaking. We flew out to see Linkwitz last week and got his support to bring these little guys to market. If anyone has a pair of LXMinis on the forum, btw, please let me know. I would like to share some of the things we found in our iterations. If you don't have a pair of LXMinis, please build them ASAP. So good.
Aside from the introduction, I wanted to offer up our shop and expertise if it is needed. We have two 150 watt lasers than can slice very cleanly through half inch ply. 3D printer, CNC Metal Milling (down temporarily until we can find an Okuma Tech to diagnose a tool change error) and have a pretty wide range of CAD/Cam expertise I'm always happy to share. Just a way of contributing to the community, not looking to sell services or anything. Always happy to just talk shop if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
Anyway, that's us. If we are too commercial for the forum, I totally understand. The last thing we want is to be a nuisance.
Cheers.
Ben
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- Beanstalk JCK
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- ML-QWTL
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- Tardis Sub
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 5:45 pm
Welcome aboard. Beautiful looking work! 
Roscoe
Roscoe
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 6:01 pm
The speakers or the blond?
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 6:04 pm
SoundMods wrote:The speakers or the blond?
Yes.
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 6:04 pm
The Blonde's name is Katie (one of the founding partners). She was in the military and will cut a bitch 
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 29th, 2016, 6:45 pm
Ditto my wife + a martial arts black belt. I always have to behave myself. :whistle:
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 30th, 2016, 5:10 pm
Hi Ben:
I was pleasantly surprised to see you reference SL's work. I have built *many* LX-mini and LX-521's. Your mini-LX-mini is interesting.
I was curious as to why you moved away from the magnet mount on the full-range mid/tweeter [ Seas FU10RB's] -- and no diffusor/diffraction-body -- looks like a thin metal mini-baffle. Question: Are you using the same L16RN-SL 6inch ALU woofer in the reduced volume?
Anyhow -- welcome -- good to see at least one Linkwitz 'fan' here ...
\\Charles
I was pleasantly surprised to see you reference SL's work. I have built *many* LX-mini and LX-521's. Your mini-LX-mini is interesting.
Beanstalk wrote:So, we started researching, and after many internets, we came across the work Siegfried Linkwitz has done and were intrigued enough to build a set of LXMinis. As soon as we fired them up, we stopped the search and focused on building a smaller, more shippable version and tweaking a couple of the areas we thought could use tweaking. We flew out to see Linkwitz last week and got his support to bring these little guys to market. If anyone has a pair of LXMinis on the forum, btw, please let me know. I would like to share some of the things we found in our iterations. If you don't have a pair of LXMinis, please build them ASAP. So good.
I was curious as to why you moved away from the magnet mount on the full-range mid/tweeter [ Seas FU10RB's] -- and no diffusor/diffraction-body -- looks like a thin metal mini-baffle. Question: Are you using the same L16RN-SL 6inch ALU woofer in the reduced volume?
Anyhow -- welcome -- good to see at least one Linkwitz 'fan' here ...
\\Charles
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 30th, 2016, 5:22 pm
Great questions. As you may have noticed with your own LXmini, the rear magnet mount has a couple limitations. First, under some aggressive high frequency situations, the unsecured basket will show induced vibration and distortion. Try playing imogen heap's hide and seek at 0:55 to get an idea of the distortion. Secure the basket and replay and that should illustrate things pretty clearly. Also, we found that adding a heavy but small baffle filled out the vocals in a subtle but pleasing way. Didn't do much for the intermodulation distortion during break up mode, but that is the nature of the full range beast. The other reason is shipping and stability. The magnet mounting is novel, but not sturdy enough to be trusted with UPS. Our welded and powder coated steel frame is sturdy enough to pick the entire unit up and swing it around like a dead cat.
We are using the same driver in our smaller cabinet. We are getting a near ideal 1db per octave slope with no internal resonances in the pass band. The lack of the 94hz resonance mean we can leave the stuffing out and still get the same bass extension as the infinite transmission line. This also makes it small enough to use as a desktop monitor for production work.
We are using the same driver in our smaller cabinet. We are getting a near ideal 1db per octave slope with no internal resonances in the pass band. The lack of the 94hz resonance mean we can leave the stuffing out and still get the same bass extension as the infinite transmission line. This also makes it small enough to use as a desktop monitor for production work.
Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
June 30th, 2016, 5:36 pm
Attaching top image for clarity.
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Re: Yo, I'm Ben. DIYer making a run at going pro
July 11th, 2016, 1:23 pm
Please accept my late greetings! It's good to know someone has an audio shop local to us (at least most of us.) I missed the AudioFest but hope to meet you and your co-workers!