My son loves listening to music and gaming on his PC. Over the years he's built quite a nice system for that setup in his room:
Schiit Modi DAC
Schiit Magni Preamp and headphone amp
APPL Single Ended Pentode tube amp
LGK 2.1 maxed out speakers
We'd built out the LGK 2.0's but moved up to the 2.1's because the 2.1's play louder and are capable of more bass. After living with them for 6 months or so, we realized they sounded great for music but need some more punch down low for games. The biggest issue we have is it needs to fit on his shelf and there's VERY little room down there. And I knew from experience that small, inexpensive retail subs were all crap.
After a bit of searching around I found the Dayton Audio mini-sub with a 5 inch high excursion driver and a well braced box / flat pack. I secretly buy it and put it in storage till Christmas.
Time to build!
Driver is only 5 inches but has massive excursion and you can see it's way overbuilt, which I love:
Flat pack assembled and spray painted flat black. It's only 8 inches wide but is heavy with very good bracing:
A serious 300 watt amp fully capable of driving a full sized sub (and definitely overkill for this):
Duratex applied. 2 layers were needed:
Installing in the PC system:
All done:
We then played some pink noise through the system and used the RTA/FFT app from Digital Studio Six on my iPhone to get it dialed in to the LGK 2.1's. After listening to it for a while, the large majority of the time it's not really doing much. Especially on music, the 2.1's really carry most of the sound. But, on very bass heavy songs, or on things like gunshots or explosions while gaming, the sub wakes up and fills in the low end very admirably.
Do I wish I could put an 8 inch servo sub here instead? Yes. Danny's subs are cleaner/tighter/faster no doubt. But, space considerations forced us to compromise. The LGK 2.1's took a while to fully settle in, mostly because I used over-the-top high quality parts in them. Now they sound spectacular. The sub is nice to have and it was a fun project.
