Budget Car Speaker At Home

 

Why I Made My Own Speaker

For this personal project I wanted to make my own speaker. This project was inspired from my cousin who made his own and also wanting to upgrade my own personal portable speaker. I personally own a JBL flip 5 and was not satisfied by its bass. I do on the other hand respect how loud the JBL Flip 5 gets as well as the clear audio is. However, it really bothered me that my AirPods had more bass than the $100 dollar speaker.  In technical terms the JBL Flip 5 outputs a total of 20 Watts. An upgrade that I was considering was a JBL Party Box 300 which produces 120 Watts of power for 350$. I just felt the price was too high for what I'd be getting. What I made was a 1000 Watt speaker for about 250$. 

Material

8" Speaker Box ($64): LINK

1000 Watt Car Amplifier ($54): LINK 

Xbox One Power Adapter ($20): LINK

8" Speaker ($25): LINK

12 AWG Speaker Wire ($17): LINK

2-Male RCA Adapter Audio Stereo Cable ($12): LINK

Optional Material

8" Subwoofer ($40): LINK

Steps I Did

Step 1: Connect Wires to Speakers/Subwoofer to Car Amp (Red [+] & Black [-])

Step 2: Connect Power Supply to Amp. I followed this YouTube Video (LINK)

Step 3: Connect RCA Cable to Amp and Phone (Left = White & Right = Red)

Step 4: Test Audio

Optional

Step 5: Cut Hole with Jigsaw on Top for Another Speaker/Sub (Take your time! Be careful! Measure!)

Tip: It's always best to a cut smaller hole than a bigger one. What I did was cut the same exact size hole as the one the box came with.

Step 6: Drill hole on back small enough for wires to fit. 

Step 7: Connect wires to Speakers/Sub to Car Amp (Red [+] & Black [-])

Step 8: Test Audio

 

Results

The speaker that I made it a way better improvement of my JBL Flip 5. The audio quality sounds as if I was in-between outside a club and inside a club at the same time. Another downside is the power output that the xbox power adapter outputs. While the bass is fine for me. If someone wanted an even deeper sounding bass upgrading the power supply would be your best bet. My cousin uses a PC power supply while I have also seen YouTube videos that use an actual 12V car power supply. That being said I got the bass I wanted and I will modify this project in the future to improve the sound quality. I am sharing my results here because not that many people share their budget in-home car audio speakers online. So this page is for other audio enthusiasts and for myself for future reference.