The name says it all: Dinas stands for Do I Need A Sub, and the whole project is the maker's answer to that question. Joe N Tell teamed up with another designer to build an active three-way bookshelf speaker that carries its own subwoofer in each cabinet, and the design grew out of an earlier DIY subwoofer called the Voxel. The pair set out to try something different, and the result is a compact two-channel setup aimed at desk listening.
Construction looks tidy. The cabinets are Baltic birch with chamfered front edges, finished in a light natural wood, and each one holds a 4-inch Dayton Audio aluminum-cone mid driver with a phase plug, a 5.25-inch Tang Band subwoofer driver with an extended rubber surround, and a slot port along the bottom edge. The tweeter is a teardrop-shaped 1-inch HiVi soft dome mounted externally on the top panel, a detail I find genuinely charming. Box plans were drawn up in SketchUp.
Electronics come from a clever repurposing: plate amplifiers intended for DIY 2.1 systems, fitted one per speaker rather than shared between the pair. The Lepai plate amp sits flush on the rear panel, rated at 60 watts for the sub channel and 30 watts per satellite, with knobs for sub level, crossover and speaker volume, toggle switches, an indicator LED and a DC input fed by an external 19V adapter. A built-in 100 Hz high-pass handles the satellites while an adjustable low-pass shapes the sub, and RCA splitter cables link the two speakers.
Measured in-room, bass reaches 35 Hz at -3 dB and 25 Hz at -10 dB, and the build took first place in the Best for Desktop column on the maker's own speaker leaderboard. Two things are worth weighing: port chuffing appears at extreme output levels, and the drivers were soldered on the far side of the board, with the rear binding posts left unused. One question is still open, whether the crossover design can be obtained separately from the paid cabinet plans.
Project by Joe N Tell. Watch it on their YouTube channel: