For a few years now I wanted to create a new party speaker that not only performs well but also looks good (to my eyes). I love piano white and I have no Idea how I “came up” with a diamond in the center.
Diamond Sound should be a portable speaker (hopefully) outperforming ones I already own, like the Beatbox Portable by Beats by dr. Dre.

Once in a while I drew a few sketches of a speaker that would be really appealing to my eyes. Those first sketches weren't good looking at all but at least showed my idea on paper.

Around New Year I finished the first renderings to get a feel for the exact looks of the speaker. In those renderings I also decided to use real world low-mid frequency and tweeter speaker chassis.

Renderings under CC BY-NC-SA License. Made with Cinema 4D.

After drawing and measuring a lot It was finally time to cut all the parts out of MDF-Wood. Since there are no 90° angles at all it was quite an act to precisely cut all edges.

Finally after around 10 hours of cutting I was done with all parts. 21 in total.

The day afterwards I sticked all the pieces together and tried to leave as little and few gaps as possible. Unfortunately the cutting wasn't very precise when It comes to the back pieces.

Since the enclosure didn't fit together perfectly I had to fill a few gaps and sandpaper the whole body.

I gave the smoothened enclosure to a car painter which did an awesome job and applied a beautiful piano white paint job. The surface is still a bit soft but soon ready to house all the electronics.

As of what should go into the enclosure I have following list:
- 2x Woofer (Morel CAW 634)
- 2x Tweeter (Peerless OX20SS00-04)
- 2x Sure Amplifier TPA 250 (50W per Channel)
- Sure DSP
- TinySine Bluetooth Board (Apt-X)
- DJI Phantom 3 Battery

Maybe in future:
- Raspberry Pi 3

I assembled the rear electronics and put together the whole speaker adding damping material.
Diamond Sound looks great and sounds decent when paired with the correct software.
Unfortunately the speaker as of now isn't very loud.

When parts are available I will continue, using Mini DSP instead of Sure DSP, and rebuild the back panel to minimise air flow which lead to unwanted noise.

I tested the first functioning version and soon realised that to much bass means significant air flow which made its way through every tiny hole.
I started to rethink the cutout for internals and build a casing protruding inwards, then sealed everything with silicone so no air would come through.

I also bought a new and more sophisticated DSP (Mini DSP) which sounds a lot better and comes with a software that allows me to adjust sound settings quicker.

Diamond Sound now sounds great but still needs a good mechanism for holding the backplate in place.

After rebuilding the housing for all electronics the speaker was ready for use. I listened to a couple of my favorite songs, the speaker has a great response with rich bass and clear sound. Unfortunately I also discovered that playing certian piano songs reveals some very unpleasantly distorted mid range sounds. This is clearly something that has to be fixed and I will continue to look for the source of the problem.

Sitting down and looking for the source of those distorted sounds made me assume the DSP is the cause. This would have been very unfortunate, because I had already spend aprox. 100$ more on the Mini DSP (in comparison to the previously installed Sure DSP). A few days passed and I sat down again to be sure about the problem's cause. Fortunately I found out that the cause was not the DSP but the 16$ Bluetooth Module from TinySine, which I threw out promtly to make space for an even better idea.

I had recently bought two Airport Express' which were perfect for such a build. Since the Speaker will now be a more or less stationary one (It would take a lot more to build in batteries and a charger + the drivers aren't safe) it makes sense to equip the speaker with Airplay and even be able to expand one's WiFi.

Opening the Airport Express and connecting it to my already existing Step Down Converter was easy. The Airport Express needs 3.3V instead of 5V which the Bluetooth Module needed. That way I couldn't use the Isolated Converter I already soldered in. I removed the converter and soldered the Airport Express to the Step Down Converter directly which now, as I kind of expected, results in crackling sounds while not playing and especially shortly before playing music.

Since eliminating these sounds requires another part the project is on hold again until I have the new Isolated DC-DC Converter (converting from 24V to 3.3V with 3W) which should fit the Airport Express and hopefully eliminate the disturbing sounds.

Today I finished my speaker build. Earlier this week the last components arrived. I build in the new Isolated DC-DC Converter, which successfully vanished any noises regarding the AirPort Express. And lastly I used Neodymium Magnets to hold the backplate in place.
The Speaker sounds awesome, is super easy to use and looks good. But it was a long way to get there.

I am so glad that I finished Diamond Sound. I can now say: "I build the speaker I always wanted".

Take a look at the videos if you want to see Diamond Sound in action!