Hey everyone - I’ve had a set of DIY 3-ways that my dad and I built about 15 years ago that, unfortunately, I haven’t really been able to use the way I want due to my living situation since then. My partner and I finally moved into a house where we can play music as loud as we want! They still sound amazing, honestly better than any speaker I’ve heard, but the crossover was an off-the-shelf one and I didn’t feel like designing a custom crossover, especially considering the different impedances and styles of drivers.
After looking around a bunch for alternatives and ways to create an active system I came across the Acoustas which is exactly what I was looking for. Once it came I plugged the speakers in and played around with the EQ and got it sounding great, so I knew once I got each individual driver connected it would be better than ever.
I also wanted to completely redesign the cabinets so I used some speaker enclosure calculators to get a rough idea of a good internal volume for the woofer and went from there. My stepdad helped me make the cabinets out of 3/4 plywood (MDF was out of stock when we went, I know it’s typically better but oh well).
I wanted a unique look to go with our living room decor as we already have a lot of medium wood and warm tones, so for contrast I thought a pop of color would help. After considering different wood stain colors, veneers, paint, vinyl, etc. I thought that maybe ceramic tile would look cool. I haven’t seen anyone do this before, so I’m either a trendsetter or there’s a good reason nobody does this 
Here’s my preliminary Photoshop “render” of my idea along with an AI texture replacement and some other tile projects I found elsewhere:
I ordered some Mexican Talavera tile from Etsy in emerald green, terracotta, and the traditional painted pattern style. It hasn’t arrived yet but I’m so excited to use them; it’ll be my first time using tile and grout too. I’m not going to bother making the cabinets look any better since they’ll be covered entirely by tile and mortar.
Here’s a current parts list for the speakers:
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(2x) Aurum Cantus AC250-F1 - not made anymore, newer versions of the AC250 available
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(6 pair) Binding posts - tap-in style, 1 pair per driver
As for the active setup, I am planning on crossing the drivers over at around 700-800Hz and 5500-6000Hz, which is close to the current passive crossover. After doing some modeling I’m going to start with a fourth-order Linkwitz-Riley and go from there.
Looking forward to making progress on this build and will keep this post updated!
