Just starting....Cocktail Cab

[ennbee]

Hi all, I have been what only can be described as stalking this forum for the short time i've been a member, gathering as much info as possible about cocktail cab arcade builds, and from this have got the urge to build my own.

I will be documenting to the best of my ability the progress of the project and will, if people want it, provide the plans/designs with measurements once complete.
First of all I have to say a big thank you to Kyle Lindstrom for the pacman plans of which I have worked on the design from, along with piecesof8 and davieboynj for inspiration from their cabs for my own.

Right, as previously said, I have started on the plans, but could do with a bit of feed back on the top design, so far I have rattled off 6 varying designs based on the cabs I have seen out there, would like some opinion on the designs if possible;

http://imgur.com/a/UdtRW

I will continue to update this thread with any and all progress, and of course as this is my first cab will be asking plenty of questions around the forum. 

[ennbee]

been having fun hacking up what can only be described as the worst set of 2.1 pc speakers i have ever come across, the amount of hot glue inside the brittle plastic casing was impressive.

however, after powering through the glue i salvaged the innards and got to work replacing the 3" sub and the 2" satellites with more suitable sized speakers; 8" sub and 5" satellites, noice.



question is, ive seen many people mount the left and right speakers straight into the cab, with no back box surrounding them, im ok with this, but what about the sub? will the cabinet itself do the job? and will i need subwoofer port tube?

[ennbee]

not a huge amount of progress made, but it's still moving forward. I have been faffing with the design of the cab for too long, and think im pretty much there.

finally decided on the top layout (see below), and got the button layouts sorted too (thanks to this site http://slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html)



also lightly painted the speakers i salvaged to get rid of the gold overspray; amp and speakers now pretty much sorted, though holding off on any serious wiring until I know where everything will sit in the cab.

anyone know where i can get rolls of wood effect laminate or equivalent in the UK?

[notroubleclubber]

B&q is where I got most of the kit I needed

[ennbee]

not a huge lot of progress made, just been gathering bits and bobs for the build and configuring all the emulators and frontend.

Have had a bit of a rework of the designs, decided to drop the 3rd CP on the side, in favour of just the head to head, which lead me onto a full redesign after stumbling across a photo popsicle posted; after contacting him, i was pointed in the direction of his project (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=104229.0) and have been working on the plans for a similar styled cocktail cab.

in regards to the frontend work, have gone with Maximus Arcade, and my emulators of choice are MAME and MESS. I originally started with emulators for each of the consoles, but was having issues with rotation, I tried to solve it by putting windows into portrait mode (widescreen tft) but then MA wasnt looking so hot, sadly no custom resolutions for MA as of yet, so found MESS and its MAME like ability to rotate the image.

Picked up a 200mm fan for cooling, and will be covering that and the 2.1 speakers with speaker grills i got off eBay (nice and cheap lol).

Will hopefully have new designs posted at some point, and some photos of bits and bobs too.

[matsadona]

With those small speakers and the low power amplifier it will probably work just fine putting both the satellites and the woofer in the game cabinet.
It will probably be a bit distorted if you push it, but more probably of low quality amplifier and speakers than because of any acoustic phenomena.

In theory though, it isn’t a smart idea. If you shall build a subwoofer you should either go with a completely sealed box (easiest) or a properly vented box (harder). Just having a speaker mounted on a wall in an open space or not properly vented box can cause acoustic feedback. I.e the air in front of the speaker interfere with the air behind the speaker. Having the satellites in the same box will also cause problems with the woofer membrane moving the satellite membranes as well, distorting the output. But again, this is in theory and isn’t noticeable before you go up in power and size.
But building a properly vented subwoofer box can gain the sound volume several times, with the same power output from the amplifier.
Every 3db gain in volume would need the double power from the amplifier, so that can be accomplished with just building the speaker cabinet correct.

So yes, the game cabinet will act as a speaker cabinet. It will also be vented since I suppose there will be heat vents? But not properly tuned.
There are so many variables to consider making a proper ventilation for a speaker cabinet and so many ways to do it, it would require a specific thread and lot of explanation to cover all aspects and calculations.
However there are probably many at this forum besides me that would be happy to help you with that.

[matsadona]

Almost forgot - this is the place for you : http://www.vinyldepot.co.uk/