Budget Beats @budgetbeats-blog - Tumblr Blog

The Recap

Brett Klassen - Hamid Yuksel - Jared McPhee

After lots of work, Budget Beats were made. Although the original idea had to change, we adjusted in order to find a different type of success. Instead of the hassle of repurposing delicate speakers, Budget Beats evolved to become noise attenuating earmuffs for your earbuds. This way, you could achieve the noise cancellation of expensive headphones, but without the hefty price tag. Here’s a recap of everything that happened.

Cost

$10

Materials Used

1 pair of earmuffs

1 pair of earbuds

2 sponges

a small tube of super glue

A lot of tape

A bit of fake fur

Materials Not Used

1 old pair of speakers

a lot of wires

foam knee pads

Work Division

Brett Klassen

Went fetching for most of the materials

Managed much of the construction

Made several blog posts

Jared McPhee

Did all the wiring on the earbuds and the speakers

Helped build a bulk of the headphones

Took most of the pictures found on blog

Hamid Yuksel

Made and custom designed the blog using HTML and CSS

Helped fetch some of the materials

Made most of the blog posts

In sum, Budget Beats was a fun project that can attenuate sound surprisingly well. Also, it ensures comfortability, with the added bonus of keeping your ears warm!

The Clean Up

After having finally finished the Budget Beats projects, here’s a look at the mess we made. We tried various things, tore up a lot more, and had a lot of fun in the process. In the end we were able to create noise attenuating earmuffs for your earbuds on the cheap. Instead of spending over $400 for a brand new pair, why not just under $20?

Test #3

Here’s a test of the speakers on a person while on full blast (max volume).

Test #2

Here’s a test of the speakers on a person on normal listening volume, or what is at least recommended by doctors.

Test #1

Quick sound test to see how effective the Budget Beats 1.0 are.

The Budget Beats 1.0 (Patent Pending)

After waiting for the glue to finally dry, Budget Beats 1.0 was complete. Above you can see the first pair of Budget Beats on a model. It is very comfortable to wear, and can attenuate sound fairly well for your earbuds.

Stylizing the Budget Beats.

We eventually found a way to make the earpads less ugly. We repurposed the fur from the earmuffs to cover the spongy ear-pads. This way the yellow sponges could not be seen. As well, it made the earphones far more comfortable to wear.

Frame Finished!

After much discussion, we decided to go with the sponges as our noise attenuators. They may not cancel noise the best, but easily make up for it by being able to cover the wearer’s ears completely and being very soft on the ears. As well, the noise attenuation by the sponges are still quite decent enough to be effective.

Using super glue, we attached the sponge ear pads to the winter earmuff frame. As you can see above, the headphone attenuators are very ugly to wear. Even so, they should still work pretty well.

Spongey-Success!

After ditching the foam knee pads, we decided to try out the sponges as ear pads. Although we were able to easily carve out the concave shape we wanted, the sponges were not as good at blocking unwanted sound and are much, much thicker than the foam knee pads.

Pros

Incredibly easy to mold into desired shape

Softer than the knee pads

Cons

Does not attenuate sound as well as the knee pads

A bit on the large side

Testing For Noise Cancelling

We started experimenting with the foam knee pads. The knee pads were incredibly soft and incredibly sturdy at the same time. It was also very thin, making it easier to wear. However, it’s downfall came when we tried molding it to fit someone’s ear. The knee pads were unfortunately too sturdy and we had a very hard time trying to change their shape. To make matters worse, the knee pads proved quite good at cancelling sound.

Pros

Thin

Sturdy

Soft

Cancelled sound well

Cons

Too sturdy

Hard to mold into desired shape needed

Although the knee pads had many pros, it just was not a good material to use for making headphones. We could not mold it into the proper shape we needed, and that makes all of its pros useless since it can’t even cover the wearer’s ears.

Change of Plans

Despite Jared’s best efforts, rewiring the headphones have been proven fruitless. The wires are just too thin, and way too small to handle. We are left with speakers that will not work. As such, we’ve been forced to rethink our project.

We don’t know if we can find replacement speakers, or even that we can safely isolate them from their plastic. So what do we do? Well, we decided to simply abandon trying to repurpose the speakers. Speakers are too delicate for us to handle or rewire, and we don’t think we can find another affordable pair at such a nice size.

Even so, we can’t just abandon Budget Beats. That’s why our new plan is to now figure out a way to simply make noise attenuating headphones, and nothing more. With the Budget Beats objective, we’re going to try and make headphones that cancel noise for your earbuds.

Earbuds do a terrible job of cancelling noise. Many people instead crank the volume to max to try and drown out outside sound. However, this is very bad for your hearing. Budget Beat’s new aim is to try and be a cheap alternative to high-end headphones by making your earbuds noise attenuating.

Problem 1 Solved! Using a small knife, we managed to successfully (and dangerously) detach the speakers from the glue that kept them stuck to the plastic. Luckily, no one got hurt. Thanks, Brett! Now, we just need to find a way to reconnect the speakers and make them work again.

PROBLEMS ARISE: While taking apart the old speakers, we discovered the actual speakers themselves were glued to the plastic casing (see picture above). As well, Brett accidentally broke the speaker wires while trying to remove the speakers. In fact, Brett managed to break the wires connecting both sets of speakers. We now face two new challenges

PROBLEM 1: How do we get the speakers out?

PROBLEM 2: How do we reconnect the speaker wires?

The Materials:

Old earmuffs - Salvation Army - $2.00

Sponges - Dollarama - $1.50

Foam Knee Pads - Dollarama - $2.50

Play-Doh - Dollarama - $1.00

Old speakers - Salvation Army - $3.00

Total: $10.00

We had to make some changes on the actual materials we will use. We couldn’t find any construction sound-cancelling earmuffs cheap enough, and so instead had to purchase a pair of old winter earmuffs. Our two candidates to act as the foam noise attenuators are knee pads and sponges.

Our Plan’s Sketch

Here is a rough design sketch made by Brett. But instead, you can read the bullet points written by Hamid.

Frame: Frame will most likely be made out of the frame from actual noise cancelling headphones used in construction sites. This will depend on whether or not we can actually procure some.

Speakers: We will try and find small sized computer speakers. These are the most manageable size on making something that fits on someone’s head.

Noise Attenuation Material: We will be using any foamy material we can. Foam is sturdy while at the same time very soft and malleable. We can mold it in nearly any shape we need, and will be molded to completely cover the wearer’s ears.

Problem: Finding the right speakers

An important part of making headphones is having it actually fit your head. Since we were using speakers, we needed to find a pair that weren’t too big or too small. In our first trip to a thrift store (Value Village), all we managed to find was the one pictured above. Unfortunately for us, it was a bit too big and ultimately unusable.

#MMEDIA1A03

Introduction: The Concept

Budget Beats are old computer speakers reimagined. Instead of throwing out old speakers, the Budget Beats project aims to repurpose them into inexpensive headphones still capable of being noise attenuating. Instead of spending over $200, why not just under $20? However, doing so isn’t perfectly simple and there are some problems we’ll have to solve.

FORESEEABLE PROBLEMS

How do we keep the headphones on someone’s head?

How do we make the headphones comfortable to wear?

What materials work best at attenuating sound?

Can we find speakers that aren’t too big and can fit on someones head?

#MMEDIA1A03 #BudgetBeats #save money

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