Mark's Speaker Projects - 8" Two Way Towers

For this project I wanted to build a decent quality set of stereo speakers and spend no more than $200. I chose to use the Dayton 8" woofer and the Dayton 1 1/8" Silk Dome Tweeter due to their high performance at a relatively low cost. I decided on a 1.84cu ft enclosure tuned to 29.94Hz with a 3" port that is 9" long. To design the enclosure I let the Parts Express PEBox utility crunch the numbers for me. ;-) I don't have the equipment to measure their actual performance, but I am very pleased with how they sound so far. I'm sure they are far from having a flat response - they seem a tad rough around the mid range (as the response graphs of the Dayton 8's might indicate), but they produce some powerful bass and brilliant, natural highs that are never harsh. They are still a work in progress...

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DAYTON DC200-8 8" CLASSIC WOOFER

DAYTON DC28F-8 1-1/8" SILK DOME TWEETER

My eyes and ears have been opened! I installed the down-firing ports and finished the little bases that I attached to the bottom of the speakers. Then in October I took my speakers to the Texas DIY event graciously hosted by Danny Richie from GR Research (thanks Danny for the door prize, by the way!). I didn't go to show them off, but rather to have them tested and critiqued. I was hoping I could learn a thing or two and I did! As it turns out, I was way off the mark! The response plots from my speakers looked awful. There were both huge peaks and nulls at critical midrange frequencies, and with no padding on the tweeter the highs were about 8db louder than the lows. As I mentioned previously, I detected some "roughness" in the midrange area, but my untrained ears could not hone in on the problem. Now that I have seen graphically what my speakers are doing, I can better hear their specific characteristics, or tonality (which is way out of whack right now). Without even realizing it, I was picking up on the highs being too hot and compensating for it on my amplifier by adjusting the tone controls. I noticed that I had turned the treble down -6db and the bass up +2db. Since the DIY 2003 event I have been working on designing custom crossovers, but at the moment I am still using the Dayton pre-built crossovers. The only change is that I added a fixed L-pad to attenuate the tweeters by roughly 8db. The highs and lows sound a lot more balanced now, but that made the roughness in the midrange area just stick out even more. It is driving me nuts and I am determined to fix it. I am kinda regretting selecting these woofers to use in a 2-way design now. Their midrange starts to break up really badly in the 2khz range and I'm sure that's what is causing the problem. One way or another I will fix 'em up. I will try to post more pics of the construction and some response plots to illustrate all this soon.

Slapped the boxes together and wanted to see what they would look like next to my tv...

My first attempt at cutting circles with my router. This was done with a homemade jig I made from an old clipboard.

I hooked up the pre-built Dayton crossovers I had for a quick audition. These will be replaced before it is all said and done.

They sounded pretty good, but they were a bit bass shy. The boxes are sealed at this point - I still haven't installed the ports.