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Haven't been terribly active here in the last few years but I thought I would share my latest project with everyone. Seven years ago I built my first diy speaker design using the Dayton DS175 and DC28F. It originally employed an online x-over calculator crossover 
and a really small port. Not to long after that a member here helped come up with a better crossover for me which did help with the speakers response. Those drivers then got moved into an old vintage stereo cabinet in the garage for a few years and then got put on a shelf. Fast forward 4 or 5 years and I though it would be fun to revisit this build. I now have an OmniMic and Dats so I can take proper measurements of the drivers and design my own crossover for the new enclosure.
What started this idea was a woodworker local to me had a pile of veneer scraps for sale (5 large Rubbermaid bins!) of all kinds of cool wood. I bought about 4 different kinds, but was excited to use the curly maple the most. I have wanted to use curly maple in a build for ages after a local sushi restaurant used a large slab of it for their bar seating - looks so cool! There was definitely so lessons learned during this build so the cabinets didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but I will just chalk that up to learning to use a new wood
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The cabinets are an mdf box with the veneer and BB ply for the sides with an accent strip of cherry for the baffle edge. Enclosure size is .4cf and tuned to 50hz. I put one brace across the middle of the inside. One of the known issues with the DS drivers is a bit of upper distortion in the 4k range. Looking at the stamped steel basket I thought to myself that I wonder if some car audio sound deadener on the basket would help, so I went ahead and applied some to one driver and took some distortion sweeps of both finished speakers - I was quite surprised to actually see a difference in the distortion plots! I finalized my crossover and it came in right around 2k with an 12db slope on the woofer and 18 on the tweeter. Now onto the pictures!
A few under construction shots,
Side panels with the cherry strip,
Modelled response and measured in room,
Applying the sound deadener to the woofer and the distortion plots without the treatment and with - note these were taken full range with the tweeter and crossover in place,
and a really small port. Not to long after that a member here helped come up with a better crossover for me which did help with the speakers response. Those drivers then got moved into an old vintage stereo cabinet in the garage for a few years and then got put on a shelf. Fast forward 4 or 5 years and I though it would be fun to revisit this build. I now have an OmniMic and Dats so I can take proper measurements of the drivers and design my own crossover for the new enclosure.What started this idea was a woodworker local to me had a pile of veneer scraps for sale (5 large Rubbermaid bins!) of all kinds of cool wood. I bought about 4 different kinds, but was excited to use the curly maple the most. I have wanted to use curly maple in a build for ages after a local sushi restaurant used a large slab of it for their bar seating - looks so cool! There was definitely so lessons learned during this build so the cabinets didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but I will just chalk that up to learning to use a new wood
.The cabinets are an mdf box with the veneer and BB ply for the sides with an accent strip of cherry for the baffle edge. Enclosure size is .4cf and tuned to 50hz. I put one brace across the middle of the inside. One of the known issues with the DS drivers is a bit of upper distortion in the 4k range. Looking at the stamped steel basket I thought to myself that I wonder if some car audio sound deadener on the basket would help, so I went ahead and applied some to one driver and took some distortion sweeps of both finished speakers - I was quite surprised to actually see a difference in the distortion plots! I finalized my crossover and it came in right around 2k with an 12db slope on the woofer and 18 on the tweeter. Now onto the pictures!
A few under construction shots,
Side panels with the cherry strip,
Modelled response and measured in room,
Applying the sound deadener to the woofer and the distortion plots without the treatment and with - note these were taken full range with the tweeter and crossover in place,
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