The Mini Daytons

[Scarface1]

I wanted to build a system with full spectrum sound, a build in amplifier and as small as it can be. I choose all Dayton products except the passive radiators wich are from aliexpress, these are flat membrames and the only option because of the minimum internal volume, beside they can look really cool.

I use the dayton nd91-4 with the dayton nd16fa and power it with a dayton kab250v4 and a dayton dspb250 as a duo to get dsp and a active crossover. The crossover is at 3500hz and the highpass is at around 42hz @ 96db...

At the end i want a piano black finish and they should be under 3 liter volume bruto each ( without speaker surround and binding posts)

[Scarface1]

The enclosure, rotate the driver 45° so that i can use the 'corners' of the enclosure for a venting hole..

[Scarface1]

Added some filler and paint..

[Scarface1]

Added the passive and binding posts. I remove them later because i didn't finish the paintjob yet. By the way this is the passive speaker

[tomzarbo]

Man, I didn't understand the comment about rotating the driver 45 degrees to use the enclosure as a venting hole. Now I see that you had to do that to get breathing room for the ND91, otherwise there would be no more baffle to 'scallop' out. You're use of 3/4" material here is messing with my mind!

Cool project. How did you model the PR's, or did you do a test box? I never see PR's from A-Ex with specs is why I'm asking. And while I'm asking, do you have any shots of the PR's you used? and what's the little box that sits on the top and behind the tweeter? Details man!

Nice project, it looks good. I like that driver a lot. Even with 3/4" material, it's still pretty compact!

​​​​​​​TomZ

[Steve Lee]

The finish paint work came out very well!

[Kevin K.]

Nice work! The binding post look huge on the tiny enclosures. Are the amps internal or external and how do you like them?

[Scarface1]

Man, I didn't understand the comment about rotating the driver 45 degrees to use the enclosure as a venting hole. Now I see that you had to do that to get breathing room for the ND91, otherwise there would be no more baffle to 'scallop' out. You're use of 3/4" material here is messing with my mind!

Cool project. How did you model the PR's, or did you do a test box? I never see PR's from A-Ex with specs is why I'm asking. And while I'm asking, do you have any shots of the PR's you used? and what's the little box that sits on the top and behind the tweeter? Details man!

Nice project, it looks good. I like that driver a lot. Even with 3/4" material, it's still pretty compact!

TomZ

Thanks Tom, yes i mean the venting gap on the back off the baffle ( inglish is not my native language). I always want to minimalize bruto volume with thin wood but decided to take it the other way to get better sound instead, especially with high mass passives i have the idee the enclosure vibrates A LOT more ( when the passive get active ) so i use 18mm mdf just like the audioengine a2( a speaker the same size .

For the passives i did make a test enclosure. The test enclosure was originaly for dayton nd105 passives but to get a really low tuning i had to add a lot of mass, like double the weights you get with those passives. So thats not an option i guess because of the spider design the weight is 5 cm from the cone and really want to move directions wich are not lineair...
So i glued a piece of mdf with a smaller hole so i can use the passives from aliexpress. I did some rice on the cone and played with some frequencies to know the tuning point. It was around 65 hz so i added a couple of magnets, also from aliexpress , and get a 42 hz tuning. Because those passives are flat, they have a better control i gues in this situation.

That piece of mdf on top is to match the internal volume of the active speaker , so the volume of the amp

Here are some pictures of the test enclosure and the passives wich i painted , they get loose from the surround because i got nuts with the polish machine but i gonna make new ones!!

[Scarface1]

The finish paint work came out very well!

Thanks, in real life they have some imperfections but i'm not done yet. They really feel expensive, i used car paint out of a spray can so i have to add some layers

[Scarface1]

Nice work! The binding post look huge on the tiny enclosures. Are the amps internal or external and how do you like them?

Thanks, the binding post looks indeed huge on this but gives it a high end look i think if you compare it to plastic binding posts. They cost 40 dollar for both the speakers so that's the trade off but i'm happy with it...

I don't have much experience with amps but i think it sound ok and the v4 version even has aptx HD. The bluetooth has some trouble if i play games on my phone while listen to music but that is the v3 version so i hope this v4 version do it better in that way..

[Scarface1]

Man, I didn't understand the comment about rotating the driver 45 degrees to use the enclosure as a venting hole. Now I see that you had to do that to get breathing room for the ND91, otherwise there would be no more baffle to 'scallop' out. You're use of 3/4" material here is messing with my mind!

Cool project. How did you model the PR's, or did you do a test box? I never see PR's from A-Ex with specs is why I'm asking. And while I'm asking, do you have any shots of the PR's you used? and what's the little box that sits on the top and behind the tweeter? Details man!

Nice project, it looks good. I like that driver a lot. Even with 3/4" material, it's still pretty compact!

TomZ

The passives! I bought 20 of them for around 16 euro, so thats around 13 dollar.

I took 1 apart to lay it on a magazine cover so i could make a perfect fit cut out wich i later put on a passive to spray paint it without painting the surround. On the last picture you can see i sprayed to much so it messed up the surround because it flew under the cover because it was so much. I have to do it again with gentle sprays but i have a lot of those passives so it's not that bad.



Edit: the link to the passives Tom!!

[Scarface1]

Before i gonna polish the right speaker i build the left speaker and shorten all the wires so it fits inside the enclosure without touching the speaker or passives..

[Scarface1]

I have a left and right speaker now and painted it like 5 times to get a proper layer tickness to polish it. While i kept seeing scratches after polishing a test piece of mdf , i tried to just paint a piece of mdf black and cover it with clear varnish 3 times with sanding in between. It seems reasonable so i have to wait a few weeks till its completely hard and hope i can get a smooth result with polishing.

[Scarface1]

2nd pic

[Scarface1]

I don't know much about painting so i used the wrong paint. I used acryl instead of alkyd so i got scratches from using even a soft cloth! I gonna sand the speaker and paint it again with the alkyd paint and hope it turn out well.

Some pics of the what becoming a grill..