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Coming soon... to a living room in my house ;)
It uses the Dayton ND105-4 + Dayton ND90 + Dayton ND20FB, all rear-mounted. (Yes I finally figured out a way to take the ugly out of those damned pincushion frames. More on that in a bit. For now, here's a teaser)
This project was an idea generated by my wife. She wanted something slim and wall-mounted for our living room. Believe it or not, she wanted lots of drivers--a mini line array, if possible!
This created a laundry list of challenges:
1. The enclosure had to be small, and maximize its use of space. Anything wider and deeper than 6" was too much. But you can't get too long, either, or it just looks silly. I decided no longer than 32". So, that limits our total box volume to something around 11 Liters, max.
2. There are very few drivers out there that will put out any sort of respectable bass in 11 Liters. A 5" woofer is way too much; a single 5" driver needs that much space on its own to get decent bass. 3" woofers might work, if you get enough of them. But even the venerable Aura-derived NS3 (Dayton ND90) could only get down to the mid-50 Hz range. What's left? 4" drivers; and even those are a push, though there are a few that can get respectable bass.
3. Everything has to be as lightweight as possible. 3/4" MDF creates very heavy cabinets--great for floorstanders, not so good for wall-hanging. Plus, that thick stock eats up valuable interior space: so 1/2" MDF it is. As for drivers, if I could find neodymium motors, that'd be a plus, since they're lighter in weight (this was before the neodymium fiasco we are now witnessing)
One driver I thought would work would be the Dayton ND105-4 and/or the ND90. But I had to find a way to hide those ugly frames. I searched around this board and the internet to see if any DIYers had found ways to mask it, and finally found someone who had the right idea (I apologize that I don't remember who it was. But I remember he had converted an old Minimus-7 to use an ND90 and cleverly rear-mounted the driver with just the right amount of recess so it didn't look silly.) And that's just what I did. I used the ND20FB to complete the ensemble. (Oh, and I just freehand-routered the bits around the nuts--a step which ended up being unnecessary)
Still, fitting all that into the cabinet and making sure the drivers all got the appropriate volume was a bit hard. The outside drivers needed 4.5 Liters each; the inside woofers would have to make do with about 2 Liters for the pair. It's a tight fit, for sure--but it fits no problem, with about 1/2" of play. (Kind of reminds me of how tightly packed car engines are nowadays compared to 30 years ago.)
So what about some real details. Well, the F3 is probably in the upper 40's. It sounds spacious and images pretty effortlessly. It can stand on its own without a sub (as it will probably have to in my living room), but to turn on the sub is just dreamy. With a sub, the sound is huge and room-filling... makes you feel like you've gone weightless.
And what about that name? Well, my wife kept insisting on a name like the "wife pleasers," but I thought that name had too many other connotations :rolleyes:. (She figured this is a speaker with very high WAF. Get your heads out of the gutters, guys!) After deliberating, experimenting, trashing this design many, many times over the last year, I started feeling like it was this unattainable vision. A threshold I wasn't sure if I'd ever make it across--an Event Horizon!
Measurements and XO to follow soon. Just want to do some more measurements and put them through some more strenuous tests. Sorry for the long-winded writeup. But I've been through so much rigor to get this thing, that I can't help but have a lot to say.
It uses the Dayton ND105-4 + Dayton ND90 + Dayton ND20FB, all rear-mounted. (Yes I finally figured out a way to take the ugly out of those damned pincushion frames. More on that in a bit. For now, here's a teaser)
This project was an idea generated by my wife. She wanted something slim and wall-mounted for our living room. Believe it or not, she wanted lots of drivers--a mini line array, if possible!
This created a laundry list of challenges:
1. The enclosure had to be small, and maximize its use of space. Anything wider and deeper than 6" was too much. But you can't get too long, either, or it just looks silly. I decided no longer than 32". So, that limits our total box volume to something around 11 Liters, max.
2. There are very few drivers out there that will put out any sort of respectable bass in 11 Liters. A 5" woofer is way too much; a single 5" driver needs that much space on its own to get decent bass. 3" woofers might work, if you get enough of them. But even the venerable Aura-derived NS3 (Dayton ND90) could only get down to the mid-50 Hz range. What's left? 4" drivers; and even those are a push, though there are a few that can get respectable bass.
3. Everything has to be as lightweight as possible. 3/4" MDF creates very heavy cabinets--great for floorstanders, not so good for wall-hanging. Plus, that thick stock eats up valuable interior space: so 1/2" MDF it is. As for drivers, if I could find neodymium motors, that'd be a plus, since they're lighter in weight (this was before the neodymium fiasco we are now witnessing)
One driver I thought would work would be the Dayton ND105-4 and/or the ND90. But I had to find a way to hide those ugly frames. I searched around this board and the internet to see if any DIYers had found ways to mask it, and finally found someone who had the right idea (I apologize that I don't remember who it was. But I remember he had converted an old Minimus-7 to use an ND90 and cleverly rear-mounted the driver with just the right amount of recess so it didn't look silly.) And that's just what I did. I used the ND20FB to complete the ensemble. (Oh, and I just freehand-routered the bits around the nuts--a step which ended up being unnecessary)
Still, fitting all that into the cabinet and making sure the drivers all got the appropriate volume was a bit hard. The outside drivers needed 4.5 Liters each; the inside woofers would have to make do with about 2 Liters for the pair. It's a tight fit, for sure--but it fits no problem, with about 1/2" of play. (Kind of reminds me of how tightly packed car engines are nowadays compared to 30 years ago.)
So what about some real details. Well, the F3 is probably in the upper 40's. It sounds spacious and images pretty effortlessly. It can stand on its own without a sub (as it will probably have to in my living room), but to turn on the sub is just dreamy. With a sub, the sound is huge and room-filling... makes you feel like you've gone weightless.
And what about that name? Well, my wife kept insisting on a name like the "wife pleasers," but I thought that name had too many other connotations :rolleyes:. (She figured this is a speaker with very high WAF. Get your heads out of the gutters, guys!) After deliberating, experimenting, trashing this design many, many times over the last year, I started feeling like it was this unattainable vision. A threshold I wasn't sure if I'd ever make it across--an Event Horizon!
Measurements and XO to follow soon. Just want to do some more measurements and put them through some more strenuous tests. Sorry for the long-winded writeup. But I've been through so much rigor to get this thing, that I can't help but have a lot to say.
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