I am now planning on building a larger box for these speakers, but that will have to wait until I finish up the other projects that are piling up in the workshop (oh… the endless joys of home-ownership). So to continue making progress I thought I would start working on some crossovers. I know it will not be the final crossover as I intend to move the woofer and tweeter closer, but I think it will give me some idea of what topologies and alignments will work best. Plus, I need to hear these things or I will start loosing steam (that’s right, I am easily distracted)!
So, I took the test box outside for some measurements. This was my first time trying to measure outside. My inside measurements were always repeatable, but I never quite trust them. Like I said, this was my first time measuring outside, so there was a learning curve. There was some ambient noise, I can hear the freeway from my house, some construction in the distance ect. Its amazing how much noise there is outside if you actually stop and listen! I figured that with 6 cycles averaged together I could get rid of most of the ambient. The thing I didn’t realize was going to be such a problem was the wind. It wasn’t heavy wind, but with the puffs of air I could go from good measurements to clipping the mic-pre in a heartbeat. I need a windsock. Anyways, eventually I got consistent and repeatable results that I am pretty confident in. Measurements taken at 1.5m using ARTA’s sweep excitation for impulse measurements.
The next step was taking everything into Soundeasy and whipping up a crossover. After some fiddling I ended up with a LR4 @ 2200. This was more a choice of convenience of hitting the targets than any precisely contemplated crossover point. I don’t think the woofer will be having trouble by then, and I think moving the crossover up when using a woofer that can handle it gives the tweeter a little extra headroom. Here is the basic info:
Like I said, this isn’t a finished crossover. It is promising though.
