nm2285 - Thanks for the schematic of your crossover.
You asked earlier what I thought of the Peerless woofer and tweeter I used. The lack of distortion and wide dispersion across the midrange (including the crossover region) is what I think makes this speaker so good. It has more of that difficult to describe quality where the musicians sound as if they have stepped out of the speaker box and are in the room with me than any other small 2-way I've heard. I believe some refer to this quality as "soundstage".
This was my first DIY speaker and I did not design this myself. It is a kit that had been designed and tested by someone else, Ed Frias. The full details including crossover schematic can be found here
http://www.audioreview.com/DIY^speakercrx.aspx. Madisound sells all the components including assembled crossovers and cabinets. To find it from the Madisound homepage
http://www.madisound.com/, click on the kits link on the menu on the left side. The AR.COM Kit by EFE Technology is the 1st kit on their list. For about $340 a pair, I think it is one the great bargains around. I honestly believe it sounds as good as commercial 2-ways that retail for $1000 or more a pair.
The obvious differences between yours and mine are the tweeters, the crossover, and the use of a ported or sealed box. They both use the same woofer that Peerless describes as a
6½" high-end woofer with heavy magnet and large voice coil. All-around bass reflex driver suitable for a wide range of box sizes (8-50 ltrs.). The speaker impresses with a very deep and dry bass, and a crisp and clear midrange with very low distortion.
It would be interesting to hear both yours and mine side by side. Since we probably can't easily do that, I can always speculate on how they might differ
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- I wonder if your higher crossover frequency and steeper rolloff alters the wide dispersion character across the midrange. How did you come up with your crossover design? Computer modeling alone, or did you also experiment by building several different crossovers varying the crossover frequencies or slopes to listen to them?
- Ed Frias says he tried changing the bass response by varying the box volume. He says that larger box volumes did produce more bass lower than 60 Hz, but it came at the expense of that marvelous midrange. The design uses small 15 L ported cabinet well stuffed with polyester fiberfill. I never thought of using a sealed cabinet.
- Ed Frias also suggested adding to the 5 ohm resistance in the tweeter part of the crossover, by adding an extra resistor between the crossover and the tweeter (as shown in the diagram). He suggested trying values from 0.5 to 6 ohms. I ended up using a 2 ohm resistor for this. Less than 2 made the tweeter too bright compared to the woofer.
