Leaderboard

I was too busy catching that day to take pictures. Was insane. Put more than 100 bass in the boat in less than 2 hours.

Last week-end I installed the Focal ES 100 K comp set, and 2 8" Focal subs/midbass under the seats. I absolutely need to install the amplifier : an Audison AP 8.9 with buil-in DSP, and all OEM interconnections and wires. I know it may not be the best, but it will do it for me. I put some Damplifier pro on the doors, but I had LLP for my old car and I din't use it. I hope I will be able to use it in the trunk. That was not cheap, I must use it somewhere !

Northstar 31s are sold out earlier so I just got the equivalence at the same cost, so win win. Even though I have OCD it wont bother me that bad.

You're welcome man, and more pictures to follow as well.

I've had these speakers sitting around for *literally* a decade, finally decided to actually build them into something MTM using Exodus Anarchy and Seas 27TDFC. Enclosure is 2cuft tune to 35hz. They should dig down to 30hz with ease, so we'll see if I add a sub or not. The baffle will be removable so that I can easily access the crossover, reuse the enclosure with different speakers or reuse these speakers in a new enclosure. I had debated on active vs passive but I'd done active in a car for years. I've never designed passives from scratch since I didnt play too much in HA/HT, so it's an experience I'd like to try. I'm intrigued by the combination of art and science that goes into the design of a passive network. My audio skillz are a bit rusty, so the task is a bit daunting. But I'm relearning pretty quickly...I think? Every DIY project needs a name, right? Decided to call these 7empest. Why? Well, primarily because TOOL is the most badass fucking band ever. If you don't understand the reference GTFO my thread (no, seriously....go). It works because the Anarchys are 7" drivers, and what does a tempest cause? Anarchy. See. It works. My woodworking skills leave a lot to be desired. Right now as long as these are simply functional I'll be happy. Baffles turned out nice though About the only thing that's gone right so far. This is where we're currently at.

Welp, spent some time today building and measuring crossovers. I think I built six different iterations in total, and took countless measurements of each one. Here are, I think, the top 3 contenders. The maroon so far looking best on paper for both FR and phase. I did spend a bit of time the past day or so listening to the first crossover I was able to build based on the parts that arrived (some of my inductors were on back order and just arrived today). Made me wonder why the hell I wasted so much time and effort trying to obtain good audio in a car when home audio sounds infinitely better with much less time and money invested, LOL. I really enjoyed how they sounded with that first crossover, and it didn't measure quite as well as these (well, maybe a little better than the purple xover...but I want to give that design a listen so I kept it in my "top 3"). So long story short there I think I'm ultimately going to be very happy with how these turn out regardless These measurements were done in-room, so ignore 300hz down. I'm also pretty suspect of the peak in the last octave from 10khz -20khz, but considering my age and past listening habits I'd be lucky if I can even hear most of that octave anyways. But regardless, all 3 xovers are within +/- 2db from 300hz on up, which is pretty good. Graph "looks" a little ragged but that's because we're zoomed in pretty close. If I zoomed out one or two clicks on the graph it'd "look" much more smooth. Reverse nulls aren't amazing, but I think they're sufficient (maybe a little less so on the purple trace but again, I just really want to listen to that one). Then I have the individual roll offs.

And, it's alive! I literally spent HOURS figuring out why I had no tweeter on the right channel. Finally came to discover that one of my jumper wires were bad It was incredibly frustrating trying to track down the issue, and I dont handle frustration well. Curse words were said (and muttered, yelled and spewed)

Here's probably one of my top contenders as far as phase and response go. 4th order on the woofer with a zobel and tank filter, tweeter is second order. My last crossover is just a variant of this - slightly different values for some of the inductors and caps to shape the response a little differently. But overall layout is the same. I have a 5ohm resistor on the tweeter to drop the response a little to keep it from being on the bright side, but I am also going to try a 4ohm which would bring the response from the tweeter up to pretty close to flat. We'll see which way sounds best in reality.

So with a little help I came to realize that the dip in my initial measurements from 2-3khz was likely an issue with my measurement system somewhere. So I went through and created a new cal file to basically pretend it didn't exist My new initial measurements look a little different than above, but eliminating that dip in the tweeter response is really the main difference. Spent way more time than I care to admit working on different xover sims, but I learned a bit each time. I'm far from an expert but definitely better than when I started a few weeks ago. Came up with 3 main xovers that I'm going to try. This is probably my favorite. The response isn't the flattest, and the reverse null isn't the best of the bunch...but it's the only alignment that is a 2nd order on both the mids (with a tank filter) and tweeter so the part count is the lowest and it's the simplest design. I think there's something to be said for simplicity. Guys like Zaph and Jeff Bagby (RIP) always tried to design with the least parts possible. I have $160 worth of crossover components on their way to me from PE. to try all three designs. So hopefully out of that I'll be able to make something that sounds decent I just went with non-polarized electrolytics for the caps because, well, they were 1/10th the cost and I'm a tight ass with money, the actual sonic differences are arguable at best, and I may have something in the next couple months that'll require some cash to fund properly. We'll see.

Here's the impedance sweep for the Anarchy's. Learned a few things: 1) For some reason tuning ended up being 25hz instead of 35hz? No idea. I know it's not a measure twice, cut once issue with building the cabinets. Measurements there are solid. I figured I'd be off a few hz one way or the other....but 30% was a little unexpected. I'd considered that maybe it's an accuracy issue with the measurement....but the Anarchy's are infamous for having a cone resonance around 4200hz which is about spot on in the measurement. So.... 2) I had poly fill stuffed in the bottom of the enclosure to start but when I started measuring impedance I had a nearly non-existent impedance peak at tuning. Removed the polyfill and the impedance peak looks much better than how it was. 3) I knew about the hiccup at ~4200hz which is a cone resonance. Not sure what's going on at 150hz...enclosure resonance maybe? Internal reflection? Not sure. Anyways. I had the FR sweeps all done, but going to rerun the sweep for the Anarchy's without the polyfill since based on the Z curve I'm going to be leaving that out.

Got my impedance measuring jig soldered up today Pretty happy with how it turned out considering how long it's been since I've soldered anything

Can at least start FR sweeps tomorrow....finally

Welp, as usual this shit is taking way longer than I anticipated. Didnt help I had to spend all day Sat fixing my dryer instead of working on my speaker project But, progress was made. Got my binding post plates installed, baffle mounting bracket pieces put on, holes drilled and countersunk, T nuts installed and started on the cabinet damping. Also realized I forgot about needing to measure the impedance curve....really wish I'd thought about that when I placed my order at PE >:(