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Getting close to wrapping these up, a few details left to take care of. Will be taking another stab at the crossovers this week in hopes of reducing the part count from my first set. As soon as I finalize the crossovers, I’ll post the crossover schematics.
Figured the name was suitable since this set of 2.1 desktops consist of all Dayton products, including the amplifier. Everything is meant to work together in harmony and the amplifier’s adjustable crossover frequency for the sub and adjustable sub level makes this possible. There’s also a tone control on the amp and I’ll be setting the crossover up to work with the tone control in its middle position. This will allow the end user to tailor the highs to his or her own liking. If you would like it brighter, turn up the tone control, if it’s a bit too hot for you, turn down the tone control.
Now before anyone jumps in and comments “Comb-Filter Nightmare”, let me reveal the true nature of the beast. Drivers for the two cabinets consist of four ND90-8’s, four ND90 Passive Radiators and two ND25FA-4’s. Per cabinet, the top ND90-8 serves as a mid in its own sealed chamber. It’s then followed by the tweeter. Below the tweeter are two passive radiators which help tune the bottom ND90-8 that operates as the subwoofer. The bottom woofer of each cabinet is then wired to the .1 portion of the amplifier in parallel presenting a 4ohm load to the sub portion of the amplifier. Hope this helped to clarify the set up.
Confession: I’ve done a horrific job of documenting this build from a picture standpoint. When I first started the project, was just curious if the build would even be worthy of sharing, wasn’t sure how it would turn out from a sound standpoint. After cutting a quick set of prototypes and working up the crossovers, I really liked what I heard and decided to go ahead and cover them in the veneer. Perhaps I’ll cut another set of cabinets in the near future to do a better job of documenting the entire build.
The veneer is Bocote and it was purchased from Certainly Woods in New York. After receiving it and giving it a good look over, I decided to book-match it for all sides of the cabinets. This definitely adds some time to the overall job, but the end results are usually more striking, especially in a highly figured veneer like this one.
I’ll end this first post with some pictures of the cabinets. They were taken late last night right after installing the drivers. Once I’ve finished the crossovers, I’ll take some more pictures of these on my actual desk. You may notice the amplifier case looks a little lighter in hue, it still has another round of lacquer to go before being finished, and I’ll also be painting the inside of it black.
Thanks for checking them out guys!
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What a great build! It’s kind of cool to see that I am using some of the same design goals in some of my builds as well (Dinas adjustable crossover and Uglies using one as a subwoofer). I guess what they say about great minds, is true 😉 I just picked up some of those passives to work with, but I think they are for the ND65 (2,5″). I must say, the first thing that really drew me to them was the height. I can’t tell the exact height, but they look pretty perfect for a desktop speaker. DO you have any idea the tweeter height? Curious if you put it there so it would be more central on the ear or if that was just a design choice.
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Thanks Nick! I’ll post the detailed dimensions for everything later today or tomorrow. For now, the basics are 18.5″ tall, 4.5″ wide, and 7″ deep. The tweeter center is 13″ up from the desk top, and that puts it almost perfectly aligned with my ears, so yea, that was intentional. The height of the cabinets also matches the height of my monitor, so these look right at home sitting beside it.
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Forgot to ask. Would like to get some feedback on these from others and was wondering if you would be open to a demo? Everything would be included in the box, simply unpack, plug the audio jack into your computer and hook up the cables to the binding post on the cabinets, easy as that. I realize they won’t hang with the Dina’s, there is a substantial difference in the woofer sizes. But when you take into consideration desktop space vs output, I think these will surprise a few. If you are game, I’ll try to get them ready to ship out in the next week or so. Once you’re done with them, I’ll have you re-pack them and send em to the next guy I have in mind, Tom Zarbo. Haven’t talked to him about it yet but I know he would jump at the opportunity. If others are interested, PM me and we can discuss the possibility.
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Yeah definitely. That’s a great idea to send them to Tom as well. He is one of the nicest guys I have met. I really enjoyed meeting him at MWAF 2018. I didn’t see him this year. I was actually going to contact him about it, since I missed him. He doesn’t live too far away from me. Just a few hours. If I wasn’t in the middle of getting ready to move, I would say, Tom and I should get together and listen to them. But I don’t think that’ll be possible.
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That might work better. I am really busy right now 😀
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