Speaker Project

Prototyping

We're done with the woofer testing. We have an impedance and a frequency response for prototyping a crossover and we've verified the enclosure and port sizes. Now it's time to work on the tweeter.

Next we start working with the tweeter. For the tweeter we really just need to measure the impedance and the frequency response - both done while in the enclosure. The enclosure front will affect both measurements slightly (due to diffraction effects, more than anything).

Here's the tweeter "Free Air" measurement (done in the enclosure) and the tweeter On Axis response.

Before we start prototyping the crossover note that the tweeter dropoff is substantial at the high end (above 15KHz). I haven't decided for sure if I'm going to use this tweeter. It's a large mid-tweeter made by LPG (the 38T) a 1 1/2" midrange dome made from titanium. 

The purpose of these speakers is primarily as home theater speakers and as I get older I hear fewer high frequencies so I'm strongly considering this because it should be able to generate more volume at lower distortion than a standard 1" or 3/4" tweeter. Also the crossover should be simpler because it goes farther down in frequency. Finally, the driver is much lower in distortion in that important midrange area (700-2000Hz) than a standard tweeter.

The next step is to prototype a crossover and listen to the speaker to see whether that top 1/2 octave matters to me or not. The crossover prototyping is a good exercise, either way.

On to the next page.

last updated March 12, 2001