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Thread: Dayton Audio Exciters - DIY speakers

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    Default Dayton Audio Exciters - DIY speakers

    Next project I want to tackle, is build a set of these speakers ; got given a powered subwoofer the other day, and it will suit purpose here nicely.

    If you're not aware of Dayton exciters ->

    More details later... however, anyone else done this here? Comments/insights most welcome =)
    Last edited by wotnot; 15-06-20 at 03:48 PM.



Look Here ->
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    Well as long as HiFi is not your thing.
    Without even reading about it, I can say that obviously the larger the board the lower the frequency response. Try mounting it on a low quality hollow room door and see how much bass it can reproduce. A circle would look nicer than a square or rectangle and the thinner the board the higher the efficiency I would imagine.
    A circle may also provide a more linear reproduction or better said: less likely to cause unwanted resonance effects but every vibrating piece of wood has it's own resonance frequencies which is the reason why the walls of better speaker cabinets are constructed so solid that they can't vibrate at all.

    Offsetting the position of the exciter may reduce resonance effects too.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 15-06-20 at 10:20 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by loopyloo View Post
    Bit astonished after all that effort, tests and theories that he didn't try a perfect circle with the exciter significantly offset.
    In every direction you would get a different standing wave length basically covering the whole frequency range that it can cover and therefore a more linear response.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Uncle Fester View Post
    Bit astonished after all that effort, tests and theories that he didn't try a perfect circle with the exciter significantly offset.
    In every direction you would get a different standing wave length basically covering the whole frequency range that it can cover and therefore a more linear response.
    Indeed, and I was also considering the foci established by a long ellipse for example ~ in essence, I always thought the experiment was 'underdone' for the exact same reasons you point out.

    Also, if the study goes down to the minutia of detail as to whether or not having sharp or sanded/rounded corners on the resonating board makes a difference in tonal quality (and it likely does to some extent with certain materials), makes my mind query just why are we dealing with a 'flat' resonating surface? As far as I've studied into this thus far, high density XPS foam is for instance a recommended material (where I'll be starting), and there's nothing to stop you from altering that flat surface radically. For simple example, golf ball sized pock marks in the front/back faces of the resonating board.

    Then, right, even though in my mind it makes little sense to think about, what about parallelograms or triangles? Surely one would explore these options, relative to the specific listening/room environment, 'just because' you wanted to test your own dismissive thoughts about shapes other than rectangles...which make no sense at all in -my- head.

    Wrt what I'm after, in this place the only way to get hi-fi, is to put on the Sennheisers - it is what it is. I'm probably aiming for something as good as the best high-end computer 2.1 speaker system you can buy now-a-days or some such...mm..better than a soundbar at least. I'll probably try both 5watt and 25watt exciters in that order, and find out for myself what sort of sound level/power/panel size correlation pans out ~ pretty much all shrugs atm if I was asked how loud a pair of 5watt daytons are ; dunno, lets find out =)
    Last edited by wotnot; 19-06-20 at 09:16 AM.

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    I saw the Techingridents a year or so ago when the vid came out. Seemed Impressive.
    The drivers seem to have come down in price surprisingly. If one had some old But Good quality speakers the paper had broken down on and mounted the centre ( Driver/ Coil) hard onto the board, would that do the same thing?

    I was thinking these would be great for the back Verandah instead of the bulky Party/DJ speakers I have out there now.

    What is the consensus, Offset the drivers on Circular Cutouts? I was thinking rectangular would look better.
    Was going to do them in MDF. What thickness do the Knowledgeable think would work best?

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    You'll very really end up about as wise as anyone else, by trolling the internets and read, read, read, watch YT, ingest all resources, and construe design from that understanding. Very much one thing that needs to be understood, is exactly what material to use for the resonating board, and at this level we're very easily drawing analogy to the difference in sound of an acoustic guitar or violin for instance, where the quality of sound is dependent on the resonate qualities of the wood used....we're down at this level of sound reproduction. That being the case, experimentation would be the key, which is what I plan to do ~ take on any reasonably draw advice and results of others experimentation, for draw up a plan of attack.

    I have some personal experience with exciters/transducers, but in the industrial process control arena...ie; container level scanning, particle conglomeration using sound (was helping a fellow from csiro with a diesel particulate filter at some stage), and we had to deal with the same sort of physics). Like I say, I'm starting with high density XPS foam, but by no means will that be the only material I try - each has it's own resonance and timbre. and so me that's part of the 'fun' of such experimentation.

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    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post
    What is the consensus, Offset the drivers on Circular Cutouts? I was thinking rectangular would look better.
    Was going to do them in MDF. What thickness do the Knowledgeable think would work best?
    Standing waves. A rectangle will have 2 strong resonant waves and their harmonics based on it's fixed length and width if you centre it.
    It will sound squawky and awful.

    By offsetting it you have 4 weaker resonant waves.

    By making a circle or better an ellipse and offsetting it, you theoretically have an infinite amount of possible standing waves and none are dominant making it very linear, theoretically.

    Long ellipsoid boards would also look much cooler and futuristic than a boring square bit of ply. The longer the better for lower frequencies and I would make them so long that they almost touch the ground, while the width could be much narrower and won't take much space away.

    As I mentioned above the thinner the better as long as it stays rigid. I would rather use marine ply than MDF 5mm or less.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 19-06-20 at 12:34 AM.
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    Seems I'll have to fix the sub-woofer first while the exciters get here ~ tested it last night, both volume & rollover pots are scratchy, and it works for a time but the heatsink starts to get overly hot for no good reason, and the thermal protections cut in. All the hallmarks of a high frequency runaway event, should be a doddle to fix.

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    Let the fun begin ...matchbox gives comparative sizing of these 5watt driverss




    I've got a class-D 2.1 amplifier board I can use for experiments ..



    Reference noise provided by a pair of Bose Studiocraft 440 still alive out of the 70's =)




    First experiment - piece of plywood sheet found in shed...distorted & warped, 4mm thick.



    O expect it to sound like rubbish, it's just a piece of flotsam I found...going to attach both drivers in a 'soundboard' type thang, much like a soundbar is both l/r speakers in a single unit.

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    I reckon we'll expect a youtube vid out of this so we can hear it too.

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    They ARE small.
    Hmmm... I could get one through the sound hole of a crappy acoustic guitar and stick it underneath so it can't be seen, together with one of those little 10W bluetooth D-amp boards and a little Lipo, run Paco de Lucía from my phone through it while I pretend to play and show off

    ...until I get caught


    Well it would have been a cool looking blue tooth speaker ...
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 25-06-20 at 08:47 PM.
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    I know wattage ratings are variable and based on distortion and I know my Harmon Kardon Amp and speakers are only rated at 30W but will just about remove the windows when cranked, BUT, how much sound/ power/ Volume are you going to get out of only 5W Drivers?

    That seems a tad underpowered to me or is there some other thing at work here like the size of the boards that move more air to compensate?
    But wouldn't they need more power to move the large surface area of the board that moves and meets more air resistance?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Uncle Fester View Post
    They ARE small.
    Hmmm... I could get one through the sound hole of a crappy acoustic guitar and stick it underneath so it can't be seen, together with one of those little 10W bluetooth D-amp boards and a little Lipo, run Paco de Lucía from my phone through it while I pretend to play and show off ...until I get caught

    Well it would have been a cool looking blue tooth speaker ...
    Obviously a canny joke (that would actually work & sound pretty good =), but in essence you've hit upon some of the standout features of these small exciters.

    Ref. -- &

    They actually sound about as flat as their frequency response suggests, but then the actual sound is inextricably linked to the resonate properties of the material the exciters are attached to/in. The words 'to' & 'in' seem out of place, but for example you can plonk these things on the side of a cupboard and be surprised ~ you can surprise yourself again by attaching the exciter of the inside of the cupboard instead (in the same location) ; each will sound different.

    The idea of sticking one in an acoustic guitar might appear to be whimsical folly, however, in a tuned enclosure like that and just feeding the exciter an acoustic guitar signal (all around the midrange), would actually sound better than OK... at least, that would be my expectation after the limited about of playtime I've had with them thus far.

    For instance, the shitty piece of crap plywood I found in the shed, sounds like a shitty piece of crap plywood =) I think the proper way to remark upon that, is if someone had built a guitar body out of that shitty piece of crap plywood, it would've been one shitty sounding guitar. This is really where these exciters put you (as an experimenter) - into this realm of material physics & sound vibrations. As I mentioned previously, you are very much at the same point, as the old master craftsmen of acoustic musical instruments, going through the same process they did, to conclude pinewood makes for a lousy sounding instrument, whereas higher density woods (of specific grain) sound heaps better.

    The real difference, is today we have a -lot- more material types we can test...including plastics & expanded foams. Once upon a time, the idea of making an acoustic guitar with a plastic soundboard would've been treated (and sounded like) a joke -- now days, not so much, due to the advancements on plastic/polymer technologies.

    Point about power consumption (or more overly, power required to produce a specific sound pressure), is another bit of a wake-up ; it is somewhat understandable at the same time, it's just not that often you get to tacitly appreciate how much of a compromise traditional coned speakers/box enclosures are, in the practical sense of watts per decibel.


    BUT, how much sound/ power/ Volume are you going to get out of only 5W Drivers?

    That seems a tad underpowered to me or is there some other thing at work here like the size of the boards that move more air to compensate?
    But wouldn't they need more power to move the large surface area of the board that moves and meets more air resistance?

    One pretty much has to throw away a lot of preconceptions to do with traditional speaker designs. If I were to be hi-fi critical of these exciters, then you would hold them analogous to a wideranging midrange driver, in a say 3-way speaker enclosure of around 50w total music handling power, in a 70~100litre box...with a subwoofer lurking in the background. I express it like that, because even though these exciters -are- a widerange device, you're very much limited by the resonating qualities of the materials you're exciting, and it's highly unlikely (in my ind at least) to suppose of a material that can accurately resonate, in flat fashion, from 70Hz thru to 12kHz ...where these exciters drop-off noticeably.

    In practice, you need woofer to cover off 50~200Hz, and tweeter to take-over from 11kHz up...(and the sub does DC to 50Hz =) ...in hi-fi terms, m'kay? That said, one wouldn't build these, as midrange elements, into the enclosure - they would be satellites, as would be the tweeters in my mind's eye...and once that is so, you get sound vibrations from the front, back, and sides of the material being driven by the exciter ...not just from for instance the front of a vibrating paper cone. It is actually this somewhat omnidirectional transmission of sound, that's one of these device's most enigmatic qualities ~ the ability to deceive the listening ear, wrt to location of the sound source.

    These 5w units would be, as I had planned for, good for a computer 2.1 speaker setup... they easily make this amount of noise. Good enough for watching teevee, easy. I haven't even tried them on the 2.1 amp with sub running... I've been using one of these little BT stereo amp modules..



    If you want to surprise yourself about how good/loud a measly 1watt of power can sound like, you should buy some to play with =)

    The very best way to describe these exciters, are as tools to explore the transmission of sound. I've found I really did understate the case for resonating surfaces as being flat/thin geometrical shapes, and imho, limiting the scope of implementation. The instruction manual, such as it is, could be summarized as 'find something to attach them to that sounds good'.

    I'm starting to look at anything within reach, as being a possible resonator ...



    That sounded pretty good for example. Boxes sound good too, as would cubes, spheres...things shaped like footballs =) It all depends on the material used and how the shape is constructed -- the bucket above, hung from the handle with exciter attached to the bottom, was truly amazing sounding for what it is/was. The siding glass door had nice bass, but was relatively quiet volume level, because glass behaves like that. The power to resonator mass thing is more than that, it has to take into account the resonating qualities and frequency transmission characteristics on the material being used - I'm fast appreciating why stuff like XPS foam is often cited as a good material for this.

    I reckon we'll expect a youtube vid out of this so we can hear it too.
    Nah, won't happen, nor would it be useful to properly demonstrate what these things are capable of, just because on the omnidirection way these things project the sound ; you really have to be in the same room with the things, to have any chance of appreciating the technology involved... these devices are sort of in a league of their own.

    I'll do some more mucking around later with the 2.1 class-D & venom sub ... that might coax the handicam out for a quick vid of some sort.

    One thing to mention, is there's a small wrinkle in the avid adventurer's path here -- the adhesive footings of these units. One is supposed to hold in a probable location, to find the best sounding placement before removing the backing paper and sticking them in place. You have to vome up with something better than that, if like me you plan to test a myriad of materials/surfaces in search of the goldilocks effect.

    Except for the fact I can actually use these units, I think if I had my time over, I'd jump straight to the 25watt versions of these Daytons if one was thinking of home stereo or thing bigger than 2.1 computer speaker systems.

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    I think if I had my time over, I'd jump straight to the 25watt versions of these Daytons if one was thinking of home stereo or thing bigger than 2.1 computer speaker systems.
    Do you have a suggestion of where to get these? I see there are some 40 W units as well.

    As usualy, fleabag is an insult to ones intelligence with postage charges from the US amounting to significantly more than the product itself.

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    Quote Originally Posted by george65 View Post
    Do you have a suggestion of where to get these? I see there are some 40 W units as well.

    As usualy, fleabag is an insult to ones intelligence with postage charges from the US amounting to significantly more than the product itself.

    Well, definitive 'official' dealer in AU is this mob --> and their prices are comparable to ebay prices (where I got mine from, ebay seller 'quickshopinternationalptyltd' )

    Silly things you can get up to with these...



    That turns out to be a lot more bassy than you'd give it credit for.

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    Quote Originally Posted by wotnot View Post
    Obviously a canny joke (that would actually work & sound pretty good =), but in essence you've hit upon some of the standout features of these small exciters.


    The idea of sticking one in an acoustic guitar might appear to be whimsical folly, however, in a tuned enclosure like that and just feeding the exciter an acoustic guitar signal (all around the midrange), would actually sound better than OK... at least, that would be my expectation after the limited about of playtime I've had with them thus far.
    The problem using a guitar as an enclosure are the strings as they would also be excited and create what is called a drone.
    There are actually effect pedals that sample such drones which play back a background 'noise' while you continue to play a melody but this is an instrumental sound and not in any way suitable to reproduce existing recored music.

    My joke pretending to play Paco's guitar virtuoso would have meant that I dampened all the strings with my fingers with out actually plucking them.
    An unstrung guitar body however might actually sound quite good as it has the round and partially parabolic form that limits standing waves over the entire wooden surface but also acts as a Helmholtz resonator to enhance bass. This would still be a far cry from any hi-fidelity but I would expect it to sound pleasant.
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    Lol... I built a set of speakers in the 80's. Have to admit they sounded like shit compared to cheap tawainese built units at the time.. Blew them up listening to Led Zeppelin. Lol
    Kept the tweeters as they were kick arse and dumped the rest..

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    Not just speakers, i built the whole damn stereo. ...lol. here's the amp..


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    The problem using a guitar as an enclosure are the strings as they would also be excited and create what is called a drone.
    There are actually effect pedals that sample such drones which play back a background 'noise' while you continue to play a melody but this is an instrumental sound and not in any way suitable to reproduce existing recored music.

    My joke pretending to play Paco's guitar virtuoso would have meant that I dampened all the strings with my fingers with out actually plucking them.
    An unstrung guitar body however might actually sound quite good as it has the round and partially parabolic form that limits standing waves over the entire wooden surface but also acts as a Helmholtz resonator to enhance bass. This would still be a far cry from any hi-fidelity but I would expect it to sound pleasant.
    Yeah, I did consider the strings would get excited, and you'd end up playing it like a Chapman stick/Warr guitar....and if you want to talk about droning without squeezing a bag, try exciting the 'wrong' material =) I also considered you wouldn't need strings at all, given the lack of observational skills of the general masses these days, and you could perhaps make use of any drone produced by retuning the strings to take advantage of the phenomena..

    I do tend to agree with you however ~ the enclosure is likely to sound rather pleasing, and a pair of stringless guitar bodies sitting in a room being speakers, is not all that over-the-top when you think about it.


    Lol... I built a set of speakers in the 80's. Have to admit they sounded like shit compared to cheap tawainese built units at the time.. Blew them up listening to Led Zeppelin. Lol
    Kept the tweeters as they were kick arse and dumped the rest.. Not just speakers, i built the whole damn stereo. ...lol. here's the amp..
    Never bother with building speakers before, but still have my old eti-480 bipolar amp somewhere...with hand drawn/etched phenolic PCBs, none of that fancy fiberglass board like you've got there =) What I do regret losing (thank you not '84 Brisbane floods), is my very first audio project - an AM receiver using the very best Philips thermionic valves, from the days when real men didn't use PCBs... <grin>.


    The 12" vinyl LP is all sorts of interesting ~ you wouldn't credit a small exciter could drive the plastic into such a vibrating mass...and still sound ok. I mean serious...the spindle hole was behaving like a little bass port =) The problem with this, is keeping the driver stuck to the record ; essentially speaking, the plastic is too thin, distorts too much, and ends up breaking the adhesive contact...but up until that point, it does sound remarkably good. Then of course, not all vinyl LPs are the same...different groove sizes, plastics and thicknesses - you give yourself an hour or two playing along these lines, and it's not long before you start wondering about older records made of things other than vinyl, that are thicker and more rigid. Definitely see an op-shop visit in my future.

    The other bit of plastic I'm toying with now, is a 30cm square x 3mm thick piece of acrylic PVC sheet - it actually sounds good as well, but is a tad too thick me thinks...does have very smooth tonal qualities to it though.

    One of the next things I should do, is fashion together some hanging stands for further experiments -- if there's any one thing that's easy to discern, having the sounding board suspended in free air is something you appreciate/learn very quickly.

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