Dayton 8's "Done"

Finally had a little bit of time in between exams to head over to the shop and finish up the other tower, it only needed about another hours of work. Mounted the driver's in the cabinet, set up the speakers in stereo and played the first test song through them (it was a Regina Spektor song, cant remember which one, then a TV on The Radio song), they sure sounded good. I was really starting to want to keep them for myself, but I figure I will be able to hear them often enough over at my father-in-law's, and they will actually be played at the levels they were designed to over there.

You can see the receiver/amplifier we are using behind the speakers on a stand by the wall, it is a small one that I believe was Zanes. It sure does sound good! We were just using my iPod with a headphone jack to RCA (not the best setup) to feed it and it sure sounded nice.

We got the speakers over to Tims place and got them setup in his basement to his Onkyo SR606 Home Theater receiver. They sounded good, nice and loud with decent bass, but for some reason not as nice as with Zane's amp in Dad's shop. I messed around with the settings on the Onkyo and got some improvements (was still using my iPod with the headphone to RCA cable), with a lot of level adjusting and other tweeks we got them to sound quite nice, Tim was very impressed with the clarity and volume they produce. Then we popped in an Eagles Live DVD into his BluRay player to see how that sounded and wow! It's amazing (0r maybe it isn't) how much the source of the sound plays in the final product. I know that iPods used compressed digitized music files that lose a lot of the detail and range, so it is better to listen directly from a CD or DVD, or even better a Phono. I haven't watched a movie over there yet but I would expect that the sound quality coming from a BluRay would be very nice. But in conclusion to these towers: I learned a lot building them, more about the actual cabinet construction; these were a big cabinet and a challenge to build but i learned a lot of stuff that works well and other things that i wont be trying again. The hardest thing is trying to build them an hour or two at a time. Most of the mistakes I made were from forgetting what exactly I had done previously because is some cases it would be a week since the last time I had worked on them. As far as finishing them, I don't really have a place to paint right now, I will wait until the summer so I can hopefully do it outside. These will take several coats of primer and sanding before the final paint stages. They would probably be best painted with a spray gun, so maybe I will have to see if anyone around here has one and likes doing that kinda stuff. Now, most importantly The Sound: While some of the drivers have only had a couple hours (at most) of play time while the others have had probably in the 20hour range (and most likely fully broken in), and the sound quality varies significantly based on the source of the signal, I can say that I really like them. While they do have the reputation as being a "Loud Rock and Roll Speaker", I really like them for other genres as well. I really enjoy female vocals through them (esp. Regina Spektor, and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's) and other acoustic or mellower stuff, that being said, I really like them for harder music as well: Daft Punk's "Alive" album. Their cons: they are big, so they arent for everyone or every room. They are going into a semi-dedicated tv/theater room/area, so the size wasn't an issue. Their have been others that have built them that claim they are lacking in the midrange (due to the fact that it is a 2-way speaker between a 1 1/8" tweeter and 8" woofers, usually the biggest you can go for a woofer in a 2-way is 6 1/2"-7") but i havent really had any complaints there. I also don't want to make any final conclusions until I have listened to them a lot more and they are fully broken in. Now the main question is.... whats next?