I recently replaced the speakers in my car. The old ones are actually not that bad in terms of mid-range sound. So I think I might buy some cheap horn tweeters ($10USD each), and wire them in series with the speakers from my car. I already have a Logitech Z2300 2.1 speaker system, and I am using these speakers as the satellite speakers. The amplifier outputs 20W RMS at 4 ohms to the standard speakers. But the speakers out of my car are 10 ohms. So wired in series with the tweeters, that will be 14Ohms, and probably somewhere around 8 watts. Despite the decrease in power, it should output a higher SPL because the car speakers and the horn tweeter both have higher sensitivity then the sattelite speakers that came with the Logitech. And also, twice the speakers means twice the sound output.

Is anyone on here experienced in making speaker enclosures? Currently, i have the old car speakers mounted in identically sized cardboard boxes. It sounds better then if they were just out in the open, but the resonant frequency of the speaker is definitely noticeable.

Do you have the appropreate crossover for connecting the tweeters and the speakers together? If not, it will never sound good.

The crossover seperates the frequencies going to the speakers and the tweeters, so the tweeter only gets high frequency input and the speaker only gets mid-low input.

Without this the tweeter will get low frequency inputs from the amplifier and will make a horrible buzzing noise every time you get bass sounds to the speakers.

You will need a seperate crossover for each speaker and tweeter set.

Speaker enclosures are ususaly just a wooden box with a hole drilled for each speaker, and then a metal or fabric cover over the front. They arn't actualy that complicated.

Quote from DragonCommando :

They arn't actualy that complicated.

Yes they are.

Quote from DragonCommando :

Do you have the appropreate crossover for connecting the tweeters and the speakers together? If not, it will never sound good.

I think the horn tweeter may come with a capacitor as a passive crossover, but I'm not sure. Otherwise i'd just buy the proper capacitor and use that.

Quote from DragonCommando :

The crossover seperates the frequencies going to the speakers and the tweeters, so the tweeter only gets high frequency input and the speaker only gets mid-low input.

I know what a cross over is.

Quote from DragonCommando :

Speaker enclosures are ususaly just a wooden box with a hole drilled for each speaker, and then a metal or fabric cover over the front. They arn't actualy that complicated.

It will sound like poop if I do that. I currently have the speakers in cardboard boxes, and it's horrible. The problem is that I don't know the specifications of the speakers. Because, speakers have resonant frequencies. That's what the point of port tubes is.

The best speaker boxes I've seen are the simplest ones, they are square, or rectangular.

All you need to do is use the right joints for the top and bottom, and make sure to dato the back plate in. Just cut 45º angles for the joints, make a rectangle out of wood, then nail or screw a front plate on.

If you want to deal with the resonant frequency, just mount the speakers with some rubber gasket material or cloth between the speaker flange and the front plate. If you want to completely remove the harmonics of the box, insulate it with foam, a 1/2-1 inch layer should be good.

I've built my own speaker boxes before, and they worked well. And I do sound setup for audio systems so I happen to know what I'm doing and talking about.

But the enclosure affects the impedance of the speaker. Isn't that important?

I just took another look at the numbers you put in the first post. 14ohms on a system designed for 4, thats going to be quite a drop.

The only time you have to worry about complicated speaker boxes is if the speaker itself is very large, then the enclosure has to be designed, and not just built. For small speakers, you don't need to make an elaborate enclosure.

Most of the good small speaker boxes I see have no ports or tubes unless the speaker is bigger than 13 inches, any smaller and the speaker is either completely enclosed or the box has an open back. Open back speakers woulden't be good for a computer speaker system though. As far as High end goes, yes, a good high end speaker will have an elaborate enclosure, but just thinking about making one is insane, and you don't need to to get good sound.

The only reason you see alot of the stereo systems with fancy speaker enclosures is for pure looks, I'v built better sounding enclosures that where nothing more than a wooden box with holes drilled for the speakers, and sometimes the odd hole for reducing the resistance of the air mass in the box. Like I said, only high end will have proper working ports or tubes.

If you do drill a hole , make sure its at the very bottom of the box, and leave at least an inch of wood around the hole for the driver.

But like I said, thats going to be a big drop, even with the increased response you still might not get great sound.

Quote from DragonCommando :

I just took another look at the numbers you put in the first post. 14ohms on a system designed for 4, thats going to be quite a drop.

Well, for a near-range speaker it's not that bad. And, the car speakers have a much higher sensitivity then the satellite speakers that came with the subwoofer/amp. I could run them in parallel, but then it would be about three ohms of impedance. I could connect a 1 ohm resistor to the circuit, though. It would have to be a 40W resistor though. After a quick search on google, I found that there are 0.5ohm, 25W resistors. I'd just need two of those in series with the speaker circuit. Another possibility is to just have a 3 ohm resistor in series with the 4 ohm tweeter, and then that in paralell with the 6.5in speaker.

I just used a dB calculator, and with the speakers in that configuration, assuming that all the speakers have 80dB sensitivity, would add up to 96dB. That is plenty loud. But the amplifier might be overdriven at that point, which would be bad. So, halve the power and it's still 93dB. Plenty loud. These car speakers don't react well to clipping. That's how I blew one of them when they were in my car. Cone separated from the surround.

Now that you put all the numbers down thats not too bad.

You should never get cliping. If you do it's either because the volume is to high, or the equalizer is set up wrong. You want level sound most of the time, not loud sound.