Zaph|Audio - Dayton B652 Tests and Modifications

Starting with the looks, the system is decent and tasteful in flat black with a sharp looking grill and Dayton logo. From there it's downhill however. One speaker with grill weighs 5 pounds, not exactly inspiring confidence. Inspecting the enclosure, the sides and back appear to be approximately 3/8" MDF while the baffle is 1/2". The terminals are the cheapest made and they don't open well, making it hard to push in even small gage stranded wire. The drivers have very small magnets and appear to have simple construction. The woofer has some venting holes behind the spider, but no venting of the voice coil anywhere. The woofer has about 2.5 mm of one-way Xmax. There is a 1" thick piece of damping that covers the rear and sides. A single electrolytic cap is the tweeter crossover and the woofer is run full range.

The regular price of these on the day of this article is $32.50 per pair. A sale price valid until 01/04/10 is $25.00 per pair. These are available under Part number 300-652 at Parts Express.

Measurements

Frequency response is pretty rough, displaying the issues expected of this design: no baffle step compensation causing a forward glare in the mids, peaky high Qtc woofer low end causing some boominess, and an unfiltered breakup node on the woofer showing itself with some music.

The effective tweeter crossover point is very high, approximately 6.5kHz. The design axis appears to be halfway between the woofer and tweeter, since that is where the response exhibits fewer problems. This system has all the problems that normally result from a crossover point that is too high. Just a few degrees off the vertical axis and the response changes drastically for the worse. If you can stay on the vertical design axis however, 30 degrees off the horizontal axis helps tame some of the woofer's breakup node and reduce the system's mid treble level. I had to run the vertical polar simulation all the way up to 7 kHz to show the extent of the problems with this high crossover. This goes beyond what some people would consider "head in a vice" listening position requirements. There is no good listening position, only bad and worse.

Can people please stop mounting rectangular speakers on the wall. This system comes with a wall hanging hook on the back. Don't use it if you care at all about sound quality. As is always typical when placing a rectangular speaker on a wall, the lower mids disappear and the upper mids get peaky. Where this happens depends on the depth of the enclosure. I tried to listen to this system mounted on a wall and it was horribly colored. The real problem is that the primary reflection is early and dominates the room response. With typical mounting on a stand, this is not nearly as much of a problem.

The harmonic distortion of the drivers is no surprise. The tweeter has issues down below 2.5kHz. The woofer is not too clean but less troublesome than the tweeter. Comparing to PE's other low end woofers, tall order harmonics are better than the DC160 for example, but not quite up to the DA175.

Modifications

A new crossover design filters the tweeter lower but steeper, and tames the woofer breakup better. The whole design is still as simple as possible because there's no real point in spending too much money on this system. I specificy the utter cheapest crossover components possible, and that includes electrolytic caps all around. Polar response is mildly improved with the narrowest vertical lobe happening right at the crossover point. There is a bit of baffle step compensation to bring down the glaring mids a bit.

There are other things you can do to improve this system. The first would be adding some structural rigidity, by way of 4 internal crossmembers. The real trick is to avoid taking away any of the enclosure's volume, which would make the Qtc even higher. I recommend 1/2" hardwood dowels, no larger. 2 from side to side, one from top to bottom and one from front to back, positioned in the area between the drivers. Then add a good wad of additional stuffing, all around except the area directly behind the woofer.

And finally, a Scan Speak 29001 Flow Resistance Vent would help tame the peaky bass. The problem is that is will cost $10 per speaker, and that's "breaking the bank" so to speak. You may want to experiement with DIY aperiodic damping. It could be as simple as cutting a hole in the back and stuffing it with damping material, though you would have to test the impedance curve to insure that you are not creating a helmholtz resonation.

The bottom line
I can hardly believe I just tested a pair of speakers that cost $25 a pair. That's a new low. I guess I can say that if they even make sound at all, they are a great value. For some customers, that is really all they need. However, I find it hard to put my stamp of approval on these speakers. Guys like me are obviously a bit more discerning about sound quality. Some people are looking for a diamond in the rough, and this system is not it.

For home theater, this system will be an improvement over a TV's built in speaker. Again, that's all some customers will need. Maybe add a subwoofer and cross higher to remove some of the problem boom.

I'm not sure if the crossover I posted is even worth while. Even upgraded and improved, this is not a system I would want to own for any amount of time. The upgrade simply makes the system more bearable for a longer time before I feel the need to turn the music off and go outside for a bike ride or something. It could be a fun project, but the typical buyer of this system is a cheapskate who is unlikely to spend any extra money on anything - including crossover parts.

Don't take any of this review and commentary as overly bad. This is a $25/pair system and everyone should set their expectations accordingly. It's certainly not bad for what it costs.

Page done by John "Zaph" Krutke © 2009
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