driver selection help

[dallaire]

Hello, I am new to this forum, and thought I would join to maybe get some opinions about the drivers a think a am happy with on paper. I am building a three way center channel for my HY room and also listening room. I think the Peerless 8" 830884 woofer is what I am going to use, two infact. The mid I want to use is the Acuton 2" ceramic driver model C44-8 2" dome, 88.5dB (C50-8-44), and for the tweeter I want to use the Hiquphon OW I (D2094-8708-03). My only hangup on deciding is knowing if the 8" Peeless woofers will mate well with the Acuton mid? Acuton rec. a cross point at 800-1000hz with what slope I don't know? I just don't know how the Peerless will sound crossed at 800-1000hz? My system is all elec. crossed over using Marchand goods. I have twelve position rotary switches for tweeter and mid controls to match spl's of drivers. The slope I'm using is 24db per octave. All speakers will be driven with my Rotel amps. So is anyone else out there using these woofers crossed over near this freq. with perhaps the same slope and can comment??
Thanks,
Dallaire

[sdclc126]

I don't mean to discourage your idea, but IMHO a 3-way center channel is overkill - it will be primarily playing voice during movies, and doesn't need the range of a 3-way; even HT mains are often 2-way, as there is usually a subwoofer to carry the low bass.

I would save time, money, and complexity and go 2-way, perhaps with 6.5" woofers or smaller, and ditch the very expensive Accuton midrange.

My center channel consists of 2 Dayton DA135-8 5-1/4" woofers at $15 apiece and an SEAS 27TBFC/G tweeter, one of the best tweeters at any price yet it's less than $40. The speaker uses the very simple crossover from Zaph's BAMTM design. It sounds terrific and could just as well serve as mains for serious music listening.

[augerpro]

3 way WMTW format for a CC are desirable for their off axis response, not for any need to be fullrange, although that is not a bad quality to have either...I think WMTW with a dome mid is an excellent idea.

However 8" requires quite a large box, is this ok? The 1000Hz crossover should be ok, but is definitely at the limit since you are not using any passive notch filters. Personally I would consider the HDS Nomex 830869. Harmonic distortion is basically the same in teh region you want to use it and all the drivers in that line can use quite small boxes. And it's cheaper.

[augerpro]

Also if I could suggest a design: http://htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=27218

Not the same drivers as you would like perhaps, but as used probably just as good

[dallaire]

Well guy's, thanks for the tips! I have concluded that my first idea was a little wack So I did take some advice and go with two 8"HDS Nomex woofer by Peerless, seems to be a nice driver response wise. For the mid I also took the advice to go with the Vifa P13WH00 5" mid(2) also. And for the tweeter I went with the Morel MDT33 which also seems to have a very nice response. I will be experimenting a little with driver placement on baffle. I kind of want to imitate the driver config. of the Alantic Technology driver array, I think you guy's reffer to it as a "WMTMW" array.

I was going to take the man. advise as far as woofer box, but on second thought I remember using Speakerworkshop a few years ago and remember them saying how off the driver to driver parameters can sometimes be, so I guess I should hook them up to the freq. gen. and let them get some break in time on the surrounds, and then procceed to measure them to find the correct "acctual parameters".

I was also going to make a mid section on the baffle removable, if I can implement this nicely so I can make some mock ups of different mid and tweeter placements, this will bw some work but after all this is a labor of true love!!! Just curious how different mid tweeter positions will affect measured response, I will only do this for the center speaker. If this does come out nice I will follow up with some mains in the future.
Thanks again everyone for the sound advice
Dallaire