Reddit reviews Loudspeaker Design Cookbook
We found 6 Reddit comments about Loudspeaker Design Cookbook. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Reddit reviews Loudspeaker Design CookbookWe found 6 Reddit comments about Loudspeaker Design Cookbook. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Speakers:
Amplifiers and other goodies:
Morgan Jones will get you into building with tubes, but also check the books from Bruce Rozenblit at Transcendent. For free books, Pete Millett has a lot of them at his site. I recommend Norman Crowhurst's books for an excellent intro for laypeople.
If you want components, you can get resistors, capacitors, etc. from Digikey, Mouser, Newark, Redco, and Antique Electronic Supply.
For speaker supplies, look to Madisound, Speaker City U.S.A. and Parts Express. Madisound and Parts Express sell kits, so you can knock off a build without tools.
There's a lot more, but this will give you things to chew over for a few weeks at least. Please come back and ask here if you want advice or need help with anything.
It sounds like you are looking at building a pair of speakers.
You need to buy the latest version of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Loudspeaker-Design-Cookbook-Vance-Dickason/dp/1882580109
And read it front to back. Twice. It will answer many of your questions; it's well worth the price. I studied the first edition way way back.
Parts Express and Madisound are fine for parts.
Expensive? Let's put this in perspective. How many hours would it take you to build as good a set of cabinets as you can buy for $130 each on Parts Express? I assume that's what you're looking at. Trust me, unless you're a woodworker (or don't care what they look like) the cost in time is worth WAY more than that to get a good cabinet.
Want to 'cheat'? Get yourself a pair of cabinets from a thrift store or garage sale -some old pair with walnut veneer that are heavy and maybe have blown drivers. Seriously. You can ditch the drivers, add some material inside the cabinet to reduce the volume to what you need, put in a new front plate and drivers, and oil up that old walnut and you're in business.
What makes a speaker $10 and one $200? Engineering and quality construction and performance. Bear in mind that you reach a point of diminishing returns with drivers; you might get 95% of the performance of a $200 woofer with one that only costs $150. Is that extra 5% worth the cost?
Check out this man's work:
http://www.linkwitzlab.com/
Engineers don't come any finer than this man, he's amazing. Read everything he writes and check out his projects.
What you need to do to make your project sound good is do tons and tons of reading and research into what others have done. Find projects that have been built and refined and are known to be successful. Build one of those first. Remember, your time is valuable. You could waste a lot of money and time on something that sounds disappointing.
I built some speakers and subwoofers (more suited to DIY for beginners than 2-3 way designs) and came to realize that it's a mix of sound engineering and art. And lots of time.
Good luck!
Speakers are a bit too complicated to learn much by just taking them apart and asking questions about what you find. This goes double for any commercial product with active electronics inside.
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If you want to learn, I'd read a book on the subject. This one is a good one.
The specs for the drivers are listed on the sites you linked to. For the woofer, they recommend 0.79 cubic ft.
I would cross them over well above the resonant frequency of the tweeter to make sure you can get the crossover steep enough.
If you really want to get into designing speakers I recommend picking up a copy of the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason.
That's like asking "how many different ways can you prepare, cook, and present a steak dinner".
One good read if you are curious in the "loud speaker design cook book" https://www.amazon.com/Loudspeaker-Design-Cookbook-Vance-Dickason/dp/1882580109
I remember literally wearing the cover off of that book back in the olden days..:)
Jeff Bagby has a good excel spreadsheet with baked-in formulas. However, it's difficult to use unless you have a good base understanding of what you're doing. Some good books to get you started are the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook and Speaker Building 201.
Keep in mind that it is absolutely necessary to have measurement equipment if you want to design anything and be able to point out what is wrong. Even if you have perfect pitch, actually quantifying what you're hearing in a speaker is really hard to do, and honestly can probably only come from lots of experience listening and then measuring to be able to recognize what is off.
Still, I recommend you just build an existing design.