best place to read up on building custom speakers

is there any place where i can read up on setting up my own custom speakers. like geberal info on crossovers, how they work, and common designs and stuff. also any guides on how to choose the best speakers and other info like that. (best enclosure types would be useful also).

i see a lot of ppl talking about crossovers and not knowing much about them makes me wonder. and id love to read up on them.
same thing for enclosures, and how amps work, and everything like that.

any guides would be great.


thanks!!!!

There are a lot of really good books out there on this subject. One that gets a lot of recomendations is the loudspeaker design cookbook.

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&PartNumber=500-034&DID=7

When your going to design your own speakers IMO the first thing you have to do is figure out what level of performance you want. Second is the buget you have to work with. For small scale speaker projects (under $100 per set) I think that unoptimized crossovers are fine but dont expect them to be better than speakers in the $300 price range (if that).

If your gonna spend more than that its a big waste of money IMO unless you have the resources for all the test equipment and complex design software. Which itself can cost hundreds of dollers. On top of that you have to have exensive knowledge of how sound works and crossovers, driver interactions with enclosures etc. I'm not trying to say it cant be done but If your gonna spend any serious amount of money I would HIGHLY recommend buying DIY kits. With the kit you make the enclosure, solder the crossovers and install the drivers. Your pretty much gurentted great speakers if you fallow the plans.

Most important is to have fun with whatever path you choose. DIY audio is tons of fun .


Ryan

I was actually hoping for online guides so I didn't have to buy them. I've looked around on google and found a little bit. but nothing that appeared very useful.

I'm not really aware of any good online sites that give basic info on speaker design. You could try asking around on some audio forums like
www.hometheaterforum.com
I've got several books from radio shack that were ok at explaing the basics. The only other thing I can think of is head over to the library and look up books on speakers. They usually have a couple and if your lucky they might have one of the loudspeaker design cookbooks.


Ryan

punkgamingmaste said:

I was actually hoping for online guides so I didn't have to buy them. I've looked around on google and found a little bit. but nothing that appeared very useful.

Click to expand...

If you plan on just reading stuff online, it's going to take years before you can attempt to build a successfull speaker design. I can't think of any websites that have much of the information you need consolodated into one place like the loudspeaker design cookbook.

So IMO its best to just bite the bullet now and buy it. If you are really serious about this anyways, you are going to want to buy it in the future anyways.