Customer Reviews

Building Pro Audio Loudspeaker Enclosures

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After reading several of the reviews, I have come to the conclusion that some had a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the book, and may not have read the editorial review before purchasing the book. This book is to help you design and fabricate your own designs and not merely be a cookie cutter approach of other people's designs that are already on the market.

This is for Pro Audio, not Hi-Fi Home Audio. The title of the book is Building PROFESSIONAL AUDIO Loudspeaker Enclosures, which should have been a clear indicator. To answer the question as to why there are only two projects is because the author felt that there were a vast number of designs already available on the web, but lacked the information on construction of those designs, and the intent of these projects was to show you how to approach any design and build it.

The bottom line is if you want to design a unique loudspeaker, and have little knowledge of assembly and woodworking, or what tools to use, or where to even start, this book will be extremely helpful. If you just want to replicate an existing design, and are not familiar with how to properly build a cabinet, and need information on resources on where to find materials and what to use, there are several chapters in this book dedicated to that as well.

This book contains information found nowhere else in the industry and is the first book ever written for building pro-audio loudspeakers with this detail and resource information. Everything else is just for home audio and has little use for anyone building concert loudspeakers. It's a great Book.......

This book is great for anyone who would like to know more about how pro-audio speaker systems are designed, put together, etc. The information was very valuable to me and quite honestly I learned a lot. I got this book last night, and I have already finished reading it. It is written in a very easy to read fashion, and the author is very honest about what he feels.

If you are looking for a book of loudspeaker plans that you can make, then don't get this book. On the other hand you are thinking of building your own speakers for portable sound reinforcement work take the effort to find a used copy.

While others slam it as not being a "loudspeaker design" book it really is. It just has a different focus. It does not talk about Thiele/Small parameters or horn flair design. What is does talk about are how to build the speakers, how to construct the corners, hand hold design, how the design fits into a sheet of plywood and how the speakers fit into the truck. I also explains how you would go about making a production run of speakers.

I am from the old school of sound companies that build their own speakers. I enjoy making the speakers. I also enjoy coming up with a design that sounds good, is durable and looks good. While my production runs are small, 4 to 6 cabinets, his description of how to use jigs for cutting, routing and assembly have saved me time and allowed me to make much more professional cabinets.

As to speaker design he has a very interesting section on reusing basic designs. He takes a large basic trapezoidal cabinet and shows 20 or 30 different speakers designs that can be made by changing the baffle board design. His point is to come up with a good cabinet design and then use it in lots of different ways. This allows you to amortize the cost or effort of making the jigs and tooling over a lot more enclosures.

A bonus is the first couple of chapters which are an overview of speaker designs by the major sound companies in the '70 and '80 and an overview of current speaker designs (2002) by the major pro sound manufactures.

Two thumbs up for an excellent book.

I live in the UK and had to order this book from the US Amazon store. I must say, I am deeply dissapointed....

There are only 2 loudspeaker projects in the book, and neither of them are loudspeaker types that I want to build. For the money I paid, I was expecting a minumum of 10 designs, covering bass, mid-range, high-frequency and full-range designs. The dual 15" horn project has the following text "I chose this one for its difficulty with its compound angles in nearly every part"

I don't see how choosing a particularly difficult design for a book that only contains 2 designs is a good idea.

The book is extremely thin, with under 200 pages. And many of these pages are taken up with long lists of web links (without explanation of the the resources that are being linked to - you would have to explore each site to find out whether the link is useful to you or not). And other useless information, like inch to millimeter conversion charts. That is what calculators are for. There are also some very thin texts on powertools and workshop basics. These should have been left to a specialised text book.

My last hope was for the disk included with the book - however, this is stuffed full of PDFs and shareware that can be freely downloaded off the internet. The plans to the 2 projects in the book are supplied, but unless those projects are perfect for your purposes, they won't be much use to you. Had this book cost [money] I would have been disappointed, but not absolutely bitter. However at [money] I feel completely ripped off.
This book capitalises on the fact that so few good texts exist on PA speaker design. Save your money and go to speakerplans.com for more design that are easier to build

I ordered this book for building HI-FI loudspeakers for my own needs. To my surprise when I received the book, I discovered it was for large studio or disco room.
I would appreciate to have more details on the book before ordering it.
I would like to give you positive comments on it, although it is probably a good book in its category.

Paul