Customer Reviews

Great Sound Stereo Speaker Manual (Tab Electronics)

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

 

 

A good beginner's book for those interested in building their own speakers without getting into heavy mathematics, passive electronics, complex woodworking, or folded horns. The book explains some the rudiments of speaker theory, and barely enough to design your own simple crossover network. The book has several economical projects which the author already debugged and are ready to build, including: the make and model of the speakers, list of passive components, schematic - which usually include extras like a Zobel network, and the cabinet dimensions. Their are several two-way projects and one three-way with a ten-inch woofer. Most designs use a soft-dome tweeter, if that's what you like. There is a list of raw component vendors in the back of the book. The designs for the ported boxes use the Thiel method, and I am finding that this may be conservatively sized toward the large side with respect to a flat bass response. The prose is a bit wordy, but still easy to read. Overall, I have learned a few things from this book.

Great introduction to loudspeaker design theory. Very good, in-depth discussion of crossovers with usable equations.

However, the projects and suggested projects aren't worth the paper they're written on. After studying the theories on cabinet and crossover design, and researching available drivers, I don't think many people are going to be interested in using the cheapest crap available for drivers. The projects all use Audax, Peerless, Seas, and Vifa drivers - the worst junk available. The authors themselves state that these drivers deteriorate quickly, and that all the drivers for one particular project can be purchased for seven dollars each! Are you interested in investing all the time required to learn, design and build a set of speakers and then invest $28 in four drivers? I'm certainly not.

The included software Crossover Modeling Program certainly has potential, and are useful for building the low-buck projects in this book. It includes treatment for virtually all the variables available for manipulation by the designer/builder. However, it's DOS based, almost impossible to navigate, only has data files available for the trash drivers used in the project, and, in fact, doesn't even have all the data files for all of those drivers. If they've got data files for good drivers like Focal, Eton, or even Dynaudio available on a web site or something, the program would be VERY USEFULL. And it is still usefull for modeling the crossover, but without linking in the driver specs, it's guesswork as to how the response curves are going to come out, let alone the actual speaker performance.

It's amazing to me that the authors give such a good treatment to everything, go to all the trouble of developing a good modeling program, and then build garbage. You're going to have more invested in this book than you will in the speaker projects themselves. They even go into buying and/or building fairly sophisticated test equipment - for what? To test your $15 driver? After discussing all the advanced considerations, the projects use surface-mounted drivers with defractions rings instead of routing out the cabintes to flush-mount the drivers. Are you going to put the hundreds of hours into a project and then forego the extra few minutes to properly rout out the driver openings? I'm not!!

Another serious shortcoming is that all the test data only goes down to 200 hertz, and almost all the response curves show a 3+ decibel rise in the 200-500 hz range. Well hey, bass response is where the going gets tough! But it makes the low-dollar, two- way, 5-6" 'woofer' projects look acceptable. The three-way projects are also a joke since the 'woofers' are still only 6.5". Believe me, there is going to be NO appreciable bass response at any significant volume level with ANY of these projects, and who wants to be crossing over to a subwoofer at 200 hz. I like 60-80 hz much better. And I'm not interested in having a system where a 5-6" driver is resonsible for handling everything from 3000 Hz on down - approximately seven octaves!

I DO RECOMMEND buying this book - and then tearing out everything after page 165 .

If you are only interested in "spoonfed" recipe loudspeaker designs, this book will be great for you. It does cover some important theory initially and has some very clear and succinct illustrations, but I felt that it was a let down of my expectations, especially if you pay too much attention to things like the cover illustration (way too "hi-end" and complex for this book!).

Speaker building can easily become an addictive and engaging hobbie, and if you think at all that you may want more than a "casual glance" I'd strongly recommend "LOUDSPEAKER DESIGN COOKBOOK" by Vance Dickason instead. It may seem to be a more technical book but it has "staying power" and is a longer term reference text that the Weems/Koonce book.

On the positive side, if you do lack the time, inclination or confidence to get into the "nitty gritty", this book does have projects that feature relatively simple enclosure construction, require readily available (and not too expensive) speaker drivers and components and it has choice in terms of scale, complexity (to an extent) etc in the projects.

This book covers the basic aspects of loudspeaker design in an easy to understand language and includes useful software on the CD-ROM. If you want to build your own speaker system, this is the book for you. Don't expect it, however, to go further in mathematical or theoretical contents.

A wealth of information for a mere pittance -- that is what this purchase was for me. There is enough entry level information for the beginner to easily understand, and begin a speaker building project, and it is presented in a manner, which will not produce a yawn for those with prior experience. Anyone with an interest in DIY speakers could benefit from this volume.

This book is a poor example of the first David Weems book which is far superior in content,mathematics, projects, and experimental projects,how to test drivers using Oscopes audio generators,omni directional speakers,appendix useful formulas,12 db per octive crossovers,transmission lines, it even has a EQ design for bass reproduction, so if you can find the first David Weems book 336 pages of one of the best books ever written on speaker building!! And if you think things have changed since then, they have! better drivers for less, but you cannot change the laws of physics all of the info in the first edition is still very relevent!!!!!
Rick
Electronics Tech, I have been building and designing speaker systems since 1978........

Basically I experienced an expectatives problem. I was looking for a general coverage book and this came out to be a small cabinets one. If this is what you're looking for this is an excelent book, covering from A to Z. If you're looking for folded horns or large subwoofers, keep on trying.