Customer Reviews

High Performance Loudspeakers

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

 

 

Full of well written, objective and clear explanations of a huge variety of problems that occur in loudspeakers. Unfortunately, it won't give you the equations you need to design much at all. For interesting, thought provoking reading it can't be beat, but for design equations I would recommend the book by Leach.

This book makes no attempt to introduce anybody (even with a good technical and scientific background) to show the principles of loudspeaker design. The author makes a show of knowing the principles of design and evaluation, but the job of puting them in print is , at best, sloppy. Most of the formulae have bugs, thus making this a poor choice as a refernce book. As a summary, it is not a GOOD book on loudspeaker design. It is even, in absolute terms, and comparing with other disciplines, a very poor book on design. It has some interesting remarks, though.

If you are looking on building a good understanding about the principles and methods guiding today's loudspeaker designs, forget about this book as a guide (not that I know of any better alternatives, though).

I swear, every wild idea I've ever had concerning speaker design is mentioned in this book. Ever thought of a double walled design filled with water? Someone else has too, and it's mentioned in a sentence. I gave it two stars because as a raw source of wild ideas, as a kick to the head, as a brainstorming session where anything goes and depth doesn't matter, it has some value.

My dislike of the book came from a feeling that the sentences in any given paragraph were lucky if they barely hung together by a common thread. More than likely, one sentence touched on something which led to a new subject for the next sentence and on and on, lightly touching on everything while explaining nothing. I wanted something like Douglas Self's book on amp design, "Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook." The system is explained with all its parts. Each part is taken alone, the goals and problems clearly shown, then many of the possible ways one might think of achieving the goals while avoiding the problems tested and the results shown. I wanted to see which ideas work out, and which were merely good ideas that don't work. That book was deep, clear, and systematic; "High Performance Loudspeakers" was not.

Martin Colloms, instead, tends to skip merrily across the waters of loudspeaker knowledge without even getting wet. Facts are mixed with fiction, subjectivism and science glanced equally over.

When I leafed through "High Performance Loudspeakers" I thought I was in heaven--he covered everything, it seemed, so I put out the very pricy cover cost. As I read on and on and on, I was given superficial views on everything such that I never knew what would be coming next, nor what this sentence had to do with the one before.

Here is a book that tries to mention everything there is to mention about audiophile loudspeakers-that's exactly how it felt to me. I was never instructed, never shown, only allowed to sit and hear the names and ideas dropped one after another after another so that by the end of the book, every idea in world of audio loudspeakers had been mentioned at least once, but I was no closer to understanding how to build or buy a top quality loudspeaker than when I started.

I am upset that the book treated the only subject i was interested in (as it does some other subjects) too lightly. I was looking to improve my understanding of crossover phase response and the only thing i found was what i already knew. Here is the thing: the scope of the book is excellent but the depth is only fair. On the positive side the book is completely unbiased -- this is VERY important in high-end. High-end today seems to be all about throwing unsupported claims, Colloms is not into that.

Colloms demonstrates a clear and deep understanding of loudspeaker theory. This book is very informative and interesting, but he does not put forward any application. It is very much of an undergrad engineering textbook. It is slow reading but good.

This book has been called `the best book on loudspeakers ever written', and it is certainly very good. It is mainly focussed on the professional loudspeaker designer, less on the HiFi enthousiast or the DIY loudspeaker builder. Unfortunately, the quality of several figures is very bad. It seems these are mediocre scans from older editions of the book.

If you're a professional in the area or you're looking for the state of the art in sound reproduction theories, you must have this book. The only thing I missed were more practical examples but after reading the book you understand why Mr. Colloms is not providing them. I must also mention that amazon did a great job sending this book 7,000 miles away in 10 days without any problem. Pedro Rabie (bromac@netline.cl - former Prabie @netline.cl) Santiago, Chile

I agree entirely that this book is flawed.
On face value, it seems that the book is wonderfully comprehensive and covers most you would like to know.
Delve deeper, attempt to read it and its incoherent, illogical, and plain poorly written.
Equations are given without adequate explanations of parameters, where the equations come from, there is little logical structure and its impossible to gain an appreciation of the big picture.
Anyone wishing to understand speakers will come away more confused and wonder where it all fits in, why dispersion is relevant, directivity, its just not explained, little about what the impedance curve means, next to nothing about phase.
I have read colloms' reviews of equipment and he is plain boring using flowery words to impress, fortunately this book is not like that, but it is not the book to get to find what you seek.
I don't know any that are yet, thiele isn't explained, in fact the whole lot simply isn't logical.
don't bother with this unless its very cheap.

Martin Colloms has written the definitive survey of loudspeaker design principles. Negative reviewers here on Amazon fault the book's math, but such criticisms are ridiculous. Colloms is a respected author, writing under the imprint of a distinguished technical publisher and, while an error can always sneak through, the book has meticulous citation and editing. If there is any flaw, it is that the subject matter is so wide ranging that individual topics suffer from a compressed treatment. This is not a book about how to build speakers, nor is it an introductory work. It is a reference source, and a very good one at that. Well worth the finding on the used market.

This book is so full of great info about loudspeakers, it's super fun to read. Judging from the great explanations of zillions of interesting high-tech loudspeaker topics the author is clearly a technical expert. I love speaker tech talk and I love this book.