Loudspeaker Design Cookbook [Paperback]

Vance Dickason (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Old Colony Sound Laboratory; 4th edition (October 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962419176
• ISBN-13: 978-0962419171
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,011,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for Beginners - Some Gems for Enthusiasts and Pro's, January 16, 2005

By 

QuixoticMan "mfd" (Bozeman, MT) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Loudspeaker Design Cookbook (Paperback)

Warning: This book is not for beginners. Hard core hobbyists or speaker design professionals may find some useful models, empirical studies and references in this book. For the beginner, the minimum vital data needed to design and build a speaker is interwoven in to a jumble of esoteric empirical tests and computer simulations. For the more experienced speaker builder, the depth of this book is great and the footnote references are very complete. While the breadth is great, the depth of technical explanation for fundamental speaker enclosure modeling physics was a lacking. I guess I need to buy another book or research the footnotes myself.

This book could be a lot better with some solid editing. The writing - for the most part - is clear, but there are sections that are hard to read and there are some errors. The fonts are too small (many of the subscripts are illegible). The graphics are horrible. The book has over 100 frequency domain plots (developed with speaker CAD packages), which are illegible and poorly labeled. Most of the graphics are nowhere near the text.

I give this book two stars because of the breadth and the references, but it's no cookbook. You won't be able to look up a recipe and cook up a speaker.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic revisited, but the publisher was a bit unpolished, July 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Loudspeaker Design Cookbook (Paperback)

The font size used for my 6th edition as quite small, dust off those reading glasses! Even the hundreds of graphs will need a magnifying glass if you need to determine what is presented in the graph. Clearly, the size reduction is a compromise to reduce page count, and thus minimize cost, but in my opinion, this is a few steps boyond the boundary of good printing techniques. Look for larger sized fonts and reasonably sized graphs in the next edition. The book rarely presents alternatives to commercial software (and, similarly, to commercial hardware) for calculations and measurements. Some calculations, maybe even most of them, can be handled with a simple spreadsheet, yet the book rarely offers the full equation, instead directing the reader to commercial software, which costs well in excess of the price of a couple pairs of good bookshelf speakers. Home built test equipment is presented, for lesser devices, but here again, for all Thiele-Small parameters, you'd need to purchase commercial equipment. Some tests do not need professionally designed equipment! Regarding content, some points are not definitively explained, despite the authors obvious skills for explanation. In some cases, the equations which are actually offered contain unexplained terms: you might have just read about one term, but the equation might be calling for a subscript of the term, with no explanation as to what conditions define the subscripted term.... what, then, would you use for a value? My review sounds a bit negative, but above all, these kinds of problems can easily be searched in online forums related to loudspeaker design (if indeed you have internet access). Should there be any confusion: this is a reference, a standard by which other tutorials are measured. When in doubt, ask online. Good book for the beginner, despite a few concerns.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Building your own speakers? This is the book for you!, February 17, 2001

By 

AS Atwood (Heflin, AL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loudspeaker Design Cookbook (Paperback)

Too bad that Amazon has it listed as a special order item. The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickanson, currently in its 6th edition, will teach you more than you ever wanted to know or even thought existed when it comes to both the art and (mostly) science of desgining loudspeaker systems. You'll also find out first hand how useful that algebra you learned in high school really is.

This book covers the most popular types of enclosures from the simple acoustic suspension (think old AR and Kloss designs) to ported bass reflex and bandpass designs that are so popular now. There is also a wealth of information on crossover design.

Dickanson builds upon the work of Thiele and Small in treating speaker systems with filter theory. The days of building a box, sticking a driver in it and hoping for the best are gone. Among amateur speaker builders, and even some pros, this is the one book that you just have to have on your shelf. It's simply the best of its kind.