Great Sound Stereo Speaker Manual: With Computer-aided Design Projects (TAB Electronics) [Misc. Supplies]

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 .

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.