The best books to buy on speaker design and construction

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steevo

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Joined 2005
Hi I am looking to buy a good book on speaker design and construction, and I am a beginner with regard to this subject, can anyone suggest any good books to buy on speaker theory, design, and construction. Ultimatley I would like the build an active 2 way speaker.

Thanks
Steevo
 
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KLBIrd

KLBIrd

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Joined 2009
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While Vance Dickason's book is a great technical bible on speakers, the raw beginner would be better served with these books by David B. Weems. Most are now out of print but can still be found on Amazon. "The Great Sound Stereo Speaker Manual" and "Designing, Building and Testing Your Own Speakers System" Both are TAB Books published in 1990. They are out of print but you can still find them on Amazon or Ebay.

Also a subscription to Audio Xpress magazine is vital if you want to learn speaker building.They now offer both a hard copy magazine and an on line version. audioXpress - Home

Weems published his first speaker project in 1954, followed by many more over a 50 year period. He led the way in showing the non-technical how to acheive good sound by DIY projects. At age 89, he is still and doing speaker project research in his Missouri lab.
 
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Conrad Hoffman

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Joined 2007
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I started with the Weems book way back when Radio Shack carried it. The next big revelation was the T&S article published by Speaker Builder magazine, I think back in the '80s. Highly recommended if you can find it. After that I got Dickason's book. No doubt the latest edition has a lot more in it than my old one. With the measurement capabilities offered by soundcards and software today, you can do a lot better job than anybody did a couple decades ago. OTOH, I think there were more good quality drivers available for home use back when Dynaudio was selling them, than there are today. Lots of drivers intended for automotive use, but exceptional choices for the living room seem to be scarce and the prices are higher than I have any desire to pay.

Conrad
 
KLBIrd

KLBIrd

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Joined 2009
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Most of Dave's projects contained no measurement stats. In the early days of DIY measurement equipment and the required skills were not available to the average individual. It was trial and error, using some of the available tables on reflex systems as a guide. Today the beginner can get access to better measuring tools via computers. During my enginering career, I learned that accurate measurement did not necessarily produce a good sounding loudspeaker. Speaker building is both science and art and the art arena is what usually separates the good from the bad. If it sounds good it is good, no matter how it may measure.
 
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Leafman123

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Joined 2021
If your a University student make sure to search on your university's library website. A lot of the time they provide links to eBooks of the above mentioned books which you can read free of charge. Also try searching for general terms like "loudspeaker" and "acoustics".

Sorry to reopen an old thread but this is the first page that comes up on google when searching for loudspeaker design books. Has anyone got any modern day recomendation that could recap the advances of the past decade?
 
tktran303

tktran303

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Joined 2005
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I like to tackle speaker design by a direct, hand-on, iterative process, and have read lots of books mentioned above. But the I recently discovered this series of Speaker Design courses on Udemy.

I wish someone had done this 20 years ago when I got started… this covers theory and practice, with a discussion of pros/cons of doing things.

Big ups to Marcus for creating and sharing such useful video content and step by step process to actually building your first 2 or 3 way speaker. It's up to date, and he uses modern crossover tools and modern computers, so you're not stuck trying to run something from the days of Windows XP and PCI soundcards...

I would say it's for the beginner to intermediate, and as close to a tutorial that I've found that includes video.

For just the price of a pair of tweeters it goes through:

Cabinet selection and design-
Acoustics 101 : Speaker design basics and enclosure design | Udemy

How to take measurements-
Acoustics 201 : Loudspeaker measurements | Udemy

How to design crossovers passive crossovers-
Loudspeaker engineering : How to design speaker crossovers | Udemy

And it's not some YouTube "Design your dream speaker in 20 minutes" BS or clickbait. I can't recommend it more highly.
 
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Alexium

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Joined 2010
I've read the "Cookbook" by Vance Dickason, the 7th edition from 2005. It's a good book, but I was expecting more. I have not built a single speaker properly, but I knew a lot of the stuff already. I felt some basic concepts were not explained in enough detail (Qts/Qtc, why enclosures affect frequency and phase response the way they do; how and why bass reflex. bandpass and PR enclosures actually work), while some other details got too many pages (e. g. formulas for crossovers that you're not likely to calculate by hand anyway). The book does have some insights, and the section with objective and subjective testing of how different design choices affect the sound is amazing. That's the most useful part of this book, IMO.

Now, what should I read next?
I've come across dr. Geddes's book (now free online), but after reading stuff like this I realized it will be of no help to me, as I need other books to understand this one :)

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