I've been thinking of designing a speaker. There's a lot of attention given to small bookshelf speakers these days if you check the reviews. Small speakers have issues. For one they have low sensitivity (measured sensitivity is often lower than what is published in the specs). If you want to play them louder, you need more power and that leads to another problem. If you ever cranked up the volume on a small speaker, you might have noticed that the bass becomes weaker and/or distorted. This is due to compression. The small cone area of these woofers are inadequate to move enough air and the extra power exceeds their limits. This is why it is common to pair them with a subwoofer.
I'd like to design a speaker that is somewhat larger (cab. volume around 1 cu ft or 28L) that can stand on its own (no sub needed) and sound good. No, it's not going to blow the roof off the house, but it will be something to sit down and enjoy the music to and not sound too compromised if you want to turn it up a little. It will match up well with chip amps like in the power range of the LM1875, or more power of the JAT501 amp.
I've been playing around in box modeling software with a few different drivers. I think we'd need an 8" woofer ported or a 10" if we go sealed. I'd rather go with a budget and build friendly design rather than something more exotic like a transmission line. I did find an 8" driver around $60 that gets a reasonable F3 in the 42Hz range and low group delay, all in a cabinet of 1 cu ft. As for the tweeter, I'd like to go with a dome type. I'd design for a reasonably flat response but may color it a bit to my tastes.
So, what about the collaboration? Well, someone with wood working skills and perhaps someone who can properly measure speakers could join in. We can sort it all out if there's enough interest. Comments?
JohnAudioTech
Speaker collaboration project
I've been thinking of designing a speaker. There's a lot of attention given to small bookshelf speakers these days if you check the reviews. Small speakers have issues. For one they have low sensitivity (measured sensitivity is often lower than what is published in the specs). If you want to play them louder, you need more power and that leads to another problem. If you ever cranked up the volume on a small speaker, you might have noticed that the bass becomes weaker and/or distorted. This is due to compression. The small cone area of these woofers are inadequate to move enough air and the extra power exceeds their limits. This is why it is common to pair them with a subwoofer.
I'd like to design a speaker that is somewhat larger (cab. volume around 1 cu ft or 28L) that can stand on its own (no sub needed) and sound good. No, it's not going to blow the roof off the house, but it will be something to sit down and enjoy the music to and not sound too compromised if you want to turn it up a little. It will match up well with chip amps like in the power range of the LM1875, or more power of the JAT501 amp.
I've been playing around in box modeling software with a few different drivers. I think we'd need an 8" woofer ported or a 10" if we go sealed. I'd rather go with a budget and build friendly design rather than something more exotic like a transmission line. I did find an 8" driver around $60 that gets a reasonable F3 in the 42Hz range and low group delay, all in a cabinet of 1 cu ft. As for the tweeter, I'd like to go with a dome type. I'd design for a reasonably flat response but may color it a bit to my tastes.
So, what about the collaboration? Well, someone with wood working skills and perhaps someone who can properly measure speakers could join in. We can sort it all out if there's enough interest. Comments?
1 year ago | [YT] | 110