Building a speaker.

[Danec71]

If one was interested in experimenting with building a speaker is there a premade crossover worth buying to help achieve good results. Along with everything else that goes along with designing the whole system of course

 

[Lavane]

There are lots of calculations that need to be made. You need all the specs of the drivers your going to use first, then comes figuring out the speaker box volume needed . For me personally speaker building and restoring and aligning FM tuners is all black magic and voodoo. I have built some nice speaker kits that sound great. All the design fuss has been taken care of.
Parts Express sells a lot of various pre-made crossovers though, along with Lots-0-Speaker Drivers to choose from. They even have flat pack speaker boxes of various sizes.

 

[swechsler]

While there are premade crossovers, in general, they are designed for an "ideal driver" that doesn't exist. For example, while a woofer might be rated at 8Ω nominal, its actual impedance at the high pass frequency you want to use could be 6Ω, or it could be 12Ω (it's importance to remember that a speaker's impedance is a function, or a range, not a single value), which will change the crossover design. To properly build a crossover you need to have an impedance graph of all the drivers. Ideally you should graph the impedance of the woofer after it's been installed in the cabinet you've built, but that's beyond what most DIYers are willing to do. I should point out that first and second order crossovers are fairly easy to build once you have the correct values, assuming you know how to solder. There are online crossover calculators that will do the math for you.

If this is seems too complicated, as @Lavane suggests, a pre-designed kit might be your best option.

 

[hnash53]

If one was interested in experimenting with building a speaker is there a premade crossover worth buying to help achieve good results. Along with everything else that goes along with designing the whole system of course

Check out Parts Express... lots of speaker building parts and an active community of speakers builders.

 

[Lavane]

Check out Parts Express... lots of speaker building parts and an active community of speakers builders.

I've built several of PE's kits. They sound nice.

 

[painttoad]

If this is seems too complicated, as @Lavane suggests, a pre-designed kit might be your best option.

or someone else's design if the op is able to build cabinets.

here's some:

http://zaphaudio.com/index.html

 

[Lavane]

or someone else's design if the op is able to build cabinets.

here's some:

http://zaphaudio.com/index.html

Madisound sells speaker kits also besides the full range kits. I don't remember if they offer cabinet designs for those or not though.

 

[drjim]

I've built several of PE's kits. They sound nice.

I built a set of their "HitMakers" a couple of years ago, and now I'm building a set of their "TriTrix MTM Transmission Line" speakers. The CNC cut cabinets are nice, but some of the instructions leave a bit to be desired. Reading the reviews is a great way to see how other people interpret the instructions, and what improvements they made.

 

[painttoad]

Madisound sells speaker kits also besides the full range kits. I don't remember if they offer cabinet designs for those or not though.

some do. i'm not sure if all do.