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Speaker Design Software?
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dnewma04
The Healer
Unibox is excellent. Not quite BB6P, but not far off, easily as accurate. Requires Excel to run. It also is grouped together with a number of other tools that allow you to pretty accurately model everything from crossovers to baffle step diffraction, to tracing SPL and impedance plots at the FRD Consortium.
http://www.pvconsultants.com/audio/frdgroup.htm
http://www.pvconsultants.com/audio/frdgroup.htm
tubino
A guy with too many tubes
Unibox: how to import add'l data?
Thanks for this tip!!! Would you please save me some time and tell me how to import the .bbd file of additional driver info on there?
Thanks for this tip!!! Would you please save me some time and tell me how to import the .bbd file of additional driver info on there?
dnewma04
The Healer
Sure.
If you mean the additional .ddb files from the website, save them off to a folder on your harddrive, you may have to unzip them.
From within unibox, on the upper right side of the spreadsheet under the drop down menu for selecting drivers, there is an "Import" button. Click on it, select the .ddb file and you are done.
For entering new drivers, change the driver name and fill in what you can under the "Drive Unit Parameters" section. Leave the external components blank unless you want to model rudimentary effects of crossover components. (there are better tools for this). When you are finished entering the data, you can click save under the design database area and it will add the driver.
I usually will save off the specs prior to working on any modeling but i am easily distracted and sometimes have forgotten to save the drivers only to enter new driver parameters.
If you mean the additional .ddb files from the website, save them off to a folder on your harddrive, you may have to unzip them.
From within unibox, on the upper right side of the spreadsheet under the drop down menu for selecting drivers, there is an "Import" button. Click on it, select the .ddb file and you are done.
For entering new drivers, change the driver name and fill in what you can under the "Drive Unit Parameters" section. Leave the external components blank unless you want to model rudimentary effects of crossover components. (there are better tools for this). When you are finished entering the data, you can click save under the design database area and it will add the driver.
I usually will save off the specs prior to working on any modeling but i am easily distracted and sometimes have forgotten to save the drivers only to enter new driver parameters.
ken kantor
Fowl Humor
Unibox is really excellent, once you understand the basic concepts of enclosure and driver modelling. It's a fully professional tool, and I use it often. It's especially good if you want to get into designing or modding your own drivers.
If this is one of your first designs, something like WinISD will probably be easier to get going with. It's also very excellent software, and can handle almost any box design project.
Here's a reference for you:
http://www.kenkantor.com/publications/speakers_by_design/
It's a little depressing that it's now more than 20 years old! But, it will give you a very basic overview of the the process.
-k
If this is one of your first designs, something like WinISD will probably be easier to get going with. It's also very excellent software, and can handle almost any box design project.
Here's a reference for you:
http://www.kenkantor.com/publications/speakers_by_design/
It's a little depressing that it's now more than 20 years old! But, it will give you a very basic overview of the the process.
-k
tubino
A guy with too many tubes
Beautiful! I was trying IMPORT via the Excel menus. I just had to hit RELOAD after importing in order to access them! Thanks!
Ken,
Thank you for your highly valued input. Many here, myself included, highly respect your work over the years. You have designed or at least influenced many very influential products.
I have wanted to ask you this question for some time...
It appears to me that you vastly favor smaller woofer (mini-monitor) style speakers with common channel sub-woofer support. What factors influenced your design reasoning to this approach? Was it more driven by performance, imaging, lifestyle influences or other factors? To me, it seems a more difficult approach to get seamless coverage, yet you have managed to do it, repeatedly.
tubino
A guy with too many tubes
I'm reading it and enjoying it a lot -- very informative! Look on the bright side: it's still very relevant and useful after all these years!
Thanks for posting this.
"The Pitts."
Heh, heh.
Shades of Karma Indignia in many respects, you were 20 years ahead of us here; a most enjoyable read, Ken.
Thank you for posting the link.... :thmbsp:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=160535
Russellc
Addicted Member
Tapehead47
Addicted Member
ken kantor
Fowl Humor
Well, thanks! That's very kind of you. I've been pondering how to best answer your question...
I try to be value neutral about overall design strategies... sub-sat vs. full range, acoustic suspension vs. ported, fabric vs. metal ...etc. I believe that if one gets too hung up on such things, its easy to lose sight of the more important goal... optimizing the final sonic results at the listener's ear. So, you can find products I worked on with various mixtures of the above.
I would say that many of what I considered to be "lower compromise" products, (for lack of a better term), were designed for use without subs. I'm thinking of the AR MGC-1 and 303, the NHT 2.5i, 3.3, VT-2, etc. I believe that in a good listening room, and where speaker placement is unrestricted, integrated speakers generally provide the best performance.
These are large and relatively expensive, demanding products. Commercially, they represents a small percentage of even the "enthusiast" market. I believe any mature speaker company needs some higher performance models in their line. Not so much for sales $$ reasons, but rather, to establish, state and test their design goals. And, of course, to serve the serious audiophile customers who agree with them.
But, the bulk of the business is in more affordable products. For me, that meant trying to make very good smaller speakers, rather than cheaper large speakers. At NHT, the stereo pair was always designed and released first, and independantly. Then, subwoofers were then added to allow an upgrade path. At least during my tenure there, we never explicitly designed an sub-sat package which could only be used together.
Personally, it was also a very compelling engineering challenge to see how good a small system could be made to sound. Same thing for a subwoofer. The engineering fun-factor was definitely in the equation for things like the Model 1 and Super Zero.
-k
I try to be value neutral about overall design strategies... sub-sat vs. full range, acoustic suspension vs. ported, fabric vs. metal ...etc. I believe that if one gets too hung up on such things, its easy to lose sight of the more important goal... optimizing the final sonic results at the listener's ear. So, you can find products I worked on with various mixtures of the above.
I would say that many of what I considered to be "lower compromise" products, (for lack of a better term), were designed for use without subs. I'm thinking of the AR MGC-1 and 303, the NHT 2.5i, 3.3, VT-2, etc. I believe that in a good listening room, and where speaker placement is unrestricted, integrated speakers generally provide the best performance.
These are large and relatively expensive, demanding products. Commercially, they represents a small percentage of even the "enthusiast" market. I believe any mature speaker company needs some higher performance models in their line. Not so much for sales $$ reasons, but rather, to establish, state and test their design goals. And, of course, to serve the serious audiophile customers who agree with them.
But, the bulk of the business is in more affordable products. For me, that meant trying to make very good smaller speakers, rather than cheaper large speakers. At NHT, the stereo pair was always designed and released first, and independantly. Then, subwoofers were then added to allow an upgrade path. At least during my tenure there, we never explicitly designed an sub-sat package which could only be used together.
Personally, it was also a very compelling engineering challenge to see how good a small system could be made to sound. Same thing for a subwoofer. The engineering fun-factor was definitely in the equation for things like the Model 1 and Super Zero.
-k