Design and Build Your Own Live-Sound Speakers

Rating:
Summary: Design & Build your own Live Sound Speakers
Review: Great book! Well illustrated & very informational.

Rating:
Summary: Good for Construction - Bad for Design
Review: This book DOES provide enough information to build pro loudspeakers. There is good coverage of pro loudspeaker construction, so if you want to know how to build a box, this is the book for you. When it comes to design, this book is very lacking. There is a fair section on cross over design (1st & 2nd order only). But when it comes to enclosure design, the author suggests the reader use speaker design software (not provided) with no guidance on what these programs do. Nice!

The book does a great job of emphasizing frequency response and efficiency matching, but some of the design examples are are a little unorthodox. Specifically, there is a 12" PA speaker design where the author recommends a 6dB cross over point of 4kHz. This may protect the horn, but sacrifices off axis frequency response. Most commercial 12" PA speakers will use a lower cross over point ~ 2kHz and use a 2nd or 3rd order cross over.

Bottom line, if you want to know how to build boxes, this is a good book. If you want to know how to design enclosures, you will need another book or software. I rated this book low because the title "Design and Build . . ." suggested to me that there would be better design guidelines. So while I rated this book one star, other readers may find this a useful reference for pro speaker construction.