Car audio home audio ?

 Building a good set of speakers is much more than just selecting mids and tweeters and crap-shooting the crossover design.  To design it right you need some pretty expensive test equipment, software, and a great deal of knowledge and experience of what works and what doesn't.  Honestly for your first time I would suggest looking at kits instead.  They supply the speakers and crossover parts and you build them from there. 

Now if you still want to build your own, there is a forum dedicated to it with many VERY smart people there.  Check out www.diyaudio.com and just start searching.  Good luck!   BTW, if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask. 

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio

That's no problem.  I just wanted to be sure that everyone understood the complexity of what they are getting into.  Of course all the great speaker engineers had to start somewhere.  

Well first I recomend doing some serious research.  There are many different drivers out there in many different price ranges.  And price doesn't necessarily dictate the quality of the driver. 

I'd recomend LSPCad.  It seems to be very accurate and has some great features.  It has a good crossover modeling section in it, and is one of the more accurate enclosure design softwares on the market. 

Actually similar sensitivity isn't critical as you can always adjust the differences in the crossover network.  Just remember the lower in frequency you run the speakers, the less overall output you can get from them.  Also look closely at the frequency response of the mid.  A lot of times you will see cone resonances that cause dips in the response early which means you will have to roll off the speaker early.  This can also mean that you will have to run the tweeter lower and thereby hurt your peak output.  You should also check out the response of the speakers at different axis points.  Otherwise you might have good results on axis, but have a very narrow sweet spot. 

You should also understand how we hear things.  Sometimes something will measure badly, but will sound just fine.  A perfect example of this is doppler distortion.  It measures very bad in some speakers, but when you actually listen it is either inaudible or isn't objectionable. 

What my boss usually does is first select the speakers.  He then has me build test enclosures for the speakers.  He then tests each speaker in it's place, with the microphone hooked up to his computer.  Next he uses LSPCad to design a crossover for the speakers using that collected data.  Then the computer is connected to an amplifier and the amplifier feeds the speakers.  LSPCad allows him to play music that is then fed through his similated crossover network and into the speakers.  He can actually hear the crossover before he builds it.  From his listening tests he can determine whether to modify the design or not.   After that he hands me the crossover scematic, I build it up and we test it. 

Well I think having to amplify each speaker seperately is a major drawback.  Honestly unless you are going with digital crossovers, I don't see any benifit.

Sorry, I hope that didn't sound rude.  It's just that I've seen people do this before and they never get good results.  I just wanted to make sure you knew not to do it.

I do want to add one more thing.  The crossover is the most important part of a speaker system.  It is what gives the speakers their voice.  Second in importance is the speaker selection.  And finally a distant thrird is the enclosures. 

I hope this helps!

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio

BTW, I thought I should add that I've never designed speakers myself.  I'm just going based on what I've learned from my boss by helping, observing, and asking questions.  So if you guys (Dyon) see anything questionable in my posts, please point it out.

BTW, we have a free downoad of LspCAD on our website if you want to try it out.  Here's the link: http://www.adireaudio.com/TextPages/FreeSoftwarePageFrameText.htm  There's also a link to a site where you can buy the full version of the software.

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio

       $980 for a program? 

You might want to check out this site it has a lot of info on speaker building.

http://www.speakerbuilding.com/

Check out the software page, lots of software some free. Also you might want to request the Parts Express catalog, they have all the stuff you will need for the crossovers and the cabinets( some of this stuff is kind of difficult to find on their site). Not to mention all the drivers they have . And like Steven said a driver doesn't have to be expensive to be good.

Ps. Can you tell I'm cheap? lol