Scan Speak and Morel

"Which is a better speaker" is a question that cannot be answered.  Both Scan Speak and Morel (and several others) make some excellent drivers for a variety of applicaitons and both serve as OEM suppliers for a number of other companies.  I like and use drivers from both companies regularly.

What are your plans, maybe I can suggest something for you.

Ravendarat, DYohn helped me through some speaker building and now I've got a home theatre setup that rivals some of the big boys!  I watch movies just for the sound, I kid you not...I don't care what they're doing on the screen.  For music listening, I just use the main speakers and sub.  It's hella fun to do and I congragulate you for taking the step.

With PartsExpress, I always look at the buyouts first and figure what I can do with those.  I put $6 Vifa-JBL woofers in my rear dipoles and $4 Vifa-Infinity woofers in my center channel....and bought 4 extra of the latter with the thought of using them in some new main speakers that I will be starting on (when my wife's not looking...).  I figured that since I was just learning while doing I wouldn't have a ton of money in speakers and I am happy to report that both buyouts turned out to be perfect for the task.  I'll probably graduate to the Morels when the day comes that I'm brimming with confidence!

BTW, DYohn, I finished up that center channel and it rocks.  I used a Tang Band tweeter with the two Infinitys.  I'll hijack Ravendarat's thread and post up a pic.  (Sorry 'bout that, Ravendarat...)  I still have a long way to go on cabinet-making, though, but I'll be getting a router sometime soon so I'll start learning how to flush-mount the drivers.

Now when those Stanislavsky-bred actors mutter and whisper I can understand what the hell they're saying.

Steve, flush mount that tweet and you'll notice an improvement in time coherence.  Good work, BTW.  I like your red and black scheme.

Raven, for a 3-way the key to good sound is the crossover design, and the key to choosing crossover points is your drivers' capabilities.  Your two most critical drivers are the tweeter and the midrange, and the size of the mid is determined by the tweeter's capabilities.  The ideal crossover point for a tweeter is  approximately 2 octaves above the tweeter's Fs.  So if the tweet Fs is 750 Hz, you want to cross no lower than 3000 Hz.  That means you will need a midrange that can be used up to 3000 Hz without beaming (or off-axis response dips, especially in an automotove application) or compression effects (which I'll skip for now.)  Since larger cones tend to "beam" at lower frequencies, a 3000 Hz crossover point dictates you must use a smallish mid.  At 3000 Hz this means your mid should be 4.5" or smaller (to avoid beaming the crossover should be less than the wavelength equivalent to the speaker's diameter.)  Most mids will play effectively down to 600 Hz or so, and any woofer will play up to 600 with decent SQ and without beaming effects.  Depending on the mid chosen, that's the default woof-mid cross point that I like to use.

The "2X Fs" tweeter lower extension rule of thumb is really only necessary if you're using a 2nd order crossover ( I cannot recomend a 1st order for a tweeter in any case.)  With a steeper slope you can push the tweeter down closer to its Fs.  I've gotten decent results using a 3rd order crossover at 1 octave above Fs.  The advantage to this is you can use a larger midrange cone size (or do a 2-way design with a wide-range woofer.)

SO, all that being said, depending on your tweeter's crossover point, go for whatever woofer you like that will fit your application and choose the mid range and your crossover properly.  And above all please experiment, don't be afraid to make changes and to just try things, and have fun!