I am planning on building a pair of speakers. its going to be a pair of bookshelf and i already choose my speakers that are going in but i have no clue about the crossover....
i am still not sure about the dimension of the box. I would realy need help with the crossover and any suggestion would be appreciated.i dont want anything cheap too.
If you don't know how to build a crossover or how to determine which enclosure type and volume is suitable for the drivers, why did you decide to build a DIY loudspeaker? How did you select the drivers you intend to pair together? By their bandwidth? Their dispersion characteristics? Their size? Impedance? Sensitivity? Or, just by looking at pictures?
We can point you in the right direction but, at the moment you seem to be saying you've decided to buy a hammer and some nails, can we tell you how to build a house? There's a bit more to this than just deciding on two - or, depending on the answers, maybe three - drivers. Why not just buy a kit or a ready made speaker rather than trying to do something you have no idea how to accomplish?
If you want instructions on DIY speakers, you can use a search engine. But you'll be involved in a fair amount of math and some computer work for a few weeks before you start deciding on how to go about the final product unless you just buy off the shelf components and do nothing more then screw parts together. In other words, there's fair amount of difference between "building" a speaker and "assembling" parts to make a speaker someone else designed.
That's a good point Jan. Parts Express sells the speaker kits that you just basically screw the parts together. I never understood the point of that. Building your own enclosure is way cooler and would a lot more fun.
The advantage is the illusion of saving money. Someone else integrates and hopefully voices the system with the crossover you get. It should be better than just randomly choosing parts out of a catalogue. Absolute control over finish.
I've built a bunch of computers. Doubt I've saved a nickel, but at least knew my way around what I built and had control of parts used.
I've built a few computers out of spare/used parts. Saved a bundle... even have one still running in the basement as a file server that's been going non-stop for 6 years now.
The FIRST computer I build was a PII / 266 with a 4gb HD and I think....32 mb of ram! Add in case / cd drive / floppy and a copy of Win95b on disc. The Monitor was a 17" Sceptre which was surprisingly good with accurate color. Add a SB AWE64 sound card, a Nvidia vid card w/4mb or ram and you had about the max you could get.....WAY back then. The MB had an early AGP slot, 2 ISA and 3 or 4 PCI slots. A transition board between technologies.
Darn thing cost a BUNDLE. I new PC of similar specs....and the one I built lacked on the 333 PII, which was the fastest available, would have been maybe 200$ or so more than I spent to DIY.
don't even get me started on upgrades, which went on for a couple more years and included more memory, a cd burner, a DVD drive, and several higher capacity HDs.
No, I'm not convinced I saved all that much money, but the experience was terrific. I'm not scared to tear into any PC and have been fairly successful in helping friends keep out of the clutches of repair guys.....
If I had access to a stock of used / good stuff, I'm sure I could build something for pennies on the dollar................
I'd love to find a computer which is pretty much obsolete and build myself a 'smoothwall' home hardware firewall computer. Jan has me worried! just kidding.
Pretty crazy how prices have come down, huh Leo? My first laptop was a PII/233 with 32 MB RAM and a 2GB - for 2000 dollars! I just picked up a new laptop this weekend - a dual core AMD 2.4 gHz, with 3 GB of RAM and a 500 GB HD, for less than 500 bucks!
Don't remind me! My first computer, which is 'doorstop' grade in todays world, went close to 2 large. The wife? slackjawed with disbelief..... 'We could have gone to Hawaii for what that 'thing' cost!'
I waited on a Digital pro camera until fully 1 generation PAST the one I liked, than bought it. Paying for brand-new latest is a recipe for going crazy.