[MonkeyBoogers4]

I have only bee into audio for a few years, but regardless, I'm only 20 and  therefore don't have much knowledge of older gear that is still out there but is way better than much that is available today.  (wow that just sounded like I called all the people I'm asking for help old...)  What I am interested in doing is building a pair of speakers.  I haven't decided whether just a simple box or attempt a more complicated one, but regardless, I'm hoping to end up with a decent pair of speakers in the end without paying a lot of money, but putting into them a lot of work.  What I need help with is determining what type of raw drivers to use.  I hope to expand it in the future to be used as surround sound, so it would be great if they were fairly common drivers that I could find again later to be used in the rest of the system.

A two-way speaker would probably be ideal for me, with fairly good full range woofers, and the maybe some ribbon drivers for the high end (though those will probably fall quite a bit out of my price range, so I'm open to other suggestions).  I would add a sub eventually, so extremely good low end is not a must.  Any suggestions would be very helpful.  Oh, and to describe my budget a little more, I'm a junior in electrical engineering and don't have a job while in school right now or rich parents...

[Watson]

You might consider a kit from Danny at GR Research. If you're working from scratch, what you really want is to choose a design from this site:
http://zaphaudio.com/
There is a lot to quality speaker design and you rarely find free designs where the author has so well documented his engineering decisions as John Krutke at Zaph Audio. (Well, except Linkwitz, but those designs are likely out of your budget.) Other good speaker design sites with free designs are RJB Audio and Murphyblaster (the guy who designed the Salk speakers). But in general I'd go with one of Zaph's designs, simply because he's got a good eye towards value and everything is so thoroughly documented you'll learn a lot.

[hdspeakerman]

Not to run you away from here but there is a pretty good group of folks at Parts Express forum that talk about building their own speakers day and night.  I must warn you.  If you get started with it, it can be very addicting.  Good luck.
Howard

[Bob in St. Louis]

Welcome to A.C. Mr. Boogers,

Couple questions;

- How much you willing to spend (audio is a lot like race cars.... How fast you wanna go, cause money equals speed.)
- How are your woodworking abilities (please describe)
- Do you have any tools? (what kind)
- What equipment do you have (sources, amps, pre-amps, ect....)

Good to see another multi-channel guy. 

Again, Welcome! 
Bob

[S Clark]

Definitely build an already established design.  Crossovers can be daunting.  So, GR-Research, Murphyblaster, RJB audio are all excellent choices.

[MonkeyBoogers4]

thanks for the tip for zaphaudio, I'll check it out.

Bob, to answer some of your questions:

I'm not really set on a budget, as far as just the drivers, under $100 would be great, and less would be better.  I actually have a component set that used to be in my car that I would experiment with first.  They do sound pretty good, but like I said, I would want to expand to a 5.1 later, so I'd like the drivers the same.  And speaking of cars, because this describes my basic view on things.  I opted to buy a miata last summer, and love it because, though it isn't the fastest car in the world, I can actually drive it at close to it's peak and not be breaking laws (much).  So basically that means I understand diminishing marginal returns, and though I could tell the difference between an insanely expensive speaker and one that isn't, it isn't worth the money at this point in my life.  What I would like to do is build a pair of bookshelf speakers that are very decent (better than the polk 150's I'm stuck with now).

I'm a fairly decent woodworker.  I've made a few sub boxes, one of them bandpass.  Also, my dad is much better and can always get his help.

Again my dad has all common tools, plus here on campus, I have access to quite a few tools, but I don't exactly what, but assume tools aren't a problem.

The amp I have right now is a Denon surround receiver, I forget the model, but 75watts a channel.  I also have a Crest 800-2, but I doubt I'll be making anything that requires that much power.

Speaking of amps, and crossovers, another project that maybe will come first is to design a monoblock.  Unless something comes up in the next few years, that may be my senior design project(because then I don't have to pay for it).  Just thinking out loud though.

[MonkeyBoogers4]

Actually after looking at a diy site, let me change that under $100 to be something like no driver over #$0.

[MonkeyBoogers4]

whoops, $30.

[Christof]

Have a look here: http://www.lonesaguaro.com/speakers/  Lou has some nice budget diy designs.  I've built a couple of his designs for friends and was impressed with his work.

Here is a good design for mains and add center/surrounds later.  That HiVi mid driver is pretty cheap....

[warnerwh]

Want expert knowledge and lots of excellent designs?  Go here:  http://www.htguide.com/forum/forumdisplay.php4?f=6
These guys know what they're doing as well as anybody. In the Mission Completed area you can find numerous designs.  This is also an excellent place to learn how to design and build speakers.  You'll find at any one of these sites you'll be recommended to not try to design a speaker system yourself.

Do not try to design a system yourself. I felt insulted when all these people first warned me. Believe me I'm sure glad I got that advice before I spent several thousand on parts, which is exactly what I was going to do. Knowing what I know now I would only design and build a sub.  Even a 2 way is more difficult than I'd have guessed.

There's several speaker manufacturers in these forums that have kits.  You'll get excellent sound from any one of them. Prices for what you get are excellent as there's no middle man that also has to make a profit. Best wishes on your endeavor.

[S Clark]

Actually after looking at a diy site, let me change that under $100 to be something like no driver over #$0.

If you feel that you must design your own, then I recommend the GR-Research M130 woofer for under $30 along with the T-3 tweeter.  You can use a first order crossover (single cap on the tweeter, and single coil on the woofer) and cross at about 2500Hz. This will give you most of the musical spectrum but will not have a baffle step diffraction correction circuit to compensate for lost bass. The owner, Danny Richie, might even tell you what values he would recommend.  Later, when you have the funds, order one of his AV-1 kits, and then clone the better crossover to retrofit your older pair.  Then you have 4 of some of the best quality, low cost speakers that are out there.

Cost: $108 for the drivers from GR-Research, probably $20 for the coils, and $5 for some mylar caps from Madisound.com---altogether less than $150 and only about $25 worth of parts that would be thrown out upon upgrade.
One of my physics students built this design that was reasonably flat (+-3 db)up to about 10K with a dip due to phase issues, and then flat to 18K.

[MonkeyBoogers4]

Do any of you know of any good software or online tools that can help with calculating dimensions for speaker designs?

[JohnR]

Hi, depends what you mean, but UniBox is a good tool for calculating box volume, port size etc.

If you mean how to figure the internal volume of a box, I have in the past just whipped up a spreadsheet, with the external dimensions, wall width etc, and calculated it that way. You can add braces and driver and port dimensions/volume if you want get fancy.

[S Clark]

Do any of you know of any good software or online tools that can help with calculating dimensions for speaker designs?

So, are you still looking to design from scratch? I assume so since most established designs have the box dimensions. 
However if you are determined to go it alone, I have a copy of Sound Easy that I'd let go of cheap.  The learning curve was way to much for me. Do some research on it as many really like it.