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I've been tossing around some ideas for a new 2-way bookshelf speaker and wanted to get some feedback from the forum. In all honesty I definitely don't need a new pair of speakers, but it's the start of a new year and I'm itching for a project to work on. I'd like to do something a little different, or in other words I'm not trying to build a tried-and-true design, I know there's plenty out there, I'm more interested in the challenge of a new design and at least for me, picking some new drivers I haven't had a chance to play with. So I'll just walk through my initial design/thought process and let me know what you guys think!
First off, driver selection, we all have our reasons for picking driver A or tweeter B and our reasons may or may not be grounded in any kind of reality. Maybe it's price, maybe it's value, maybe it's cosmetic, perhaps you're a purist and it's completely based on performance, or you simply go to PE's website and sort by "most reviews" and pick the driver that has the best track record. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to go about driver selection, everybody has a reason. For me this design started with, I'll admit it, cosmetics. The visual. Looks. Probably the least important actual thing that matters for sound reproduction, but I really want these speakers to just look awesome. It's completely subjective, I know, so I started my search with the tweeter and initially I was drawn to the new Peerless Corundum dome tweeters. Ever since they came out and I took one look at that wide faceplate and metalic silver dome and grill, I knew I wanted to use them in a project. I jut thought they looked super slick! And the little grill probably doesn't mean much to most people but I have kids that love to poke in tweeter domes so I always love finding a good tweeter with a grill. (I know I can build speaker grills too, but that kind of defeats the purpose of picking a good looking driver in the first place!) So the Peerless Corundum dome tweeter it is, based solely on its looks, plus just the fact that it's new and hasn't seen its way into a lot of designs. So I thought it would be fun to work with.
So the second criteria for this design after cosmetics would be, surprise, performance. Even if it's just datasheet stuff, even the best-looking tweeter I would pass on if it didn't have something real to back it up. The manufactured specs reveal some great characteristics, low fs, flat/smooth response, decent power handling, nominal sensitivity, should pair nicely with many mids, and an easy 8 ohm impedance. Looks good on paper, though there is an unusually high self resonance at like ~28 kHz. I haven't seen that on many published specs. Metal dome tweeters tend to have a fairly high-frequency resonance, sometimes in-band (<20 kHz) but they don't normally peak that high, but also tend to give metal domes their signature "sparkle" which can be for good or for bad depending on your preference. This peak has 15 dB gain but is well above the audible range. Does this concern anyone? I can't imagine why this would even matter. I'm chalking it up to a "don't care" at the moment and let's move onto the woofer selection. Oh and of the two diameter versions available, I'm leaning towards the smaller 25mm dome (DA25TX00-08) at the moment. Fs is only marginally higher and it's a few bucks cheaper.
So the woofer selection was harder, a lot harder. Initially one would need to decide on the driver size. Did I want a little bookshelf speaker so like a 4" or 5" driver? Or was I looking for a full-size bookshelf speaker with the potential to have a little more low-end and go with a 6"-7" driver? Or should I just go all out and do an 8" driver? Oooh, an 8" with the 32mm Corundum looks tempting, probably one of the only tweeters that could cross low enough to keep cone break-up modes of a huge 8" woofer in check, but no, not for this build. Crossover complexity might be a bit much and it's hard to fit an 8" driver into a "bookshelf" sized speaker and have it model properly. So I settled on a 6-1/2" driver size and started with selecting every 6-1/2" driver PE sells (which is 64, more than any other driver they carry) and sorting by price - high to low. Holy cow, Morel make some expensive drivers, pass. While I didn't mention budget, obviously every speaker designer has to consider budget as a factor and budget always matters. For this build I was leaning towards the more expensive side of things opting to forgo the less expensive drives such as the ever-so-popular 6-1/2" poly cone woofer that costs all of $6. I'm sure it's a great driver and definitely has its place but ultimately didn't quite meet my criteria - which was once again, give me just a really great-looking driver!
I considered several of the Peerless drivers, with their many different fancy cone materials and thought a Peerless/Peerless combo is always nice. Not a strict requirement though to keep woofer/tweeter of the same manufacturer. I know I tend to want to do that though, as do many others. For now I wanted to leave the option open for any manufacturer just to widen the playing field. Dayton RS series was considered but I swear almost every speaker in my house is Dayton Audio and while I do love them, I just wanted something different this time. And that's when I saw it, the Tang Band W6-1721. Wow that looks like such a beefy driver and I'm not just talking about the magnet. The wide surround and small dust cap with a traditional paper cone just look great. Does it have the specs to back up the looks? I think it does! Low fs for a 6 incher, some serious xmax at 8 mm, not typical for a driver this size, and where does this thing role off? TB clearly exaggerates the response as there is very little peaking (where are the cone breakup modes) and the response barely starts to roll off just above 10 kHz. Either way, I'll be measuring the drivers anyway so I don't need to get too hung up on published FR specs. But that's when it hit me, the motor is an underhung design, just like the tweeter! Wow, cool. But aren't most tweeters not already underhung? Peerless at least specs them that way so now you can say that both woofer and tweeter incorporate an underhung motor design and then whatever benefit is reaped (lower distortion, higher power, etc.) at least can be said about the entire speaker as a whole. So hey, that's kinda cool, right?
So with the TB woofer picked I ran some sims in Unibox and came up with a 25 liter enclosure tuned to 36 Hz provides a small bump with an f3 of 30 Hz. It's a slightly compromised design, the driver really wants a full 28-29 liters (basically 1 cu.ft.) but in order to still meet my original design criteria that this be a bookshelf-sized speaker, it's already getting to be on the larger side of things. This requires an enclosure size of 15x10x16 (HWD) with a double-front baffle made from 3/4" MDF and reasonably braced. Also the port, oh my gosh, the port. I hate ports. Balancing port air speed with port length (ie, consumed internal volume) just drives me nuts. Who came up with the 5% minimum recommended port air speed anyway? What if I like shuffing? I must like shuffing, because I don't think I've build a ported box yet that actually meets the maximum port air speed of 17 m/s. The "ideal" port diameter for this driver in this enclosure is 3.25". Tuning a 25L enclosure to a low 36 Hz requires a whopping 17" long port. I could barely fold a 3.25" port to fit inside this tiny cabinet to get it to be that long let alone the fact that it would consume ~2.5L of internal volume to do so. So I compromised and went with a 2.5" port (which is a standard size) which ends up needing to be only about 10" long which can easily fit into the cabinet without elbow/bends and takes up only 0.8L. Of course the crux of it all is port air speed increases to 31 m/s at fb, so yeah I guess I like chuffing. For that all I have to say is, the port location is definitely going in the back! And by the way I did model about 8 other drivers that met my initial "looks good" criteria but then couldn't muster the "looks good modeled" criteria. Like what's with the Aurum Cantus 6" driver? You can't make the enclosure small enough to make that driver happy. Not to mention xmax is exceeded on many drivers with anything more than 10 watts input power (Dynavox drivers were the worst offenders in that category).
Anyway, this post is way too long for a normal person to read, so I'll end with some drawings and definitely looking for some feedback or thoughts on my driver selection process. How do you pick drivers for your projects? What motivates you do pick a particular driver? What would anyone like to see as far as going deeper into this design? I have plenty of measurement gear and plan to design the crossover based entirely on measurements taken with the drivers in the cabinets, so the crossover design will have to come later. But initial box modeling and enclosure design is at least taking shape. Thanks for reading!
First off, driver selection, we all have our reasons for picking driver A or tweeter B and our reasons may or may not be grounded in any kind of reality. Maybe it's price, maybe it's value, maybe it's cosmetic, perhaps you're a purist and it's completely based on performance, or you simply go to PE's website and sort by "most reviews" and pick the driver that has the best track record. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to go about driver selection, everybody has a reason. For me this design started with, I'll admit it, cosmetics. The visual. Looks. Probably the least important actual thing that matters for sound reproduction, but I really want these speakers to just look awesome. It's completely subjective, I know, so I started my search with the tweeter and initially I was drawn to the new Peerless Corundum dome tweeters. Ever since they came out and I took one look at that wide faceplate and metalic silver dome and grill, I knew I wanted to use them in a project. I jut thought they looked super slick! And the little grill probably doesn't mean much to most people but I have kids that love to poke in tweeter domes so I always love finding a good tweeter with a grill. (I know I can build speaker grills too, but that kind of defeats the purpose of picking a good looking driver in the first place!) So the Peerless Corundum dome tweeter it is, based solely on its looks, plus just the fact that it's new and hasn't seen its way into a lot of designs. So I thought it would be fun to work with.
So the second criteria for this design after cosmetics would be, surprise, performance. Even if it's just datasheet stuff, even the best-looking tweeter I would pass on if it didn't have something real to back it up. The manufactured specs reveal some great characteristics, low fs, flat/smooth response, decent power handling, nominal sensitivity, should pair nicely with many mids, and an easy 8 ohm impedance. Looks good on paper, though there is an unusually high self resonance at like ~28 kHz. I haven't seen that on many published specs. Metal dome tweeters tend to have a fairly high-frequency resonance, sometimes in-band (<20 kHz) but they don't normally peak that high, but also tend to give metal domes their signature "sparkle" which can be for good or for bad depending on your preference. This peak has 15 dB gain but is well above the audible range. Does this concern anyone? I can't imagine why this would even matter. I'm chalking it up to a "don't care" at the moment and let's move onto the woofer selection. Oh and of the two diameter versions available, I'm leaning towards the smaller 25mm dome (DA25TX00-08) at the moment. Fs is only marginally higher and it's a few bucks cheaper.
So the woofer selection was harder, a lot harder. Initially one would need to decide on the driver size. Did I want a little bookshelf speaker so like a 4" or 5" driver? Or was I looking for a full-size bookshelf speaker with the potential to have a little more low-end and go with a 6"-7" driver? Or should I just go all out and do an 8" driver? Oooh, an 8" with the 32mm Corundum looks tempting, probably one of the only tweeters that could cross low enough to keep cone break-up modes of a huge 8" woofer in check, but no, not for this build. Crossover complexity might be a bit much and it's hard to fit an 8" driver into a "bookshelf" sized speaker and have it model properly. So I settled on a 6-1/2" driver size and started with selecting every 6-1/2" driver PE sells (which is 64, more than any other driver they carry) and sorting by price - high to low. Holy cow, Morel make some expensive drivers, pass. While I didn't mention budget, obviously every speaker designer has to consider budget as a factor and budget always matters. For this build I was leaning towards the more expensive side of things opting to forgo the less expensive drives such as the ever-so-popular 6-1/2" poly cone woofer that costs all of $6. I'm sure it's a great driver and definitely has its place but ultimately didn't quite meet my criteria - which was once again, give me just a really great-looking driver!
I considered several of the Peerless drivers, with their many different fancy cone materials and thought a Peerless/Peerless combo is always nice. Not a strict requirement though to keep woofer/tweeter of the same manufacturer. I know I tend to want to do that though, as do many others. For now I wanted to leave the option open for any manufacturer just to widen the playing field. Dayton RS series was considered but I swear almost every speaker in my house is Dayton Audio and while I do love them, I just wanted something different this time. And that's when I saw it, the Tang Band W6-1721. Wow that looks like such a beefy driver and I'm not just talking about the magnet. The wide surround and small dust cap with a traditional paper cone just look great. Does it have the specs to back up the looks? I think it does! Low fs for a 6 incher, some serious xmax at 8 mm, not typical for a driver this size, and where does this thing role off? TB clearly exaggerates the response as there is very little peaking (where are the cone breakup modes) and the response barely starts to roll off just above 10 kHz. Either way, I'll be measuring the drivers anyway so I don't need to get too hung up on published FR specs. But that's when it hit me, the motor is an underhung design, just like the tweeter! Wow, cool. But aren't most tweeters not already underhung? Peerless at least specs them that way so now you can say that both woofer and tweeter incorporate an underhung motor design and then whatever benefit is reaped (lower distortion, higher power, etc.) at least can be said about the entire speaker as a whole. So hey, that's kinda cool, right?
So with the TB woofer picked I ran some sims in Unibox and came up with a 25 liter enclosure tuned to 36 Hz provides a small bump with an f3 of 30 Hz. It's a slightly compromised design, the driver really wants a full 28-29 liters (basically 1 cu.ft.) but in order to still meet my original design criteria that this be a bookshelf-sized speaker, it's already getting to be on the larger side of things. This requires an enclosure size of 15x10x16 (HWD) with a double-front baffle made from 3/4" MDF and reasonably braced. Also the port, oh my gosh, the port. I hate ports. Balancing port air speed with port length (ie, consumed internal volume) just drives me nuts. Who came up with the 5% minimum recommended port air speed anyway? What if I like shuffing? I must like shuffing, because I don't think I've build a ported box yet that actually meets the maximum port air speed of 17 m/s. The "ideal" port diameter for this driver in this enclosure is 3.25". Tuning a 25L enclosure to a low 36 Hz requires a whopping 17" long port. I could barely fold a 3.25" port to fit inside this tiny cabinet to get it to be that long let alone the fact that it would consume ~2.5L of internal volume to do so. So I compromised and went with a 2.5" port (which is a standard size) which ends up needing to be only about 10" long which can easily fit into the cabinet without elbow/bends and takes up only 0.8L. Of course the crux of it all is port air speed increases to 31 m/s at fb, so yeah I guess I like chuffing. For that all I have to say is, the port location is definitely going in the back! And by the way I did model about 8 other drivers that met my initial "looks good" criteria but then couldn't muster the "looks good modeled" criteria. Like what's with the Aurum Cantus 6" driver? You can't make the enclosure small enough to make that driver happy. Not to mention xmax is exceeded on many drivers with anything more than 10 watts input power (Dynavox drivers were the worst offenders in that category).
Anyway, this post is way too long for a normal person to read, so I'll end with some drawings and definitely looking for some feedback or thoughts on my driver selection process. How do you pick drivers for your projects? What motivates you do pick a particular driver? What would anyone like to see as far as going deeper into this design? I have plenty of measurement gear and plan to design the crossover based entirely on measurements taken with the drivers in the cabinets, so the crossover design will have to come later. But initial box modeling and enclosure design is at least taking shape. Thanks for reading!
. The biggest difference between the two data sets is the Vas - which he states is about half what the datasheet reports with a higher fs as well. Perhaps he didn't allow the driver to break in properly before running the test? His numbers model better in a smaller enclosure because of this. I suppose the best thing to do is measure the actual drivers and not rely on datasheet values or even measured values from other sources. It was just something to start with to get an idea of possible performance in an enclosure. I'll post a pic of the parameters from Zaph and if you want you can run those and see if it changes your results.
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