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Originally Posted by solidONE
Anything relating to putting together a modest power, hi fidelity system is more than welcome. I'm sure anyone looking for this information in the future would be happy to find this as I am.
Any suggestion were to find dumbed down, but accurate, step by step information in regards to speaker and crossover selection and construction?
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The short answer is that, to get very good or better results, there's a lot to crossover and speaker design in general, and there's a finite amount of "dumbing down" possible. Fastidious designers make their own measurements of each individual driver's Thiele-Small parameters, calculate box volumes for best damping and desired low-frequency rolloff Q (in general, sealed enclosures will extend deeper and rolloff more gradually for a given driver, but a well tuned ported enclosure will rolloff much more steeply but the onset of rolloff may be a bit lower), calculate and design the front baffle in order to allow for the effects of the baffle step and diffraction, then using all of that information, begin work calculating and designing a crossover that takes ALL of those parameters into account, trying to incorporate specific rolloff slopes, notch filters, impedance smoothing circuits, phase adjustments, etc., for each individual driver so that the summed response of the integrated speaker system is smooth across the spectrum, phase- and time-aligned, without strange impedance peaks or dips at various frequencies that may provide difficulties to some amplifiers, etc.. there's a LOT to it.
Having said that, you can have a lot of fun and actually achieve listenable results (if your standards are commensurately realistic) using readily available published specs for common drivers, freeware crossover and box-design programs, and just diving in. I don't mean to sound discouraging... that's how I got my start almost thirty years ago... although without the software... did the comps long hand back then. After my first pair built and designed from scratch (still in use in my youngest son's house), I dug a bit deeper, learned more, built a few more systems, and in general just enjoyed myself. The only truly GREAT speakers I've built were based upon other people's designs, with only very slight tweaks in the fabrication of the enclosures and slight changes in crossover component selection based upon availability or lack thereof of various parts.
Having said all of THAT... try this..
https://www.parts-express.com/resources
..and just start clicking around the various articles. A lot of it is kind of geared towards selling their products; you can't blame them for that, and their customer support is excellent. There's a lot of good introductory information in those links, and you might enjoy reading through that stuff.
If you want to get a bit more serious, I HIGHLY recommend Vance ****ason's
"The Loudspeaker Cookbook."
EDIT: .. OK, the filter algorithms hate his name. His last name is RICHARDason only "RICHARD" is the nickname that rhymes with "Rick".... as in "Rickason" with a D.
The book is not what what the title sounds like.. it's not just a collection of "recipes" for specific speakers, but rather a great introduction to all of the various aspects of speaker design. When I bought my first copy twenty five years ago, it was kind of a hard slog to get through... if you're starting with zero or extremely limited knowledge of this stuff, you'll still be able to slowly work your way through it, but there's a lot to digest. He writes and explains it all about as clearly as anyone can, and I still refer to that book.
https://www.amazon.com/Loudspeaker-D...5152574&sr=8-1
It's quite expensive on Amazon now... not sure why. Maybe your local library can source a copy for you? It really is just about the best balancing act between over-the-top-technical and too-basic-to-be-useful that I've found.