Full Range Speaker designs...

I found a selection of full range designs that were interesting....enjoy!

http://www.quarter-wave.com/Gallery/Gallery.html

Here's my favorite full range beginner's design....

http://murphyblaster.com/content.php?f=newplop.html

You don't even need a router to recess your driver. A plain old jig saw will work just so you stay reasonably close to the circle you've drawn on the front baffle and given yourself enough room to screw the screws in.

The drivers I wanted to use are the Audio Nirvana drivers. I've read nothing but good about them.

Even easier would be to use the Hawthorne Audio Silver Iris drivers. They're up around $169 now... but it's important to keep in mind that these drivers made by Eminence are custom made to perform really well in a small open baffle. Some "open baffle" designs are big and take up a whole side of the living room. Not these, they're made to perform at their best in a reasonably small piece of wood. They have the idea dimensions on the Hawthorne website.

David at Planet10 HiFi prefers his modified or "enabled" Fostex drivers. He says you can get better performance with $200 worth of Fostex drivers. Actually, he says they "blow away" the Silver Iris, however, I don't agree (in most cases) when someone says one speaker "blows away" another speaker. That's an insult to people who have done their own research and spent their hard earned money on the "other" speaker... and really enjoy them. Plus, it's just not true. We are fortunate to live in the best time ever for buying really good affordable loudspeakers or drivers.

Anyway, if you want to try your hand at building a really good sounding but easy to build speaker, build yourself a "Plop-in-the-Box".

Or, build a simple box based on the dimensions that Audio Nirvana provides with their drivers.

Or, choose drivers that will perform at their peak in one of Parts Express already made boxes. These are really nicely made boxes. You can get pretty veneer or opt for their "Piano Black" paint. All you have to do is cut the hole in the front baffle... no "building"... no cutting, now screwing, gluing, clamping, sanding, painting or veneering. The guys at PE will help you pick the right size.

There are some guys who make custom speaker enclosures for you, too. They're not cheap, but you get a box that is really... really nice. You can choose your own veneer from dozens of woods, not one or two. Let's say you throw together a simple Plop-in-the-Box... whatever... and you put your drivers in and listen and decide that you really like and want this to be in your living room... but the wife looks at it and says.... "No way" "Not in this lifetime". And most homemade speakers look... well, homemade. Sure there's a lot of love in there. Still it's not up to professional speaker standards. Then you can have someone make your boxes for you and you pick your veneer and they'll make them for you.

now that was fun reading..

It kept me awake.

I think it was pretty sound. I just can't say enough for that "Plop-in-the-Box" as a beginner's DIY project. You know, for trying to build a speaker for the first time and getting a pretty good result depending, of course, on your drivers. If you shop Parts Express sales regularly and check out their "Deal of the Day", you're eventually going to find a pretty decent full range driver. The important thing for beginners is understand they need to specifically look for a full range driver.

Because in the past I've found so many really good deals at PE, like "Close Outs" and "Buy Outs", plus an occassional "Deal of the Day", or just one of the regular old "Sales" that pulls my chain, PE is the first website I check when I get up and sit down at the computer. I just type "P" in my Google and it lists Parts Express.com and I click on that... I'm still not awake yet, but I can usually remember "P"... I mean I'm a senior, "P" is one of the reasons I'm up at 2-3 a.m. to start with... not "Pee", but just plain "P", I'm in such as hurry I can't take the time to spell it out. Anyway after that mad dash, the middle of the night "Senior Moment", I sit down at the computer to check email to see if we've heard from family and how they're doing and if they need anything, but first thing, I check the "Deal of the Day" and special sales at PE. My most recent find was a portable stereo "boom box" type music player that is specifically for plugging our XM radio into, so if we're travelling and listening to XM in the car, we can unplug it and plug it into the portable boom box and listen to Classical Music in the motel room -- just so the room faces south so the portable antenna can find the XM satellite. Anyway, PE had one for $10 -- $9.95 something like that as a "Buy Out - Close Out". It said they were previously selling them for $79.95 ("Yeah sure", I thought. "It's a little bitty piece of junk... but they're good at returns so I'll try it." Got it. It was big. Had two nice stereo speakers. Really well made. Looked nice. "Wow!", I thought and bought another one.

I've got so many good deals that way -- from soldering irons to really good quality cables and connectors, several of the great little $99 pr. BR-1 speaker kits which I like to put together and give away -- you can't even buy empty cabinets of this quality for $99 and the holes are pre-cut -- to the subject of this thread (I didn't hijack it that far) -- drivers! They have various ones -- their brand name that they push is Dayton, but they also have from time to time others, such as, Peerless, which is one of the high end driver manufacturers and, oh what's that really good brand made in Israel -- they have great tweeters, well everything, but I'm rebuilding a pair of AR3a's and I've read they have an excellent replacement tweeter if I can't get mine to perform. They have other drivers on sale, too, from time to time. Recently, they had an "Eminence" drier sale -- and so on.

But the ones I wanted to make sure to mention that appear regularly with great discount sale prices are the Full Range drivers made by Tang Band. I bought several and set them aside for future projects, also a couple pairs of the little Tang Band "Sub-Woofer" to make a desktop or Guest Room small subwoofer.

All a beginner needs is a good Full Range driver and a box. It doesn't have to be a fancy furniture grade finished box, the first one can be just simple wood with box corners, just to get the feel of it and actually accomplish something... in other words, it works. It may be ugly and you may not want to put it anywhere except in the garage... but, as Dennis explains... it works. David at Audio Nirvana will give you speaker box plans -- dimensions and all that specifically for each of his driver models. Over at Hawthorne Audio, if you want to splurge and get the basic Silver Iris drivers with Darryl's lovely quality pre-made crossover for around $175 each to make your own Full Range "Open Baffle" speakers -- many people believe Open Baffle speakers are the only way to listen to music. You don't even need a box, just a baffle -- a flat piece of wood to hold the driver. Darryl has got it all figured out for his custom 10" or 15" drivers what size the baffle should be -- in the case of the Hawthorne drivers, surprisingly not large. Or for, I think around $100 or so (if you don't want to cut wood and cut holes in wood for the driver... or figure out how you want to support the baffle upright and where to mount the crossover), Darryl even sells a nice looking wood kit that comes pre-cut, pre-drilled in a "flat pack". It's nice birch quality plywood. Give it a sand and a finish, or a stain and a finish and you've got great looking Open Baffle -- Full Range speakers.

Anyway, I hope that helps someone who wants to try a Full Range... or an Open Baffle Full Range... but who is (like me) shying away from the DIY project for whatever reason -- no woodworking experience, unsure how to cut holes, no router, no tools, no space... whatever.

It is really worth it to listen to good Full Range speakers... or good Open Baffle speakers. What convinced me was the fact that there were so many really experienced, knowledgeable, advanced "audiophiles", most of whom have been around in the hobby listening to music for years and who have "tried this and tried that" -- and when all was said and done, they preferred listening to a good Full Range or Full Range Open Baffle as their speaker of choice -- and they share their reasons, why they like that sound, and so on. When you come across a large number of people who really know what they're talking about and who've probably forgotten more about speaker designs and types than I'll ever know -- because I'm just a hobbyist and not a fanatic -- and they all prefer a certain type of speaker or driver, then that tells me something. It tells me there is something there worth pursuing and trying. I may not like it. I love the classic "East Coast Sound" of the famous AR's, KLH's, Advent's, Dynaco, etc. and the sound of the famous BBC LS3/5A that's still available today from Harbeth (or in a pretty good copy in a kit from GINI for five times less money), etc. But when I listened to my first modern Full Range drivers I was amazed how wonderful they sounded. I don't get bent out of shape over room shaking bass. They're not meant for HT, car crashes, exploding bombs, etc., they're meant for listening to music.

Gotta go. Supper is almost ready.