How to Pick The BEST Drivers For Your DIY Speaker Project

#diyaudio #homeaudio #hifi #audiophile
Today I am going to show you how to pick the best drivers for your diy speaker project. How do you know which woofer, tweeter midrange or which drivers in general to use? That is what I am going to be talking to you about. I will walk you through some of the things to look out for when you are beginning to get into DIY Speaker building.

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[brianraulerson]

I think you've mastered being able to explain things in a simple way without talking to us like we are rodents. Your passion for this hobby really shows and I appreciate all of your efforts sharing your knowledge. Thanks!

[tradain]

I built a floorstanding pair with the exact 6.5" and 1" drivers in the example. Nice to see I know at least a little bit about what I'm doing.

[dreieinhalbeck]

I literally ordered a new subwoofer one and a half hours ago and I'd have liked to watch this video before.

[strong_voice_of_truth]

Nice video. I'm new to your channel but old to diy loudspeakers.
A simple rule of thumb for driver size that generally works well is 13500/ diameter in inches. This will give you an approximate frequency where the driver dispersion will begin to beam and roll off, off axis.
One thing i might have missed is sensitivity. If you're designing a passive system, the woofer needs to be 3-6 db more efficient than your desired average spl to compensate for baffle step, which is the frequency where the wave becomes bigger than the baffle and the enclosure isn't pushing it into the room as efficiently. This happens anywhere between 200- 800 hz depending on the baffle dimensions. Typically the large inductor on the woofer is used to create a falling response as frequency increases to compensate for this at lower frequencies. If you have a narrow enclosure and don't account for this, the bass/midbass will be thin and the speaker will sound extremely forward. My first good quality speaker had this problem, so i learned the hard way.

[brianwood]

I can't tell you how helpful that really was. Thanks for sharing.

[danrussell]

Excellent video - I appreciate the blend of simple steps combined with technical considerations.

[TigDegner]

Excellent explanations and really useful to me as I'm considering a build using Dayton ND13 tweeters, which are ½" and thus definitely an unconventional choice. Unconventional choices should always be a yellow flag to a beginner, as it usually means we're overlooking something. In this case I think it's okay, as it's a 4-way system with DSP, crossing to ND65s (2½" midrange that measure more like 2" drivers) at 4.5kHz, and then to dedicated midbass -> subbass drivers. That gives me latitude not economically feasible for most commercial systems, but this video gives me a little more confidence and understanding of the design track I'm going down. Also, welcome reminder of the rule of thumb to cross over an octave above fs. Thank you.

[ghost]

Thank you for this Video, i never knew about this topic in speaker selection before

[nvrfollowb]

Can we do a video on how to mini DSP eq a subwoofer?

[anulegehfualefeh]

This video is breakthrough for me. I have been trying to understand this thing for over a month 😅

[alexw]

Great video Nick! This would have been a huge help to me like a year ago.

[rawux]

It would be nice to see how to chose drivers for 3-way system. Do you have to match sensitivity?

[SilmarilS]

For tweeter cross-over frequency, I have read that you must do 30db down in power level at FS. So the crossover point will be different depending on the crossover order.

[csj]

A good rule of thumb as to what frequency to crossover at is one octave from the driver's limit. For example, a tweeter with a frequency response of 2, 000Hz-18KHz, should be HIGH PASS filtered at 4, 000Hz.
With a 12dB/octave HP filter at 4KHz, a tweeter playing at 100dB will see 88dB at 2KHz, 76dB at 1, 000Hz, 64dB at 500hz, 52dB at 250Hz and so on.
A steeper slope on the roll-off helps greatly if you play your music loud.
With a 24dB/octave filter at 4KHz, playing at 100dB, that same tweeter would only see 76dB at 2KHz, 52dB at 1, 000Hz, 28dB at 500Hz, etc.

[PrimalEdge]

Very well delivered! I’m planning on my first speaker build in 30 years and this video was extremely helpful! I just subbed your channel and I’m gonna start looking through your back catalog.

[antoniiocaluso]

easily the BEST video on the subject on Earth!! :-))) tanx! sooo...if one finds "abandoned" pro stage speakers (ie: Peavey), should one use them as-is, or build the drivers/x-over into a "better" box? I've many, and they are HUGE and HEAVY!! :-))) what would you speaker-folks do with similar, please?

[harleypub]

Ok, I understand the basic theory when looking at speakers. If picking drivers, and figuring out what works or does not work is difficult for a two or three way system, why not go with a 4 way system? Is it really difficult to add that extra driver in the crossover?

[eisythetrackstud]

Nice video! Great simple advice on how to use the parameters. Any chance you could do a video on the different materials for woofers and tweeter comparing their pros and cons, i.e. Textreme vs paper vs glass woven and beryllium vs Textreme vs soft dome etc?

[BigHeinen]

Excellent dissertation on basic driver selection and thank you!

[tommyshoe-star]

I´ve watched so many videos about how to build a crossover and so but almost no one was talking about what you did here :S should´ve seen this like 2 years ago