How to Pick The BEST Drivers For Your DIY Speaker Project 

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!

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

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

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

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

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?

Excellent dissertation on basic driver selection and thank you!

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.

Really good info. Appreciated!

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.

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

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

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.

that was an awesome video, thank you very much

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?

Thank you so much, gold information

Good stuff man🤓

nice explanation thanks

super helpful

Thank you so much for sharing.

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

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.

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

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?

Video idea: Aside from graph, SPL, and power; what is an indicator of sound and performance? Those specs can be very similar for 2 drivers of wildly different prices. (Sometimes the more expensive looks worse, just looking at the 3 things). Are there other T/S parameters that give an indication? I'm in process of building some satellite surround speakers. I had narrowed down to 2, a Tang Band and Faital Pro. I contacted the good folk at Parts Express for insight, and the Tang Band was recommended. I took his word for it and ordered them. Now I'm figuring out kerf cutting to make round enclosure, but that's neither here nor there for this question.

Have you considered building a rtj 410? I would love to build a few of those.

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

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.

I'm curious about building a transmission line or some such out of tiny smartphone speaker drivers any thoughts or interest in doing a project like that yourself?

Excellent!!! Do you have a video on crossovers? Are store bought from a reputable source okay to use or do we always need to custom design using software? Many thanks...

Let's say I have a pair of interesting speaker boxes, but the drivers used for those speakers where specific made, so How should I know what might suit well, as drivers, for those boxes? Thank you!

I wish one of the ways you could "sort by" on parts express was by QTS

Thank You. World expanded:)

What's a good replacment for Sony sscs5 ? something that has more bass than stock

Hello, Can you suggest speakers, woofer and the rest for 5.1 home theater system to build by myself? Thanks in advance

@Toid i have a question, if you double the fs to get your crossover frequency for a tweeter, does the same rule apply for any driver, of any size, playing any frequency range?

really great video but for woofers of brands other than Dayton on partsexpress the frequency response just has one black line, so how do I determine dispersion, crossover points and all that? please help

Hello I have a Technics SU-V75 STEREO. I'm looking to replace the original speakers and was curious what would be the best fit. Came with SB-2665 cabinet.

Hello mate. I have a pair of celestion ditton 44 mk 2 empty cabinets 26" high. 13" deep. 12" wide. I'm putting 2 x 7" Dayton audio Rs180p woofers with 2x 10" passive radiators. Do you think they'll sound ok ? Thanks in advance from London

Hey Nick, nice video. But I have a bit of an overlap of experience coming from years of Car Audio. I'm a 25 hz port Tuning and even lower tunings kinda guy (low and windy :D ) and finally want to build my own 2.1 home system for moderate music listening, but LOTS of headroom for DEEP and clear bass. I feel like going with a 15 inch ported OR... 10 inch quarter wave transmission line. I have lots of space for that. Any thoughts on this? I would need a chassis with an Fs around 28 hz, I reckon. Greetings from Germany! PS: I currently run a B2 HN15 in a 5 ft³ net vented box tuned to 25 hertz on .5 ohms at around 4 kilowatts, of course that's way too extreme for home use, but on low volumes it sounds AMAZING. I want that but less violent, lol.

Hey my friend I've been following you for a long time and I think you have very good knowledge on speakers and I need your help if you can I would appreciate it I need to build 2 speakers to go to Mexico in an audiofile competition the speaker has to be one sub 4 drives and 2 tweaters am very good at building the box but I have a problem with deciding what speaker I should use on this project the sub woofer the 4 drivers and the 2 tweaters and btw if you can help me let me know what's the program do you use to build the cross over ? Thank you you are very appreciated

How will it be to use that 5/8" tweeter in a 3 way bookshelf system with 6.5 tang Band and some 3" mid driver ?!?

Bottom line, every driver has a sweet spot in the frequency range where it can play the best sound. What you want is that the combination of the woofer and the tweeter to cover as much of the 20-20kHz of human audible frequency with their sweet spot. If two drivers can't cover the range you want, you can always add more drivers to widen the range.

Hi, is there a follow up video?

I love this video. However, the problem I have with a lot of audio channels/forums is that they always talk about more or less the perfect set up. Like pull the speakers away from the wall or choose speaker X for the best midrange, etc. The reason this is a problem, is that people who are into this, prioritize the quality of what they are listening to. I wish that I could do this. But I have to live in the real world, where I don't have a dedicated room for this. I also have to use my home theater system to do double duty for listening to music. I don't have a wife that is willing to walk around a speaker pulled away from the wall on a stand to get to the bathroom. I have a room with 3-ish walls (sliding glass door) and an open-to-the-kitchen-at-the-back layout. It's not a small room really, but it's not big enough to accommodate a couch, a chair, an entertainment center and a bunch of speakers on stands around the room. I am forced to put them on the wall up high or perhaps in the ceiling . In this event, I really need to know the dispersion of the speaker in the vertical axis as well as the horizontal axis. Hell, I would be happy if someone would just do some videos on how to lay things out with different room configurations. Can you help?

How about some info on horns?

this video helps a lot, but i have a question, what about the impedance and sensitivity of the speakers, and even the power, i have a lot of questions, how the power is distributed between the woofer and the tweeter? thanks for the great content :)

Have you ever toyed with designing and building a set of in-wall speakers?

Is it possible or okay to use a full range driver as midbass/midrange in a 2 way speaker like (tweeter+full range)? thanks.....

Do I have to tune to parts expresses recommended tuning frequency? Or can I tune below? I have built many speakers and they aren’t terrible but for example, I would use a 3-4 inch full range and the fs would be somewhere around 110, the recommended tuning frequency would be 90, but in the same box size I could tune it to 60-65 and be relatively flat, or atleast that’s what winisd tells me, but is it bad to do this?

Hi, I want to Upgrade some Dayton bookshelf speakers “B562-Air”. They have a 1-inch Mini ATM tweeter and 6.5-inch woofer. I want to upgrade the crossovers at least but maybe the speakers too ?……Is it worth it or NOT ? They are rated for 40-watts but My AVR is 100watts per channel so I would like them to support 100watts at least or maybe 80watts. What do you think ? Is this possible and worth it or is it better to just build all New Speakers ? I don’t need Base heavy speakers because I have a 12-inch subwoofer. I use these as Surround in my home theater but I notice when I play music in stereo they can’t handle allot of wattage. So they need a better woofer setup in the bookshelf speaker.

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.

I'd like to know how to choose a full-range speaker for a single driver speaker design.

Go with ATCs

People go nuts for ribbon tweeters. Many ribbons won't play low enough to cross over to a dynamic wooder or even midrange in the 3 way.

Have you ever used a ribbon and a silk tweeter in a project? I'm going to experiment here, but beforehand I would like to know if you already tried this... I have ZERO experience on making speakers, I'm just adventuring myself for the first time.

My problem is, I have the box, I don’t want to make or buy a new one, 8 inch sub, 5 inch mid, and 1 inch tweeter, so I have to stay near those sizes

The sensitivity of both woofer and tweeter should be nearly same? Or tweeter sensitivity should be higher??

Why shouldn't the tweeter be used with a lower crossover point even though it has a flat response?

Purifi 6.5 Woofers... and SB Acoustics Satori BE Tweeters =)

Just discovered your channel and it's most informative. I just picked up a pair of Jamo GF 25 old school speakers that take me back to my teenage years with my Technics gear. I also run a pair Jamo 707i and 507i with a 12" M & K sub. I am a fan of the warm sound of the Danish speakers and I am having a crazy idea to build some speakers out of our local hardwood timbers. Your thoughts on drivers? Happy to fling a few bucks for your thoughts

What happens if you put your woofer in a bigger than recommended space?

ASMR

Can you build a Home theater 7 speaker setup for under $1000 ( Bookshelf speakers and Center channel ) I think this is the holy grain for many peoples. Home theater enthusiasts want more for $1000 than cheap Klipsch speakers but you know they don’t want to spend allot of money. A good Home Theater setup that Sounds great for Movies and Music. Many peoples live in small houses and the Average TV room in USA is probably about 12x12 feet. With Wood frame walls. So you don’t need MASSIVE Speakers to SHAKE the Entire house. I think most Peoples are looking for a Balanced Natural sound that is EASY on the EARS for hours of listening Enjoyment. Many Peoples have low powered AVR with 70-to-100 watts per channel. What do you think ?……I think Home theater enthusiast are looking for the Right Balance in Sound Quality, Bookshelf Speaker Size, and Costs.

Parts Express tells me that coupon code has expired.

It’s a terrible match for other reasons but, you might address the sensitivity problem using the 12” woofer with the 5/8” tweeter WRT the sensitivity difference being in the wrong direction. Unless you’re adding in biamping or an autoformer as a means of dealing with it.

You should (in my opinionen) make the assumption that I am a beginner that dont even speak the same language as yourself.. Just saying 🙄🙄, jk. Thanks for upload.. Apreciate. Pz

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