DIY Mains/Center Questions (1 Viewer)

[SteveCallas]

Since I had such great success with my DIY sonosub, largely in part because of all the great help I received on this forum, I am now interested in building some DIY mains and a center. I realize building a successful speaker will be tougher han a sonosub, but I am in no immediate hurry and will do as much reading and researching as I have to.

The design I have in mind is similar to this MTMWW.
http://www.partsexpress.com/projects...p-3/index.html
I want to use the same Vifa Ring tweeter, the same Hi-Vi midranges, but use Dayton Reference 10" woofers instead of the Hi-Vi woofers. For the center, from left to right, it would be WMTMW with the tweeter slightly above the center point. I can position the tweeters on the mains slightly to the inside to make sure the sonics will be identical to the center. Any thoughts or opinions right off the bat?

I plan on isolating each driver in its own sonotube enclosure - I believe I would want all of them to be sealed. If a pair of those Dayton 10" can get me down to 100hz sealed, my sub is more than capable to take over. If not, I guess I could port just the woofers. The tubes will be mounted in an MDF shell that will consist only of an exterior and some barces inside to support the tubes. This cabinet will probably be very deep in order to supply enough length to the tubes for the woofers to come out with a pretty optimized volume.

I am open to either passive or active crossovers.

Basically, I was hoping you guys could point me in the right direction to start learning about driver layouts, baffles, impedances, crossovers, etc., all the basics I would need to know to start building a set of speakers. I'd rather not buy a book because I'm sure all of this info can be found online, but if I had to, I guess I would. Also, what programs can I use to start playing around with deisgn parameters and get predicted results?

I would appreciate any and all help.

 

[John -*-P]

Im in the same boat as you, I wanted to build DR. K's Design on PE's DIY showcase, and use the same design as a center but the crossover will not work as a center. ThomasW directed me over to HTguide.com for another option for mains and a center. There is a thread right now using MTMWW for a main set up and a WMTW setup for a center. Although they are using the Dayton RS series for drivers, so that really wont help you up that much if your set on using the Hi-Vi and Vifa drivers. Either way Htguide.com has a nice DIY section with some extremely smart people. Also another forum I've found somewaht usefull is diyaudio.com. Though Ive mainly been using that for amplifiers. Good Luck