I came to this post solely and exclusively to comment on my fear of doing my 3-way project.
I did thousands of calculations, simulations, questions, I contacted people from my city and abroad, I did autopsies on other speakers, I made a simple speaker, I talked to the forum's anxieties but even so, I feel that anxiety of having holes in the frequencies caused by the crossover, of not giving an overwhelming sound to the set as a whole, of not having 4 ohms at the end of the crossover, of the box not being able to withstand the vibration that may exist.
I don't know what else I can do if I don't start building the project and seeing the end result.
Basically after everything I'm still scared LOL I wanted to thank everyone on the forum for their help (I won't summarize, I'll update everyone on my project)
After everything I've read, everything I've seen, I think I can think about perfection not existing, or rather, there is no perfect project, I think this is much closer to art.
I did thousands of calculations, simulations, questions, I contacted people from my city and abroad, I did autopsies on other speakers, I made a simple speaker, I talked to the forum's anxieties but even so, I feel that anxiety of having holes in the frequencies caused by the crossover, of not giving an overwhelming sound to the set as a whole, of not having 4 ohms at the end of the crossover, of the box not being able to withstand the vibration that may exist.
I don't know what else I can do if I don't start building the project and seeing the end result.
Basically after everything I'm still scared LOL I wanted to thank everyone on the forum for their help (I won't summarize, I'll update everyone on my project)
After everything I've read, everything I've seen, I think I can think about perfection not existing, or rather, there is no perfect project, I think this is much closer to art.
You may make mistakes, and these will help you.. but there's another thing you get from building only as good as you are currently capable, and that's the experience of working on them. You get to hear what you're up to as you refine your crossover. You learn where the problems are and can work out how to manage them as you revise your design.
It’s interesting to read this, since I had a similar fear of restoring a set of classic speakers and building a new preamp. Was I doing justice to the original speaker, and would the preamp be good enough? There can be a few roadblocks.
There is alot of unspoken pressure generated by the notions of perfectionism in the audio realm. Hundreds of measurements, calculations, many hand written/drawn concepts, sleepless nights after cad drawings. Revisions upon revisions. I mean, there is a science forum where even exceptional measuring & performing gear gets the thumbs down over the most arcane criteria, so sometimes we try extra hard to account for all the possibly shortcomings to avoid the critics, even if nobody else is ever going to test it.
In times like that, I take a breather and try to acknowledge that engaging these projects and devising pragmatic solutions should be a positive hobby experience. Just strive for excellence, don’t worry about perfection quite so much!
There is alot of unspoken pressure generated by the notions of perfectionism in the audio realm. Hundreds of measurements, calculations, many hand written/drawn concepts, sleepless nights after cad drawings. Revisions upon revisions. I mean, there is a science forum where even exceptional measuring & performing gear gets the thumbs down over the most arcane criteria, so sometimes we try extra hard to account for all the possibly shortcomings to avoid the critics, even if nobody else is ever going to test it.
In times like that, I take a breather and try to acknowledge that engaging these projects and devising pragmatic solutions should be a positive hobby experience. Just strive for excellence, don’t worry about perfection quite so much!
They used to have a say in industry that there comes a time to "shoot the engineers" and hand the design over to production, let them figure out how to actually make it. Perhaps you're at the point where you can turn off your engineering mind and "start production" as well.
As a fallback, I've always envisioned a 3 way build with 3 individual boxes per side. Imagine a tweeter box with a little FR graph on the back, of what it does at 1W and 1M. Likewise a midrange box, a woofer box. Divide the problem and conquer each frequency range; make sure you can stack them :') Leaves room for fun like sliding them backward relative to one other to play with phase alignment, tri-wire to the amplifier. Or triple amplifiers one day; whichever one sounds best driving that box.
If the time comes you feel the mid is too harsh, or you want to try a dome there instead of a cone, or a metal cone, instead of a plastic one, just build another couple small boxes / crossover for that frequency range. Maybe you'll end up with a closet full of different boxes; invite people over for a tweeter listening party. "Now let's go from the front and upward firing domes to the metal horns - see what you hear"
No offence but you sound like a relative who has OCD. He spends so much time pondering everything most of his ideas and projects never get started..
Personally, I do some research first but accept that perfection will not be achievable, because I will not know it when I heard it.
Dive in and build. With speakers the ccrossover can be tweaked, or a DSP crossover used for fine tuning. (I have started using a t.racks 4x4 DSP for this which provides many hours of 'fun')
The fear I have is that something terrible will come out of the project LOL, or as I'm going to do the crossover I'll round the values and I'm afraid of "cutting" frequencies, things like that.
As I recently chose to make the woofer box 100% sealed, I'm a little worried because I've never made a sealed woofer box...
I was thinking about using 10 or 15mm wood, but I'm afraid it won't withstand the vibrations and it will crack LOL.
I can't stop reviewing the calculations and simulations, no matter how much I review everything, it always seems like something is missing.
I'm going to start doing it very soon, in about 1 or two months, the drivers have already been purchased, they just need to arrive and the other parts that I haven't bought yet
Just read through this thread:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...you-make-as-a-speaker-design-beginner.388191/
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...you-make-as-a-speaker-design-beginner.388191/
You will not do everything right no matter how many months you spend on design, but every time you will get closer. You cannot know everything before you do it, you have to learn that as you go. You will not fail in such impossible ways, you can learn to work with and around issues.
A friend of mine crippled himself that way. Everything had to be optimal ... in a world where there might not be an optimum. He wouldn't spend on parts because the project might not work as well as planned. His level of risk intolerance was pretty debilitating.
Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough. That doesn't mean that you have to be satisficing, only that you don't let the quest for the last picobell of performance get in the way of actually building something.
Tom
This is the first step to begin exorcising fear, and one of the possible ways to do it.
But we still can't know which of the two will win.
You may continue to be afraid, but you won't.
The idea of perfection is not for ordinary mortals, but it can be a good motivation to move forward.
But you have to know when to stop, otherwise it will be worse than with fear.
True "perfection" always has at least one flaw, otherwise humans don't like it.
Art has nothing to do with perfection, but with human uncertainties.
I guess you are still very young, but I'm sure you will learn it soon.
Start building the project you have in your head by living with your fear.
Will it be imperfect?
Surely, but who cares?
You will discover that not all the money you spend will be well spent in the same way, but this is part of the game and in any case it will never be money wasted because you will gain experience, your own experience.
It has an incalculable value.
It will help you to perfect your project.
And you will have fun building and perfecting your project.
You couldn't ask for anything better...
I wish you all the best.
+1.
Half the fun is developing / fine tuning the item. No HIFI manufacturer ever designed anything and put it into production without extensive listening and tweaking. For example. Quad's electrostatic speakers and current dumping amps.
+1 for this idea. I'm actualy in very similar situation as you. (just not 3 way, but woofer assisted wideband) and I'm about to hit a bullet for a woofer box construction. If you can make it modular, you can focus on optimising the woofer cabinet, learn on the way and leave some of the worries for your future self ;-) And if you do it right you will have lot of options to play with as jjasniew said.
Peter Walker said he did not use listening tests during the design process.
https://www.quad-musik.de/index.php...-with-peter-walker-the-audio-amateur-s-editor
"PW: We designed our valve (tube) amplifier, manufactured it, and put it on the market, and never actually listened to it.
In fact, the same applies to the 303 and the 405. People say, „Well that's disgusting, you ought to have listened to it."
However, we do a certain amount of listening tests, but they are for specific things. We listen to the differential distortion--
does a certain thing matter? You've got to have a listening test to sort out whether it matters. You've got to do tests to sort out
whether rumble is likely to overload pickup inputs, or whether very high frequency stuff coming out of the pickup due to
record scratch is going to disturb the control unit. But we aren't sitting down listening to Beethoven's Fifth and saying,
"That amplifier sounds better, let's change a resistor or two. Oh yes, that's now better still." We never sit down and listen
to a music record through an amplifier in the design stage. We listen to tunny noises, tunny distortions, and see whether
these things are going to matter, to get a subjective assessment. But we don't actually listen to program material at all."