Design a $60,000 Speaker - Start here

I wish I knew more about driver manufacturing. I mean, is there a show where I can go and buy a woofer press? :)


Erik

The voice coil annual will take you, eventually..to someone or some group that can make that a reality.

Of course, you are talking about a cone press? Which is pretty basic, actually. You can make one yourself, but accurizing it will be your big issue.

Working with paper will be what makes it easier.

You can buy a smaller injection moulding set up and can have the moulds made for experimentation..for probably..under $20k. This is for plastic based cones, obviously. Since they are so thin, you are not restricted (relatively) due to a thing called shot size (volume of plastic per single injection). You could go from 3" to 12" cones on probably the same set-up.

Designing an effective mould and process for such thin materials is your biggest problem. The other way to do it is much like pressing records with lots of excess materials.

A paper cone cheapo set-up would be similar to a casting variant, or similar to a composite layered design/build set up.

A small CNC set up with good Z capacity (XYZ, maybe even rotation) can have you making your moulds for paper and similar materials..in quite a short time. A few dedicated months could get you there.

In the face of such things that require multiple disciplines be mastered and integrated... it is no wonder that machining of cones has taken off, and touted by some as being the best thing around. One can also machine and use that as a core for composite pressing, and so on.

Many possibilities out there that can each be touted in the given sales literature.

We quickly enter the ’different but possibly not better’ area in potentials, as we still don’t have a commonly known and utilized answer to what *exactly* the ear’s part is - in this equation. Lots of things still up in the air.

Which means argument without clear resolution.

Customers generally find they are fighting to buy gear that  gives them detail, transient, and spacial cues (all born of the same considerations).

Down to the point that some end up with what another may call an 'unlistenable system' due to the spacial cues being where they want them, or expect them to be, but the rest of the package tripped up or exaggerated in an uncomplimentary fashion.

When it comes to the speaker part of the equation...ultimately this may be considered to come from the tweeter and it's integration with the given mid to mid bass driver. And a whole plethora of other aspects are at play.

Getting a tweeter to do it right is no small task, and yes, this is where a decent chunk of money is going to be spent.

In smaller European rooms, the room lift will help out with the bottom end.

In bigger north American rooms, not as much, as averages go.

Most speakers need to be ’interviewed’ with room size and position as part of the analysis. Both a useless obvious statement -- and needing to be said.

All that said, a pair of 7’s (per side) will work wonders in most mid sized rooms. Extreme low bass that is as full range as it can possibly ever be tends to require perfected rooms be built or found, as well as the same applied to the speaker.. Which most can’t or won’t do. At any level of expense or income.

Few understand that bass control in a room is actually the most potent and difficult part of acoustics to fix and tame at the same time it is the least understood and most badly attended to by experts or the layman. None of our acoustical standards even have the guts to pay attention to bass, it’s all magic and mystery down there, according to those ’standards’. (weighting standards for measurement, etc). They ignore that which they can’t make sense of or understand. Bass reflex as a realized system that is in heavy use illustrates this point quite well. (Exhibit A kinda thing)

(the most informed and capable person I know of in room acoustics, by far.. is my Biz partner Taras, the approx 60 film set acoustics systems under his belt, is the least of his resume)(lots of things I’m not allowed to mention or talk about)

Giant extreme bass is like a rock hard suspended track day car. Fun for those few times it can be entertained as conjoined to the given musical source/package. Look how extreme I am! For regular life... the other +90% of the time...not entirely like tits on a boar and a hindrance, but warming up to it...

The acoustics and improvement of bass in consumer listening rooms is very well understood,......

On my life, I fundamentally disagree. (in a casual friendly way... but if pushed...) I’m talking about how the ’fix’ of the rooms is, in my direct experience, a fail. Not even close to how much better it may or could be. Meaning, they don't understand the nature of the problem well enough to create a more functional solution than they have.

From my prior post:
" (lots of things I’m not allowed to mention or talk about) "

The written word and the internet combine to make it seem like a ego contest. I’m not projecting that or meaning that. :)

We're starting to explore the question of acoustics a bit better than in the past, but..we're not all the way there, yet. Not as far as I've had the chance to witness, in various installs and locales, that is.

One can go entirely active with speakers, yes, but the speakers will still sound notably better if the drivers have passive zobel networks.