Put yourself in the designer’s shoes....Start with the 3 C’s.....cabinet, components, crossover. All 3 play a critical role in how the speaker performs You need to make a strong well-braced non-resonant box of the right size for the drivers that looks really cool. You need high quality drivers to cover the full audible frequency response with good power handling and reliability, and you need to build a crossover to make those drivers sound like a single music source that’s coherent, clear, and plays all the frequencies at the same volume.
If $1000 is MSRP, you need to build it for $200-$250, and it needs to be sellable, competitive, and profitable. Is it better to spend less on multiple cheap drivers, or just two high quality drivers? Is it better to build a large cheaply made thin box, or a smaller high quality box? Is it better to use the cheapest crossover parts available, or of a few good quality parts to get the job done?
The objective of the speaker does come into play, and I obviously simplified the steps for the sake of brevity, but if you want to build a speaker that performs well and sounds like music, it’s a new brainer to me. A larger speaker typically has more drivers, definitely a larger box, and more crossover parts....all cost more, so quality has to get lowered to meet the price point. The price point almost dictates a high quality two-way vs a multi way if you want it to sound better than an 80s Sound Design rack system. Build a good box, get good drivers, and use high quality crossover parts....it’s a great start to any speaker design vs starting with lesser parts.
