First time speaker builder

[whateveryo]

ive been into speakers for a little while and i am really interested in them as a hobby. lately ive been thinking about building my own front speakers and i have come up with a rough idea of what i may want. right now i am only pretty certain on the look/design of them and what drivers i may be using. i came here to get some ideas/criticism/help for my project (i want to build these this summer and have them to bring back to college with me in the beginning of september.) what i want is a really great sounding speaker with detail and also have really nice bass. ive been thinking about using a planar tweeter since they supposedly have really crisp and accurate sound reproduction. here is a rough drawing i did in paint:

Image not available

Ive been looking at parts on partsexpress and these seem to be alright for what i want

tweeter

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=297-402

midrange

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=297-560

woofer

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=295-464

would these drivers all work fine together? around what size box would i need to build for these to perform excellently?

another thing i had a question on was the crossover. i'm pretty knowledgeable with circuits and such but im sure i couldnt design a crossover for a speaker. would a good 3-way crossover from partsexpress do fine or should i look elsewhere? if i could somehow find a way to design it, would it be better to just build my own? i have experience with circuits and soldering and such, since im studying to be an electronic engineer. thanks for your input

[ThomasW]

Generic crossovers aren't a good idea. Neither is placing drivers playing the same frequencies side by side. This leads to problems from comb filtering effects.

I recommend you build one of the proven design posted in the Missions Accomplished section of the forum, until such time as you have a better grasp of what's involved in scratch building a loudspeaker.

This post from the Modula MTM thread will give you some idea what's involved in properly designing a loudspeaker

https://www.htguide.com/forum/showpost.php?p=142746&postcount=1

[Dennis H]

Side by side mids and tweeters aren't really too good. You'll have problems with the horizontal response because of the different path lengths off axis where the waves cancel each other adding up to no sound at some frequencies.

There's nothing special about ribbon tweeters and, because of their limitations, especially at low frequencies, a good dome often does better.

Generic crossovers that you can buy suck bigtime. The crossover is the heart and soul of the system and has to be designed specifically for the drivers and the cabinet.

If you want a good system, check the threads in the the Mission Accomplished subforum.

Edit: I see Thomas beat me to it.

[jonathanb3478]

Edit: I see Thomas beat me to it.

Buy a whole 6-minutes! Slacker!

[Amphiprion]

If you are going to buy a ribbon or planar magnetic, BUY THE BG NEO3 PDR at Parts Express. I have never used one, but based on other's measurements they look to be the best non-dome tweeter with excellent performance for the price, even compared to really good dome tweets.

Also, skip the side-by-side arrangement. You surely won't notice the negative effects in a college party environment, but it would be bad for serious listening and especially off-axis listeners. Serious speaker builders will see it, and regardless if you are proud of it they will wonder if you know what you are doing. It's an audiophile cred thing.

Three-ways are much harder to design than two-ways, and there are much fewer plans for them on the internet. Stick with a high-output TMM or MTM type speaker with 6.5" or larger drivers for loud, deep output instead of complicating things with a three-way. If you must needs have deep bass, add a sub - a set of two-ways with active sub is WAY more impressive, and in some ways better sounding IMO, than a big set of three ways. You basically trade lower midrange distortion for better bass smoothness due to being able to move the sub around and much higher output with the dedicated sub. I think the latter is the better option for most.