Acoustics 101 Pro : Advanced enclosure design
What you'll learn
- Design sealed and bass reflex enclosure using WinISD
- Design passive radiator boxes
- Design 4th and 6th order bandpass enclosures
- Design high output ported boxes
- Use SketchUp to design basic enclosure in 3D
- Quickly calculate panel dimensions for speaker boxes
- Basic woodworking techniques for speaker building
Requirements
- Acoustics 101 course taken
- A laptop or desktop computer
- You need Microsoft Excel installed or other application that can open *.xlsx files.
Description
Start designing more advanced enclosures
Finished Acoustics 101? Time to step it up a notch. While we are still going to revisit sealed and bass reflex enclosures, we are going to go deeper into the subject, and touch more advanced stuff. As a bonus, a high output ported enclosure is in the course as well. Besides these familiar enclosures, we going to see some new. Get ready to learn about passive radiator enclosures, 4th order and 6th order bandpass boxes.
Software
Yes, we are going to use software, WinISD. Popular software in the DIY audio community, with lots of features. Don't worry, you can download it for free. What you also get for free is a bunch of excel spreadsheets. These will be used to easily calculate the panel dimensions for each enclosure type. Even if you are not good at math, I'm confident you will find it easy.
3D Modeling
After the enclosures are modeled and the panel dimensions are calculated, we are going to use SketchUp to make 3D models of the enclosure. This has a number of benefits. You can visually check the proportions of the enclosure. You will double check if the panels fit together correctly. You can send someone the drawing with the dimensions. You can do all sorts of things if you expand on this subject. However, bear in mind that this is not a SketchUp course, and it covers only the basics and the stuff you need to make a 3D model of a speaker box.
Building and results
The final part of the course will be me showing you how I build each enclosure. I will describe what I do and you will learn some basic stuff about woodworking so you can build your own speaker boxes (tools required). Each enclosure will be measured and tested. If you have taken Acoustics 201 you will understand what I'm doing, but it's not mandatory. In the end we will compare how each enclosure stacks up to one another by judging the numbers.
Who this course is for:
- Audiophiles who want to extend their knowledge about sound systems.
- DIY-ers who want to build advanced enclosures.
Featured review
![Manik Roy](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 2,698 Reviews
- 5,301 Students
- 5 Courses
Hi! My name is Marius and I'm from Romania. I majored in economics and computer science, and have a college and masters degree in this field. Regarding the audiophile part of me, I started to intensely study this area since several years ago. It’s difficult to get a college degree in this field, since there are only a few universities around the world which have this specialization (from what I know, In Europe, there is a famous one in Denmark, and another in UK). The closest specialization would be electrical engineering, but I wanted something a bit more specific. So instead of going abroad for studies, I decided to study at home in my free time. The things I find important or interesting I write them down on my blog. Here is a list of books I have read, some of them even twice or three times :
1. Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest, Ken Pohlmann (McGraw Hill Professional, 2009)
2. Introduction to Sound System Design and Electro-Acoustics by Peter Swarte (DHvV Interactive Lab, 2014)
3. Audio Engineering Explained by Douglas Self (Taylor & Francis, 2012)
4. Electroacoustics by Mendel Kleiner (CRC Press, 2013)
5. The Audio Expert: Everything You Need to Know About Audio by Ethan Winer (Focal Press, 2012)
6. Electroacoustic Devices: Microphones and Loudspeakers 1st Edition by Glen Ballou (Focal Press, 2009)
7. The Complete Guide to High-End Audio 5th Edition by Robert Harley (Acapella Publishing, 2015)
8. Introduction to Loudspeaker Design: Second Edition by John L. Murphy (True Audio, 2014)
9. Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms 1st Edition by Floyd Toole, (Focal Press, 2008)
10. Basic Electricity (Dover Books on Electrical Engineering) 2nd Edition by Bureau of Naval Personnel (Dover Publications, 1970)
11. Distortion: The Cause Of Harmonics And The Lie Of THD by Dan P. Bullard (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015)
12. Audio Engineer's Reference Book 2nd Edition by Michael Talbot-Smith (Focal Press, 2001)
13. Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook 3rd Edition by John Borwick (Focal Press, 2001)
14. Loudspeaker Design Cookbook 7th Edition by Vance Dickason (Audio Amateur Pubns, 2005)
15. How to Build Speaker Enclosures by Alexis Badmaieff and Don Davis (Howard W. Sams & Co, 1966)
16. Making Sense of Sound by Alvis J. Evans (Prompt Publications, 1992)
17. Designing, Building, and Testing Your Own Speaker System with Projects 4th Edition by David Weems (McGraw-Hill Education TAB, 1996)
18. Testing Loudspeakers by Joseph D'Appolito (Audio Amateur Pubns,1998)
19. Speaker Building 201: A Comprehensive Course in Speaker Design by Ray Alden (Audio Amateur Pubns, 2004)
20. Loudspeaker Recipes: Book 1 : Four Two-Way Systems by Vance Dickason (Audio Amateur Pubns, 1994)
21. The Sound Reinforcement Handbook 2nd Edition by Gary Davis and Ralph Jones (Yamaha, 1988)
The difficult part Is making sense of all the information from a text book, since there is no mentor to guide you. There is a lot of study to be done, when you have a question that needs answering. Hopefully, the courses I’m about to publish, will save you from this ordeal and give you concentrated and easy to digest information.