BOOK REVIEWS
P. L. Marston
Physics Department, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164
These reviews of books and other forms of information express the opinions of the individual reviewers
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comments. [See ‘‘Book Reviews Editor’s Note,’’ J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 81, 1651 (May 1987).]
The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook,
5th Edition
Vance Dickason
Audio Amateur Press, 1997, Peterborough, NH 03458.
xii⫹216 pp. (including 51 pp. advertising section). Price: $34.95.
The first edition of the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook was released 22
years ago. According to the author, each successive edition reflects the
current engineering trends in the ever-shifting field of loudspeaker design.
The first two editions were published by the author himself, and then Audio
Amateur Press took over the publication of subsequent editions.
It is not hard to see why Dickason’s text enjoys brisk sales 共over
60 000 copies of the latest edition have been printed兲. He writes clearly,
thoroughly, and provides much data necessary for speaker design. The target
audience can range from amateurs who are beginning to learn the ropes to
well-established designers who like to keep a reference manual on hand.
The back of the text contains 51 pages of advertisements by suppliers of
drivers, parts for making drivers, electrical/electronic components, test
equipment, computer programs to assist and evaluate design, various publi-
cations, and even complete speaker kits and assembled speaker systems.
The format of the text follows a rather logical path, although the chap-
ter numbering is slightly quirky. There are twelve chapters in all, but the
first chapter is titled ‘‘Chapter 0,’’ effectively causing the last 共twelfth兲
chapter to be christened ‘‘Chapter 11.’’ Technical terms are carefully de-
fined so that there should be no doubt in the mind of a novice as to what
they mean. Dickason did not stint on providing tables and parametric curves
that are used in designing speaker systems and predicting the performance
capabilities of components acting individually and in unison; and a fairly
thorough, potentially valuable reference listing is given at the end of each
chapter.
Chapter 0 describes how electrodynamic loudspeakers work, the effect
of gap/coil geometries, the real-world behavior of loudspeaker cones with
their resonance modes, the necessity for dust caps, dome shapes in higher
frequency drivers, suspension of the cone that is attached to the voice coil
which, in turn, interacts with the speaker magnet, modeling of loudspeaker
impedance, and speaker input power required on the basis of loudspeaker
efficiency and room size.
The simplest loudspeaker design is that of a closed box, which is the
topic of Chap. 1. The closed box system, more suitable for low-frequency
response, subdivides into two categories: the infinite baffle and the air sus-
pension, the latter made popular in the 1950s by Acoustic Research co-
founded by Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss. It remained for Richard Small
to publish in the Journal of Audio Engineering Society in June 1972 the
most definitive study of closed-box design. The Q-factor of the driver rep-
resents the interaction of the electrical, mechanical, and pneumatic factors of
the woofer/enclosure combination in determining the system resonance and
response curves. Computer simulation through the use of LEAP 4.0®, argu-
ably the most sophisticated speaker design program available at the time, is
used by the author to model a series of closed boxes with different values of
Q. Performance characteristics such as group delay, cone excursions, imped-
ance curves, etc. are shown to depend on physical parameters such as box
size, woofer cone mass, free-air resonance, voice coil overhang, effective
driver radiating area, reference efficiency, etc.
Vented boxes constitute the subject of Chap. 2. Vented boxes carry the
advantage of lower cone excursions near the box resonance frequency, thus
providing higher power-handling capacity and lower modulation distortion,
2329 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106 (5), November 1999 0001-4966/99/106(5)/2329/2/$15.00
and they operate more efficiently. However, vented systems are consider-
ably more sensitive than closed boxes to inappropriately chosen values of
parameters. Manipulation of the total speaker-box Q can be achieved by
changing the volume of a closed box; vented enclosures are dealt with in
terms of specific alignments, entailing adjustments of a number of specific
parameters to achieve a more or less flat response. There are at least 15
well-established alignment categories, such as SSB4 共Super Fourth-Order
Boom Box兲, SC4 共Fourth Order Sub-Chebychev兲, QB3 共Quasi Third-Order
alignment兲, and discrete alignments such as the Fourth-Order Butterworth
共B4兲, Fourth-Order Bessel 共BE4兲, and Butterworth Inter-Order 共IB4兲. The
rather involved procedure of selecting a box size and relevant parameters is
described with a discussion of box losses, use of accompanying design
tables, calculation of vent dimensions, box tuning, and other parameters.
Two drivers serve as examples of suitability for use in vented boxes, ac-
companied by a description of measurement parameters. Other topics in the
chapter include box damping, the dual-woofer format, resistive and distrib-
uted vents, and electronically assisted vented designs, and vented rear cham-
ber bandpass enclosures.
Passive-radiator low-frequency systems, covered in Chap. 3, contain
‘‘drone cones’’ that substitute for vents. While they closely follow the
vented loudspeaker design methodology, the passive-radiator systems carry
the advantage of lacking vent pipe coloration and can be used in small
enclosures where the required vent lengths would exceed the box dimen-
sions. The procedure of selecting a woofer is the same as that described in
Chap. 2, and alignments are generally restricted to QB3 , B4 , and C4 types.
The determination of box size and relevant parameters are generally dealt
with in the same manner as with vented enclosures. An additional factor is
the so-called delta, the compliance ratio of the passive radiator. A section in
this chapter also treats passive radiator bandpass enclosures, which can be
best designed through computer simulation by the use of a speaker design
program such as Speak® 共by DLC兲 or LEAP 4.0 共by Audio Technology兲.
The augmented passive-radiator 共APR兲, a double-cavity version of the cus-
tomary drone cone design, is capable of most of the vented and passive-
radiator systems alignment variations. While it requires more volume in the
way of enclosure size, the APR yields higher power output and a 15%–25%
1
lower cutoff 共corresponding up to 2-octave extension兲. The layout for the
APR consists of two unequal area passive radiators, connected back-to-back,
with the front baffles joined to the inner dividing baffle. A special table
共Table 3.4兲 provides the requisite data for designing an APR system.
In Chap. 4, the transmission line 共TL兲 low-frequency system is de-
scribed as a means of obtaining low cabinet resonance and strong deep bass.
The design situation is somewhat murkier here, as there seems to be little
agreement among TL enthusiasts as to what is the optimal system parameter
Q. One computer program described in the text was specifically developed
for TL design by Juha Backman, but it is not currently available. However,
curves based on the use of LEAP, a program that does not model TL de-
signs, yielded results that show similarity to the performance curves devel-
oped by Backman. The line length and damping material, tuning of a TL,
the TL enclosure configuration, and the selection of the woofer are dis-
cussed. An exhaustive listing of articles on construction of the TL enclosure
is also given.
Chapter 5 covers the topics of cabinet construction. The sphere is the
best possible shape to provide the flattest frequency response, but obviously
it is the most impractical to build and manufacture. However, the rectangu-
lar box, which is considerably less than optimum radiator, is the enclosure
type most easily built. Standing wave modes depend on the enclosure shape
and can be minimized by choosing appropriate dimensional ratios for the
box. Nonparallel shapes can also attenuate standing waves. Box damping is
© 1999 Acoustical Society of America 2329
needed in order to eliminate as much as possible the coloration that is
retransmitted by most wood enclosures. Internal cabinet bracing, driving
mounting techniques, enclosure floor coupling, and selection of wall mate-
rials are factors to be considered in damping an enclosure. In this chapter the
emphasis is on enclosure features rather than cabinet construction ‘‘tips.’’
Chapter 6 shows how to determine the proper crossover frequencies on
the basis of driver bandwidth and boundary orientation and to establish
baffle locations for mid- and high-frequency drivers. Among the topics are
two-way versus three-way loudspeaker formats 共neither one is inherently
superior to the other兲, the effect of boundaries 共room walls and ceilings兲 on
the loudspeaker power response, boundary-induced interference patterns,
driver separation and horizontal dispersion, midrange enclosures, and
midrange and high-frequency baffle configuration.
Attention is paid to attendant factors such as driver placement, radia-
tion pattern of separate drivers, and zero delay plane 共ZDP兲. Other topics
include crossover network power response. Two-way crossover characteris-
tics are described, including those of first- through fourth-order Butterworth
filters, second- and fourth-order Linkwitz–Riley filters, second- and fourth-
order Bessel filters, second-order Chebychev filters, fourth-order Legendre
filters, fourth-order Gaussian filters, and fourth-order linear phase filters.
Design formulas are given for two-way and three-way crossovers. Examples
are given for the low-pass filter, high-pass filter, and high-pass/low-pass
summation. Driver load compensating circuitry, series notch filter, imped-
ance equalization, driver attenuation circuits, response-shaping circuits, and
inductors and capacitors in crossover circuits are also discussed.
Passive crossover networks constitute the main thrust of Chap. 7. An
excellent history of the development of crossover networks is rendered here,
followed by a primer on the fundamental principles of crossover design.
Rather than delving into the esoteric aspects of this rather complex subject,
the author chose to maintain a cookbook format by treating examples of
accepted methods commonly used in the loudspeaker industry. Active net-
works do not lie in the scope of this chapter, but a number of references on
construction details of active filter circuits are given.
Chapter 8 is an important one, since it describes loudspeaker testing.
While it is not as comprehensive as Joseph D’Appolito’s Testing Loud-
speakers 共Audio Amateur Press, Peterborough, NH, 1998兲, it contains
enough information to conduct loudspeaker performance tests. Break-in of
loudspeakers is recommended, and the procedures described are those for
measuring driver resonance, impedance 共AC resistance兲, complex imped-
ance, driver mass 共delta mass and delta compliance methods兲, driver sus-
pension compliance, driver motor strength BL, and voice coil impedance.
Formulas are included for calculating driver voice coil impedance, amplifier
source resistance, and volume of air equal to driver compliance. Measure-
ment procedures are given for driver Q, frequency response, phase, and
enclosure vibration. Equipment for determining frequency response is dis-
cussed, and microphone types are examined. An important facet of testing,
too often given short shrift, is that of measuring voice coil temperature over
time—the description of measuring this parameter concludes the chapter.
Chapter 9 is essentially a compilation of the software intended for
loudspeaker design. While this is a useful listing, it was done in mid-1991
and much new hardware and later versions of software have been devel-
oped.
2330 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 106, No. 5, November 1999
While Chap. 9 is somewhat remiss with respect to its modernity, Chap.
10 deals with an area that is growing more popular—the home theater sys-
tem that is intended to reproduce movie soundtracks rather than conven-
tional stereo programs. It is pointed out that soundtrack recording techniques
for conventional home listening and motion picture theatre listening differ
considerably, with the result of less than optimal reproduction in the home.
Because film soundtracks are not remixed for home playback, Tom Holman
developed the THX 共Tomlinson Holman eXperiment兲 home specification,
essentially an equalization fix-up. Controlled directivity led to the specifica-
tion of THX speakers, which call for additional channels.
An overview is rendered of the home theater loudspeaker system, in-
cluding as subtopics the placement of left/right front speakers, magnetic
shielding of drivers 共which may need to be placed close to a video monitor兲,
center channel speakers 共possibly the most important speaker in a home
theater system兲, controlled vertical directivity, rear channel surround sound
speakers, and subwoofers.
Chapter 11 devotes itself to the special requirements of designing a
loudspeaker system for automobiles. The automobile passenger compart-
ment is essentially a closed-field environment. Sections of the car body tend
to flex, so the acoustic situation becomes one of a ‘‘lossy’’ pressure field.
Also, the relatively cramped dimensions of the passenger compartment tend
to limit the wavelength response. Because the Thiel–Small predictions are
based on free-field performance of the speakers, adjustments need to be
made by establishing the impedance, cone excursion, and frequency re-
sponse in a small ‘‘lossy’’ field by actual measurements. Computer simula-
tion can also be achieved by using commercially available programs. Both
predictions and actual performance are shown to correlate rather well for a
couple of actual speakers and automotive interiors. A somewhat tongue-in-
cheek discussion of the desirability of including center channel imaging is
included with a set of generic installation rules for those who absolutely
must have this feature. It was wise of Dickason to point out the most over-
looked method of improving automotive sound quality, namely cutting
down on the ambient background noise levels generated by engine operation
and car motion.
In summary, The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook merits a place on the
bookshelf of every serious speaker designer, whether he/she be a profes-
sional or a hobbyist. All of its chapters are well done, although Chap. 9
lacks immediacy in its compilation of computer programs but the reader can
easily update himself or herself by checking out the Internet or consulting
advertisements in current issues of The Speaker Builder. Loudspeakers other
than the conventional electromagnetic type, e.g., electrostatic and planar
systems, are not treated in The Loudspeaker Cookbook. There is no index to
facilitate easy location of particular subjects in the text, but the table of
contents is sufficiently detailed to help in finding the subject of interest.
DANIEL R. RAICHEL
CUNY Graduate School
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department
and the School of Architecture and Environmental Studies
The City College of the City University of New York
New York, New York 10031
Book Reviews 2330