ART OR SCIENCE?

This handbook has been prepared to take just a touch of the mystery out of the subject of loudspeaker design and performance, with an eye out to the characteristics that make a loudspeaker sound good (or bad).

Since this is a personal statement of one designer, who necessarily is in business for profits as well as enjoyment, the handbook makes no claim to being either objective or comprehensive.

For the reader’s convenience, the handbook has three related, but different, sections:

1: A general introduction which tersely ties together some fundamental concepts and sets forth the problem;

2: An expansion of some of the key concepts of speaker design and speaker construction; and

3: A lexicon of commonly encountered speaker terms and vocabulary.

Throughout this document, any term defined in the Lexicon is in bold italic type.

Hoping you’ll have a bit of fun with this handbook, even if it may seem to raise more questions than it answers. . .

The loudspeaker handbook and Lexicon by Winslow Burhoe is a valuable resource on speaker terminology and the basics of what makes a good audio speaker. It is available here, for free in either;

Adobe Acrobat PDF

or HTML Part1 – Speaker Design, Part2 – The Basics, Part3 – The Lexicon