Learning to design speakers

Yeah, hornresp basically designs straight horns. If you want a normal shaped rectangular box, without a lot of dead space, you have to figure out how to do that. Folding a mid horn is rarely a good idea though. It is tricky business designing horns. Best bet is to get your wood working down first building tried and true designs and then when you understand the ins and outs, then you could start venturing into some invention. I am not there yet. I have designed my own reflex, and I have customized a miniature scoop, but I have not yet tried to design and manufacture my own speakers. Takes a lot of time and money, and you have to be ready to scrap your ideas in order to move on to something better.

Cool, I get that but would the volume of the actual wood affect the size of the box because it would use up space, can you put that in the program or is that another factor tht you have to keep in mind? I downloaded the program but I'm not sure how to actually use it, I mean I've put in all my driver settings but I didn't know where to get the result


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I mean the wood inside the box e.g a horn


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No. It will not take into account the wood volume. Horn resp is only concerned with the empty space and the shape, volume and length of that space on either side of the driver. It does have inputs for dampening materials a sealed chamber. If it is a vented horn or tapped horn it will calculate a rudimentary prediction of how the front and rear sounds will affect each other. It also assumes an infinitely rigid structure. It assumes a round, not a square one. Your job is to figure out how to get as close as you can to the dimensions with wood. You must figure out how to most effectively brace your structure. You must figure out where to compromise. You must understand as you are drawing the design how you want the joints to work and if something is going even be feasible to build. Then after you build, you will want to listen carefully and measure the performance with an objective mindset. You have to not be so proud of your box that you block out shortcomings, which you may be able to fix on your 2nd ...or 25th... prototype. You have to learn to draw a repeatable plan, because if the prototype does work out, you will need to build more of them.

All the programs will do is get you in the ball park for what frequencies you are looking to produce, and give you some idea of how much power you can give it before it is too much. Your predictions will be limited to how close you can come to the dimensions entered.

Horn design is a skill that will take years of practice. There are no programs to replace the human designer elements. There are programs to help you make the blueprint, but those require a whole other skillset.

Horn resp gives you something like this

and something like this




you have to make this

Here is a basic guide of how to use HornResp and WinISD

Thank you B for your time and help

Thanks @bgrade i downloaded sketchup yesterday aswell, I'm actually really into it, I will keep at it until I get a decent result, and just keep using off cuts to make my prototypes, thanks again, was pretty helpful


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Okay so I know I completely went against what you said, but yes I used WINIsd to calculate the size of a ported box for a mid, the only thing is that I can't tune it high enough without reducing the port length to something stupid like 3cm I was thinking If I tune the box to about 60hz does that mean that the mid bass will sound good out the port an the higher frequencies will just sound out the driver?


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No not really. A well planned port will give you a bump of energy that is usually a bit below where the driver is starting to fade, thus keeping the low end from just dropping off of a cliff, but the port in reality is a really narrow band of boost. It is hard to isolate and hear exactly what is coming out of the port, except in like a fourth order (Single vent) Band Pass sub, as that is only a single vent and the driver is not exposed. I generally set my crossover a bit above the vent tuning, so that I am in the flattish low range and not on the downward slope, and this also decreases some of the phase issues between the vent and the driver.