Designers who freely share their research and projects on the web are a boon to mankind, or at least a boon to those with shared interests. John Krutke is such a person, with his Zaph|Audio site. John is a speaker designer with a good scientific habits: he theorizes about a possible new design, simulates it, builds it, carefully tests it, and compares the results with the original theory and simulations. Sadly, a lot of designers skip many of these steps. There are a dozen complete speaker designs on the site plus tests of drivers and other speaker-related projects.
John is much more towards the objective end of the subjective-objective spectrum than I am, and comes dangerously close to saying that “if I can’t measure it, you can’t hear it”, but his techniques seem good and he certainly clarifies speaker design. Check it out: Zaph|Audio.
As a boon to another portion of mankind, may I claim that anything you want to try with whatever drivers and mounting motifs you can imagine is fair game for the technically bewildered. Yes, it is fun to measure stuff, too, but some of us no longer have the energy, or never did. You can find joy by mistake
Maybe not as often, maybe more … just because I don’t measure it, does not mean it sounds bad. OK, it often sounds bad enough no one need measure it, but, sometimes …