Legal Stuff & Disclaimers

All Content of Lou's Speaker Site is Copyright by Louis Coraggio All Rights Reserved You may build any of my designs for personal, non commercial use. I accept no liability whatsoever for the use, misuse, or performance of any design or process. You are encouraged to read and understand the use of your power tools, hand tools, safety appliances and personal protection devices. If you cut your finger off, you probably did something stupid. If you blow up your speakers, fry your amp, or otherwise destroy your gear don't blame me. You got it for free, you can't claim you were "ripped off."

Ranting and Philosophy

If you build one of my designs let me know what you think. I don't get paid for this site. I don't get kickbacks from vendors, or form of compensation. I do it for fun, to feed my ego, and to share a bit of knowledge. I build using my own techniques, ideas and thoughts. I flat don't care if anyone agrees with the way I do things. If you build the box suggested, and use the drivers and components specified, you should get similar results. You may or may not like them. Most of my recent designs are fairly sophisticated. Driver alignment, baffle shape, phasing, impedance and final spl profile are all considered and accounted for in the measurement and design. Some of the crossovers don't fit theoretical norms -- but they seem to sound good -- as designed. If you didn't build it as I designed it, then it's your work not mine. If you want to substitute other drivers, different components etc. please don't expect me to fix them or design a new crossover for free. I'll help if I can, but sometimes I don't have the time or the patience. I work two jobs --this is my hobby. Your "prototype" in the cereal box cutouts probably doesn't sound good -- duh! Be realistic. Don't expect a $50 speaker to blow away a $20,000 commercial effort. You won't get earthshaking bass from a 4" driver, nor should you expect to host a block party with it. Audio is pretty subjective. If you are into head banging heavy metal played at deafening levels then most of my stuff isn't for you. If you think Bose is the ultimate in high fidelity, you won't be happy either. I'm pretty conservative in evaluating my own work. No design is perfect. I try to report what I hear. I've heard great speakers with off the shelf Xovers and cheap parts. I've also heard $1000 boxes with hundreds of hours of development that made my ears bleed. That's the nature of the hobby. I've done designs that looked great on paper but sounded like crap. I've also built some lovely systems with drivers that shouldn't have worked. I don't usually post bad work, but I do occasionally revisit and update designs. Sometimes I just screw up. Often I get bored and move on to other things. Speakers are just one part of the music experience. Room acoustics, your hearing, the electronics you use, the music you like, and your taste are all variables beyond my control. It may sound great in my living room but suck big time to your ears. Don't ask me if this one is better than that one. It's like asking who's the prettiest girl in the bar. "Better" is subjective, "different" is objective. I don't believe in groupthink. (see Wikipedia) There's a ton of bullsh*t out there that's been perpetuated by preponderance of opinion or some guy with a measurement rig. There are many flavors of Kool Aid out there. (Fox, CNN, NPR, BBC in the "news" business.) I'll try it for myself, if it works out, I'll let you know. If not, I'll let you know too. It's up to you to decide if you believe me. I don't work with really high end drivers. I prefer the mid price stuff as better bang for the buck. I own mid fi Yamaha, Onkyo, Harmon Kardon, Denon, and Pioneer gear. IMO the last 5% improvement is 80% of the cost. I'm not sure I would recognize the difference between 3rd and 4th order harmonic distortion. But I do know when things sound right and when they don't. Personally, I don't listen to square sine waves, I listen to Linda Ronstadt. An engineer and a scientist were placed in a room with an eager young woman at the opposite side. They were told "You may halve the distance between yourself and the young lady once every two minutes". The scientist left the room because, theoretically, he could never get there. The engineer persevered because he knew he could get close enough. Save the propeller-head debates, I'm an engineer.