Background
For a long time, I've been making and fixing stuff for others -- new floors, new walls, etc. for my wife (and soon, the bank :( ); networks, servers and apps for employers -- you get the picture. So when I became fed up with the quality of the sound in our house, I decided that I would like to make something just for myself for fun.
That led me to the land of DIY audio. There are loads of great vendors and parts. There are an endless range of project complexities from the $20 + 2 hour quick-n-cheap to the 6-figure expensive and PhD-thesis complicated. There are boatloads of great people from those brilliant E.E. and PhD types to enthusiastic amateurs to happy wackos that provide help, inspiration and entertainment.
The one thing that I cannot find is any good, comprehensive software tool to help with the basic of speaker and system design. There is a plethora of little bits, from 15yo Excel spreadsheets through simple javascript calculators and a heap of proprietary software.
The Goal
I would love to, with the help of those who are more knowledgeable than I, to develop a reasonable comprehensive toolset for speaker design, likely including a web-based Thiele-Small database, that is free and open-source.
I've considered both traditional desktop/mobile application design and web-based design as an implementation strategy, and have yet to understand to true demands from a computational perspective.
What I Need
The simple coding aspect of this does not seem overwhelming, but I am simply to ignorant of the math and physics of acoustics to be able to do this independently. I also kinda suck at UI design, tending to spend most of my life with a bash prompt in front of me.
That means I would need significant help from others who share the same goal -- free and easily accessible tools for anyone interested. Please let me know what you might be able to help with and how much time you might have to lend to the project.
Thanks!
Notes
I do most development in Python with Numpy/Scipy and Cython for the numerical stuff. I also prefer to keep code on GitHub.
For a long time, I've been making and fixing stuff for others -- new floors, new walls, etc. for my wife (and soon, the bank :( ); networks, servers and apps for employers -- you get the picture. So when I became fed up with the quality of the sound in our house, I decided that I would like to make something just for myself for fun.
That led me to the land of DIY audio. There are loads of great vendors and parts. There are an endless range of project complexities from the $20 + 2 hour quick-n-cheap to the 6-figure expensive and PhD-thesis complicated. There are boatloads of great people from those brilliant E.E. and PhD types to enthusiastic amateurs to happy wackos that provide help, inspiration and entertainment.
The one thing that I cannot find is any good, comprehensive software tool to help with the basic of speaker and system design. There is a plethora of little bits, from 15yo Excel spreadsheets through simple javascript calculators and a heap of proprietary software.
The Goal
I would love to, with the help of those who are more knowledgeable than I, to develop a reasonable comprehensive toolset for speaker design, likely including a web-based Thiele-Small database, that is free and open-source.
I've considered both traditional desktop/mobile application design and web-based design as an implementation strategy, and have yet to understand to true demands from a computational perspective.
What I Need
The simple coding aspect of this does not seem overwhelming, but I am simply to ignorant of the math and physics of acoustics to be able to do this independently. I also kinda suck at UI design, tending to spend most of my life with a bash prompt in front of me.
That means I would need significant help from others who share the same goal -- free and easily accessible tools for anyone interested. Please let me know what you might be able to help with and how much time you might have to lend to the project.
Thanks!
Notes
I do most development in Python with Numpy/Scipy and Cython for the numerical stuff. I also prefer to keep code on GitHub.