I don’t see how to quote people here, so responses in bold below:
’m in my busier work season, but could help on design. In fact, I’ve done the baseline roughed out design with the public data sheets of the drivers. The speaker volume for a single Wom165_vMS is 0.134 cubic feet. So decently small size. It then comes to how complex the bracing will be and I don’t know the equipment or woodworking skill of the person you would hire. That makes a difference. Also don’t know if you plan on insulation in the build (add a bit of depth), if you have a height constraint on the build, etc.
I’m open to suggestions, but expect as much bracing and or insulation needed for optimal inert of the cabinets. I have one person in mind to do the cabinets who is very advanced in woodworking, but not doing speaker cabinets. I’d expect for someone like him, not terrible challenging, but it would also make a lot of sense for the person who designed it all out to build it too, and then they can test, etc.
To put that in perspective, before insulation and bracing are taken into account, that would be 12″x7″x2.75″ internal dimensions. the driver is 2.64″ deep (and assuming you flush mount the driver, that means you could add the depth of the front baffle to the 2.75″ depth, then subtract a quarter inch, approximately, for the recess for the driver). That is without any insulation or bracing on internal dimensions, though. Then comes if you want to do a slant or advanced shape (geometry is your friend for that). You can setup a spreadsheet with the equations to rough out what you need. Then you draw it up in a cad program, then break it down by piece of the assembly, then hand that to your fabricator.
If I’m doing it for you, I would give a discount as I would use the rough design, depending on specifics, to then use as either plans to sell or for me to make as speakers to sell on (which would mean I’d have to draw up a basic contract in order to license the use to you for your project instead of it being a work for hire situation, as I would retain the copyright and ownership of the design). And it does take time to get the design down. Especially if you wanted to have simulations ran on the design instead of just plans from rough internal dimensions plus simple bracing and insulation, if desired.
On that front, I like the idea of it being a design you could sell, and I could develop an interest in people want such a design by making vids about it, ongoing as it develops, and then of course a review of how they sound, all with links and recs for DIY people to follow link to your plans. That sounds like an exciting project to me. I’m new ish to audio reviews, not new to reviews in general. While not a huge following, a very dedicated following who often purchase on my advice:
My audio reviews: https://www.youtube.com/c/willbrink/search?query=audio
If creating it specific to the drivers, then you have to buy the drivers first, test them, then use the Thiele/Small parameters to get the exact factors in order to size the dimensions of the box for those specific ones you bought. Going from general to specific wouldn’t be too difficult once the equations are laid out in the spreadsheet to adjust the dimensions of the wood needed. You plug in the changed data for volume, get the end result with minor tweaks.
The DIY speaker in the vid is a Thiel like design, and I like it visually, assuming you don’t feel the shape is problematic to the final sound. Currently, I thinking MDF for the body and internals, and wood front baffle similar to that in the vid, visually more advanced, minus the port. Whether the woodworker I know was to make the entire cabinet or just the front baffle, he’d the baffle would be stunning to look at for sure.
But, for crossover design, that is best done once the box is built and you test the drivers in box. If you want a passive crossover (not amping per driver, instead one amp per channel left and right), you can even do that external to the box in between the amp and the speaker and keep the bi-amp situation for future projects if you decide to add on DSP instead for the crossover.
I’m open to suggestions on that. My understanding was an active external X over using DSP can take a speaker to another level. I do like the idea per OP of full actives, but bottom line is the quality of the audio. Everything else is secondary. If the designer (you?) feels a passive X over build with X parts will deliver the best audio for the project, that’s what we do, then figure where/how it fits budget wise.
Now, if you want a generic box made off the spec sheet, that makes the design easier and would take less time. Wouldn’t be as custom and optimized, but will do just fine. And with the quality of the drivers selected, you shouldn’t have a problem meeting the performance of the speakers you are comparing it to.
I’m done with generic boxes myself. I think they give up both sonic benefits and are visually boring. First I want to see what can be done without defaulting to basic boxes, unless again, it sacrifices sound for looks.
And I’m considering doing an audio YT channel as well. Mine would be more on acoustic theory, paying for a subscription to AES, then going through papers published on specific topics to dive into theory. My other channels I’d ask people I talk audio not to watch as one is philosophy and current events (and politics may be discussed and I don’t want that to get in the way of the people I talk audio shop with), while another would potentially be computers and overclocking (down the road on that one, as breaking into the computer videos side takes a bit to start getting hardware sent, etc.).
Either way, talking YT channels is a different topic.
But something may be able to be roughed out, potentially. But my other work comes first (so that may not work on your timeline, I’m sorry to say).
See comments above. It sounds like such a project could lead nicely toward interest/content of your own YT channel.