Many people buy new speakers every year, spending hundreds of dollars for that one "right" set. Well, there is a different approach for getting speakers, and it doesn't require spending ridiculous sums of money.

Over the years I've read quite a few books discussing speaker systems with projects and there are two that have served me very well.

The first book is called "Building Speaker Systems: Speakers for Your Listening Pleasure." This is actually a RadioShackR publication, but it is very good at teaching the basics of audio concepts.

The book includes four projects for home stereo speakers and even shows a little bit on car stereo systems. It is perfect for someone who doesn't know a lot about speakers but would like to learn. The projects are easy to follow and inexpensive.

After reading this book and completing at least one of the enclosed projects, you will walk away with the basic understandings of sound, frequency, Q, woodworking, and simple electronics soldering.

The second book I read was called "Designing, Building, and Testing Your Own Speaker System With Projects." The book was written by David B. Weems.

This book delves much deeper into the topics of speaker building. It teaches methods and techniques of how to build and test crossover networks, which can be quite discouraging without the proper know-how. Crossover networks divide audio signals, sending only low frequencies to the woofer and high frequencies to the tweeter.

The book also teaches topics such as dynamic range, frequency response, and speaker polarity, to name a few.

I found that reading this book was a bit more challenging than reading "Building Speaker Systems" because of the terminology used, but was still very informative with several useful concepts.

Towards the end of the book is a full program written in VB (visual basic) that walks the user through the different parts of building a system. The projects are a little more complex, yet still painless to follow.

When a reader finishes this book and the enclosed projects he/she will walk away with quite a bit of practical knowledge on building inexpensive speaker systems.

In short, you don't have to spend a lot of money to obtain the sound you want your stereo to produce. All you have to do is gain the knowledge to do it yourself.

Other books that I found useful:

1. Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook

2. Modern Recording Techniques

3. Basic Electronics (RadioShackR Publication)