well if I learnt anything about this hobby (both speakers and amps), there is nothing cheap about it. small size, great sounding, cheap, can play loud, have an area coverage, constant directivity, etc. are all attributes which are usually traded off with each other.
if you just want good small speakers to listen to, look for second hand monitors on bay. a pair od B&W DM302s will beat anything you can build yourself for the cost and if you add a sub to them you may just decide to buy a case of beer and a lounge chair and forget about diy. you will need to sit fairly close though if your space is not reverberant.
now if you are really into DIY (a different kind of fun!) and want to listen to something YOU made or at least put together, then we are talking something else (and $$s hardly belong to that discussion because who puts price on fun?).
for your woodworking background I take it you would probably like to leverage that and make a lot of dust, right? in that case I suggest horns or line arrays (the latter ones could be done with cheap drivers and may be better with low ceiling and deep room).
for the horns, look over the site by Hoerst Mueller (also here as "hm"). tons od designs there (mind you if you want bass there is no way to stay small!).
Hornlautsprecher
good luck!
p.s. as for the amp, with your choice of source you may need something with fairly high gain.
if you just want good small speakers to listen to, look for second hand monitors on bay. a pair od B&W DM302s will beat anything you can build yourself for the cost and if you add a sub to them you may just decide to buy a case of beer and a lounge chair and forget about diy. you will need to sit fairly close though if your space is not reverberant.
now if you are really into DIY (a different kind of fun!) and want to listen to something YOU made or at least put together, then we are talking something else (and $$s hardly belong to that discussion because who puts price on fun?).
for your woodworking background I take it you would probably like to leverage that and make a lot of dust, right? in that case I suggest horns or line arrays (the latter ones could be done with cheap drivers and may be better with low ceiling and deep room).
for the horns, look over the site by Hoerst Mueller (also here as "hm"). tons od designs there (mind you if you want bass there is no way to stay small!).
Hornlautsprecher
good luck!
p.s. as for the amp, with your choice of source you may need something with fairly high gain.
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I owned thse. They were replaced by a more enjoyable pair of FR speakers i built for much less than they cost me.
If you can find a pair used cheap they would be a good pair of speakers.
dave
It depends on how much you want to spend on levels of drivers and components. I believe that with modest costs (actually quite inexpensive as hobbies go) you can build yourself something quite remarkable and up there with speakers commercially offered for 10x the price. A lot of it is sweat equity but a lot can be good design and excellent component choices. Based on the speakers I have built I think with $300 in parts you can make an equivalent $3000 commercial speaker. Besides the challenge of the design, I enjoy the nice sound that I otherwise cannot afford. This goes for the whole system not just speakers but amps and DACs too.
Now who is scaring off the newcomers?
Ohhhhhhhhh....trust me. I'm so far gone in the woodworking/woodworking too department that SWMBO won't even blink when I start buying drivers and Baltic Birch or HDF. No fear here except for soldering, and trying to figure out how "I" can actually start designing.
First steps first though. I'll plan to start with the FH3's and also a set of bookshelf/stand mounted. I'll go ahead and plan to drive them with some sort of T-amp just for starters. I like the idea of big things from small packages.
My only real benchmark is the Bose Soundock I have now. I had a 901-1 and Bose receiver set up many moons ago, but grew tired of it. Plus....the ex....wife 1.0 has it. Wife 2.0 and I are enjoying a simpler life in terms of "stuff", but the siren call of high fidelity is strong upon me. I would be quite happy with fidelity equal to or better than the Soundock....is this doable with the components I've mentioned thus far?
All the diy suggestions in this thread would utterly slaughter Bose Soundock.
Really, no sheeting you
I'll jump in on this with a bit of my own experience. I won't opine on the "driver" side of things, people here have a great deal more knowledge than I do in amps and speakers, but I might make a suggestion on the "source" side. I too started with running my stereo off an iPod dock on my existing stereo system. While extremely convenient, I felt I was missing something in sound quality. I recently purchased a raspberry pi running Moode player. It feeds an outboard DAC although the I2C DACS available are cheap and very good and I'd not hesitate to go that route if we're starting from scratch. The difference with my current set up is that I can play hi def sound files rather than 128kbs AAC that my iPod uses. The improved fidelity is just downright amazing! I am listening now to a hi fidelity classical feed from Athens that is 24 bit 44.1 kHz and wonderful to hear. The cost is very reasonable and I could not be happier. I am thinking about replacing my class A/B preamp-amp setup with a class D, but that is another discussion. Hope I haven't derailed this thread, sorry if so.
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