In the commercial world, a company will typically design a speaker and put their name on it, but won't actually build it(Or parts of it) themselves. So the question is this. Is a design still considered "DIY" by most enthusiasts, if you don't build the cabinets, but choose all the design parameters and then put everything together yourself? After all, we don't make the wires, drivers, passive or active(most of the time)components or terminals. There is no one I admire more than someone who builds their own beautiful cabinets, but is that truly required to earn the name "DIY"? Opinions?
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Thanks for interesting link to link to book. I've long contemplated this "desert island" challenge.
What difference does DIY definition make? If the question is, what criteria to apply in deciding to make it yourself... a better question.
British taxes once made a big distinction between factory products and kits - for example a Lotus from the factory and a Lotus Super-7 Kit and HiFi stuff too. Geez, with all the Heathkits I made, pity no such distinction here.
B.
IMO the emphasis should be on the DO. It is all very well speculating on the perceived benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to dealing with audio issues, and healthy debate can clarify vision of what is achievable. However to qualify as DIY for me, I should see a tangible result. Implementing a given design qualifies. If there is some refinement of an existing design approach, even better.
This is in the realm of engineering R&D not DIY
No IMO. There are many reasons for involvement in DIY. For me, the desire to own equipment that performs well beyond the standard set by commercial products that I can afford, is my primary reason for DIY. If I was much richer or desirable products were much cheaper, I would probably not build speakers, despite the satisfaction I get from DIY. There are plenty of commercial products I would be quite content with. I just can't afford them. I use them as a target for my DIY efforts.
Just checked out the S19. Beautiful, functional design. Way better looking than the Linkwitz Orion, in my opinion. The (dual) waveguide tweeter is a better idea too(For matching the midrange dispersion at the crossover point). Wow!Well I do not mine the magnesium ore used in the drivers.
Does that count as diy
With loudspeakers there is a large range of what people would probably consider DIY.
One person might consider building a Zaph kit, complete with Parts express/Madisound cabinets a DIY design. This is a DIY effort to some extent as you're certainly going to tick the box that would qualify getting more for your money then if you were to buy a completely assembled pair of loudspeakers on the commercial market, but it does sort of stretch the definition of DIY a bit thin imo.
Now if you were to use Zaph's own design, but build the cabinets all by yourself and even if they didn't end up looking as good as the PE/Mad boxes, I would consider this more of a DIY effort then the first.
Then you've got the person who buys all the drive units and crafts their own cabinet and once built, measures everything and then designs their own crossovers. This is about as DIY as it gets, but depending on the designers competency you might end up with a cabinet that looks worse then madisounds and a crossover that's poorly implemented, but at least it's all your own work!
Finally you've got another choice which would be someone like Zaph for example, buying all of the drivers and cabinets from PE/Mad and then designing the crossover himself. Personally I consider the selection process for the drive units and then the associated design of the crossover, the true heart of what it means to make and design your own loudspeakers. This is the hard part to really get right and for that reason would make this choice qualify almost as high as if you had built the cabinets yourself too.
Part of this though is recognising your strengths and your weaknesses and working around them to give you what you wanted. Sure, buying PE boxes and a Zaph kit might not really be doing much true DIY, but if you've asked around on DIY audio for help in making an informed decision about which loudspeakers, from which designer, would be the best from a technical point of view AND in the process you've learnt a little more about loudspeaker design by researching these things and asking those questions, then there's no reason why this shouldn't be considered DIY.
I get the most fun out of choosing the drivers and designing the crossover and then seeing/hearing what the results are like. If someone else wants to build and finish the cabinets for me, then that's fine by me. I personally will consider the majority of the design my DIY effort with a bit of help from the person who built the box. And the person who built the box could probably also consider the majority of the design their DIY effort with a bit of help from me. Our opinions on that would be radically different, but at the end of the day we both ended up satisfied and most importantly would have scratched what they call 'the itch' where we are now hopefully satisfied to not feel immediately compelled into wanting to build something else!
One person might consider building a Zaph kit, complete with Parts express/Madisound cabinets a DIY design. This is a DIY effort to some extent as you're certainly going to tick the box that would qualify getting more for your money then if you were to buy a completely assembled pair of loudspeakers on the commercial market, but it does sort of stretch the definition of DIY a bit thin imo.
Now if you were to use Zaph's own design, but build the cabinets all by yourself and even if they didn't end up looking as good as the PE/Mad boxes, I would consider this more of a DIY effort then the first.
Then you've got the person who buys all the drive units and crafts their own cabinet and once built, measures everything and then designs their own crossovers. This is about as DIY as it gets, but depending on the designers competency you might end up with a cabinet that looks worse then madisounds and a crossover that's poorly implemented, but at least it's all your own work!
Finally you've got another choice which would be someone like Zaph for example, buying all of the drivers and cabinets from PE/Mad and then designing the crossover himself. Personally I consider the selection process for the drive units and then the associated design of the crossover, the true heart of what it means to make and design your own loudspeakers. This is the hard part to really get right and for that reason would make this choice qualify almost as high as if you had built the cabinets yourself too.
Part of this though is recognising your strengths and your weaknesses and working around them to give you what you wanted. Sure, buying PE boxes and a Zaph kit might not really be doing much true DIY, but if you've asked around on DIY audio for help in making an informed decision about which loudspeakers, from which designer, would be the best from a technical point of view AND in the process you've learnt a little more about loudspeaker design by researching these things and asking those questions, then there's no reason why this shouldn't be considered DIY.
I get the most fun out of choosing the drivers and designing the crossover and then seeing/hearing what the results are like. If someone else wants to build and finish the cabinets for me, then that's fine by me. I personally will consider the majority of the design my DIY effort with a bit of help from the person who built the box. And the person who built the box could probably also consider the majority of the design their DIY effort with a bit of help from me. Our opinions on that would be radically different, but at the end of the day we both ended up satisfied and most importantly would have scratched what they call 'the itch' where we are now hopefully satisfied to not feel immediately compelled into wanting to build something else!
The thing that really got me thinking about this subject is the latest "high end" efforts by Sony;
https://dealersource.sel.sony.com/dsweb/p/ar1/assets/SS-AR1_WhitePaper_Final_LoRes.pdf.
A company that has always used their own drivers, cabinets and components, outsourced everything this time, except for the intellectual effort by one of it's own engineers. So it made me think; is it ultimately the "intellectual effort" that allows you to call a design your own? So far I've gotten some very good responses.
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As far as I'm concerned that's the only bit that really matters, as ultimately that's the thing that's going to determine how well your loudspeakers perform. Where you get the raw components from doesn't really matter, it's how you use them that really counts.
An example where form and function are both following each other. My only criticism would be that the C2C spacing is a little high and I'm only saying this because it looks like it would be possible to reduce it.
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