There should really be an informative thread like this for anyone new taking up this hobby. It should be titled differently though, something like: "What are/should you be expecting from diy audio hobby."
It is a journey really.
Can really great audio systems be made by diy selfers? Undoubtedly.
Is it about saving money over commercial offerings? Not at all.
Is it easier to buy a commercial offering? A lot easier. You may also listen to more choices within a store's offering.
Can you get to a great diy audio system in a single straight shot? Not likely.
Do you have clear listening and design objectives? Probably not. You will need to learn and your expectations will evolve over time.
Should you tackle both the speakers and the amplifiers? Yes if you want truly great results which the mainstream industry is not structured to deliver.
Should you venture into non-conventional speaker designs? It is only your choice if you want to emphasize function over form or compromise and to what degree.
Should you go it alone? Definitely not as you will not be happy with the results. The best part of this hobby is being able to leverage collective experience of some very, very competent designers who are generously sharing with the diy audio community.
Will you be given straightforward instructions on this forum? No. You will be given a lot of good advice but also a lot of subjective opinions which may or may not be helpful. You need to research the posters and get a feel for their background and their personal preferences in order to decide what may be a relevant piece of advice for you.
Will all your friends appreciate your great diy audio system(s)? No. Some will, but the average listener is not into critical listening. Most will acknowledge a difference by a mere side-by-side comparison. Many will bring along an expectation based on a mediocre audio system they have gotten used to, or some preconceived appreciation for a renowned commercial brand.
Will all here on the forum agree on what a great sound is? No. There will be some common threads but you will be mostly talking with people with whom you never get a chance to listen to music together. So this hobby is really an individual experience for most.
others can add as appropriate...
It is a journey really.
Can really great audio systems be made by diy selfers? Undoubtedly.
Is it about saving money over commercial offerings? Not at all.
Is it easier to buy a commercial offering? A lot easier. You may also listen to more choices within a store's offering.
Can you get to a great diy audio system in a single straight shot? Not likely.
Do you have clear listening and design objectives? Probably not. You will need to learn and your expectations will evolve over time.
Should you tackle both the speakers and the amplifiers? Yes if you want truly great results which the mainstream industry is not structured to deliver.
Should you venture into non-conventional speaker designs? It is only your choice if you want to emphasize function over form or compromise and to what degree.
Should you go it alone? Definitely not as you will not be happy with the results. The best part of this hobby is being able to leverage collective experience of some very, very competent designers who are generously sharing with the diy audio community.
Will you be given straightforward instructions on this forum? No. You will be given a lot of good advice but also a lot of subjective opinions which may or may not be helpful. You need to research the posters and get a feel for their background and their personal preferences in order to decide what may be a relevant piece of advice for you.
Will all your friends appreciate your great diy audio system(s)? No. Some will, but the average listener is not into critical listening. Most will acknowledge a difference by a mere side-by-side comparison. Many will bring along an expectation based on a mediocre audio system they have gotten used to, or some preconceived appreciation for a renowned commercial brand.
Will all here on the forum agree on what a great sound is? No. There will be some common threads but you will be mostly talking with people with whom you never get a chance to listen to music together. So this hobby is really an individual experience for most.
others can add as appropriate...
And sound aside, one can make DIY speakers please the eye, or camouflage them! Fit the surroundings. This is the main benefit doing it yourself if someone asks me why to build own speakers. Very good sound quality is a lot of work, it is a lot easier to buy (mostly very ugly) commercial speakers 😀
Yep, oh so dominant.
Personally for what matters next, I'd put source material, but at an order of magnitude below speaker/room.
And then, preamps, amps, DACs, at one more full order down.
Trying to be kind to folks who feel they can hear those differences.
And 2 orders of mag down does make it 1/100th in importance, relative to speaker/room ..huh? 🙂
Oh, I agree, and crappy recordings sound good on my excellent speakers and set up, seriously. 🙂
False dichotomy I think.
Studio monitors are reproduction devices. Ideally precision ones to make it easier and more predictable when adjusting things on the production side.
Thank you! I'll take responsibility for "Graily". 🙂
But Mark Twain was the one who coined "Holy Grailing", in his book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:
Mark Twain said:
-Gnobuddy
Do keep in mind I always used the term "audibly perfect", unless I accidentally slipped up somewhere. Not "perfect", but "audibly perfect".
This isn't a minor quibble. It refers to the fact that human ears - with their inherent limitations - are used as the measuring tool. "Audibly perfect" means the measuring tool - human ears - are too crude to detect the remaining imperfections in the sound. It does not mean that amplifiers are mathematically perfect - of course they aren't, and can never be.
To make the concept clearer, here's a different example. It is not possible to manufacture a length of aluminium rod that is perfectly, exactly, ten centimetres long. There will always be some tolerance, some imperfection, even if it's only a micron (that's about forty-millionths of an inch, for our American friends.)
However, if you are only able to use a ruler marked in centimetres and millimetres to make measurements, the smallest error you can measure in the length of the rod is about one-half millimetre (about the thickness of your fingernail.) If I can consistently manufacture rods that are more accurate than this - let's say, accurate to +/- 0.1 millimetres - then all your measurements will produce the same result - every rod is perfect. The length is exactly 10 centimetres, as far as your measuring instrument can tell, and therefore, all the rods are perfect.
It's the same story with our ears. If an amplifier generates 10% THD, some people will hear it (many won't!) If an amplifier generates 1% THD, there is some reasonably trustworthy statistical evidence that some people, under ideal listening conditions, with a pure-sine wave test signal, might be able to detect it. However, nobody has ever produced statistically significant data showing that anybody can detect 0.1% THD, under any conditions, using any test signal. Never mind 0.01%, or 0.001%, or 0.0005%, all of which numbers have been achieved by audio amplifiers.
So, is an amplifier with 0.1% THD mathematically perfect? Of course not! Hello, it generates 0.1% distortion, which you can easily measure with the right equipment!
But is this same amplifier audibly perfect? Yes, it certainly is; human ears cannot detect 0.1% distortion, so as far as our human senses are concerned, this amplifier is perfect from the point of view of harmonic distortion.
And that's the crux of the matter. Smart people have worked long and hard to find out what the human ear/brain can hear, and what it can't. Other smart people managed to create signal sources and amplifiers whose imperfections are too small for the human ear/brain to detect - usually by an order of magnitude or more. Therefore, those systems are audibly perfect.
-Gnobuddy
I understand what you meant, I was questioning the thresholds of audibility that were established some time ago