Jim. I agree with what you said, at $10500 it's maybe doable if one likes woodwork and is design capable. When second hand it's a bit more grey an area.
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details...-f228be-speakers-audiophile-pair-gloss-black/
there is also another new pair at $8k from another seller.
The F228b is a newish product so more difficult to find second hand but older designs, whilst still great are easier to find.
https://www.highperformancestereo.com/speakers/revel-studio.html
https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/302/index.html
I am not knocking DIY at all, I intend to finish my 3 way design and possibly go on to a 4 way. This hopefully will compare with far more expensive professional and esoteric products which I would not buy. But up to the £2500 or so price, for me it's second hand.
As always with second hand though it's DYOR! and be patient.
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details...-f228be-speakers-audiophile-pair-gloss-black/
there is also another new pair at $8k from another seller.
The F228b is a newish product so more difficult to find second hand but older designs, whilst still great are easier to find.
https://www.highperformancestereo.com/speakers/revel-studio.html
https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/302/index.html
I am not knocking DIY at all, I intend to finish my 3 way design and possibly go on to a 4 way. This hopefully will compare with far more expensive professional and esoteric products which I would not buy. But up to the £2500 or so price, for me it's second hand.
As always with second hand though it's DYOR! and be patient.
Companies specify now custom versions of drivers following Proac RS2.5 DIY "feeding frenzy ". Making a clone of $10k speaker is not really saving much . After a couple of years the speaker can be bought for $3k or less on used market and if God forbid it has a chip or damaged corner it looses it's sonic appeal altogether...Now , a successful clone of $60-70k speaker like for example Kaiser Kawero Classic.... This one I would clone myself if I could but I can't and I didn't see a used example cheaper than $25k.
Fair enough and sorry. My strike rate on detecting humour online lately has been low. My missus always had the living room filled up with her pianos (upright and grand), keyboards, drum machines, percussion and guitars so she never complained, except they left too little room for her stuff.
My approach is to keep it simple.
Full range drivers in sealed boxes.
A Fane 12-250 TC one in each box and sounds ok.
Not 10K in cost but maybe £250 all in.
My first speakers were in 1980 with 4 Fane 12-50's spread across 2 sealed boxes and sounded fine and very loud.
Despite just being 3KHz top and mono I never had a complaint about the sound in years of mobile DJing.
I was just thinking of such setup last sleepless night. I recalled a long interview with a pianist Krystian Zimerman when he said he could not listen to his fine and expensive Swiss stereo system due to useless in essence information overload. To judge the performance he was driving during the night listening to his simple car stereo. He sold his audio system.
Actually, I noticed some years ago that I can only truly listen and enjoy music in a car or from a table radio, ,jukebox in a bar, midfi Pioneer tower in my GF's house. Once I turn the main rig I immediately drift into nitpicking of the audio performance and can't help it in any way. I keep looking for a magic component but maybe indeed what's required is to pack the whole shebang and put it on the curb.
What size of box are you using with your Fane Nigel ?
Yes, even I think that the savings need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, instead of generalising things and saying "any DIY saves money". If it does, it's great, but whether it does needs to be found out beforehand.
In my opinion, doing the carpenter's job yourself saves you only "carpenter money". Thus, the DIY people who read, learn and apply have better chances of saving money that would otherwise go to the designer - "designer's money".
And sometimes (as limono has mentioned above), value depreciation enables one to place hands onto things he could never have dreamt before. Waiting (patience) is indeed one of the easiest ways to save money. Nice point there.
If you snore while sleeping you should look into a CPAP machine, if you already haven't done so. I think that they have saved many marriages. Plus giving you a much better night's sleep.
That's providing the market has something you actually want, and the ProAc 2.5s mentioned above are a hard no. I prefer high efficiency, controlled directivity, excellent LF response and clean high SPL capability when I want it. There's very few speakers on the market that fit in that category, and some I've already had and sent on their way, like the KHorns, so DIY is not about saving money for me, but about getting what I want.
Agree 100% with this. I've auditioned many $2K to $5K speakers in stores, even brought some home before quickly returning them, and none have been able to match the clean, undistorted, wonderfully musical sound from my $400 Jeff Bagby designed Piccolos.
And while being a woodworker certainly makes that choice rather easy, there is a possible alternative for those who aren't one. Contact a local woodworkers club and offer to pay someone a reasonable fee to build the cabinets for you from the plans that you provide. For a pair of small 2-way cabinets I think $300 to $400 should be a fair price. Maybe even less if the person thinks that they will enjoy the project. You pay for cost of the materials and do the finishing yourself. My club is approached from time to time by people with similar requests to build something custom for them.
Here is link to a list of woodworking clubs in the US and Canada, although it is about 10 years old and may not be completely accurate now.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2012/10/22/woodworking-clubs-directory
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Well, then the only way is to design yourself. Besides, people can't be blamed for liking the idea of being in control, like Neo in the Matrix.
Sounds like directivity issue from the speaker combined with excess reverberations in the room, e.g hard surfaces and not much decoration/furniture.
Bring in controlled directivity speakers that fit the application, maybe consider some acoustic treatment, and you are in the car audio territory in terms of "information overload". Fullrange speakers would work too, they beam and reduce the high frequency energy in the room which makes them "clearer". Only problem is that fullrange speakers possibly beam too much making hard time for brain again, because small head movement changes the treble sound and you have to be at the sweetspot to get the treble at all.
Anyway, controlled directivity is opposite to small direct radiating tweeters and classic speaker designs that didn't consider anything else but on axis frequency response as design criteria. The usual problem case is that the speaker splash walls with sound which has different sound signature than the direct sound and makes brain hard time to figure out whats going on. Combine with modern concrete homes with minimal decor. I suspect well done and balanced direct radiating speakers exists, but this is the category of speakers which holds the worst offenders for the brain trying to interpret the music from the noise in the room.
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In terms of resale value, DIY speaker is not that bad. If we buy a new $10K brand name speaker, the resale price would be $7K at most, and we probably loose 4K or more including tax and fee, etc. An equivalent DIY speaker, we can build one with $1K parts, and even we trash the parts, we only loose 1K. You know what? We can still try 3 more equivalent of 10K speakers at home before losing 4K and we now own more than enough high end units.
OP built $10K DIY speaker, that means he was trying to build equivalent of $100K brand name speaker, so instead of loosing $40K, he only lost $10K even before selling the units.
OP built $10K DIY speaker, that means he was trying to build equivalent of $100K brand name speaker, so instead of loosing $40K, he only lost $10K even before selling the units.
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It's more of an expectation bias. I do not have any requirements from my car audio . Crappy fullrangers in a noisy environment and rattling interior yet I can enjoy music a great deal, same with radios and cheap & cheerful systems. From a main system bought at considerable investment in time and effort I expect probably impossible and can't free the mind to simply enjoy music. I think what Zimerman had in mind was that all the minute details and nuances so loved and absolutely required from a High-End systems simply take away from a main message in the musical piece and are distraction rather than a help. To me, they do give almost physical pleasure to a sound addicts which we all here more or less are. My regret related to getting into hobby is a loss of a genuine musical passion in a quest of chasing "eargazms" 🙂 Alas more experienced and jaded we become we need more and more "spice".
When somebody buys a $100k speaker and after 3 years he sells it for $30K it really does not make a dent in his finances at all, a pocket change. In DIY which is money conscious and saving related, loosing a few thousands on a project which usually is "end of life" kind of thing, a final expense on the road to nirvana can be a considerable loss. I never lost money on any audio purchase. Poor people can't afford cheap products (BUT they keep buying them)
That's not true. I was able to get exactly what I want by building a DIY kit designed by one of the experts. Could not be happier with the sound performance. Particularly for the very reasonable cost.
I think u r looking at it the wrong way. 7/10k is a 30% loss, 0/1k is 100% Loss. Using your logic then why build a $1K diy, just use the cheapest drivers and build $100 kit, if you dont like it you can throw it away, you need to do it 10 times before it equals the $1K kit in cost haha.
Resale value is one single factor where commercial speakers win against DIY without much contest. Even within DIY, kits from reputable designers are much easier to sell then “a diyaudio member” self design kit. Brand name = credibility = resale value.