Maybe it's because I come from a background in car audio and home music studios that I find this whole discussion a bit ridicules. Designing a set of loud speakers is not all that difficult. The most important thing is knowing what speakers play well together. Once you understand that designing speakers isn't all that hard. You get the right drivers paired up you won't have that much difficulty designing the crossovers because the drivers just play well together.
I have put together systems in vehicles that would blow your mind. Although generally speaking drive units that cost a lot of money are going to have a good build quality but aren't always going to sound much better then a cheep driver. Funny thing is most commercial offerings from the likes of JBL and others use rather inexpensive drivers and particle board for boxes. It's really not that hard to build better speakers. Every set of loudspeakers that I have ever built, I designed as well and they have all been "audiophile" grade all though I don't like that term because audiophiles are usually the suckers that think spending thousands of dollars esoteric nonsense like interconnects and speaker wire is going to make your system sound incredible.
I'm in the process of building a set of floor standers right now that I am quite certain are going to sound amazing. They are still in the design phase right now. I have my drivers chosen and have the box design all worked out after voicing them together in a test box and I am currently cutting the MDF for the finish boxes.
I have put together systems in vehicles that would blow your mind. Although generally speaking drive units that cost a lot of money are going to have a good build quality but aren't always going to sound much better then a cheep driver. Funny thing is most commercial offerings from the likes of JBL and others use rather inexpensive drivers and particle board for boxes. It's really not that hard to build better speakers. Every set of loudspeakers that I have ever built, I designed as well and they have all been "audiophile" grade all though I don't like that term because audiophiles are usually the suckers that think spending thousands of dollars esoteric nonsense like interconnects and speaker wire is going to make your system sound incredible.
I'm in the process of building a set of floor standers right now that I am quite certain are going to sound amazing. They are still in the design phase right now. I have my drivers chosen and have the box design all worked out after voicing them together in a test box and I am currently cutting the MDF for the finish boxes.
You seem to be unable to make up your mind.
First you said:
..."No worries, I shouldn't have posted in this thread at all since I don't see any point in building a speaker I never heard when out of many speakers I did hear I really liked only a few..."
Then you said:
... "I have nothing against finding, building, collaborating on audio designs and having all sorts of fun..."
But your first statement has a lot of truth to it when you said ..."I shouldn't have posted in this thread at all."
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Wel, i never believed the myth you need expensive parts to have a good speaker. One of the best diy speakers i heared here locally is build by an old Philips engineer (now in his 80's), one who worked on philips hifi speakers in the former factory in Dendermonde, Belgium (now Premium Sound Solutions, an independent company still working on car speakers).
He made a 3 way tower with relative cheap vifa and monacor drivers, self made aircoils, cemented wirewound resistors and wima mkp filmcaps. He is not online and does everything the old way (calculating on paper, drawing on technical paper and so) and needed me to help him measure them as he is a noob on computers. He used to use an osciloscoop to measure his speakers, but wanted to measure it the modern way also with a clio system he bought (but did not understand).
His 3 way towers has a flat response, relative flat dispertion till 45° off axis and a bass response to 35Hz, and that all with a budget of about 500€ including the 18mm birch plywood he needed. But at that time he was 73 and had +50 years experience with building speakers for Philips and other companies and that payed off. He learned me a lot about speakes, most of the basic knowledge i have comes from him.
He made a 3 way tower with relative cheap vifa and monacor drivers, self made aircoils, cemented wirewound resistors and wima mkp filmcaps. He is not online and does everything the old way (calculating on paper, drawing on technical paper and so) and needed me to help him measure them as he is a noob on computers. He used to use an osciloscoop to measure his speakers, but wanted to measure it the modern way also with a clio system he bought (but did not understand).
His 3 way towers has a flat response, relative flat dispertion till 45° off axis and a bass response to 35Hz, and that all with a budget of about 500€ including the 18mm birch plywood he needed. But at that time he was 73 and had +50 years experience with building speakers for Philips and other companies and that payed off. He learned me a lot about speakes, most of the basic knowledge i have comes from him.
Here is one of the many reasons that I got seriously into DIY speaker building. I was at a Rocky Mountain audio show about 10 yrs. ago and one of the people who was demonstrating an expensive (good sounding) speaker system had one of the speakers go down. It seems one of the people attending the show accidentally kicked one of the mono block amps and the cables shorted the amp and blew one speaker. This guy who was running the room did not have the proper allen wrenches to remove the speakers from the cabinet so I went to my friends room, who was also demonstrating an audio system, so my friend and I gave him a hand. This speaker had two 12" woofers, two 7" drivers, and a ribbon tweeter between the 7" drivers. Using an ohm meter, we found the two 7" drivers were blown and one of the 12" drivers was damaged, the tweeter was fused and the fuse was blown. This pair of speakers cost was $29k !!! When we took out all the damaged drivers, we figured that there was about $1,200 retail in total driver costs for both speakers !!! The cabinet was well made, well braced, with an excellent finish and the crossover used good quality parts. I was shocked that all the drivers were off the shelf and readily available. The company rep was called and new drivers were sent overnight and installed. Now, I understand that this company has lots of expenses like salaries, cabinet construction costs, drivers, rent, taxes, shipping, profit, etc. but us DIY people do not have all these additional expenses, so we can use the same or even betters drivers and make a very good cabinet to get as good or better sound for a LOT less money.
Joe
Joe
Joe,
You have described perfectly the great value in DIY speaker building.
Yet, there are people who post here that still don’t get it. They think that a DIYer can’t build anything comparable to a costly commercial speaker when exactly the opposite is true.
We can build speakers that rival or exceed the performance of commercial speakers for a fraction of the price. Sometimes as little as a tenth of the cost.
I think that people who make those posts proclaiming the superiority of commercial products have no DIY experience or interest at all. They probably don’t have the woodworking capability or the inclination to build something themselves. So they resort to a false narrative that satisfies their own needs.
The question I’ve always wondered is why in the world are they on this website to begin with. It is clearly labeled “diyAudio” and if someone is not interested in building speakers themselves why are they spending time here.
You have described perfectly the great value in DIY speaker building.
Yet, there are people who post here that still don’t get it. They think that a DIYer can’t build anything comparable to a costly commercial speaker when exactly the opposite is true.
We can build speakers that rival or exceed the performance of commercial speakers for a fraction of the price. Sometimes as little as a tenth of the cost.
I think that people who make those posts proclaiming the superiority of commercial products have no DIY experience or interest at all. They probably don’t have the woodworking capability or the inclination to build something themselves. So they resort to a false narrative that satisfies their own needs.
The question I’ve always wondered is why in the world are they on this website to begin with. It is clearly labeled “diyAudio” and if someone is not interested in building speakers themselves why are they spending time here.
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There have been some very valid points raised here. I would say that just like children we all love our own, be they speakers or little humans. I hope to build a pair of "Keepers", duel 15" bass, 10" bass/mid, 6" mid and an as yet unselected tweeter. I can see that it can be a tortuous path, many here have helped me to get a better handle on the way forward. I can though also see pitfalls (some builders, even shown on DIYA) have had to eventually give up on the task. I've built two way designs in the past that people have complimented on, but this is a different league. I can also see the attraction of a great pair of second hand boxes, which have been reviewed and listened to, (I'm listening to a pair of immaculate JM Lab Mezzo Utopias bought for £1900 compared to their new price of about £9K) so I can see the attraction of that also. When somebody asks why I want to build, my answer is "Because it's there". These are very personal and subjective things. I'm not sure that there is a right or wrong answer. Thanks to everyone.
Hi,jotom750
Since I don't know exactly what what you are looking for, I can offer some suggestions. Unless you want a very large, heavy, single box speaker. You may be better off putting the two 15' drivers in their own separate box and mount the smaller box containing the rest of the drivers on top of the woofer cabinets. I use Crown pro amplifiers that have built in DSP and crossover functions so you can power and tune your bass box, then use a smaller, high quality, amp from mid bass and up. The crossovers will simpler ( or use DSP for the top also). For tweeters, get the best ones that closely match the efficiencies and polar plots of the other drivers ( unless using DSP ). For drivers, BMS, B&C, Beyma, Faital and some others make excellent drivers. Do lots of reading and ask questions before plunking down any cash. Good luck with your project !!!
Joe
Since I don't know exactly what what you are looking for, I can offer some suggestions. Unless you want a very large, heavy, single box speaker. You may be better off putting the two 15' drivers in their own separate box and mount the smaller box containing the rest of the drivers on top of the woofer cabinets. I use Crown pro amplifiers that have built in DSP and crossover functions so you can power and tune your bass box, then use a smaller, high quality, amp from mid bass and up. The crossovers will simpler ( or use DSP for the top also). For tweeters, get the best ones that closely match the efficiencies and polar plots of the other drivers ( unless using DSP ). For drivers, BMS, B&C, Beyma, Faital and some others make excellent drivers. Do lots of reading and ask questions before plunking down any cash. Good luck with your project !!!
Joe
Hi Hot.
Thanks for your suggestions. Like yourself I think that separate boxes for the four frequency ranges is a must. One only has to touch the cabinet (however robustly it is made) to feel vibrations that can colour the sound. I have not really considered the fully active/dsp route as I thought that it may "rob" the speaker of it's "soul" (I have no experience of it and it's very unknown to me!). It would be great to try though if it were not too expensive relative to function so I will think about that. As many here have advised a workable analysis setup is not too costly. As with any home designed and built speakers it's all unknown as to whether it will be better that that one presently has. The active route may simplify that aspect of the design.
Kind Regards. Richard.
Thanks for your suggestions. Like yourself I think that separate boxes for the four frequency ranges is a must. One only has to touch the cabinet (however robustly it is made) to feel vibrations that can colour the sound. I have not really considered the fully active/dsp route as I thought that it may "rob" the speaker of it's "soul" (I have no experience of it and it's very unknown to me!). It would be great to try though if it were not too expensive relative to function so I will think about that. As many here have advised a workable analysis setup is not too costly. As with any home designed and built speakers it's all unknown as to whether it will be better that that one presently has. The active route may simplify that aspect of the design.
Kind Regards. Richard.
I'm building speakers for more than 40 years now.
First thing I had to realize, in the very beginning, there was no way then for me to construct a good speaker by my self. Even after reading any book available at that time, I was lacking measuring tools, parts to try out x-overs and years of experience.
So for most of my builds, I used copies of commercial speakers or well reputed kit's from some rare magazines.
In general, building your own speakers is a very rewarding task, done right you get a result that most can not afford buying finished, new or even used.
New speakers are always overpriced, the really large savings on used speakers are only with those that do not sound well for their price. Good used speakers stay expensive.
So go for DIYS!
I know there are some people around, that do not believe you can build a high end speaker by yourself.
In many cases they are right, because the “yourself” building is done wrong for several reasons.
I will list some DIYS speaker builds I have witnessed:
Some build cabinets from hand cut wood, held together from a few screws and with holes everywhere. Asked why they did not do an air thigh box, they argued the reflex port was a hole anyway. Really. No joke.
Others build wonderful cabinets, but ignored the polarity of the speakers, as they did not even know what + and – meant on a speaker. After month of bass free listening and saying bad things about DIYS speakers, some nice guy (me) corrected this problem and left them speechless.
Soldering is a rare skill, soldering parts in the right order even more complicated.
Then there is the “I can do anything, I'm so smart” type, who bought some “carefully selected” speakers and a universal x-over, or, even worse, calculated his own.
The “any idiot can do a x-over” specialists are a very special variety. I read a lot from them, even in this thread. They buy good speaker and never get them to sound right. Buying a measuring microphone does not make you a speaker specialist.
Some of the worst ignorant “I know anything better” people are working in the Pro audio sector. They know anything about a PA set up, but nothing about HIFI speakers in living rooms. Let them touch a HIFI system and things go down the drain.
Then there are the “this speaker component is the same as” guys. They are so stupid to think they can tell by the look what is inside or insist “Terry told me, he has a buddy at XYZ”.
The sad truth is, there is only a hand full of capable HIFI speaker designers in Europe, outside of the known brands. These guys have a lot to do and are not always easy to deal with, as they usually know their value.
One thing you can be sure, the guy in the electronics shop, selling you some white box speakers and a few parts, is not one of this rare species. Even as he can draw a sketch of an x-over, while standing at the counter and talking to you. Of course he insists this will net you a world class high end speaker system. If you are lucky the tweeter won't blow on the first track...
There are real, capable designers, that do DIYS kits that really do outperform industry speakers, even many times their price. They have some advantages over brand designers I must admit.
They do not have to choose from a limited number of chassis, but can pick the best from a huge market. Tweeter from brand A and woofer from brand B.
Also, if they design a speaker, in most cases they are not handicapped by brand politics, where speakers have to sound better, the more expensive they sell and the marketing decides how large they are.
Look at commercial speakers, there are always “families” of basically similar design, priced by size.
The independent designer can simply build what makes sense, not what fills pages in a catalog.
From my personal experience, I can recommend speaker kits from the German magazines “Klang&Ton” and “Hobby HIFI”. Over the years they have developed and published hundreds off kits in any price region. Troels Gravesen has already been mentioned.
Were I do not always agree, is the need for stupid expensive x-over parts. A good part is sure fine, but a lot of high end stuff is crazy overpriced and lacks any physical base. Did I say “Mundorf caps, coils and resistors”?
A copper coil is made from copper, why pay the price of one made from Sterling silver if you are still mentally sane?
There is no technical need for a “silver in oil gold cap” in any
space ship, why put them into your speaker and pay more for a cap, than your Dynaudio high end tweeter costs?
Get such a kit, build the cabinet by the plan, do not “improve anything”, change dimensions or shortcut, do the finish to your pleasure and you will experience what DIYS speaker really are.
A final hint: Leave the really cheap speaker to the industry. They can build cheap dirt much better than you will ever do.
The fun of having a result that can challenge a 5 times as expensive finished speaker, starts at about 300-400$ a pair, including parts, excluding wood and exterior finish.
PS mixing HIFI and PA speaker is a very special, high art. If you have a large listening area, it can give very impressing results.
I'm sorry to say, in most cases the result only satisfied the one who build it. Just some heavy upper bass "bang-bum" and screaming tweeters do not make a high end system.
First thing I had to realize, in the very beginning, there was no way then for me to construct a good speaker by my self. Even after reading any book available at that time, I was lacking measuring tools, parts to try out x-overs and years of experience.
So for most of my builds, I used copies of commercial speakers or well reputed kit's from some rare magazines.
In general, building your own speakers is a very rewarding task, done right you get a result that most can not afford buying finished, new or even used.
New speakers are always overpriced, the really large savings on used speakers are only with those that do not sound well for their price. Good used speakers stay expensive.
So go for DIYS!
I know there are some people around, that do not believe you can build a high end speaker by yourself.
In many cases they are right, because the “yourself” building is done wrong for several reasons.
I will list some DIYS speaker builds I have witnessed:
Some build cabinets from hand cut wood, held together from a few screws and with holes everywhere. Asked why they did not do an air thigh box, they argued the reflex port was a hole anyway. Really. No joke.
Others build wonderful cabinets, but ignored the polarity of the speakers, as they did not even know what + and – meant on a speaker. After month of bass free listening and saying bad things about DIYS speakers, some nice guy (me) corrected this problem and left them speechless.
Soldering is a rare skill, soldering parts in the right order even more complicated.
Then there is the “I can do anything, I'm so smart” type, who bought some “carefully selected” speakers and a universal x-over, or, even worse, calculated his own.
The “any idiot can do a x-over” specialists are a very special variety. I read a lot from them, even in this thread. They buy good speaker and never get them to sound right. Buying a measuring microphone does not make you a speaker specialist.
Some of the worst ignorant “I know anything better” people are working in the Pro audio sector. They know anything about a PA set up, but nothing about HIFI speakers in living rooms. Let them touch a HIFI system and things go down the drain.
Then there are the “this speaker component is the same as” guys. They are so stupid to think they can tell by the look what is inside or insist “Terry told me, he has a buddy at XYZ”.
The sad truth is, there is only a hand full of capable HIFI speaker designers in Europe, outside of the known brands. These guys have a lot to do and are not always easy to deal with, as they usually know their value.
One thing you can be sure, the guy in the electronics shop, selling you some white box speakers and a few parts, is not one of this rare species. Even as he can draw a sketch of an x-over, while standing at the counter and talking to you. Of course he insists this will net you a world class high end speaker system. If you are lucky the tweeter won't blow on the first track...
There are real, capable designers, that do DIYS kits that really do outperform industry speakers, even many times their price. They have some advantages over brand designers I must admit.
They do not have to choose from a limited number of chassis, but can pick the best from a huge market. Tweeter from brand A and woofer from brand B.
Also, if they design a speaker, in most cases they are not handicapped by brand politics, where speakers have to sound better, the more expensive they sell and the marketing decides how large they are.
Look at commercial speakers, there are always “families” of basically similar design, priced by size.
The independent designer can simply build what makes sense, not what fills pages in a catalog.
From my personal experience, I can recommend speaker kits from the German magazines “Klang&Ton” and “Hobby HIFI”. Over the years they have developed and published hundreds off kits in any price region. Troels Gravesen has already been mentioned.
Were I do not always agree, is the need for stupid expensive x-over parts. A good part is sure fine, but a lot of high end stuff is crazy overpriced and lacks any physical base. Did I say “Mundorf caps, coils and resistors”?
A copper coil is made from copper, why pay the price of one made from Sterling silver if you are still mentally sane?
There is no technical need for a “silver in oil gold cap” in any
space ship, why put them into your speaker and pay more for a cap, than your Dynaudio high end tweeter costs?
Get such a kit, build the cabinet by the plan, do not “improve anything”, change dimensions or shortcut, do the finish to your pleasure and you will experience what DIYS speaker really are.
A final hint: Leave the really cheap speaker to the industry. They can build cheap dirt much better than you will ever do.
The fun of having a result that can challenge a 5 times as expensive finished speaker, starts at about 300-400$ a pair, including parts, excluding wood and exterior finish.
PS mixing HIFI and PA speaker is a very special, high art. If you have a large listening area, it can give very impressing results.
I'm sorry to say, in most cases the result only satisfied the one who build it. Just some heavy upper bass "bang-bum" and screaming tweeters do not make a high end system.
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Right. I shouldn't and I don't think should you since the thread's topic is questioning validity of buying $12k USD speaker kit unheard
And so far, ALL of you imply that indeed buying such kit unheard is a very good idea because by your groupthink logic it surely will rival $360k USD factory speaker.
Spending $20 on speaker driver or $200 on a set or even $1000 on kit and having a personal satisfaction that something works and sometimes works well enough is different than arrogant trumpeting of world beating designs nobody heard of.
So, who on this board invested over $10k in speaker parts and had a chance to compare it with $100k speaker from an established brand (not fly by night furniture makers) and the jury said that DIY is indeed a better speaker?
Thank you. That is exactly the same message I have been trying to deliver, but some people unfortunately still do not believe it and claim that commercially manufactured speakers are always better.
They don't understand and won't accept that a DIYer can do much better at a much lower cost.
I agree with you 100% on the listen part. As a person who like going to Audio Shows, there is one thing that sometimes one element that is completely missed out here ..... TASTE. They could be all well engineered, flat frequency response, but they will sound different.
If you are building a kit, there is a good chance you will like it, but chances of you loving it is another matter. You could probably walk into an audio show and come across a set that you just love the sound. Getting a kit that gives a sound you love is more tricky unless you know what are looking for.
Oon
Exactly, usually people in this hobby do not buy audio products by pounds. And this is the reason DIY community tries to clone products more or less successfully. Somehow they think some designers are more talented than others or simply they loved the sound of the finished product and want that sound for the price they can afford. Not the sound of Jeff , Troels , Lynn or any other internet figure whose designs almost nobody ever heard.
But you still miss the thread's topic. How come you all post in a wrong thread ?
But you still miss the thread's topic. How come you all post in a wrong thread ?
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Actually, quite the opposite is true. I've gone to audio shows and come away thinking that nothing really sounded that great. OK, but not great. Most of it very artificial sounding. Not natural. Not pleasant. Rather gimmicky instead.
And they never play the kind of music at these shows that allows you to hear the real performance of the speakers. They play soft easy stuff with very limited dynamic range. That way they don't really stress the speaker's ability to perform.
I asked at one show for them to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for me and was almost thrown out of the hotel.
But the Piccolos kits that I built sound terrific to me. Everything I would want and expect from small 2-ways. And I do love the sound. Can't imagine it being very much better.
And I'll bet you will find that most people here who have built their own DIY speakers have similar feelings. So sorry, but your premise that chances DIYers will not love their speakers doesn't hold.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, nor do you really understand DIY audio. It's been clear from your previous posts that you completely miss the point of DIY, but this post pretty much proves it for once and all.
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For the sake of civility in this thread please ignore what I say OK . There are very few true DIY personas on this forum. The rest just follows and assembles to save money. Saving money seems to be your main motivation too. Maybe you would simply express your personal opinion on buying $12.000 USD speaker kit unheard which would be the first your post on the topic.
What in the world are you talking about??? This is a "diyAudio" forum and the majority of the posters are DIYers. You don't seem to be in touch with the reality here.