First time building speakers

I have been watching and reading all about DIY speakers and I am very interested in building my own desktop monitors. I have never buildt any speakers before and I am reading many different opinions about what methods, designs, crossovers, etc to use for a speaker design. I am getting a little overwhelmed by the many design options and drivers.

I am currently looking into building dome shaped speakers, using the ikea bamboo bowls as a bevel and 3D printing the backside (see attached image for inspiration). I am still undecided if I want to build these openback or closed due to my room setup. Besides audio quality, I am also looking for a unique speaker design as I find box shaped speaker designs boring and uninteristing. I want someone to walk into my room and immediatly look and want to listen to my beautiful cheap DIY speakers 😉.

My desk is placed in a very small (2m wide) student room with a low ceiling due to a bed being above my desk. I have cheap accoustic panels on sections of my walls to help with the interference, but I think my room is highly sensitive to this issue. I have a second hand KEF sub woofer in my current setup, with 4 KEF HTS 5001 satellites for my surround and use a Onkyo TX-SR393 receiver. I however want to upgrade the front 2 speakers as I want to be able to enjoy the full fidelity of my vynil collection. I listen to a variety of music genres like alternative rock (Radiohead), Electronic (Royksopp, Daftpunk), and rock (AC/DC, Nirvana), but I also enjoy listening to dj sets from the hard techno to trance scenes.

I am a complete beginner when it comes to speaker building, maybe its wiser if I build a kit or fully guided DIY project before designing my own speakers. I am open to hearing suggestions and other peoples expereinces or builds.
 

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Your cabinet style is a bigger consideration than choice of driver. Open vs closed back cabinets aren't a 50/50 choice. Open speakers should be experienced but closed usually make the better starting choice.

In any case, welcome. I'll save the details for when you start a thread in the Multi-Way subforum 🙂
 
Our advice for newbies: build something modest.

And for near-field speakers 1-way fullranges do things a muktiway can’t.


dave