Hello All, is DIY the answer?

I don't mean for this to sound like a total downer, but DIY is just "for fun" and not an answer to anything. You can cut directly to the goal of great sound buy buying commercial products.

Some will say that it is possible to DIY audio things (amplifier, speaker) for some fraction (e.g. 20%) of the retail cost of a comparable item. But this is not really true if you are starting out from scratch. First you must acquire equipment and knowledge and skill to pull that off. This takes time and certainly money. There is certainly adventure and learning (which I personally find fun) in the process, and I think this is what motivates many DIYers to continue on with their hobby. This makes DIY a bit of a rabbit hole, and once you fall in you may never get out!

FWIW, I assume "in your school days" you were not designing multi-layer digital analog mixed signal PCBs? Perhaps you mean to buy a pre-built ADC board and then put it in a box? I see you posted over in the thread about DIY ADC modules... those are still NLA. There are now rather inexpensive pro audio (USB) recording interfaces from e.g. MOTU and even TOPPING that have very good ADC performance. Have you checked these out?
 
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Behind almost every successful commercial audio producer is an ex-DIYer, nothing comes out of nowhere. Plus, all this is fun, and the results are sometimes in the range of very expensive commercial devices. Some have turned their experience into a commercial zone, most never have.