Has anyone compared their DIY loudspeakers side-by-side with a commercially available design of similar cost? Which did you prefer?
There are some incredible DIY designs from Troels and Zaph that use sophisticated crossovers and high-end drivers. But I just wonder - the finished loudspeakers are voiced and tweaked to the preferences of one individual in a limited number of listening rooms. On the other hand, mainstream manufacturers might voice and tune their speakers to appeal to a wide variety of listeners and have many different acoustic environments to test in.
Troels and Zaph are also restricted to standard drivers from Scanspeak, Seas, etc. (except for Troels' Janzten collaboration), whereas commercial designers can ordered special editions of the very same drivers with optimized electromechanical parameters and materials for a particular application. They can also match drivers and specify closer tolerances than what we could probably get from Madisound, for example.
On the other hand, manufacturers may need to make compromises to reduce overall cost, since the retail markup over manufacturing cost is probably 5-10x.
There are some incredible DIY designs from Troels and Zaph that use sophisticated crossovers and high-end drivers. But I just wonder - the finished loudspeakers are voiced and tweaked to the preferences of one individual in a limited number of listening rooms. On the other hand, mainstream manufacturers might voice and tune their speakers to appeal to a wide variety of listeners and have many different acoustic environments to test in.
Troels and Zaph are also restricted to standard drivers from Scanspeak, Seas, etc. (except for Troels' Janzten collaboration), whereas commercial designers can ordered special editions of the very same drivers with optimized electromechanical parameters and materials for a particular application. They can also match drivers and specify closer tolerances than what we could probably get from Madisound, for example.
On the other hand, manufacturers may need to make compromises to reduce overall cost, since the retail markup over manufacturing cost is probably 5-10x.
I haven't build my own speakers yet, but as far as I can see there are two main reasons to diy beside the pride in doing it;
1- get the same quality for less money than the equivalent commercial speaker
2- create a speaker to own's own taste as it's not commercially available
Looking at #1 I'd say any decent designed diy speaker will outperform the commercial version.
So far I've also only read reviews from complete kit builders that state the same.
Those that can order batches of drivers at a manufactor can indeed ask for specific parameters, but I doubt if that will make a big enough difference with the diy offerings that it's something that can't be achieved in diy with a few modifications
After all, it's not that they will all of a sudden make the magically perfect 1-50.000 Hz driver just beause someone wants to order a 1000 pieces of that.
I think you're asking the wrong question, and that the question should be if someone has build a speaker that they feel has outperformed the best in the commercial field (multi million buck installations excepted ofcourse )
1- get the same quality for less money than the equivalent commercial speaker
2- create a speaker to own's own taste as it's not commercially available
Looking at #1 I'd say any decent designed diy speaker will outperform the commercial version.
So far I've also only read reviews from complete kit builders that state the same.
Those that can order batches of drivers at a manufactor can indeed ask for specific parameters, but I doubt if that will make a big enough difference with the diy offerings that it's something that can't be achieved in diy with a few modifications
After all, it's not that they will all of a sudden make the magically perfect 1-50.000 Hz driver just beause someone wants to order a 1000 pieces of that.
I think you're asking the wrong question, and that the question should be if someone has build a speaker that they feel has outperformed the best in the commercial field (multi million buck installations excepted ofcourse
)
Put this simply - the woofers I used recently feature in a pair of £600 floor standers. I paid £150 for the whole project. You can therefore imagine what they'd do to speakers in the same price bracket.
I'd say DIY will always beat Commercial stuff, simply because it's yours and you can design it for your needs - if you need to fill a large room, you can do that, if you want it to sound a particular way (ie, less bass for corner loading), you can. With commercial, you'll have to look around for ages to get something that will suit, and it will cost 4x as much as the ones you just made.
Chris
I'd say DIY will always beat Commercial stuff, simply because it's yours and you can design it for your needs - if you need to fill a large room, you can do that, if you want it to sound a particular way (ie, less bass for corner loading), you can. With commercial, you'll have to look around for ages to get something that will suit, and it will cost 4x as much as the ones you just made.
Chris
If you want to save money, buy commercial. If you want to have fun, DIY.
If you cost DIY time into the equation, the cost of tools, etc, the Commercial product will win hands down.
Commercial builders pay much lower prices for their drivers, and can produce much better cabinets than the average DIY'er. However marketing is a major cost.
If however you only price in materials, DIY wins.
If you cost DIY time into the equation, the cost of tools, etc, the Commercial product will win hands down.
Commercial builders pay much lower prices for their drivers, and can produce much better cabinets than the average DIY'er. However marketing is a major cost.
If however you only price in materials, DIY wins.
Not quite
Only up to a certain price point though. If you have to do everything from scratch, yes, then you can't beat commercial up to x hundred bucks because they can push costs by mass production.
If you look at complete kits (that includes the wood panels) you will at least break even with the cheaper kits as you don't need the tools, let alone if you go for a high end design.
Besides, I don't think people will buy tools for several hundred bucks only to build a 100 buck speaker if they want to save money. ;-)
And I doubt diy means inferior cabinets per se as I've seen the use of exotic woods and CNC crafted aliminium parts, high gloss finishes, and heavily braced interiors at least equaling commercial speakers.
You mentioned marketing, the figures I've seen from people in retail add another 40% or so to the price. I know one shop that gives you a 20% discount if you order equipment that he doesn't deal himself. He doesn't lose on that.
All in all, a cheap speaker can't be made cost effectively from scratch, but a serious diy design will beat commercial speakers at pricepoint (unless you earn so much per hour that you don't even bother bending over to pick up a 100 bucks from the ground).
Only up to a certain price point though. If you have to do everything from scratch, yes, then you can't beat commercial up to x hundred bucks because they can push costs by mass production.
If you look at complete kits (that includes the wood panels) you will at least break even with the cheaper kits as you don't need the tools, let alone if you go for a high end design.
Besides, I don't think people will buy tools for several hundred bucks only to build a 100 buck speaker if they want to save money. ;-)
And I doubt diy means inferior cabinets per se as I've seen the use of exotic woods and CNC crafted aliminium parts, high gloss finishes, and heavily braced interiors at least equaling commercial speakers.
You mentioned marketing, the figures I've seen from people in retail add another 40% or so to the price. I know one shop that gives you a 20% discount if you order equipment that he doesn't deal himself. He doesn't lose on that.
All in all, a cheap speaker can't be made cost effectively from scratch, but a serious diy design will beat commercial speakers at pricepoint (unless you earn so much per hour that you don't even bother bending over to pick up a 100 bucks from the ground
).I listened to a DIY budget-version of Troels' Ellam (15W + D2904/9800, $1200+) and compared it to the B&W CDM-1 (6.5 kevlar + 1" metal, $1100, but prob now ~$1500 equivalent). I slightly preferred the Ellam because it sounded more natural and detailed, especially in the highs. The bass extension was surprisingly beter than the B&W with the larger woofer. However, the Ellam seemed to suffer from lack of BSC, and the 100-300Hz region dropout made the speaker sound thin compared to the B&W on some material. The Ellam was also very inefficient from a db/W stanpoint. Comparing the Ellam to a higher end B&W (CDM9NT, retailed $2400, prob now $3000 equivalent), there was absolutely no comparison. The CDM9NT sounded better in every respect.
Does anyone else have similar experiences?
Does anyone else have similar experiences?
Can produce more attractively finished cabinets in some cases mabye, but better acoustically? I'm not so sure. They might have better simulation/measuring capacity, but they are limited by shipping weight. Many DIY cabinets are teriffically heavy and well damped compared to commercial offerings for this reason. At the very high end though this is no longer an issue as many ultra high-end commercial offerings are also overbuilt.
Dr Em is spot on the money, and the original statement that DIY cabinets are not built as well as commercial is insulting when you look at the effort that goes into some of the builds illustrated on here. The Amish 45/97 that I just built is considerably better in terms of structure and damping, choice of material thickness, etc.
Smellygas, have you opened up any commercial speakers and had a poke around? What your find is cheap chipboard, very little bracing, a token piece of foam and some very cheap crossover components in anything under £1000. Being the inquisitive type I have opened up my Monitor Audio Silver 9i, TDL RTL3SE, Mission 771, Tannoy 607 and JPW Gold Monitors. They are built to a price and the company has to pay for design and testing, staff costs, fatory & tooling, advertising, H&S, shipping & distribution, there is dealer mark-up and profit. The actual cost of materials is going to be pretty small after all of that.
So in answer to the question, and in agreement with others here, yes they can beat them especially as you move up the price range (where you start paying more design overhead on speakers, as they sell less of them). I am particularly impressed with the Amish, which has cost me in the order of £500 to build and easily betters the MA's which I paid £500 when they were on half price offer. This is not to say the MA's are a bad speaker, do a google search and they get something like 4.93/5 from user reviews.
Hope this helps you to move to the dark side!
Smellygas, have you opened up any commercial speakers and had a poke around? What your find is cheap chipboard, very little bracing, a token piece of foam and some very cheap crossover components in anything under £1000. Being the inquisitive type I have opened up my Monitor Audio Silver 9i, TDL RTL3SE, Mission 771, Tannoy 607 and JPW Gold Monitors. They are built to a price and the company has to pay for design and testing, staff costs, fatory & tooling, advertising, H&S, shipping & distribution, there is dealer mark-up and profit. The actual cost of materials is going to be pretty small after all of that.
So in answer to the question, and in agreement with others here, yes they can beat them especially as you move up the price range (where you start paying more design overhead on speakers, as they sell less of them). I am particularly impressed with the Amish, which has cost me in the order of £500 to build and easily betters the MA's which I paid £500 when they were on half price offer. This is not to say the MA's are a bad speaker, do a google search and they get something like 4.93/5 from user reviews.
Hope this helps you to move to the dark side!
I have dealt with three market segments.
Retail: Markups are horrendous! The products in the normal market, say less than 5K are built to a price and sound like it. I have sent off the sample for approval and had it returned with their version of the x-over, tiny components that wreck most of my efforts. Bad Karma.
Kits: Much the same. They want cheap! X-overs are mostly laughable when they come back. Drivers that they rave about are generally cheap lines. Of late even brands like Vifa are MICy. (Made in China). They don't have QC testing and the variations from batch to batch are terrible.
DIY: You can do what you want and time aside, (It is a hobby after all) the sound will beat the other categories hands down! It is chalk and cheese.
I have worked on systems at 20K for manufacturers and believe me most of what you read is pure hype. In fact one manufacturer had me write the hype. I seperated it into 'real' and 'hype'. Their advertising listed all the hype and none of the real.
Hope this helps.
Terry
Retail: Markups are horrendous! The products in the normal market, say less than 5K are built to a price and sound like it. I have sent off the sample for approval and had it returned with their version of the x-over, tiny components that wreck most of my efforts. Bad Karma.
Kits: Much the same. They want cheap! X-overs are mostly laughable when they come back. Drivers that they rave about are generally cheap lines. Of late even brands like Vifa are MICy. (Made in China). They don't have QC testing and the variations from batch to batch are terrible.
DIY: You can do what you want and time aside, (It is a hobby after all) the sound will beat the other categories hands down! It is chalk and cheese.
I have worked on systems at 20K for manufacturers and believe me most of what you read is pure hype. In fact one manufacturer had me write the hype. I seperated it into 'real' and 'hype'. Their advertising listed all the hype and none of the real.
Hope this helps.
Terry
My first job was a staff in a stereo store. In that period I had a lot of chances to get in touch with various audio stuff. I remember at that time my favorite speakers were in the price range of US$ 10 ~ 15 thousands or so, which I could never afford.
Then I started to design and make my own. That's the only way except for robbing a bank. Eventually I still spent quite a lot of money in components and woodworks in the first project, which was about 1/5 of that of my favorite commercial ones. Very "high end" in expense for a first time DIYer.
All these years, I lost count of the money I spent on audio. Anyway, if I 'explored' this field by purchasing instead of DIY, I would have spent much more money. That's for sure.
And what I've learned and enjoyed along the way is priceless. What a bonus except for the saving in money!
Oh! what about the contest? Hmmm... by that 1/5 expense, TBH I didn't catch up with the commercial ones in a short time. Pity there was no forum like this at that time, or I should've been quicker. Now, I think I win. But as said I lost count of the money I've spent, and my DIY result now and the commercial product then are far from apple to apple, so it's actually hard to compare.
Anyway, DIY is a way of life, and I'll carry on.
Then I started to design and make my own. That's the only way except for robbing a bank. Eventually I still spent quite a lot of money in components and woodworks in the first project, which was about 1/5 of that of my favorite commercial ones. Very "high end" in expense for a first time DIYer.
All these years, I lost count of the money I spent on audio. Anyway, if I 'explored' this field by purchasing instead of DIY, I would have spent much more money. That's for sure.
And what I've learned and enjoyed along the way is priceless. What a bonus except for the saving in money!
Oh! what about the contest? Hmmm... by that 1/5 expense, TBH I didn't catch up with the commercial ones in a short time. Pity there was no forum like this at that time, or I should've been quicker. Now, I think I win. But as said I lost count of the money I've spent, and my DIY result now and the commercial product then are far from apple to apple, so it's actually hard to compare.
Anyway, DIY is a way of life, and I'll carry on.
Im constantly buying speakers, electronics, etc because Im in the audio hobby for the fun of testing.
I have probably returned more speakers then most
I have owned most the AV123 products. I have purchased Salk speakers, Ascend speakers, Paradigms, PSBs and Klipsch.
I have tried to get B&Ws in house but the local hifi shop refuses a trial period.
I have put them side by side with many of my DIY speakers and for the $$$ most of the comercials do not come close to the performance. The RB kits this past summer for under $100 where a serious bargain and with the crossover upgrade found on HTguide.com they were as good as $1k bookshelf speakers.
I havent been doing DIY speakers for a long time but there are tons of incredible kits out there (Zaph's new kit is on Madisound). I believe if you ignore the finish and your time to do it all the costs of the DIY project is about 1/4th to 1/5th the price tag of a similar consumer speaker.
I currently have DIY 3 way active high SPL/low distortion mains (Neopro5i, PHL1120, TD12S drivers), I have not found a comercial speaker that can match these. I believe the Salk HT3s or HT4s should do the job, I can not buy another Salk speaker and return it though, its not fair to Jim Salk. I wish I made it out to RMAF though.
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This is in direct contradiction with my own experience. Buying second hand, especially if you are not a complete idiot allows you to own a good system practically for free. At any time you should be able to resell components for the price paid or maybe even for a profit. I have done it successfully over many years and it is really quite easy. Having a serious diy hobby is a different proposition altogether. Saving money by diying? Ha, ha.
The only speakers i've ever built were electrostats and these were relatively difficult to screw up. Otoh, i've heard a few atrocious sounding dynamic diy speakers. And far from cheap. Usually the crossovers remain "work in progress" for many years until an annoyed spouse puts an end to the misery.
Not saying that it can't be done but there are just too many variables for a diyer to get right. A clone of an existing design seems like the best proposition but even those are not easy. I remember reading some dishearting threads about the frustrations of getting those ProAc clones to sound good.
And a second hand set of expensive speakers always maintain some residual value, while a set of diyed speakers may only attract another diyer
We most likely just sell the drivers anyways instead of the actually speakers.
I know my initial DIY speaker build saved me money. I couldnt get the same performance for under $10K in speakers. There are kits on Madisound.com that can not be touched by consumer choices and boxes can be built for under $100/box by hobbiest with CNCs.
No doubt that building something from pure scratch is a completely different game but there are many successful projects out there to follow, Zaph ZRT designs or Jim Holtz's Statements. Name a consumer speaker that can touch either of those in performance?
The problem with DIY is that its addicting You keep buying stuff because its just a joy to build something.
btw, your only speaker build was electrostats? Wow, very impressive to try something that difficult.
I know my initial DIY speaker build saved me money. I couldnt get the same performance for under $10K in speakers. There are kits on Madisound.com that can not be touched by consumer choices and boxes can be built for under $100/box by hobbiest with CNCs.
No doubt that building something from pure scratch is a completely different game but there are many successful projects out there to follow, Zaph ZRT designs or Jim Holtz's Statements. Name a consumer speaker that can touch either of those in performance?
The problem with DIY is that its addicting
You keep buying stuff because its just a joy to build something.btw, your only speaker build was electrostats? Wow, very impressive to try something that difficult.
It's like anything else you need the right tools. To even have a chance at getting a crossover right you need a decent measurement system and good crossover modeling software to input your measurements into. Without that you are definately in for a long haul. I have done several clones and as long as you get the driver spacing and offsets and the Inductor DCR's "right" they have all worked out well.
Rob
Not really that impressive. Early eighties - i was young and enthusiastic and knew personally an electrostatic headphone manufacturer who gave me enough advice and some ESL 63 panels/transformers for inspiration. And some mylar and coating. After a few months of getting fibreglass dust into my lungs they played quite well acoustic guitar and solo violin and generally most music with no guts or bass. Then i went back to my JBL L112
2nd hand market here is not big enough to support effective exchanges. For those I was interested, there was practically no 'flow' of trading. So a 'proper' chance to get what I wanted barely existed. And, I still couldn't afford the price anyway, even in 2nd hand. After all, they call them "high end".
And, for us DIY kind of guys, there's something in common is the ambition: "I can do better than that". That should be another strong motivation.
And, for us DIY kind of guys, there's something in common is the ambition: "I can do better than that". That should be another strong motivation.
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Hi All,
Terry brings up some good points although some are not as defined as he states.
Retail: Many of the companies in audio are not large, their overhead to sales ratio is not large either, because the audio segment of the market actually isn't really very large. The Super-Duper Speaker or Terrific Turntable you read about in Stereophile magazine may in their opinion represent the SOTA, but if you check on the total sales it's infinitesimal. I have a friend that has a R**kport TT. It's considered one of, or "the" best turntable by reviewers. Were talking about $80,000 for a turntable representing a lot of design work involved and it does sound great! The owner of the turntable told me, when I over at his place to listen to his system, that the company had sold 8 of them worldwide.
Kits: These can be a terrific bargain, or not. They come in all flavors, and it's a hard market to enter and succeed. There have been some really great ones and I've actually participated in the crossover voicing sessions on a number of them.
There's a review of one speaker that I participated on (The Exodus Audio "Kepler" kit). You can read the review for yourself on Soundstage! online audio magazine. In fact, I did the original prototype cabinets and helped to choose the tweeter. The owner of the company and I did the original crossover (which needed revision as it turned out). When the crossover problems were ironed out and a final cabinet choice was made, it became a commercial offering. Read the review, check the measurements and then check the price.
DIY: I agree with Terry on the first part, however having designed and then conducted "The Puget Sound! DIY Speaker Contest" over the last decade, I'll have to waiver on the second part. I've heard some absolutely great designs, some would never be a viable product and some would. However, some were not too great, but every one of them was fun, and I think that's the whole point of DIY. I like beating the "big boys" at their own game or turning out a speaker that an owner favorably compared to his own $70,000 speakers for...$33.00.
Best Regards,
TerryO
On the DIY side, I agree with all that have said you need the right tools. This may mean using someone elses design.
The primary thing to remember is to have the ability to close the design loop. That is, Cad, build, test, Cad, build etc until you get it right. Like all endevours, the better tools you have (and the knowledge to use them!) the easier the process.
Terry
The primary thing to remember is to have the ability to close the design loop. That is, Cad, build, test, Cad, build etc until you get it right. Like all endevours, the better tools you have (and the knowledge to use them!) the easier the process.
Terry
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