Built your own speakers ?

I have built my own speakers. Started with kits, then moved on to my own designs. There is a lot of room in the hobby for everyone, no matter what your skill level. I think it's a great thing for someone to build their own speakers. You can get great(or poor) sound, but I think the biggest thing is that you have to do your homework first. I found that that the most important things I learned were: 1). A + B often does not equal C. 2). Don't think you are going to build a reference set of speakers the first(or second) time you try - there is a LOT to learn(from experience). 3). Use your ears, and go around and find out what type of sound YOU like. Many people are disappointed after hearing the best equipment (hopefully they didn't buy before listening). Not that the equipment is not good, it just doesn't suit their tastes. That said, my current speakers are not homemade, but they are the best speakers I've ever heard. I could never build them, no matter what kind of CNC equipment I had. They are not typical in shape, so hard to work with the manufacturer realized they could not produce them in volume - they now make more typical shapes. From the lessons I learned, I will upgrade them, as there is always room for that, no matter how great. Better materials are available to us every day. I'd be happy to offer advice. GOOD LUCK!

Re: Who has built their own speaker systems My design ideas are less extreme and perhaps more elegant, but I don't feel the need to be ridiculed by the jerkwads on here that don't know as much about speaker design as I do (which is most all of them). A few of my designs might be good enough to be "world beaters" one day, you never know. The point is, you started this thread as sort of a confessional to say "look what I did tens of years ago...gee, I'm glad I'm past that stage now"...There's entirely too much of that bull dung going on in this hobby already. I just don't look at speaker design that way, and don't feel the need to justify my speaker design philosophies to anyone in a public forum, because the "public" doesn't need to know anyhow. And as far as nano-decible measurements go, the human variable is never absent in gathering this "data", and certainly no one on this forum has their room dialed in enough to make use of such skilled-labor intensive testing/manufacturing. And most assuredly, anyone who can't even hear the full frequency range to begin with (anyone over age 40), has no business commenting on loudspeakers in the first place. I'm a speaker hobbyist and audiophile, and I refuse to apologize for my philosophy to anyone, especially if they think they've "seen it all, heard it all"! By Carl_eber on 07-04-00

It was very interesting reading the people's comments on DYI. I posted above my comments about my BESL dual 10 sub. Thorty40 I understand your frustration. I had a local custom cabinet maker build my sub case. Since he had to fit it in around other projects, It took a month to get it. Was it worth it? Yes. The build is as good( I think better) as anything in my price range. Most subs in my 1000 price range don't use anything more exotic than MDF; so the materials issue is pointless. I did have him use soild oak instead of veneer. Looks wonderful but really makes this thing heavy. My amp is a madisound 5230. It looks very similar to the amps in my 1k price range. I suspect they they are all made in Asia. I almost sprung for a North amp but the 500 price was too high for the project. I figure I can always upgrade later. I spent tons of time reading about sub design at the sub DYI page and on Madisound's board. I was going to purchase a pair of Totem Model ones for my basement but now have changed my mind and will purchase a pair of BESL 2.4s.

I have. OK, my opinion(and that's all it is): Simpler is better, quality of sound goes down as the crossover order goes up. So 1st order is best, but you need drivers that can operate with first order crossovers(not all are good for this). 2nd order would also be a good choice. Whatever you do, don't get much more complex than this. Also, along the lines of simple, if you have a good design to start with, you need none of the other frills(impedence flattening, notch filters, trap circuits, etc.). If you see plans for stuff like that, look elsewhere, the design maybe flawed from the start. My reference speakers (bought, not made) are WATT/Puppy clones, and there are only TWO crossover components on the sats, a cap and a coil. If you have a good design, that's all you need. Also, making the crossover more complex makes the speaker a MUCH more difficult load for the amp. So, keep this in mind if you like tubes or SET. In order of importance: crossover, box, drivers. You can also argue that the box is number 1, and I won't argue much. Make the box as sturdy as possible. If you're not good at this, have a cabinet maker do it for you. They'll make you a great box for floorstanders for around $350. There are thousands of plans out there from the speaker manufacturers that give you crossover values for their drivers, and they WORK. Often, these values are far away from those you see in the "tables". Throw the tables out, and use the manufacturer's values. Check out $5000 speakers. More often than not, they use tweeters that YOU will pay $25 for(not ScanSpeak Revelators or Dynaudio Esotars, but Vifa or Seas) and coils that you would pass over. Use wirewound resistors, GOOD polypropylene caps, and 12ga OFC coils, and you have better components than the big boys. Most of all, KNOW the kind of sound you like. Do this by listening to manufactured speakers. Example: if you can't stand bright speakers, you probably want soft dome tweeters, and not metal or inverted domes. Don't build speakers that you think are great on paper, only to be disappointed because they don't sound the way YOU like. If you do it right, you can make a $5000 pair of speakers for 25% of that. Another idea, buy your speakers used.