Build Your Own?

I built my 1st DIY when I has 12 years old, my son built his 1st unique design at 4 1/2 only help I gave him has soldering wires to drivers, seems hes in the know;) Glad I have someone to take over KCS when Im gone...His loudspeaker used a pair of Fostex fe126e in cardboard tubes he added wool dampening, used the right port size without any help, heck I didnt know he was building them till mostly finished. He wraped the outside of both tubes with large amounts of brown packing tape this killed the cardboards tone allowing his little speaker pair to sound very good for what it was. 1 of my audio friends wanted a pair so we used veneer instead of paper tape on tube he still uses them daily. So I would say if a 4 1/2 year old can do it maybe you can too.

Built the Linkwitz Lab Orion. That experience prompted me to dare designing and building my own active system for HT. No doubt, the plethora of information available at one's finger tips helped to make it possible. True, crunchin' numbers is only the beginning, but a thorough study of theory and a relentless questioning of convention is the way to a successful design that out performs commercial products.

If my goal was to create a great sounding speaker at first try, I would pick a proven design. There are many great designs out there for free or low cost. Madisound is an excellent resource, as is Parts Express. You might want to read their forums. If you want to make a hobby of building speakers, I'd suggest you pickup a copy of Vance Dickason’s “The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook”, and go from there.

Folks I built my own. I started the beginning of the summer and finally got it finished last week. My design came from Tony Gees and these speakers sound way better than most I have heard, including the Wilson Sophia & Watts Puppy etc. I sold my commercial speakers right after testing my built speakers.

"I have heard some truly horrible sounding speakers built by individuals [that claim to be] knowledgeable in Physics and Math, the theory may have been correct but the result was not."

There is no shortage of these being sold at Audio salons all around the world.

I agree, building Y.O. speakers, has a learning curve, but do to the large amount of totaly obscean grossly expensive and very poor sounding speakers on the market, it may be time to revisit speaker design. (Tell me how they come up with 25 grand for two cones stuck in a box with no X-over ?)

Start simple (which may be the best anyway) and it becomes a great hobby, in and off itself. You may need to invest in allot more than computer software too.