Build Your Own?

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.

The easiest thing to build is to replicate a proven existing design offered by folk like Tony Gees or others. Coming up with you own design is a whole new ball game and headache.

Sure.

Linkwitz Orions (believed by many to be the best speaker price no object provided you can live with the output level and placement constraints; and better than his Beethoven Elite in all areas but maximum low frequency output (fixed by the Thor + option) by the designer (the merely bi-amplified version of which was Stereophile's 1998 loud speaker of the year) in the main system.

Linkwitz Pluto (very good, but lacking life-like SPL capabilities below 100Hz and the last bit the Orion's resolution and dynamics) with Pluto+ sub-woofers in the bedroom.

Building top-notch performance isn't that hard; especially for the money spent. You just have to pick a good design from some one who understands how to design speakers. For exceptional performance you need to get away from the inherent flaws (polar/power response, cabinet resonances) in conventional designs which means something by Siegfriend Linkwitz, John Krevosky, or Earl Geddes. For merely good people like Dennis Murphy, John Krutke, and Joeseph D'Appolito have conventional designs. Siegfriend and John license their designs and sell circuit boards for nominal fees; Earl sells kits; and the rest have free designs done as independent projects or to showcase available drivers.

Popular designs have evangelists who will host auditions; and less popular ones can be heard at DIY gatherings.

Designing great sound is a separate issue; where lots of experience and experimentation are in order (for instance Don Maurer measured a couple dozen baffles optimizing for polar response in his winged Phoenix project) and you ought to enjoy the journey because it's not a quick or inexpensive means to the ends.

With computers good measurements are achievable by hobbyists for reasonable prices; and with the internet people don't even need an AES membership to become familiar with the giants whose shoulders they can stand on.