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The most fun you can have in audio is DIYing your own speakers

You don't have to make the best speakers on earth, or most expensive, and you don't have to become an expert in the tech, but in all my years in audio, I have to say DIY is the most fun and educational. For me, speaker building was a lot more fun than electronics (amps, pre's etc.) 

Lots of great sources for complete kits as well as paper-only designs. Speaker building is also a great thing to do with your kids. I highly recommend it.

Best,


Erik
erik_squires
erik_squires OP
16,726 posts
 
@dgarretson - Yeah, it is financially very difficult for most vendors to justify spending good money on crossover parts. 

One of the worst offenders is Focal, which only uses Solen's cheapest caps. So much better even with cheap Mundorf MKPs
dgarretson
2,614 posts
 

@erik_squires

Also, the marketing emphasis of most high-end manufacturers is almost always on cabinets and drivers, maybe because these are the visible parts.

BTW the epoxy/brass reinforcement brought out a huge improvement in bass definition, overall coherence, and spatial cues that one customarily encounters only in high echelon speakers. I’d be tempted to try this on any driver with a plastic basket-- such as Monitor Audio.

erik_squires OP
16,726 posts
 
@dgarretson Yes, it would, since the top end MA line measures spectacularly in both the time and frequency domains. 
analogluvr
859 posts
 
I have done a bit of this with Tannoy drivers in custom boxes and rebuilding the crossover with good parts. I purchased a pair of Tannoy Yorkminster SE for about 13 K.  I also ran across a pair of pro Tannoy15 inch drivers for about 1K, I bought a monstrous pair of DIY cabinets for $500 and rebuilt the Tannoy crossovers with quality parts for about $800.  At the end of it when myself and a friend were listening we both strongly preferred the 15's  in the DIY boxes at less than a quarter of the cost of the commercial offerings. 
 That is also a viable, easy and safe option for folks to go. Getting vintage Tannoy or altech drivers, building the boxes and re-doing the existing crossovers. 
Now I have a pair of altec 604's in the same boxes augmented with a pair of Homebuilt subwoofers and a pair of Foster T900 super tweeters.  True full range sound for about 4K. And when I go to the shows and listen to $40,000 speakers I still prefer mine.   I love the way a point source Soundstage's and images and now with augmentation on the top and bottom they don't suffer from the traditional weaknesses. 
analogluvr
859 posts
 
 And I think it's on the money what Erik is saying about 10 times the cost of drivers. That's not the same as profit as it's true what TEO Audio was saying, there are other costs involved. 
 And everybody knows that cable manufacturers are the worst offenders when it comes to gluttonous profiteering 😇
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