A few additional factors to consider. The DIY speaker guy is for the most part, designing a speaker to mate to his room, with his ancillary gear to please his ears with his music. I have had the pleasure of listening to several "life time of design" DIY speaker builds and they all sounded good, some sounded great. Now take those 4 box/open baffle/line array/wide band with a woofer et. al. designs out of the designer's room, haul them to another room or another house, hook them up with different amplification and sources. Play different music. Same results as the designer's system? Bollocks!
The real trick for the commercial speaker designer is to come up with a design that sounds good to great in a ton of different rooms, with a ton of different amps, sources and on a lot of different music. Guys like Jeff Joseph have a talent to create great sounding speakers that can work in a lot of environments, with a lot of sources, amplification and with a lot of different music. Oh and they have to be able to replicate the design in some version of "mass production". Create shipping cartons, design literature, market their designs, ship them, warrant them and the list goes on and on and on.
What if there was a way to leverage the DIY results ( your room, your, ancillary gear, your music) within the context of a commercial design?
There are a lot of examples of exactly that. Legacy Speakers, the new Bryston Active models, Gayle Sanders new designs, Siegfried Linkwitz speakers all have at least some user adjustable parameters to allow them to perform in a variety of set ups and locations.
Full Disclosure, I am an audio retailer. Only one of the above manufacturers do I represent. Joseph Audio is not it.
DIY is a great avenue for the listener who wants to participate in their own system's design. The knowledge gained can be invaluable. It is also a lot of fun. DIY builds are not generally intended to be sold to a wide swath of the audio community and therefore are not constrained by the myriad of concerns faced by a commercial design.
The real trick for the commercial speaker designer is to come up with a design that sounds good to great in a ton of different rooms, with a ton of different amps, sources and on a lot of different music. Guys like Jeff Joseph have a talent to create great sounding speakers that can work in a lot of environments, with a lot of sources, amplification and with a lot of different music. Oh and they have to be able to replicate the design in some version of "mass production". Create shipping cartons, design literature, market their designs, ship them, warrant them and the list goes on and on and on.
What if there was a way to leverage the DIY results ( your room, your, ancillary gear, your music) within the context of a commercial design?
There are a lot of examples of exactly that. Legacy Speakers, the new Bryston Active models, Gayle Sanders new designs, Siegfried Linkwitz speakers all have at least some user adjustable parameters to allow them to perform in a variety of set ups and locations.
Full Disclosure, I am an audio retailer. Only one of the above manufacturers do I represent. Joseph Audio is not it.
DIY is a great avenue for the listener who wants to participate in their own system's design. The knowledge gained can be invaluable. It is also a lot of fun. DIY builds are not generally intended to be sold to a wide swath of the audio community and therefore are not constrained by the myriad of concerns faced by a commercial design.