Stuck at home? Make a kit!!

b-limo

I actually appreciate your consistent recommendation to build a speaker kit!   I’ve been on the fence for awhile and need the “push” to actually ever do it. 

You want to build a speaker, the place to start is build some subs. With speakers you may or may not be happy. Build a swarm though and I can guarantee you will be not happy, but ecstatic. Also unlike with speakers you will never outgrow it. Want more bass? Just build more! Seriously. Read the threads. Swarm. Distributed bass array. DYODD. 

Mine were well under $3k, and that is all-in, including amps and premium Rosewood veneer. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367  The quality of the bass, not just volume and extension but speed and 3D imaging, is true state of the art. You simply cannot achieve this level of performance DIY with anything else. Look at my system. I know what I'm talking about. Because I've actually done it.

Unless you're retired, being "stuck at home" means either working from home, trying to balance working from home with e-learning for your kids, or you've now lost your job due to the associated economic downturn. Fortunately I'm working from home but certainly have less time than ever to build a kit.

“Look at my system. I know what I’m talking about. Because I’ve actually done it.”

This guy doesn’t get tired of boasting....could it be that he’s stuck in a time loop? 😎

I agree with Eric that there is enormous satisfaction in DIY audio. My second pair of speakers used the drivers and crossover from a kit that KEF offered back in the late 1970’s, and performance-wise they killed my first pair of store-bought, magazine-reviewed speakers at a small fraction of the out-of-pocket cost. 

If I were building a kit today, I’d find SOME way to inject my own creativity, for better or for worse. It would just mean more to me if my "fingerprints" were on some aspect. Maybe I’d substitute boutique capacitors for the stock ones. Maybe I’d do some contrained-layer-damping of the enclosure walls. Maybe I’d nudge the port tuning this way or that, depending on my room acoustics.

But there is a dark side to all of this: That first speaker build was my "gateway drug". It took several decades of addiction for the day to come when I took to hard look in the mirror and faced the awful truth: I needed to either join a twelve-step program... or become a manufacturer.

It’s a slippery slope.

Duke
manufacturer

Ha! audiokinesis, diy could be a gateway drug, that’s so true!
I started with speakers as a teen and now design and build amplifiers....