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DIY Loudspeakers ?

When choosing loudspeakers I usually

  • Design and build my own

    Votes: 16 31.4%
  • Get someone to make them for me

    Votes: 3 5.9%
  • Buy an existing DIY speaker kit

    Votes: 19 37.3%
  • I only buy commercial loudspeakers

    Votes: 13 25.5%

  • Total voters
    51
I'm interested in finding out just how many people DIY their loudspeakers and how they go about it.
I did. Here is how I went about doing it.

Step 1: Set design objective(s)

Step 2: Establish preferred configuration to achieve design objectives

Step 3: Select drivers to suit configuration

Step 4: Design and build enclosures

Step 5: Measure raw drivers on enclosures

Step 6: Model crossover

Step 7: Build crossover prototypes and measure filtered drivers individual and summed responses

Step 8: Repeat steps 6 and 7 to adjust

Step 9: Fine tune by ear

Step 10: Sit back and enjoy the results.

Step 11: Think about the next design objective(s) to address the shortfalls of this design.

Step 12: Rinse and repeat at least 10 times.
 
And do you involve anyone else in the listening process? Is it hard for a designer to be unbiased when listening is so subjective? I guess though if it's for ones self you don't need to please anyone else!


I'm lucky enough to have a couple of very patient friends way smarter than me to help measure and design the crossovers. I burnt that bridge a long time ago and recognise my limitations. My passion is about the product design, the fit and the finish as a whole so it makes a good complimentary team. Plus it's better to have other people to bore to tears about this stuff :D

but the speakers went through quite a few prototypes, but when it came to translating the prototype into a commercial product we couldn't make the maths work. We were trying to sell a small bookshelf speaker in 1988 that would have cost about £650. No one would buy it.

You should perhaps publish the design or revisit it now that there are other cheaper routes to manufacture? Maybe as a Kit? I remember one of the earlier crossovers we had designed for the Troubadour. The parts were a little esoteric and it wouldn't actually fit in the cabinet :rolleyes: Commercial thinking when coming from a DIY background can be challenging especially as it always introduces compromise somewhere.
 
And do you involve anyone else in the listening process? Is it hard for a designer to be unbiased when listening is so subjective? I guess though if it's for ones self you don't need to please anyone else.
Yes, I do. I even take it to the local hifi shop for a bit of a laugh. The last time I did that, I almost secured an order for three pairs. But then I made the mistake of naming my price. DIY scale is not cheap. My labour is not free, even if I happily share some of my design IP.
 
You should perhaps publish the design or revisit it now that there are other cheaper routes to manufacture? Maybe as a Kit? I remember one of the earlier crossovers we had designed for the Troubadour. The parts were a little esoteric and it wouldn't actually fit in the cabinet :rolleyes: Commercial thinking when coming from a DIY background can be challenging especially as it always introduces compromise somewhere.
Even though this question is not directed at me, I've published my E-IX design in the PFM reference pages, and agreed with Orangeart to sell kits so more can enjoy the little loudspeaker that punches well above its weight.
 
. We were trying to sell a small bookshelf speaker in 1988 that would have cost about £650....

Rule of thumb for hifi is shop price is five times the bill of material, BOM, cost, which is why it’s reasonably attractive to build your own stuff, so long as it’s not manufactured in volume and you don’t cost your time, and very uneconomic to make a living from it.
 
Interesting results since I would not have expected building kit speakers to be so popular. However, the category I would have expected to be most popular does not appear to be listed: build a published DIY design by someone else.
 
the category I would have expected to be most popular does not appear to be listed: build a published DIY design by someone else.

So you mean slightly different to option 3: Buy an existing DIY speaker kit - you mean take a free published design and build this yourself sourcing all the parts?
 
I buy commercial speakers. Too unpredictable and expensive to design and build your own generally. Kits are cheating and I can't see the point. £350 8" woofers and £250 1" dome tweeters are taking the piss!
 
I did. Here is how I went about doing it.

Step 1: Set design objective(s)

Step 2: Establish preferred configuration to achieve design objectives

Step 3: Select drivers to suit configuration

Step 4: Design and build enclosures

Step 5: Measure raw drivers on enclosures

Step 6: Model crossover

Step 7: Build crossover prototypes and measure filtered drivers individual and summed responses

Step 8: Repeat steps 6 and 7 to adjust

Step 9: Fine tune by ear

Step 10: Sit back and enjoy the results.

Step 11: Think about the next design objective(s) to address the shortfalls of this design.

Step 12: Rinse and repeat at least 10 times.

Looks like building speakers is a lifetime hobby/pursuit of magic recipe !
 
Kits are cheating and I can't see the point
Design and build is challenging, depressing and rewarding in equal measure, but kits cheating? - Cheating what exactly? I'd argue that many can get a lot of satisfaction or accomplishment from constructing things from a kit. A lot of furniture from a well know Swedish store is a "kit" - is that cheating? :)
 
So you mean slightly different to option 3: Buy an existing DIY speaker kit - you mean take a free published design and build this yourself sourcing all the parts?
Yes. When I started in the 70s almost all DIY speakers were of this type. Today there are a lot more software design tools freely or cheaply available to help design your own or tweak a published design. CNC has made self assembly kits more of an option but I would still have expected pottering about in the garage cutting and gluing following someone else's design to be the most popular. Particularly for the first (and in many cases likely only) build.
 
Design and build is challenging, depressing and rewarding in equal measure, but kits cheating? - Cheating what exactly? I'd argue that many can get a lot of satisfaction or accomplishment from constructing things from a kit. A lot of furniture from a well know Swedish store is a "kit" - is that cheating? :)

If you didn't design it you're doing nothing more than the audio equivalent of one of those Scandinavian furniture "kit's". What's the point?

If you're doing it from scratch well you have my admiration...

"Is that the right type/grade of wood I've got?" "I asked 5 'experts' and they all told me different things!"

"Will the cabs resonate, rattle?" "should I put bracing in?" "Where?" "will it make it worse by increasing the resonant frequency?"

"Does that tweeter integrate with that woofer well? "Does that sting in the treble come from bad crossover design, cabinet refraction, poor tweeter?" "oh I'll just try 4 different types of tweeter @ £400 a pair for each type I try"

"ah well it looks that intractable colouration problem is a cabinet effect so I'll just junk the £300 of wood and the 60 hours spent in my shed building them, the sanding, the veneering etc and start again with no real idea if the next ones will be any better...."

And that's all before we get to crossover design, obtaining good directivity and in room power response, port tuning, finding optimum amount of fibre stuffing!!

I fear there are hordes of home designed and built speakers out there with boomy bass and/or a top end that can remove tooth enamel, honky squawky mid range, obvious colourations from cabinet panels, bad driver integration etc etc and which probably cost their builders more than if they'ed bought new! FFS the experts get it wrong sometimes even at the likes of KEF, B & W etc!! Most long standing famous speaker manufacturers have at least a few models that are not well regarded... It's black magic I tell you!!
 
I designed and built my own speakers once and it was in the pre-internet era. A lot of effort went into the box design and the cutting of the MDF. I used the published T&S for the woofer and calculated tuning etc for the reflex port. When I finally assembled them measurement showed the bass tuning was spot on and listening it was good. Treble was also good courtesy of Audax tweeters, but the midrange... Clearly my chosen drive unit had some sort of cone break-up or peaking. All I could do was add more damping material behind it to try and minimise the effect, but it wasn't enough. The speakers were eventually replaced by a pair of Castles and their flatter response was a joy to hear.

Fast forward to now and at least courtesy of the internet you can get other's opinions on drivers, but ultimately that's the bit you can't build at home and you're stuck with your chosen unit.

Even small scale manufacturers fell for this, they would get lucky, happen on good drivers, stick them in a suitable box and their first design was a hit. However, when they tried to add to their range the follow ups were often lemons -lightning doesn't strike twice.
 
FFS the experts get it wrong sometimes even at the likes of KEF, B & W etc!! Most long standing famous speaker manufacturers have at least a few models that are not well regarded... It's black magic I tell you!!

I think you hit the nail on the head with your post. Even experts get it wrong, and sometimes spectacularly so. You've got to really love it and enjoy the challenge to stand any chance of making something good IMO. You've also got to be your own worst critic. If I had a £1 for every person who knocked up an amazing sounding pair of speakers, I think I'd be rich. I'm critical of everything I've built, and I can find faults in all my builds (current ones are rubbish off-axis, but there’s nothing I can do, that won't involve major surgery to the cabinets).
 
We can be bad at something, get a bad result and still enjoy the process. Building speakers, playing Golf, playing Snooker, learning to surf when you are over 50 bla bla.
I completely agree and the fact is there is no "definitive" perfect speaker at all especially when taste, mood and differing priorities of design get factored in. I think there are many lost souls who build loudspeakers in pursuit of something that actually just isn't there. Even if something were absolutely technically correct (I won't use the word perfect) it wouldn't suit everyone.
 
I completely agree and the fact is there is no "definitive" perfect speaker at all especially when taste, mood and differing priorities of design get factored in. I think there are many lost souls who build loudspeakers in pursuit of something that actually just isn't there. Even if something were absolutely technically correct (I won't use the word perfect) it wouldn't suit everyone.

I'd go further and say there are comparatively few speakers that even get most of it right in the way a Quad ESL57 or Spendor BC1 manages...
 
We can be bad at something, get a bad result and still enjoy the process. Building speakers, playing Golf, playing Snooker, learning to surf when you are over 50 bla bla.

I agree. I was absolutely chuffed to bits when I built my first pair of speakers, until my girlfriend said they sounded worse than a cheap, 80s Matsui system - My heart dropped. Brian from pfm also heard them a couple of times, and was always polite, but they were utter s**t compared to his. It's only when I took them to Scalford that they were starting to sound OK (still rough in the midrange though).

As for golf, my long game was OK'ish, but my short game was terrible. I only went to keep my mate happy - so for me, no, I didn't enjoy being bad at golf.
 
The reason I built my current ones was because, no-one manufactures anything remotely close to them and you'd be looking at north of six grand if they did. Six grand plus, for a glorified set of bookshelf monitors is a niche market and then some ergo, it's perfectly understandable why the design is not commercially made. That said, the continentals have far more background than the UK in the entire field of "Kit speakers" and many pro designers put out the details for the speakers they would love to mass produce only they know, their simply isn't the market to justify it.

As for the sound, they sail through the audience applause and car door being closed tests and a producer friend, with two pages and counting of engineering/producing/mixing credits on Discogs, reckons that "They are the only HiFi speakers I have ever heard I could quite happily mix on". I know that might be a turnoff to some, they prefer some added euphony to their reproduction however, that's my tastes.

As for the price of drive units, the tweeters I use have a factory rejection rate of between 3-4 of every five built to reach the specs they are sold at. Those "rejects" are often used by other companies in their own high end speakers, they're not "duff" they just aren't the best of the best.
 
I completely agree and the fact is there is no "definitive" perfect speaker at all especially when taste, mood and differing priorities of design get factored in. I think there are many lost souls who build loudspeakers in pursuit of something that actually just isn't there. Even if something were absolutely technically correct (I won't use the word perfect) it wouldn't suit everyone.
The definitive loudspeaker is a true point source with a flat power response. That's just never going to happen with the technology we have today. So we choose our compromises.

The variable that many people forget about is the room. Whilst my measurements are gated to remove room reflections, the tuning that I do by ear is done in the context of my room and for my ears. To be fair, I rarely tweak by more than a couple dB here or there. So, if someone wanted to try my designs in their room, I will have some idea how they will find them. For this reason, I designed the E-IXs in two different configurations: one for close-to-wall, and the other for away-from-boundaries.

Ultimately, loudspeakers are like cars. They all have different characteristics and flaws; some of which we cannot live with or without.
 


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