DIY Loudspeakers: Can You Build "Better" Than Professional Designs?

[jinjuku]

I don't know what your problem is.....

My problem is you saying that I said stuff I never said.

You claim you can easily make better speakers than commercial products, I say I don't believe you.... it's up to you to prove your words, when I ask you to prove it, you don't show anything.....

You're asking for a subjective preference to be an absolute. Compared to some Aerial Acoustic Model 9's both the owner and myself though my Statements did better.

Why don't you prove the inverse. Sauce that is good on goose is equally good on gander.

you turn everything upside down, or you get pissed off when people are direct and state their opinions and they don't match yours..... I never put words in anyone's mouth.... I just tell people my opinion and if you can't handle this, take a pill

The only thing any member here should be upset about is you lying and saying that member X said 'Such' and 'Such'. Again please provide posts where I said any of the things that you posted I said or redact them. Else I will report the posts and ask another mod to make the redactions of your posts for me. I'm not even asking for the posts to be removed. Just the libelous portions removed.

This is entirely in the domain of being fair. Which you don't seem to want to be.

Better prove your words than telling people off if they don't talk nicely to you
It's much easier to talk than to really do something......

I really did do something. For 7 months building my Statements. You're being a jerk.

 

[jinjuku]

Salon2's, KEF's and TAD's are optimized in anechoic rooms, I believe, how many DIY'ers do have access to this

o

See here is another problem. You don't know what you think you know. 1st you don't need an anechoic chamber to optimize speakers in. Almost every DIY designer has access to what is essentially an anechoic room.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Well, it takes an awful lot of time and effort to get anywhere close, this time and effort is better served working doing what you're expert at
I don't say people should not build their own speakers, but they should not expect to make Salon2 lookalikes and get same SQ, expecting that is to fool yourself......

Salon2's, KEF's and TAD's are optimized in anechoic rooms, I believe, how many DIY'ers do have access to this

What I'm good at is making money and buying speakers.

But some guys are extremely talented and they can make speakers that can sound great.

 

[haraldo]

o

See here is another problem. You don't know what you think you know. 1st you don't need an anechoic chamber to optimize speakers in. Almost every DIY designer has access to what is essentially an anechoic room.

Late John Dunlavy disagree with you

 

[haraldo]

What I'm good at is making money and buying speakers.

But some guys are extremely talented and they can make speakers that can sound great.

I agree with you... but what I don't agree with is the DIY crowd that claim it's so easy to make good speakers

 

[jinjuku]

Late John Dunlavy disagree with you

Do you understand that an anechoic room is a simulator?

 

[haraldo]

My problem is you saying that I said stuff I never said.
I really did do something. For 7 months building my Statements. You're being a jerk.

I'm going to cry now

Jim Thiel spent more than a year on finalizing CS 3.7 after everyone thought they were finished, in addition to years upon years of testing and designing...
Not mentioning how many cabinets were rejected

you probably did a good job with speakers but I have no faith they're close to the best commercial speakers.... you're certainly doing a very good job of promoting yourself and what you do......

 

[ahblaza]

What I'm good at is making money and buying speakers.

But some guys are extremely talented and they can make speakers that can sound great.

I couldn't agree more
I make my speakers sound good by feeding them well, I didn't make them but I did make them sound good

 

[haraldo]

Do you understand that an anechoic room is a simulator?

I understand very well what an anechoic room is, and I understand that it's 3.40 at night.....

 

[jinjuku]

I'm going to cry now

you probably did a good job with speakers but I have no faith they're close to the best commercial speakers.... you're certainly doing a very good job of promoting yourself and what you do......

Where, where, did I say my Statements are close to 'the best' commercial speakers You really are having a reality distortion problem here.

What I will say, and am perfectly sure is reasonable, is that price to performance for the $1100 I have in my Statements you will not find a commercial equivalent.

 

[jinjuku]

I understand very well what an anechoic room is, and I understand that it's 3.40 at night.....

No you don't. If you understood what an anechoic room simulates you would have never said something as ignorant as you said.

 

[ahblaza]

Jin,
You need not defend nor justify yourself to anyone my friend, the OP is just throwing coal on an already burning out fire.

 

[Chu Gai]

Where, where, did I say my Statements are close to 'the best' commercial speakers You really are having a reality distortion problem here.

What I will say, and am perfectly sure is reasonable, is that price to performance for the $1100 I have in my Statements you will not find a commercial equivalent.

You might be right so long as your labor rate is 0.

 

[jinjuku]

You might be right so long as your labor rate is 0.

The time aspect of DIY keeps getting mentioned. For the people that are critical of 'your time spent' I believe you are missing the point.

Some of my best memories are in the garage with my dad or my friends. My first attempt was when I as 17 with Dad and working on a pair of bass bins with 12" Eminence drivers in 1/4 folded horn arrangement. And now again Pops and I worked on my Statements (they are NOT a 1 person build).

For all those that want to somehow cite time as a negative in all this, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Just purchase. For me that time is PRICELESS.

Already answered that one... For me I would even go the inverse: I can't value that time enough.

 

[fuzz092888]

I agree with you... but what I don't agree with is the DIY crowd that claim it's so easy to make good speakers

Let me start off by saying, nothing I'm about to say is meant with malice. Merely making a few counter points to things you have said. So please, knives and daggers down

My biggest issue with your points thus far are that you are jumping from point to point to point without every really backing up any of them. Then the statement above is a bit ambiguous at best.

I'm too lazy to go back and quote every single thing I want to bring up so I'm going to paraphrase. Please correct me if I've made a mess of anything.

You bring up a ton of examples about the design process and how certain speaker designers spent countless years and effort honing their respective designs. However, this the design process, not the process of literally assembling a speaker. Yes it would be extremely difficult for a DIY'er to start from scratch and build a speaker that can compete with the very best on their own. That's a long and arduous process that can take years of experimenting. In that sense I kind of agree with you. However, you then take that point and extrapolate to other areas that IMHO do not apply this, your original point.

Next you (and I mean this is the nicest of ways) sort of meandered into the materials used for said building of a speaker. So you then jumped from design to the construction process. Definitely not the same. This is arguable at best. If we're talking about materials, I truly believe the DIY'er can get well within inaudibility to what the professionals can do. They have access to Balsa and carbon, we have balsa and can make carbon fiber. They have this or that, DIY'ers counter with this or that. From a purely material standpoint, I think DIY'ers can get well within inaudibility when it comes to materials of the cabinet.

If you're talking about cabinet shape, then it get's trickier. I think the average DIY'er is well beyond his abilities to create such shapes or work with the materials necessary to match the best commerical speakers. However, let's examine the price point of these speakers. Now let's take the average person who is looking to purchase said speakers and all the money he or she has at their disposal. I think this person, with their vast monetary resources can make the fancy shaped speakers out of the exotic materials and give the high dollar speakers a run for their money in a blind test. Can they match or beat them? I have no idea, I don't have that kind of money nor do I know anyone personally who does. That's kind of an up in the air argument until some rich person decides they want something to compete with the best, but be one of a kind completely unique. Those people are probably out there, but until they come on the internet and share we're all left out in the cold on this one.

So now we have design process, materials used, and cabinet shape. I think next we'll tackle your unfair comparison, but quickly since it was already touched upon by jinjuku. You're comparing the best commerical offerings against DIY offerings that were clearly not meant to compete with them. Make a fair comparison and it will give more credence to your argument, or rather simply state "I have yet to see a DIY speaker that can compete with the best." No we should not only be looking at the lower priced commercial speakers, but it also doesn't mean anything to say that the $50K-$200K speakers sound so much better than the $3K DIY speakers. What does that prove? It certainly doesn't strengthen your argument. Best bang for your buck designs like the statements are clearly not going to go toe to toe with the kef blades. Find a DIY speaker that was built and cost roughly $25,000 to complete and then maybe we can compare it against the blades, which still run more than double that I believe.

Another thing that is unclear in your argument is what criteria we're actually comparing. Are we comparing cabinetry, design philosophies, sound, measurements, or some combination of some or all of these characteristics? In terms of measurements, I have yet to see a DIY design that was meant to be what you're asking for. Most DIY designs are to give the best sound for a certain cost point. I think part of the reason we don't see any/more no holds barred builds is because the guys doing the DIY designing aren't millionaires or billionaires. They're pretty regular guys who have to work within their respective budgets. Who's to say they couldn't design something that could compete with the best commercial offerings and be built by a DIY'er, or at least mostly constructed by a DIY'er?

Sound is obviously subjective, so to say that performance at level is unattainable is simply untrue to some extent. A guy builds a pair of speakers, they measure really well, they sound great, and he loves them. He hears all the speakers you mentioned and admits they are awesome amazing speakers, but doesn't notice a huge jump in performance from the ones he built. Who is anyone else to tell him that he's crazy and that these other speakers definitely sound much better?

Audioholics has even written that the importance of anechoic chambers is greatly overstated. As the years go on, they will become even less important as well as technology and software gets better. Currently, I wouldn't say they are obsolete, but you can certainly get darn close with what is available.

Another point you made that I think would be unfair is the electrostatic dare. Have you ever heard these? Here's just one electrostatic DIY design out there. Whose to say these don't sound as good as the ML offerings?

I feel as though I danced around this point without ever actually making it. Guys with far greater resources than us can design a speaker and then release the design, either at cost, or for free. These are still DIY designs and can give DIY'ers tremendous quality, while "merely" participating in construction. A DIY'er can also take a well established design and tweak it to improve this or that, or use different materials in order to increase rigidity and make other improvements. The point of mentioning this, is that an industrious DIY'er can take these designs that many guys spent years on and combine some properties, make improvements to a certain design and end up with something that might be able to compete with higher and higher priced speakers. This sort of trickle down information really boosts the whole DIY hobby as well. I agree that there is still a gap, but a gap based on what? The lack of ability? I truly don't believe so. A lack of designs? I think this is a much larger factor. How many designs have any of us seen that cost tens of thousands of dollars and were meant to grasp at that last measure of performance? None that I've seen, but then again why would I? Those with the means to afford such a design have the money for a commercial design. Heck, if I had the kind of money that blowing $50K-200K on a pair of speakers wasn't a big deal, I probably wouldn't be making a lot of noise for a crazy DIY speaker to compete with the best of the B&M offerings. I'd just buy a pair and put them on the deck of my beachfront home to listen to as I napped in the sun

I promise you, if I ever win the lottery I'll beg Dennis or Linkwitz or somebody to design me a no holds barred DIY speaker to compete with the big boys. Until then I'll keep thanking my lucky stars that a $3K speaker can compete with a B&M offering that costs tens of thousands of dollars and be darn happy that a shmuck like me has a pair .

 

[Chu Gai]

Already answered that one... For me I would even go the inverse: I can't value that time enough.

I fully understand where you're coming from. Nonetheless, when you make the argument or take the position that the $1100 you have invested in your Statements is unlikely to be bettered by a aommercial offering you are, in effect, setting a zero dollar labor rate. What if you and your father spent 5 hours a week combined for 7 months? That would be about 140 hours. Then if we pick some arbitrary wage, say $20/hr. then the labor comes to $2800 which when added to the material cost comes $3900. So the question then becomes can your DIY effort be bettered by that amount? Me, I don't know. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done it because as you say, some things one can't put a value on. But just because you can't doesn't mean the $1100 commercial offering comparison is a valid one.

 

[jinjuku]

I fully understand where you're coming from. Nonetheless, when you make the argument or take the position that the $1100 you have invested in your Statements is unlikely to be bettered by a aommercial offering you are, in effect, setting a zero dollar labor rate. What if you and your father spent 5 hours a week combined for 7 months? That would be about 140 hours. Then if we pick some arbitrary wage, say $20/hr. then the labor comes to $2800 which when added to the material cost comes $3900. So the question then becomes can your DIY effort be bettered by that amount? Me, I don't know. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have done it because as you say, some things one can't put a value on. But just because you can't doesn't mean the $1100 commercial offering comparison is a valid one.

So, how much money (labor) do you waste on Golf in a given year? Fishing? Working on your car? Gaming on your console? Sorry just can't agree with you on this one.

Just because my hobby produces a tangible result doesn't negate the fact that my labor cost for that is in fact ZERO. So my Statements cost me $1100 all out. Not a penny more, not a penny less.

 

[TLS Guy]

Fuzz has really hit all the relevant points.

As he points out there are lots of reasons to do DIY.

In my case the object in view has been to produce a better sound system than could be build up from any commercial components.

I have been building and experimenting for almost sixty years now.

I can tell you a properly designed and built custom system is all the difference between an off the shelf organ like an Allen or Rogers, compared to one built and voiced by a seasoned custom builder, and for many of the same reasons. I have gained a lot of tips and experience hanging out with organ builders. A lot of the problems and solutions facing the speaker builder and the organ builder are surprisingly similar.

Before I begin the R & D phase I always listen to as many of the renowned designs out there before the design phase, so I know at least where the commercial bar is.

My goal is always not just to build the best speaker I can, but the best speaker with what is known together with my experience.

Now there is no close commercial equivalent to my speakers here. There is no design out there to really reference it to.

The aim is to produce a neutral sound, and above all there should be no hint that the speaker is enclosed. The bass must be just like it really is in life. This is very important, as defects here will cloud the rest of the range. The the task becomes to make the rest of the system equal to the reproduction of the last octaves. In the bass it must sound as uncolored as the best electrostatics, but with greater power and authority when needed.

For me the process, is design concept, the R & D phase, the build phase, the installation, measurements, and then the last phase of improvements usually stretches a few years. The total process lasts about a decade, for a reference system.

I can tell you this system now leaves a B & W 800 D well in the shade. I have heard the reference ATC speakers. These a very good, but they do not have the bass definition and restrained authority in the bottom end this system does.

I have not heard the Salon 2 due to the ineptitude of the dealer. However the bass drive on those speakers is technically many notches below the design concept of my reference speakers. I think crossover design concept to the bass drivers is something I would never entertain. I think it is telling that a member who has them, cross them over to a sub.

This system has now been heard by quite a few professionals and not one has suggested that it would be better crossed over to subs. In fact they have all commented that it is the bass octaves that really set the system apart. These speakers have now been used on several occasions by other professionals for critical applications.

The cost of labor argument is peripheral. For a start your own labor is not taxable! The cost of this system to build has been very comparable to the top end B & W KEFs etc. If you added all my time spent and charged it, I admit it would run to around 100K. However it hasn't. It has given a great sense of achievement like the guy who climbs a high mountain. It also gives me enormous pleasure every time I listen to it. I am currently working my way though the Mahler symphony cycle from the Lucerne Festival under Claudio Abado. Absolutely stunning, with huge depth of stage and every instrument is their correct space. The mezzo soprano solos just sound like they should with perfect balance of head and chest voice in a realistic space. There are certain things you can't put a price on, as they say "priceless".

Basically my bottom line is, that I DIY to better then anything I could buy of the shelf, and that is pretty much the whole drive behind my projects.

 

[Nuance AH]

Let me start off by saying, nothing I'm about to say is meant with malice. Merely making a few counter points to things you have said. So please, knives and daggers down

My biggest issue with your points thus far are that you are jumping from point to point to point without every really backing up any of them. Then the statement above is a bit ambiguous at best.

I'm too lazy to go back and quote every single thing I want to bring up so I'm going to paraphrase. Please correct me if I've made a mess of anything.

You bring up a ton of examples about the design process and how certain speaker designers spent countless years and effort honing their respective designs. However, this the design process, not the process of literally assembling a speaker. Yes it would be extremely difficult for a DIY'er to start from scratch and build a speaker that can compete with the very best on their own. That's a long and arduous process that can take years of experimenting. In that sense I kind of agree with you. However, you then take that point and extrapolate to other areas that IMHO do not apply this, your original point.

Next you (and I mean this is the nicest of ways) sort of meandered into the materials used for said building of a speaker. So you then jumped from design to the construction process. Definitely not the same. This is arguable at best. If we're talking about materials, I truly believe the DIY'er can get well within inaudibility to what the professionals can do. They have access to Balsa and carbon, we have balsa and can make carbon fiber. They have this or that, DIY'ers counter with this or that. From a purely material standpoint, I think DIY'ers can get well within inaudibility when it comes to materials of the cabinet.

If you're talking about cabinet shape, then it get's trickier. I think the average DIY'er is well beyond his abilities to create such shapes or work with the materials necessary to match the best commerical speakers. However, let's examine the price point of these speakers. Now let's take the average person who is looking to purchase said speakers and all the money he or she has at their disposal. I think this person, with their vast monetary resources can make the fancy shaped speakers out of the exotic materials and give the high dollar speakers a run for their money in a blind test. Can they match or beat them? I have no idea, I don't have that kind of money nor do I know anyone personally who does. That's kind of an up in the air argument until some rich person decides they want something to compete with the best, but be one of a kind completely unique. Those people are probably out there, but until they come on the internet and share we're all left out in the cold on this one.

So now we have design process, materials used, and cabinet shape. I think next we'll tackle your unfair comparison, but quickly since it was already touched upon by jinjuku. You're comparing the best commerical offerings against DIY offerings that were clearly not meant to compete with them. Make a fair comparison and it will give more credence to your argument, or rather simply state "I have yet to see a DIY speaker that can compete with the best." No we should not only be looking at the lower priced commercial speakers, but it also doesn't mean anything to say that the $50K-$200K speakers sound so much better than the $3K DIY speakers. What does that prove? It certainly doesn't strengthen your argument. Best bang for your buck designs like the statements are clearly not going to go toe to toe with the kef blades. Find a DIY speaker that was built and cost roughly $25,000 to complete and then maybe we can compare it against the blades, which still run more than double that I believe.

Another thing that is unclear in your argument is what criteria we're actually comparing. Are we comparing cabinetry, design philosophies, sound, measurements, or some combination of some or all of these characteristics? In terms of measurements, I have yet to see a DIY design that was meant to be what you're asking for. Most DIY designs are to give the best sound for a certain cost point. I think part of the reason we don't see any/more no holds barred builds is because the guys doing the DIY designing aren't millionaires or billionaires. They're pretty regular guys who have to work within their respective budgets. Who's to say they couldn't design something that could compete with the best commercial offerings and be built by a DIY'er, or at least mostly constructed by a DIY'er?

Sound is obviously subjective, so to say that performance at level is unattainable is simply untrue to some extent. A guy builds a pair of speakers, they measure really well, they sound great, and he loves them. He hears all the speakers you mentioned and admits they are awesome amazing speakers, but doesn't notice a huge jump in performance from the ones he built. Who is anyone else to tell him that he's crazy and that these other speakers definitely sound much better?

Audioholics has even written that the importance of anechoic chambers is greatly overstated. As the years go on, they will become even less important as well as technology and software gets better. Currently, I wouldn't say they are obsolete, but you can certainly get darn close with what is available.

Another point you made that I think would be unfair is the electrostatic dare. Have you ever heard these? Here's just one electrostatic DIY design out there. Whose to say these don't sound as good as the ML offerings?

I feel as though I danced around this point without ever actually making it. Guys with far greater resources than us can design a speaker and then release the design, either at cost, or for free. These are still DIY designs and can give DIY'ers tremendous quality, while "merely" participating in construction. A DIY'er can also take a well established design and tweak it to improve this or that, or use different materials in order to increase rigidity and make other improvements. The point of mentioning this, is that an industrious DIY'er can take these designs that many guys spent years on and combine some properties, make improvements to a certain design and end up with something that might be able to compete with higher and higher priced speakers. This sort of trickle down information really boosts the whole DIY hobby as well. I agree that there is still a gap, but a gap based on what? The lack of ability? I truly don't believe so. A lack of designs? I think this is a much larger factor. How many designs have any of us seen that cost tens of thousands of dollars and were meant to grasp at that last measure of performance? None that I've seen, but then again why would I? Those with the means to afford such a design have the money for a commercial design. Heck, if I had the kind of money that blowing $50K-200K on a pair of speakers wasn't a big deal, I probably wouldn't be making a lot of noise for a crazy DIY speaker to compete with the best of the B&M offerings. I'd just buy a pair and put them on the deck of my beachfront home to listen to as I napped in the sun

I promise you, if I ever win the lottery I'll beg Dennis or Linkwitz or somebody to design me a no holds barred DIY speaker to compete with the big boys. Until then I'll keep thanking my lucky stars that a $3K speaker can compete with a B&M offering that costs tens of thousands of dollars and be darn happy that a shmuck like me has a pair .

Best post of the thread. Seriously.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I have not heard the Salon 2 due to the ineptitude of the dealer. However the bass drive on those speakers is technically many notches below the design concept of my reference speakers. I think crossover design concept to the bass drivers is something I would never entertain. I think it is telling that a member who has them, cross them over to a sub.

Not to defend the Salon 2, because I think it can be bettered, but as the member you're referring to who crossed his Salon 2s over to subs I think it is worth a discussion about the Salon 2s bass.

I have heard in the Salon 2s demo'd in two conventional rooms, and at the time felt their bass response left nothing to be desired. They measured roughly flat to 20Hz at 90db at the listening position according to my test CD and handheld meter, which is rather remarkable for such a modestly-sized speaker. I used the term "roughly flat", because as we all know in a home-sized listening room there are always room modes, and just two bass sources are unlikely to appropriately smooth them.

My listening room, on the other hand, is anything but conventional, and it doesn't appear to be bass-friendly at all. My old Legacy Focus system, with 3x12" ported woofers per side in a bi-polar configuration, did better for whatever reasons, but the bottom-ported Salon 2 with only forward-facing woofers is very sensitive to placement in my room in the bass octaves. Frustratingly so. In the dealers' demo rooms they both claimed positioning was not so sensitive. Anyway, one of the real strengths of the Salon 2 is its unparalleled imaging, and once you find the speaker positions where this occurs you won't want to move them a single inch. And unfortunately those positions in my room are about four feet from the back wall, three feet from the side wall (I have only one side wall), and in an equilateral triangle with my seating position. These are significantly different positions than the Legacys occupied (and they had rather miserable imaging anyway), and in their positions the in-room bass response of the Salon 2s stink. There's a strong room mode centered at 52Hz, a suck-out in in the 100-125Hz range, and a more moderate suck-out below 40Hz. Moving the speakers closer to the rear wall improves the bass response dramatically, and the 52Hz mode is reduced a bit, but then the holographic imaging degrades to merely good.

After several months of ownership and bass frustration, I finally gave in and tried subwoofers. I had budgeted for two, but ordered one at a time because I could experiment with placement and two might not be necessary. Of course, blending a sub with the mains is a challenge, and it's especially so for someone addicted to solo piano recordings. Some very important piano sounds are going to be right in the crossover region, unless you crossover at 40Hz or below, which would not solve my bass issues. TLS Guy is correct, I did initially use an 80Hz high-pass filter for the Salon 2s woofer section, and that crossover did produce a very nice blending combined with a 6db/octave low-pass filter for the sub at 60Hz (and some notch EQ at that 52Hz room mode), but it wasn't due to lack of bass capability in the Salon 2. This set-up, combined with some extensive experimentation in the placement of the sub produced a response curve at my listening seat +/- 5db from 20Hz to 1000Hz, measured at 90db. I didn't run the Salon 2s full-range because I was worried about too much bass output below 80Hz.

My initial setup was, however, thwarted by overload on the balanced inputs of the sub, and I ended up switching to running the Salon 2s full-range, and tuning the sub's response just as a fill-in. (The low overload point on the balanced inputs is a design bug in the Velodyne sub, IMO.) This strategy changed the position of the sub quite a bit, and almost drove me to buying a second one, but once I worked things out the range from 40Hz to 200Hz measures about +/- 3db or so at my listening seat, which is of course quite flat. I'm happy, the system is stabilized, and my bass response seems second-to-none.

Would a DIY design, or more specifically, your design, do any better in the bass in my room than the naked Salon 2s? I don't know, but I doubt it. I also have to admit that I've become a fan of subwoofers. Positioning one or more subs just so for best bass response, and placing the mains wherever imaging is best, now strikes me as the strategy of choice for achieving the best in-room performance. It is not clear to me that two full-range speakers of any design could achieve a similarly optimized result. So if I were designing a DIY system now it would be a 2.1x system, not simply a pair of full-range speakers. Why would a DIY design produce a different result? I'm sure TLS Guy's room is a better design than mine, but I can't change the house, and I'm not moving. My house is also pretty typical of modern, open designs, so I'm not sure that the classic, rectangular room is a universal design point of interest.