I'm just coming into this extremely interesting thread, so I'm sorry if I rehash already discussed topics.
I'm going to fire out and answer that first question of, "Can you build better than professional designs" w/ a resounding yes you can. Ironically, if you would have asked me that question 3 years ago I would have said no way. My answer probably would have included statements like, "There's no way someone in their garage can design and build a speaker that sounds as good as anything offered even in the $500 price range", or "You could try, but I think you'll have around $10k into your speakers and they'll sound almost as good as some Infinity RS-5 towers".
Fast forward 3 years and 3 builds later (I've built the
Tritrix MTM TLs, the
Statements, and the
ER18s) and I've completely changed my tune (pun intended
).
This all started when I joined this forum to seek out some answers about a Yamaha HT receiver I purchased. Then I decided to ask if anyone had ever rebuilt cabinets for their own speakers; this was my thread about that,
Anyone ever make their own cabinets? I eventually ended up in the DIY speaker section and this was my first thread there,
Where to begin? The "Where to begin" thread is a really good read for anyone looking to tackle DIY speakers, it answered a LOT of questions for me.
When I first started the Tritrix I was scheptical at best, but I figured I only had about $180 invested so I may as well give it a whirl and have some fun w/ it. Once I got them done, I'll be honest and admit that originally I thought my $500 Infinity towers sounded better. The Infinitys seemed to produce a little better bass and seemed to sparkle a bit more on the top. But, after I gave them a day or 2 the Tritrix really started to shine. The Tritrix never got that sparkly top end the Infinitys had, and the Infinitys did still have a wee bit more bass on the low end, but the Tritrix would play
waaaay louder w/out distortion and the mids were a lot more real and defined. I quickly learned that what I was hearing in those Infinitys that I thought I liked, but didn't hear in the Tritrix, is a manufactured sparkle rather than a real sounding speaker. I think of the manufactured sparkle a lot like someone turning up the bass and treble; yes it gives more bass and treble, but it sounds like crap. Over the years I think I'd just become used to that manufactured sound as the norm and thought it was what made a speaker good.
Here's where the answer to that first question gets a bit foggy though. I've seen some guys come and go that think they're going to make some $5k speakers for $200 and I still haven't seen that happen. Another HUGE flaw in a lot of the plans to try to do something like building your own speakers just to save money over buying them is the tooling it takes just to do a decent job w/ the woodwork that goes into building a speaker. I was fortunate that I already had somewhere in the neighborhood of over $10k in tools because I was a cabinet maker. That said, you have to have some form of passion for woodworking before I would say you should jump into speaker building. I hope that doesn't discourage anyone from attempting to build; I'm not saying at all that you need $10k in tools to build a nice pair of speakers. I built my first custom kitchen for a customer using a Dewalt skilsaw, a cheaper portable Hitachi table saw, and a Bosch router table w/ a Porter Cable router in it and I did it successfully. But, you do have to have a passion for woodworking.
To surmize an answer to that question, I think I can and think I have built speakers that are better than ones you can buy manufactured. I'm not saying they're the bestest ever, badest to the bone, no one makes speakers that are better, blah blah blah; but they do sound pretty phenomenal and you would be in a fairly substantial price point to improve on their sound. And that's not just my opinion, it's shared by everyone that's listened to them. The main factor in that equation is that I have months into each of the builds, but its a hobby that I love. And I actually owe a huge thanks to you guys on this forum in the DIY section for all the help you've given me and for taking the time to answer all my questions. I literally went from a complete noob w/ a little understanding, but no where near what I needed to do what I've done, to someone that's not afraid to tackle something like this. If you rephrased that question to "Can you
design and build better", I would change my tune completely. But, given all the proven designs that the DIY gurus came up w/ that are available to the general public, you can definitely build yourself some fantastic sounding speakers. Another huge factor is that I don't necessarily build speakers because I think I can do better, I do it because standing back and listening to the work of my hands is extremely rewarding!
I would post some pics of the speakers I've built, but for whatever reason w/ the changes done to the forum I can't; it says my files are too big.
