Introductory

[kamkarot]

Hey, I have actually always kept a lookout for a good place to ask questions about Audio hardware and such; thus, I thought that I would try this one out. More for the future though, right now me and my wife are renting and saving up to buy property; and as I build the house I will be putting in my own sound system.

But a few future projects that I have building up in my mind are as follows, (also I am wondering if anyone thinks any of these ideas are good, bad, or beautiful)

1. building a sound system without buying speakers, as in I would get the Silver augies from Hawthorne Audio and learn how to put it all together.

2. Build a receiver, if I even can. learn by trial I guess.

3. In the woods near my house (the one I will build, on the property we are looking at) create a labyrinth of trails (for running mostly) and put outdoor speakers throughout it. A bonus question on this one: if I did this, I would probably have over 12 speakers throughout the trails (so expensive) and I would make the trails around these speakers...what kind of receiver would I need?

 

[lsiberian]

DIY audio is a lot of fun, but building your own receiver just isn't practical IMO. You can certainly build your own amps, and speakers though.

 

[slipperybidness]

I'll comment on #2 and leave #1 and #3 for people that know about this better than me.

#2--You certainly COULD build a receiver, but it ain't gonna be easy. You would almost certainly never match the commercial offerings unless you are an electrical engineer and make matching the commercial offerings a life-long passion.

On the other hand, you could build separates (DAC, pre-amp, amp, etc) and have something that would beat most any commercial offerings at sound quality. Probably still won't be able to keep up with all the features of the modern receivers. But from purely sound quality and build quality, you could hit the next level.

The bottom line is that a commercial offering always makes compromises. If you build it yourself then you aren't playing by the same rules of turning a profit.

I would start with kits and move from there. If you are seriously interested, I can give you some resources to check into.

PS. I have recently built some kits, have some books on building gear from scratch, and have started back to school taking electronics and manufacturing courses.