Should I consider a Do It Yourself (DIY) speaker or subwoofer project?
Most of the HT and Audio discussion boards have areas where members discuss their DIY speaker projects. If your reading this note, you may be wondering: is it really possible and practical for an individual to make a speaker in their garage with performance equivalent to commercial products?
The answer is absolutely yes.
In fact, it is easily possible to build units that outperform everything available in a mass retailer such as Best Buy or Circuit City--even get "high end" performance for a fraction of what compariable speaker would cost at a retail “high end” shop.
Starting with no experience at all in any aspect of speaker building, I have successfully completed three speaker pairs (cost about $500 each) all of which sound (to me) significantly better than the expensive, highly regarded B&W nautilus units at my local audiophile boutique. There is access to the very same world class drivers found in $10,000 plus speakers such as Wilson. Before proceeding, it is necessary to define three levels of DIY speaker construction.
Level 1- Vender supplies all parts including a completed cabinet and sometimes a completed crossover. You just put it together.
Level 2- Follow an established “recipe” but construct the cabinet and crossover yourself.
Level 3- Start from scratch with a driver set and design the cabinet and crossover yourself.
Level 1 projects only take 1-3 hours and require no special tools or skills. The problem with these is that the selection is not too vast and the savings are pretty minimal. The role of these is as a first “get your feet wet” project to see if the process is appealing without risking getting in over your head. My first project was one of these, a MTM center channel from Madisound with nice Vifa drivers. When this thoroughly trounced the Klipsch I had been using, I was hooked on DIY and ready to move on to level 2.
Level 3 projects require a MAJOR commitment of time, study and equipment. Although the appeal of creating a novel and unique instrument that has never before existed is great, do not consider attempting this without at least one successfully completed level 2 project.
Level 2 projects are the sweet spot for amateurs. There are hundreds of tested, proven designs to choose from where the difficult crossover and cabinet tweaking has already been done.
There three advantages to DIY :
Bang for buck, pride of accomplishment and control of the result.
Of these, the first is by far the least important. If your sole motivation is to save money, forget it; unless you put no value on your time at all, then money savings alone is inadequate compensation for the effort. You
must relish the process.
The last advantage is the most important. YOU get to decide where to make the compromises, and every speaker project involves trade offs and compromises. For example, a commercial manufacturer has to worry about shipping weight limiting the wall thickness and bracing. You can choose to make your cabinet as dead (and heavy) as you like, and dead cabinets sound great. You can choose any color or wood species to match décor. If you want them biampable, no problem. Gloss or satin finish, your call. Need the port in the front, put it there. You can distribute your budget towards the drivers, crossover components, damping materials, binding posts, special veneer- whatever is most important to you.
The following check list that will help decide whether speaker DIY is for you :
· I own or have access to a router and table saw
· I have woodworking and/or finishing skills
· I know how to solder
· I like to make things
· I want to learn woodworking
· I have free time for a new hobby
You should be able to answer "YES" to at least three of these points if you want to move forward into DIY building.
Another important point- free help is just a few mouse clicks away. Speaker builders are generous people who like to help. The "DIY and Advanced Projects" section right here on the HTF is a great place to start. Some other places to get help :
http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/discuss.cgi
http://www.diyaudio.com/
http://www.pesupport.com/cgi-bin/config.pl
HTF moderator Patrick Sun has a nice site which outlines his personal DIY projects and offers tons of tips and several dozen photographs of projects in progress:
http://www.io.com/~patman/diy.html
And one final link- to a large list of other speaker DIY links. This should get you going:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/gradds/DIY1.html
Good luck!