Didn't mention that I'll do measurements of each speaker and include that with them in shipment as quality assurance that they are working properly. Email me at cheapaudioman@gmail.com and put "DIY Assembly" in the subject line if you're interested
@@mag290 nothing really to it. I just wanted to make some money so I can quit the rat race. I will also assemble the CSS Criton. Not really a collaboration. I just saw an opportunity to help people get a great speaker if they’re intimidated by the build process.
My wife got me a pair of speakers (Micca MB42X) for Easter. I haven't had any stereo equipment since I was a teenager. This channel not only got me re-interested in quality audio, I've learned so much about the true depth of the subject. It's been a fun few weeks, thanks Randy!
@@lamecasuelas2 You know, in light of this DIY video, I can tell you that Micca sells, at least they used to sell, I'm not sure about now, but I don't see why they would stop selling, a crossover kit that basically makes the MB42s into MB42Xs. They are the same speaker with the only difference being the crossover, the X actually stands for crossover. There's a video by another reviewer who shows how to install the crossover, and he said adding the crossover does make a significant enough difference to warrant the price and effort, I think it's like $20 US.
@ Travis H With due respect to your wife as well as yourself, I would tell you that MB42x speakers really aren't that great, in my opinion, they are greatly overrated, for the price you can get better speakers, and frankly, you can get better for less. I'm only telling you this because Easter wasn't too long ago, and while you can appreciate the gift from your wife and graciously thank her for the speakers, if you really want the best sound, you should be able to return them to Amazon if that's where she got them. I would recommend Neumi BS5 bookshelf speaker, they're just 10 bucks more than the Miccas and are a whole lot better. If you actually want to go cheaper than the Miccas, I would look at "Singing Wood" brand speakers. I cannot remember which I bought first, the Miccas or Singing Wood T25 passives, but I bought them late last year at the same time(well, one day apart) I bought a pair of Micca MB42Xs because they were cheap. I bought the Miccas because they were so hyped and I hadn't heard of Singing Wood, but after comparing, I can tell you the Singing Wood speakers are better in every regard, build quality, looks, and sound, so much so that I ended up returning the Miccas. I got a small desktop DAC/amp with Bluetooth for $32 bucks, and together they work great. P.S. While I haven't heard them myself, the Micca RB42s are supposed to be much better, but they are $150 as opposed to $90.
Many months later… hope you didn’t take the criticisms of these folks too seriously, especially those who don’t even have them and have listened to/watched some reviews. The point is that you’re enjoying yourself and finding what you like. Who cares what some keyboard warriors have to say about what you should do. I have some MB42Xs myself. They’re currently set up with my TV. They definitely sound better than the drivers that shipped with my TV.. previously I used them as desktop speakers. Are there better speakers, probably/sure. So what, there’s always better.
I started DIY speakers in 1975, using Phillips drivers, crossovers, and plans. I made 3-way 10-5-1 speakers for less than a decent 2-way (8" + 1" ) with minimal crossovers. I also learned a lot more than I would have just buying a pair, then another, then another, as I tweaked the sound.
I’m never going to build my own speakers, but I love listening to you talk about it. I appreciate your knowledge and delivery. You speak and explain extremely well in a way that’s concise, informative, and pleasant. I could listen to you talk about watching paint dry. 👏🏼 Thanks for the videos.
I was using my Sony core speakers for my 7.1 surround, a Onkyo RZ 820 reciever, the Sony's sound good and clear but I watched this video and went to Parts Express and purchased the Dayton BR-1 kit, put it together, used the acoustical foam around the inside of the box but added speaker stuffing to fill the open interior of the enclosures, listen to them and gave them break in time, Wow wow wow, so impressed with the sound they put out deep base I think due to the oversized enclosures, and the mids and highes are phenomenal, they blow away the Sony's and even the Elac unifi bookshelf that I had, you are absolutely correct on a diy build, I'm 47 yrs old and been around and had many different systems and speakers, The Dayton BR-1 is just a awesome sounding work of art with great soundstage and imagining, sometimes I can actually hear sounds around and behind me, unbelievable, Randy have you ever listened to these, if not I recommend getting a pair !
I built a set of xls encores and they sound amazing. this video gave me some confidence to take the plunge. the process was not easy like you said, but it feels so much more gratifying than placing an amazon order. Cheers Randy, your videos are super enjoyable.
I looked at many dishes and could not find what I wanted so I designed and built my own based upon research from experts. The result is I got what I wanted built to work in the room that I use for listening with sound quality that exceed anything that I was looking at. It does take time and patience but is well worth it if you have the skills and time. Great conversation!
Couldn't agree more with the statements on cabinets. For speaker companies, a 350lbs cabinet for a medium sized 3-way speaker is just not something you can easily mass produce and distribute under most circumstances. But as a builder with a reasonable number of tools, you can design and build them yourself. And, of course, control over individual components (crossovers, wiring, driver selection, damping materials, etc) lets you experience so much more music than anything else with a reasonable price tag. Add to that the joy of hearing magic you created with your own hands... it's so much fun!
I built a pair of GR Research X-LS with all of the crossover upgrades. Absolutely love their sound. Neutral, balanced, and definitely sound like speakers around the $2500-$3000 mark...They are that good. They are not bright, or lively, or warm. Just a lovely balanced sound with my revealing equipment.
How were the GR Research crossover assembly instructions? Their video was pretty confusing and he indicated that the instructions were just electronic schematic drawings (way over my head).
@@greenbeginner9221 The instructions were very basic. I was a bit intimidated since I'd never assembled a crossover and soldered before. But, I made sure I had all the right tools and took my time. I watched the assembly video many times, and had it with me during the assembly. Laying all the parts out with the small crossover board that came with my flat pack cabinet helped me organize and position everything as Danny suggests in the video. I took my time and followed the steps closely and it worked out really well.
@@cabeallen1277 Thanks for the reply. Maybe it will make more sense to me if I had it physically in front of me. I wish Danny would have spent more time with the camera work.
@@greenbeginner9221 yeah, I would agree. Having the parts in front of you does help. I certainly had a "a ha" moment when I was laying the parts out and watching the assembly video a few times. I finally understood the layout. It was a head scratcher and then it became clearer. Make sure you have a good quality set of wire strippers and pliers for twisting the wires.
Back in the day, I bought an 8" bookshelf speaker kit,( 2 of them) from Radio Shack, the kits came with crossover components, the woofer, and tweeter, and a complete set of plans for building the enclosure! They were right up there with the more expensive pre-made speakers!
I absolutely love my Overnight Sensations, plus the fact that i made a custom desk and was able to finish both with the same stain - looks outstanding and sound amazing.
Until this video... I was considering Elacs, the new Polk's, etc. Not anymore! This makes so much more sense to me. I already have the tools and most of the experience. Awesome video Randy, I'm stoked! I really love the DIY stuff you've been doing.
i was looking at the Klipsch & Elacs too but i ended up building the GR Research AV Series and i absolutely love them, they do take some time to break in but once they do its awesome!!!
@@scottlowell493 The new Polk Reference series is an incredible value, still not as much of a value as a tried and true DIY speaker of about the same price but they’re still great speakers.
I’ve had a pair of Danny’s av-1’s for many years, and they’re absolutely great speakers. I’ve had a number of other things, but keep coming back to them.
I wish I found this channel sooner, I could only afford one giraffe but now after saving so much money big Jeffrey will soon have a giraffe wife,thanking you in advance, kevin.
I've been going to the Owston DIY hi-fi event in England for the last few years and agree with everything you say in this video. For me, the biggest advantage to going DIY is that I don't have to stick to slimline low efficiency ported speakers. I can instead, for example, go down the wide-body, 18" woofer, 4 way, high efficiency, sealed box speaker route.
I was just waiting for you to get to the enclosures. That was my wow moment when I built my first speakers using birch plywood, and recycled denim insulation. Well, until I plugged them in. It's a good weekend project with years of pay off.
I am addicted to DIYing speakers! I wanted to add a sub to my system last year. Figured out that you could DIY with moderate amounts of research. I loved the process, studied all the parameters, bought hardware to build cabinets. Built a first one, a second one, a third one (family) and already have drivers on my desk for some bookshelves. I absolutely love this and now I annoy every friend or familymember to let me build something for them. But honestly, it's really great. Price to performance ratio is excellent, you can design the enclosure as you prefer and there are so many plans available so you don't even have to get into all the details of speaker design that will eventually coast you a fair amount of money on measuring equipment - unless you love it...
I think CSS has Danny beat in one aspect and thats the crossover, CSS its all laid out and the parts fit in a moulded piece of plastic with lettering for easy reference. Dannys you cut your own piece of mdf 1/4 inch and drill your own hole, not a deal breaker, but CSS is slick how they did it.
Another right on set of observations and points well taken. Now once these are broken in please let us know how these sound in comparison to say Elac or KEF or B&Ws selling for under 600usd
@@kdomster9141 Bass for one. There really is no replacement for displacement in bass drivers (good quality ones). Also as Ron pointed out the elac bass driver attack and decay are similar to the encore paper cone driver but the bass in the elac really needs juice to get some what close to the encore and then it doesn't seem to have the same weight to it. I also think if the sandcast resistors and especially the iron core inductors are replaced in the ubi52 then it you could get better clarity and less smearing. But that is only my 2 cents and others may think quality of components etc etc is a myth. But for me I can A/B the 2 and I know what I like. :)
I built & own the GR Research AV Series for my av room. Currently the AV3 Towers, AV3S Centre & AV2 Surrounds. Just waiting for Xmas to be over and im gonna start building the GR Research X-Statik's for my 2.1 setup for the livingroom......Cannot wait, LOVE GR Research
Man I love your intros and faux-sponsor shoutouts!! Nothing says "I Love you" like a handcrafted dead head skull 💀🤣 Actually starts a detail-oriented show off with a bit of a light note! Love it! (I wouldn't be here if there weren't details, but it makes the teacher more likable).
I just built a box using 5/8 plywood. 2 feet long and 1 foot square. I installed an old car stereo that was in my truck. 2 6x9 vertically each in their own sealed box with a 50W amp in the middle, EQ and deck. I also put a 12" in a box with its own 300W amp and it plugs into the EQ. All the stuff is Kenwood. The EQ is nearly 30 years old and the deck and amp 20. The speakers are new Infinity Kappas and the woofer is a Perfect that is 20 years old. Still thumping.
Yup, the 1st DIY speaker is a huge learning experience. The instructions are an advantage, read them, it's a great jumping off point. My biggest take away was the size & complexity of the crossover. The strength & rigidity of the cabinet is also a big learning item.
I'm new to the whole audio world spent a lot of time scouring goodwill and eBay for a deal. Well I make a little bit more cash now so I sought out to setup a decent 7.1 system. As a lover of diy I didn't know this existed. More so I'm grateful I stumbled upon this before I spent any real money.
I just watched a DIY video where a guy broke down the cost of the drivers and crossovers and enclosure of this speaker system that from the manufacturer costed an insane $6000 to $10,000. He figured that the max it would cost an individual to buy the parts and put them together themselves was no more then $500 and possibly as lose as $300. This made me think, how many of these "high end" companies are using these inexpensive materials to make these very expensive speakers. I can understand some mark up, but when the mark up is as much as 1300%, I'm going to call shinadingans on them. Great video on why DIY is good.
I'm doing it. I've been overwhelmed with research on some bookshelf speakers until I came across the diy option. Plus I'm a control freak and this really appeals to me. I also have a woodworking shop in my garage and a wall loaded with exotic hardwoods. I'm thinking I might order a flat pack and use that as a template/jigs for future speaker cabinets. Keep up the great work Randy!
Woodworker here as well and thought the same. I'm a drummer so I figured some birch, maple, or mahogany would make great speaker boxes, but like drums, these woods introduce tonality. So, I'm wondering if mdf is actually preferred because it is more neutral? I don't know the answer btw but I look at these manufactured speakers and think I could make this so much better.
@@erics.4113 I think a heavy/dense wood sealed properly and braced then ad some no rez would be fine. I was thinking of ash or oak (readily available here and cheap) and filling/sealing to get a smooth finish then sprayed with a white pre-cat lacquer. I started to reconsider the diy speaker. The XL-S Encore with all the upgrades and a sheet of no rez shipped to my door is $930. Once you buy that it's yours whether you like the sound or not and then there's the finishing. I started looking at other speakers in that price range or for a little more and you're looking at some quality stuff and if you don't like the sound chances are you can send it back. I'll probably still get it but I need to stew on it for a while longer
@@toddb7154 if you're not going for a natural wood finish I wonder if the solid wood is beneficial. Like I said I'm not sure, but my guess is that different woods will color the speakers sound. Coming from the drumming background, the type of ply makes massive differences to tonality. Not saying that's good or bad with a speaker, just not sure how significant vs mdf. I'm not familiar with no-rez but my guess is it is something dense that kills resonant frequencies? I hear you on the other points. There probably is little after-market for DIY at 1k, and you could easily buy 1k speakers and retain much of the value on the second hand market. Maybe you could also source the DIY second hand as well? Someone that wasn't so successful with the build and you could grab the drivers and crossover network and scrap their cabinets? Much to consider. I did a demo the other day at a local audio spot. I left underwhelmed by numerous bookshelves reaching into the $2k price. Maybe my expectations were off or the equipment stack or maybe I just really want floor stander sound even though I don't have the room for that right now. Good luck on whatever direction you take. I'm looking for a project to get into so I am seeing the DIY route as a satisfying check box for both the end result and the journey of building them.
@@toddb7154 appreciate that. I just ordered rp600m klipsch for the sale price of $377 going on. I'm also looking at some ELACs and more amps and gear to experiment with. I'm sure a diy something or other is coming at some point.
very interesting, liked and subscribed. as a retired carpenter/handyman, i have, i imagine, all the woodworking power tools slowly dying in the garage. most of my furniture is flintstone quality. thanks, i'll look into these kits!
I worked at the largest consumer and pro audio distributor in North America and if for example a JBL speaker costs $600 retail dealer cost is $300 and landed cost for the distributor is $150.
I made the XLS Encore but instead of the T26SG Tweeter I used the GR NEO3 Tweeter with the NEO wave guide that I purchased from Parts Express. I have a 1 1/4" front and back baffles and they sound great. A friend of mine that has heard many of the best Book Shelf Speakers in the world said they are the best sounding small Speakers that he has heard.
Love seeing you promote DIY! I am huge into DIY. A couple things I wanted to say in relation to your video. The large manufactures design their drivers and the argument that drivers are specific to the design favors the major manufacture more than just about anyone. Some of the drivers in JBL, KEF, REVEL, Focal. ect are the most advanced in the world and yet are relatively inexpensive for them to produce. I do not DIY to compete with that. Additionally fantastic speakers can be made with fairly modest drivers as these days a "modest" driver is often quite capable. In DIY, the consumer is handling the drivers and crossover parts so there is incentive to make them visually superior and promote the individual parts more to generate sales of said upgraded parts, as we know however a speaker is more than the sum of expensive parts. A visually superior driver may not be sonically superior and many examples of this exist especially now, with contemporary advanced manufacturing drivers may look very simple and yet be fantastic units. They may also cost very low $. That all said, I love DIY for the fun and learning and the hands on experiences. It really is not the total value proposition it once was and yet I still enjoy it (and if not total, there is some good value to be had). It is cool that you have the GR research kit and the CSS kit here as they are known to be excellent examples for DIY. The Wavecore/CSS woofer in particular in the CSS is famous. Of course that is largely due to modeling well into 30hz bass response which can be impressive to experience I am sure. There are other factors though, such as if you are pairing with a sub or two there is less benefit to the expense of the Wavecore/CSSdriver over some less expensive woofers. Anyway the real issue I have is with the "boutique" crossover component claims, I hate to see folks paying for expensive caps and resistors without knowing what they are wading into. I would be curious if you have really researched this? Where you able to complete two truly identically valued crossovers and compare them? Many extremely famous designers, engineers and DIY folks are not on board with fancy crossover parts (even though they could choose them) and of course some are. I don't see you promoting expensive speaker wires, tube connectors and other dubious product, why expensive crossover components? Seems like you could do an episode on exploring these components and how you became sold on them.
It is definitely a waste of time and money to spend extra for crossover components. That's why most speaker companies don't use them. They get the parts and test them so they get the best match possible. I know people who have built kits and thought they could get better sound buying more expensive caps, resistors, and coils, only to find either no difference or a degradation of it. Not trying to insult you but sighted listening comparisons is of no value. The brain doesn't do well with sound and memory. The best, most reliable comparison is done double blind and with levels matched and the ability to switch between sources instantaneous. Speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain with distortion levels in woofers at around 5% which is clearly audible. One hopes that the marketers of speaker kits puts the same kind of effort into choosing cover parts and drivers. I have a pair of DIY speakers using Scan Speak Kevlar woofers (7 in.) and Focal tweeters. For bass I got a 12 in Shiva driver from Adore audio. I've had them for almost 30 years and have never had a negative comment. I found out after a lot of trial and error on my own designs that if one isn't an EE then the odds of designing an outstanding pair of speakers are slim to none. Kits are terrific if you are good with tools. My favorite that I ever constructed were from Dynaudio and we're MTM or D'Appolito configuration. Tweeters in the middle with identical midwoofers above and below. Once I was finished and listened to them I just about cried when I had to deliver them. It never hurts to use high quality drivers and Dynaudio are definitely some of the best. The comments about the Linkwitz designed kits is spot on. Nobody has ever said an unkind word about them. Every review I ever read raved about how open the sound was. For those who want to try their hand at kit building, I recommend starting with a subwoofer because they are much easier, especially if you use an acoustic suspension type box with the appropriate woofer. Make sure that if you use a plate amp that it has an EQ that can lower the volume on frequencies that tend to peak if you set your sub in a corner. In my room that's 50hz and is 10db higher than the rest of the output. That's fine if you like 50 hz but you're going to miss out on the very lowest frequency sounds. It is also good to remember that the smaller the room the more LF boost you will get which is why you need to try different placements of your sub. Adire is back in business and still makes some very high quality, affordable drivers. Follow Nevada's example Abolish qualified immunity
Years ago, I built a pair of TriTrix MTM TLs. After I built them, I wanted to test them. My brother was with me and had a Jackson Browne Live CD in his car. We put that CD in and played it through the TriTrix. He got a huge grin on his face. He said he was hearing things that he had never heard before. And he listened to the CD at least a hundred times. Not sure what your thoughts are in the TriTrix kit, but I loved them. I sold them because someone I worked with listened to them and offered me 3 times more money than I had in them. I wish I still had them!
Cool video! Yes DIY is the best way to go, I've been doing it for somewhere close to 50 years but never with a kit and I rarely build box speakers anymore. I switched to open baffle in 1994, and active crossovers in the late 80's so I don't do a lot with passive any more. I built my first CBT line array in 2009 (also open baffle) for the center channel speaker in my home theater and will be building open baffle CBT's for the LCR in the new theater. The surrounds in the new theater will use passive crossovers developed using LspCAD but I hope I don't need to do anything else with passive. I use to build analog active which was a pain and expensive having PCB's manufactured but these days I just use miniDSP. It's a fun hobby and you can definitely get better sound with far less money but it takes time and effort to learn so if you just want better speakers but don't want to invest the time and effort into obtaining the knowledge then a kit will be the best option. If you don't want to build a kit then this video has just given you a solution. I don't know Randy, I just discovered this channel, but if he can assemble it for you then I don't think you will go wrong. I personally don't offer kit building or any other services and don't really have any plan to but I wish all the best to anyone wanting to start such a business so I wish this channel the greatest success!
Just now signed on, even though I'm a year late. When shopping for the best bookshelf I could find, (and I listened to six audiophile brands) the one speaker that sounded best in all music categories was the B&W Nautilus 805. Whether of classical piano, orchestral, jazz, fusion, rock or country, these boys shine.
And excellent summarization of the whole DIY speaker concept. I took the plunge with the CSS TD-X and couldn't be happier. CSS obviously put great deal of thought into making the build process as easy as possible and it shows. I grew up building Heath Kit products and honestly this was a beginner level build due a lot to how well thought out the materials and process were. The sound, well to a non-audiophile it's just incredible. Highly recommended.
I've been working on designing and building my own DIY speakers for a bit now, definitely a fun and rewarding hobby but: Well regarded kits are the way to go unless you want to travel down a deep deep rabbit hole. Also, as far as I can tell, the SVS Ultra bookshelves use the Peerless GFC 6.5" with an SVS sticker, that's a $55 woofer in a $500/pc bookshelf with cheap crossover components... The margins are very real.
Going down the rabbit hole is the fun and the journey.😜 Not knocking kits, they are great, especially from these kinds of designers. Designing and building your own though does feel immensely rewarding.
@@ASSOpid very true. Dali use Peerless driver's, albeit with some wood fibre and pigment in the cones. Otherwise they can be had for £15.😂 Along with a cheap but good looking cabinet and a crossover that wouldn't be out of place in a Christmas cracker. It's this exact type of thing that led me to build my own.
I agree with all these points. I too Audio DIY speakers and eletronics, its really fun and rewarding the only challage I would stress is access to the tools for the job and using it, this will cost you. ask a friend that's good with wood aesthetics and leave woodwork to somebody else, however before then.. work needs to be invested into loudspeaker/eletronics physics and mathematics and lastly, eletronics this demands tools of varying degrees depending on the application. I own almost all tools expected to build a great a audio system, it took a very very long time to aquire them.
Just down the road is a woodworking shop....small business....wouldn't this guy know how to make a wooden box look good? He's got all the equipment and knows wood. I'm sure, you can find a wood worker guy in every city with a population above 100, 000 people. Doesn't that solve the finish and cut costs a bit?
How did you figure out the crossover assembly? Did the instructions include anything better than electronic schematics? (Those things are Greek to me). I watched the GR Research "how to" video and it left me totally confused. The poor camera work made things worse.
My main speakers are a DIY/Self assembled kit from that 'other' company up in Wisconsin. I've had them over twenty years and I have no desire to swap them out...there are other speakers I'd like to try, but I still really enjoy mine. The kit was $900 delivered to CA, and included pre built and finished cabs, and IIRC, with the upgraded x-over. It's the Dynaudio Aries kit and shortly after I got the kit Dynaudio exited the DIY marketplace. I listened to a lot of speakers before the purchase, and after they were built and burned in...IMHO I had the same sound of the comparable retail Dynaudio speaker, but at about 35% of the cost. The biggest difference is in the cabinets. My kit cabs are much more solid, but not nearly as pretty. A very passable oak veneer, but not 'statement furniture'. IMHO, if you can install a ceiling fan, or put together a Ikea wall unit, you can DIY speakers with a flatpack, and you will have a sound very significantly better than comparable retail speakers . There are two negatives others mentioned below. Resale. If you are a flipper, stay away unless you are connected to a local audio society. And you can't hear DIY before purchase. But if you want something that "punches way above its price..."
Note on Resonance in cabinets. Ultra hi end speakers that has that organic sound doesn't hv inert cabinets ie Gamut and less expensive Harbeth as these results in natural sound because inert means a sound like Magico. But these are done on purpose with deliberate resonance in selected frequencies.
I have the Madisound BK12 kit speakers, and they were easy to assemble and they sound great. I have them as my second system, but in the same room as my main system. They're great for playing with low powered / tube amps that my main system speakers don't work with.
This video needs to be in the HiFi hall of fame. The end is Randy realizing what those of us that have built the mighty Criton Or Encore have also discovered, some, thanks to this video. And I own popular $1500 Wharfedales, Elacs and Klipsch. None of them sound as refined and effortless as the CSS Criton. Best HiFi money I’ve spent. If you have the means and time, don’t hesitate.
Love the video and applaud your bringing the diy option to audiophiles on a budget. BUT, while every point you made is true these kits are not exactly cheap despite the greater return on investment. For many the cost is still a stretch.. Your first videos gave solid advice to those who might only have a total audio budget of a thousands bucks or less. Theres a lot of competition at that range. Along the way you've taught folks how to listen and what to listen for when evaluating speakers and equipment. Your own growth is evident from following you these past months.. you're a good honest man and if taking your TH-cam/audio path in a new direction I wish nothing but the best. I just hope you still have time for the quality value reviews and shootouts that separate the wheat from the chaff for the more contained consumer.
Have a lot of things in the works, Dean at all price levels. There are some great kits out there too that are very affordable. CSS and GR are the companies that I've concentrated on now but there will be many more to come.
Man I tried and tried and tried over 30 years and I just can’t beat the cost. I really want to make them again but for example if I want a particular bookshelf speaker that costs $1500 I might save $100 when said and done. I think I need better sourcing 😢 now AMPS for sure I can save a TON. You can make an Amp that may cost $4000 retail for 1/4 that easy. Gonna try again 👍
When I see your TH-cam name all squished together, it looks like it says Chapeau dioman. Chapeau being French for hat. I tip my hat to you sir, great video, you've earned another subscriber!
Seriously, holy crap, in like 7 different ways... So your sub count continues to rise, you said that you want to do this full time, you made several good points and new perspectives on diy speakers, you're willing to build speakers for people (which will definitely get more people interested in the audio world in general as well as diy speakers specifically) and overall you're almost irritating in your apparent ease of adaptation into "being a youtuber". The man crush is real and I'm seriously looking forward to seeing what you do for, hopefully, years to come. I will also definitely be contacting you to build me some speakers later, maybe that'll be my Xmas present to myself. Great job as usual, keep it up and thank you for your service (military and TH-cam) !
Simply said, great video!! I've been toying with the idea to build my own speakers for a while and this is the kick in my behind much needed to start this project. Thank you!
In my younger days I used to read speaker builder magazine. They had a design that used a Sonotube for t body, with a face plate made of MDF . I used peerless drivers in a 3 way design, hand wired crossover w/ air core inductors, solen caps. Parts cost me $400 in 1988. They sounded amazing for something I put together myself. Wish I still had them. Me ex made me sell them to a friend who still has them.
Are we going to see a Saturday shoot out! On these two speakers? I think this next winter I’m going to build a GR Reserch kit. Great video Randy, I really enjoy the DIY and mod stuff. Thanks!
DIY loudspeakers built from a good kit are obviously a great value. Not to discourage anyone, but their resale on the used market will be cost of materials or a bit less. The last commercial loudspeaker I bought was my college dorm speakers I got in 1972. Much more important than just saving money, DIY means you're MUCH more involved in the experience of your system. A lot of guys buy their audio the same way they do their luxury cars. It's just expensive toys for them. When you DIY, you learn an enormous amount and your experience is something money can't buy. Even so, many still look at the $30k+ systems and drool, wishing they could own something like that. The truth is they can. Going DIY with the right kit will allow us mere mortals to own a system equal to what only the wealthy can afford. Instead of lusting after that $80,000 MBL or Avalon Acoustics wonder, the Linkwitz LX521 system can be built for as little as $5k. You don't see the LX521 on the used market because they truly are a "forever" loudspeaker. Check it out.
I built a focal 2 way kit. When I was done, they sounded identical to a wilson watt 5 (same drivers),1% tolerance parts in crossover. tThe kit was a minute fraction of the cost of the watt.
Ya see so much corruption everywhere you look nowadays that you feel relieved when you hear of an American company that has passion and emphasizes the quality of materials and the build and design of its product. Thank You CSS and GR and cheapaudioman for giving me a little cheer today
Audio is a hobby and DIY is a hobby. I don't know if combining hobbies is the best route for me to take. I flew r/c for a very long time, loved flying and hated building.
Things have come a long way with the foam stuff from the likes of hobby zone. The only thing you have to do is throw on the wings and the tail and dropping the battery and away you go.
@@arena_rock_man9030 I remember about 30 years ago a company started the kind of foamy, EZ r/c. Extra 230 with an O.S. 28 was a little monster and I didn't have to worry about one of my super Kaos.
My goal in life is to get him to review the Parts Express C-Note speaker kit. It's one of the most common DIY models, but I don't think any notable reviewer has ever reviewed them.
Just had a quick look at the c note. Very interesting! Not on par with these two but what a great way to start with this hobby! I just may start with a set.
@@todddonaldson2822 I've made a few pairs of them for gifts. They're definitely decent, even after accounting for some parts you have to get that aren't included in the kit.
@@gomibako2517 What parts are not included? Did you leave the exterior bare or?? I’ve seen another vid with a wrap over MDF. Not bad but I’m searching for ideas.
@@todddonaldson2822 - I just checked their listing again. You used to need to buy some binding posts (or terminal cups), speaker wire, and screws. Those are now apparently included in the kit. Some reasonably common optional additions are wire quick disconnects for the speaker connections inside the cabinet, a pair of crossover boards (like part 260-186), two 0.22uF capacitors (like part 027-202) for the 0.22uF capacitor modification (Google it), and acoustic damping material (like part 260-520). There are lots of helpful threads and people on forums like Audio Science Review and Tech Talk if you have questions. As for finishes, I have used primer and spray paint, ExoHyde, and paper backed maple veneer with pressure sensitive adhesive that I finished with wood dye and water based polyurethane. The veneer was the most work by far. ExoHyde was the easiest.
@@todddonaldson2822 I used ExoHyde on my last set of MDF enclosures. If you're into black, or white textured coatings it's great. I used parts # 260-2100, and 260-115.
@@ASSOpid Capacitors and inductors do matter, though. They have parasitic capacitance, resistance, and inductances. Not to mention crossover distortion. I would argue the crossover circuit matters more than the individual components though, at long as they're new and of a reputable brand.
I've got a pair of Mirage 490is small towers that I bought new, but at cost, back in 94-95. The socks are wrecked and I can't find replacements. I've been thinking about building a set of speakers as I'm never going to get the deal I got on these again. I was a chef at a restaurant across the street from a high-end audio store and when they were working long hours getting the place open I'd let them in after hours and feed them. Got my whole system pretty much at cost. Winter is coming so maybe a DIY kit is a good option on snowy days.
Loving the content! Really nice you'll have some coverage of the DIY space. It's a really great option! I built a triplet of the DIY Sound Group's- Elusive 1099. They have a 10" horn loaded twitter, twin 5" mids, and twin 10" bass drivers, 99dB/1W. Bass response falls off below 80hz, so you need a sub or two. Amazing speaker that really played cleanly up into insane volume levels (120db+). The horn and tweeter combo are really good, did not sound like a typical horn speaker. It's a great home theater option that can be basically, just assembled and finished by the buyer. Far easier today than when I built mine when the design was brand new. Pre-built crossovers and cabinets weren't available then. DIY isn't really as difficult as many may assume. Plenty of proven designs available from multiple vendors. It's a really fun project, that you can get as crazy with as you like. Really great value if you're willing to put in a little time and work. I'd love to build another pair of speakers, maybe I'll get a little more involved in the design. I need to look into crossover building and speaker design. Time to start buying some books and checking out design software.
Feel like this was very true years ago, but less true now (particularly when you get into like active ls50s and the sorts). Prebuilt speakers have gotten better, cheaper, and better tested. Also building a cabinet AND finishing it (lots of reviews leave this step out!) is a lot of work and requires tools and time (and either knowledge or willingness to learn). Finishing in particular can be a lot of work to get that flat mirror finish, and a ton of time. Also keep in mind that the resale value will be next to nothing for diy speakers (better with well known kits but less so for less well known kits). I a diy speaker fan but if economics play a role as in price to buy a prebuilt speaker vs (components kit cost + wood cost+ finishing supplies cost + cost of tools if you don't have them + the value of your time x hours to completion), then prebuilt is the way to go. If you value the experience of making the speaker you like, with the cabinet how you like, learning something new, etc then diy is great fun and great return.
Great points: time, skill, and especially resale value$$. If you are looking for performance and don't build it correctly, or the finish doesn't look good, there goes your kit. Especially if you are going up the line, like to the Nx-otica which also needs subs. So now you are in aprox 6k, plus you also have to build them. If down the road you need to sell them, no one may want to buy them, because who knows if you did it right or not, or on the other hand, no one may know who the diy company is. For a teen or someone who has time, I think it's worth the investment at a certain dollar value. Especially if they are into S.T.E.M. or trying to learn new skills.
I have rescued old speakers from curb which had dry rotted drives, mostly woofers. I swapped out the drivers with more modern units and although not worthy of any reference system they product quality good enough for my bedroom.
A good friend of mine that has always been an engineer started his own car audio products under the same deal. He designed everything and then had out of the country people make them to his specs
I think he's still making his Amplifier in his shed! So, I guess you'll have to wait a while longer. Goodluck 👍 let me know if you finally see his "DIY" Amplifier. Or, better yet, sounds like. 🤦♂️
I agree. I want to see the review of the sound. Another TH-camr said this speaker with upgraded crossover was better than any other bookshelf speaker for $3k and under. I’d like to hear Randy’s input.
According to Dannie Richie who designed the crossovers for both speakers, the XL-S Encore speakers (shown on the right) are comparable in performance to the $2800/pr Usher Audio BE-718 "Tiny Dancer" model.
The benefit of brand name speakers, especially from a company that manufactures their own drivers, is that they can match each driver pair to get the closest frequency response, impedance, etc.. I've built my share of speakers both from kits and from designs of my own. My current 2.1 system is my own design and I have been using them for 30 years. They have not stopped sounding great and earning compliments. I have learned that at a given price point, multiple brands sound very similar to each other because of the use of computer modeling. Surely good quality kits exist, but the same drivers built by a brand name companies are built with matching that's better than most DIYer's can't achieve. Have you ever used drivers from Focal, Dynaudio, or Scan Speak? I don't think there are many other brands available that can compare or compete. If you try to improve the cover of a factory speaker you will likely be disappointed. This is true in kits as well. The designer will specify a particular component or combination of components because they achieve the correct xover point and FR, slope and so on. If you try to "upgrade" by using more expensive parts they won't perform as designed. Speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain. They have vastly more distortion than any other part of an audio system. They sound different from model to model and brand to brand, often because they are designed to sound different. If you have time and especially resources you can achieve good sounding speakers from kits but part for part and dollar for dollar it's nearly impossible to improve on what a manufacturer can achieve. Siegfried Linkwitz' designed kits will, as someone else said, blow your mind. They aren't boxes and give the most open, unboxed sound you're ever likely to hear.
Nice show. I thought about both of these plus a few other. Building the Parts Express Samba MT's right now. It was a tough choice. Built a pair of MTM's a few years ago. Was at the Valve State of the Art conference in Bremerton and a speaker designer gave me his plans on a sheet of paper for my own personal use. Quite a learning experience since it was not a kit.
The last 5 pairs of floor standing loudspeakers I have owned / and currently own are all DIY (1981, 1988, 1995 and 2 pairs in 2012). That said…. @Cheapaudioman forgot to mention that when a large company like KEF or B&W is making a speaker most of the drivers are (a) custom designed and (b) produced in such large numbers that the per driver cost is very low. In fact even when smaller boutique manufacturers make loudspeakers driver companies like SEAS, Vifa, ScanSpeak, Focal, Morel, Peerless, SB Acoustics, etc (Dynaudio does not sell to DIY anymore) sell drivers to these companies at a fraction of the retail cost published by say a retailer like Madisound. A woofer that lists for $100 on Madisound would be sold by SEAS to a manufacturer for maybe $30 because the manufacturer will commit to purchasing reasonable volumes. So let’s say a 2.5 way loudspeaker that has a street price of $1000 (usually list price of 1200-1500 depending on brand and positioning) would have cost the dealer about $700 and the distributor about $500. Now the manufacturer has to make the loudspeaker for $400 so it can have some profit. That would mean say $200 for the wood, damping, crossover and labour and maybe $200 on the drivers themselves. For $200 the manufacturer has to get 2 woofers and a tweeter. These same drivers would cost a DIYer about $600 then add crossovers, cabinets, etc and the DIYer is going to spend $1000 on a similar speaker granted with better built cabinets and better crossover parts. What the DIYer gains is not necessarily better woofers or tweeters, but more control over cabinet and crossover quality, the ability to finish the cabinet to exactly suit their decor, and the knowledge of what went into their speaker. That’s why I DIY.
I've been making my own speakers for about 25 years. DIY speakers from a kit is like calling Ikea furniture DIY. As you said it's more like assemble it yourself, AIY. Here is how I do it. I don't mine my own copper or make my own paper pulp to make drivers either. I scrounge drivers from bargain electronics stores, garage sales, thrift stores, or salvage them from damaged speakers that were thrown out. You can sometimes get crossovers that way too. I've repaired driver surrounds by rebuilding them with T-shirts and silicone or urethane. After gathering those critical parts I design my enclosures to suit the electronic parts. My first speakers were heavy, so they were small speakers built for 6 to 8" drivers. I had been informed by everybody that the walls of the boxes had to be massive to dampen vibrations. But you know, church bells are massive too, but they ring like crazy. I now build light weight speaker enclosures with light weight materials. I dampen their walls with viscoelastic material sandwiched between layers. Look up Green Glue. I made my own a couple of ways. I won't get into those details. I built a new enclosure for a single found-in-the-trash Optimus Pro 4000 containing a 15" woofer. My "new" speaker weighs 50 pound less than the original with its water damaged particle board enclosure. I rebuilt the 15" woofer surround with cloth from an old T-shirt and black silicone, using a ring made from a garden hose as a form. My "new" speaker sounded amazing, but I needed a pair for stereo. No problem. DIY to the rescue. I then built a matching speaker using the cheapest new drivers, 15" woofer, 5" midrange and piezo electric horn tweeter, I could find at the local electronics parts bargain store. I made high pass, low pass and bandpass "crossovers" from resistors and capacitors. No, I haven't experimented with coils yet. I adjusted the sound by ear to match the sound of the original Radio Shack speaker parts, containing its original crossover, in its new enclosure by varying the resisters and capacitor values. These speakers do not look alike until I put the grills on. I use these speakers with my Yamaha stereo. They sound amazing and costed me about $50 in parts in about 2001 including the leather-look vinyl fabric covering. I designed and built some wave-guide, sometimes called folded horn (bose style) speakers each with a 6.5" woofer, a tweeter and a single resister to balance the sound by ear. How did I design such a speaker you ask? DIY research online of course. On one of these enclosure I used two sheets of 1/8" tempered hardboard sandwiched with never-hardening floor adhesive. It sounds good, but was heavier that I was shooting for. The other look-alike enclosure has the same drivers and resistor inside, but has walls built with polyisocyanurate foam board with patches of 1/8" tempered hardboard stuck onto the inside with the same sort-of viscoelastic flooring adhesive. I've been using these speakers with my computer for about 6 years. They still sound great. Now maybe I could take these speakers to some audio engineer to be tested with all kinds of fancy devices and software. No doubt such an engineer could point out that the audio spectrum has some peaks and valleys and are therefor not perfect. All that matters is they reproduce music faithfully and do not introduce any sounds of their own.
It would be very interesting to compare mainstream/ commercial speakers to speakers from diy sound group, like the HT8. They are in the sub $500 price range.
The thing with the crossover. It's always a matter of whhat you want the speaker to do. In my case for example i paired a Punktkilde AUGWL0016-JN03 with a Morel CAT378. As a 6,5inch woofer starts to beam already where this tweeter doesn't beam at all i have to cross very low and as the tweeter is already rolling off at those frequencies and the phase is shifting a bit because of the rolloff + the actual source of sound not being as far behind the baffle as on the woofer which makes it harder to get drivers perfectly in phase over the whole frequency range. One could argue that not flush mounting the woofer and only the tweeter being flush mounted will help. Yes the phase alignment will be easier to do yet then there is that massive edge of the woofer basket there for the tweeters sound to reflect off which is bad. Also that MASSIVE Motor of this woofer that basically should belong to something like a 12inch woofer makes it able to take tons and tons of power and generate a LOT of SPL while still sounding good that paired with having to cross the tweeter very low means i have to take as much work away from the tweeter as possible as crossing low and a lot of SPL means a lot of stress even for this already 28mm not 25mm tweeter. How to do that? Crossing with a steeper Filter which rolls off "faster" and takes a ton of work awax from the tweeter. One could say "just use a bigger tweeter" yes possible yet that brings other problems to the table like cost and worse off axis Response for example. So crossing steeper is the best choice in most cases. Crossing steeper takes more parts. More parts doesn't mesn bad as in the end all work together as a unit as long as good parts are being used. For the Inductors in the main part of the woofer crossover i use Air Inductors with 1,4mm thick copper wire from intertechnik. No Voodoo bs nothing fancy just simple and get's the job done without being stressed. I coukd get the same value of an Inductor for cheaper with ferrite core Inductor yet those ferrite cores create distortion which then doesn't allow the drivers to show their full potential. In the tweeter crossover and Impedance correction circuits ones with ferrite core or thinner wire can be used to save money as those will not take as much power. As for caps and them changing "Details" in sound. Some caps have a slightly different let's say frequency response to them which causes just randomly swapping caps on a finished speaker to other "better" ones changes to change the sound character of a speaker. Apart from the type of cap there is Voltage. The higher the more abuse it can take. Low Voltage electrolytic caps can be overloaded when a speaker takes a lot of power and even explode (not like fireworks off course) which in my case means i need film caps which can take some beating. An overloaded cap most likely causes sound problems as well. in my case i use Audyn MKT 250volt as the main caps (even in the tweeters Xover which doesn't take much power as i still had the right values around) which is high enaugh to even be used in PA speakers (Audyn is a intertechnik brand as far as i know). For Impedance correction circuits electrolytic caps are fine because again those bits don't take much power in most cases. For resistors i mostly use those big white ceramic ones. They are cheap and can be had with a good amount of wattage. Only "downside" is that they have a small bit of inductance which CAN reduce very high frequency output very slightly. In a perfect resistor vs one of those the difference is so small that you can tune it out while developing the crossover super easy and even might not be noticable at all if you don't as the inductance just is that tiny. So basically if a crossover is made well and with no corners cut on using parts that are not stressed with the job even very high end Mundorf caps vs something cheap shouldn't make a difference as long as the cheap one isn't stressed out.
Parts Express, Madisound, Meniscus, and several others also have kits. Madisound has very high end drivers from Seas and Scan Speak, but I don't know if they use those in any of their kits.
Great. Each to their own I guess. I love my Dali Rubicon 2s. Dali manufacturer there own Speakers, drivers, Tweeters etc. Every thing made in Denmark, not "China." Every speaker who makes it, signs it at the back. I wouldn't swap or change anything about these beautiful bad boys! They fit my system Perfect. You Enjoy your "Super DIY" speakers. Good luck 👍interesting video.
Intiminated? 🤔 great vid. Been trying to find the right speakers, searching sites, reading reviews, I like vintage, but that's just a look the can easily be replicated, but this vid video is hella encouraging.
Started with the HiVi DIY 3.1, which is currently one of the best price to performance wise on Audio Science Review... Upgraded to a Genelec 8260 which likely beats out all currently tested speakers on Audio Science Review.
I haven't heard a DIY kit yet (I fully intend to jump in someday, love the idea even if just for fun), but I can't say I agree with your spiel on driver design. I doubt reputable brands like Martin Logan, Klipsch, KEF etc. aren't engineering virtually every aspect of their best drivers. They employ engineers just like the makers of these kits. The engineers design prototypes, finalize the design, and the company surveys production sites and says "this is what you'll build for us, tell us how much you think you'd need to do so and we'll consider giving you the contact." Just like I imagine the engineers who design the DIY kits would do. Even on that point, though, I'm inclined to argue that the big manufacturers have even more control over driver parameters considering that almost every DIY kit I've seen utilizes off-the-shelf drivers from brands like Dayton Audio (who make excellent drivers btw), HiVi, Tang Band etc. I think any reputable brand will control as much of the process as feasible. I believe the value of DIY is primarily that you don't indirectly pay for advertising or, of course, assembly. That said, when I factor in the opportunity costs of my time, assembly is probably quite a bit more expensive than the big brands. But, I expect it'll be fun, so that doesn't deter me in the least. The other reservation I have with claims of DIY superiority is the psychological tendency of people to see things they've built with rose-tinted glasses. They subconsciously weigh their own efforts in the overall evaluation. That's okay--nothing wrong with being proud of your accomplishment; but knowing that silly bit of human psychology, I can't help but question the legitimacy when people build (assemble) a speaker or PC and say it's the best thing ever. Of course, as I mentioned, I don't really have any ground on which to stand since I've never built or heard these kits, and I don't work in the field. I could be wrong about all my above points, and I have little doubt that you really do generally get a lot for the money (minus the cost of your time, if you count that); but I like to pick apart and question all claims (which is important, given the political climate and media disingenuity over the last decade or more), and the DIY pride, whether it be speakers or computers, is very shaky ground in my eyes. There are certainly pros and cons to both sides, if nothing else can be concluded. Either way, I'll definitely do one of these kits some day, and a lot of the points in this video make perfect sense to me, and has only made me more excited to buy one :) As always, great video. I love the casual presentation! Never change!
@@Newrecordday2013 no your right Ron BB is very nice and his cabs look great. What I meant was the thickness of the board. Was it 1/4 or 3/8th used? Should be 3/4. 😊
@@Newrecordday2013 Nice one Ron. Great to hear it as it looked thinner in the video and yes with 18mm will be good with No-Res and the good bracing Danny's plan recommend.
I know this is an old question, but for other viewers: 1. cost of additional drivers, 2. bigger enclosure required to fit additional drivers, 3. interference patterns between drivers, 4. more crossover circuitry. Number 4 introduces not only more cost, but also phase problems and impedance problems. I think a 2-way or 3-way is the best compromise. I would never build one of those towers with a whole array of drivers.Yuck!
GOD is our creator just wanted to put that out there. I do not want to get on a religious debate with anyone are you however I felt compelled just to make that comment because you were lacking that ,one aspect in your conversation !!! Much respect Randy I love your ,channel,may you and your family have a great and blessed holiday coming up. And wishing you the best for the new year of 25 cheers🍺🍺
I just made my own speakers from scrap.75 "oak finished plywood and I ordered a nice 10* woofer and 1.5 tweeter I just ordered the 2way capacitor all put together it was a clean beautiful well professionaly built crossover and I just bought the Sonys bookshelves that everyone raves about which I thought was good until I hooked up these I just shut off all my other speakers that I have running with them and I only want to listen to the ones I built because they so smooth and deep with the ten inch wooden it's not a bookshelves it's a big floor standing speaker and it just blows everything and it's smooth and sounds better more and just beg for more juice and they distorted or anything they wanted more than my receiver could give them but I have a new pioneer one the way so I will push them
It depends where the tubes are in the signal path. Dunno about capacitors. But it does matter where a tube is placed in the signal path to make a difference.
Didn't mention that I'll do measurements of each speaker and include that with them in shipment as quality assurance that they are working properly. Email me at cheapaudioman@gmail.com and put "DIY Assembly" in the subject line if you're interested
I knew there something behind the recent collab with New Record Day....DIY, GR-Research...
@@mag290 nothing really to it. I just wanted to make some money so I can quit the rat race. I will also assemble the CSS Criton. Not really a collaboration. I just saw an opportunity to help people get a great speaker if they’re intimidated by the build process.
Fair enough. I'm thinking of offering CSS and GR-Research assembly in CANADA too
@@cheapaudioman 😎
@@cheapaudioman Any suggested component suppliers, drivers, crossovers, connectors and such?
My wife got me a pair of speakers (Micca MB42X) for Easter. I haven't had any stereo equipment since I was a teenager. This channel not only got me re-interested in quality audio, I've learned so much about the true depth of the subject. It's been a fun few weeks, thanks Randy!
That's very cool Man, i have a pair of the non X micca's and they are not like good speakers but somehow they are enjoyable
@@lamecasuelas2 You know, in light of this DIY video, I can tell you that Micca sells, at least they used to sell, I'm not sure about now, but I don't see why they would stop selling, a crossover kit that basically makes the MB42s into MB42Xs. They are the same speaker with the only difference being the crossover, the X actually stands for crossover. There's a video by another reviewer who shows how to install the crossover, and he said adding the crossover does make a significant enough difference to warrant the price and effort, I think it's like $20 US.
@ Travis H With due respect to your wife as well as yourself, I would tell you that MB42x speakers really aren't that great, in my opinion, they are greatly overrated, for the price you can get better speakers, and frankly, you can get better for less.
I'm only telling you this because Easter wasn't too long ago, and while you can appreciate the gift from your wife and graciously thank her for the speakers, if you really want the best sound, you should be able to return them to Amazon if that's where she got them.
I would recommend Neumi BS5 bookshelf speaker, they're just 10 bucks more than the Miccas and are a whole lot better.
If you actually want to go cheaper than the Miccas, I would look at "Singing Wood" brand speakers. I cannot remember which I bought first, the Miccas or Singing Wood T25 passives, but I bought them late last year at the same time(well, one day apart) I bought a pair of Micca MB42Xs because they were cheap. I bought the Miccas because they were so hyped and I hadn't heard of Singing Wood, but after comparing, I can tell you the Singing Wood speakers are better in every regard, build quality, looks, and sound, so much so that I ended up returning the Miccas. I got a small desktop DAC/amp with Bluetooth for $32 bucks, and together they work great.
P.S. While I haven't heard them myself, the Micca RB42s are supposed to be much better, but they are $150 as opposed to $90.
Many months later… hope you didn’t take the criticisms of these folks too seriously, especially those who don’t even have them and have listened to/watched some reviews. The point is that you’re enjoying yourself and finding what you like. Who cares what some keyboard warriors have to say about what you should do. I have some MB42Xs myself. They’re currently set up with my TV. They definitely sound better than the drivers that shipped with my TV.. previously I used them as desktop speakers. Are there better speakers, probably/sure. So what, there’s always better.
I learned more about speakers in this 20 minute video than I have in the past 30 years. Great stuff!
I started DIY speakers in 1975, using Phillips drivers, crossovers, and plans. I made 3-way 10-5-1 speakers for less than a decent 2-way (8" + 1" ) with minimal crossovers. I also learned a lot more than I would have just buying a pair, then another, then another, as I tweaked the sound.
I’m never going to build my own speakers, but I love listening to you talk about it. I appreciate your knowledge and delivery. You speak and explain extremely well in a way that’s concise, informative, and pleasant. I could listen to you talk about watching paint dry. 👏🏼 Thanks for the videos.
I was using my Sony core speakers for my 7.1 surround, a Onkyo RZ 820 reciever, the Sony's sound good and clear but I watched this video and went to Parts Express and purchased the Dayton BR-1 kit, put it together, used the acoustical foam around the inside of the box but added speaker stuffing to fill the open interior of the enclosures, listen to them and gave them break in time, Wow wow wow, so impressed with the sound they put out deep base I think due to the oversized enclosures, and the mids and highes are phenomenal, they blow away the Sony's and even the Elac unifi bookshelf that I had, you are absolutely correct on a diy build, I'm 47 yrs old and been around and had many different systems and speakers, The Dayton BR-1 is just a awesome sounding work of art with great soundstage and imagining, sometimes I can actually hear sounds around and behind me, unbelievable, Randy have you ever listened to these, if not I recommend getting a pair !
I built a set of xls encores and they sound amazing. this video gave me some confidence to take the plunge. the process was not easy like you said, but it feels so much more gratifying than placing an amazon order. Cheers Randy, your videos are super enjoyable.
I looked at many dishes and could not find what I wanted so I designed and built my own based upon research from experts. The result is I got what I wanted built to work in the room that I use for listening with sound quality that exceed anything that I was looking at. It does take time and patience but is well worth it if you have the skills and time. Great conversation!
Couldn't agree more with the statements on cabinets. For speaker companies, a 350lbs cabinet for a medium sized 3-way speaker is just not something you can easily mass produce and distribute under most circumstances. But as a builder with a reasonable number of tools, you can design and build them yourself. And, of course, control over individual components (crossovers, wiring, driver selection, damping materials, etc) lets you experience so much more music than anything else with a reasonable price tag. Add to that the joy of hearing magic you created with your own hands... it's so much fun!
I built a pair of GR Research X-LS with all of the crossover upgrades. Absolutely love their sound. Neutral, balanced, and definitely sound like speakers around the $2500-$3000 mark...They are that good. They are not bright, or lively, or warm. Just a lovely balanced sound with my revealing equipment.
How were the GR Research crossover assembly instructions? Their video was pretty confusing and he indicated that the instructions were just electronic schematic drawings (way over my head).
@@greenbeginner9221 The instructions were very basic. I was a bit intimidated since I'd never assembled a crossover and soldered before. But, I made sure I had all the right tools and took my time. I watched the assembly video many times, and had it with me during the assembly. Laying all the parts out with the small crossover board that came with my flat pack cabinet helped me organize and position everything as Danny suggests in the video. I took my time and followed the steps closely and it worked out really well.
@@cabeallen1277 Thanks for the reply. Maybe it will make more sense to me if I had it physically in front of me. I wish Danny would have spent more time with the camera work.
@@greenbeginner9221 yeah, I would agree. Having the parts in front of you does help. I certainly had a "a ha" moment when I was laying the parts out and watching the assembly video a few times. I finally understood the layout. It was a head scratcher and then it became clearer. Make sure you have a good quality set of wire strippers and pliers for twisting the wires.
Back in the day, I bought an 8" bookshelf speaker kit,( 2 of them) from Radio Shack, the kits came with crossover components, the woofer, and tweeter, and a complete set of plans for building the enclosure! They were right up there with the more expensive pre-made speakers!
I’m sold, thanks for you’re honesty and insight.
My 50th birthday is coming up, reckon I’ve found the perfect gift.
I absolutely love my Overnight Sensations, plus the fact that i made a custom desk and was able to finish both with the same stain - looks outstanding and sound amazing.
Until this video... I was considering Elacs, the new Polk's, etc. Not anymore! This makes so much more sense to me. I already have the tools and most of the experience. Awesome video Randy, I'm stoked! I really love the DIY stuff you've been doing.
think you'll be blown away by the quality
i was looking at the Klipsch & Elacs too but i ended up building the GR Research AV Series and i absolutely love them, they do take some time to break in but once they do its awesome!!!
Elacs up to the debut reference have a poor tweeter. Polk is a pile of offshore junk. DIY is better than either by a long shot.
share with us how it went!
@@scottlowell493 The new Polk Reference series is an incredible value, still not as much of a value as a tried and true DIY speaker of about the same price but they’re still great speakers.
I’ve had a pair of Danny’s av-1’s for many years, and they’re absolutely great speakers. I’ve had a number of other things, but keep coming back to them.
I wish I found this channel sooner, I could only afford one giraffe but now after saving so much money big Jeffrey will soon have a giraffe wife,thanking you in advance, kevin.
I've been going to the Owston DIY hi-fi event in England for the last few years and agree with everything you say in this video.
For me, the biggest advantage to going DIY is that I don't have to stick to slimline low efficiency ported speakers. I can instead, for example, go down the wide-body, 18" woofer, 4 way, high efficiency, sealed box speaker route.
I was just waiting for you to get to the enclosures. That was my wow moment when I built my first speakers using birch plywood, and recycled denim insulation. Well, until I plugged them in. It's a good weekend project with years of pay off.
I am addicted to DIYing speakers! I wanted to add a sub to my system last year. Figured out that you could DIY with moderate amounts of research. I loved the process, studied all the parameters, bought hardware to build cabinets. Built a first one, a second one, a third one (family) and already have drivers on my desk for some bookshelves. I absolutely love this and now I annoy every friend or familymember to let me build something for them.
But honestly, it's really great. Price to performance ratio is excellent, you can design the enclosure as you prefer and there are so many plans available so you don't even have to get into all the details of speaker design that will eventually coast you a fair amount of money on measuring equipment - unless you love it...
I think CSS has Danny beat in one aspect and thats the crossover, CSS its all laid out and the parts fit in a moulded piece of plastic with lettering for easy reference. Dannys you cut your own piece of mdf 1/4 inch and drill your own hole, not a deal breaker, but CSS is slick how they did it.
Another right on set of observations and points well taken.
Now once these are broken in please let us know how these sound in comparison to say Elac or KEF or B&Ws selling for under 600usd
He'll find that they are better. :)
@@ja8020 It would be better to hear details how it is better.
@@kdomster9141 Bass for one. There really is no replacement for displacement in bass drivers (good quality ones). Also as Ron pointed out the elac bass driver attack and decay are similar to the encore paper cone driver but the bass in the elac really needs juice to get some what close to the encore and then it doesn't seem to have the same weight to it. I also think if the sandcast resistors and especially the iron core inductors are replaced in the ubi52 then it you could get better clarity and less smearing. But that is only my 2 cents and others may think quality of components etc etc is a myth. But for me I can A/B the 2 and I know what I like. :)
I built & own the GR Research AV Series for my av room. Currently the AV3 Towers, AV3S Centre & AV2 Surrounds.
Just waiting for Xmas to be over and im gonna start building the GR Research X-Statik's for my 2.1 setup for the livingroom......Cannot wait, LOVE GR Research
Man I love your intros and faux-sponsor shoutouts!! Nothing says "I Love you" like a handcrafted dead head skull 💀🤣 Actually starts a detail-oriented show off with a bit of a light note! Love it! (I wouldn't be here if there weren't details, but it makes the teacher more likable).
I just built a box using 5/8 plywood. 2 feet long and 1 foot square. I installed an old car stereo that was in my truck. 2 6x9 vertically each in their own sealed box with a 50W amp in the middle, EQ and deck. I also put a 12" in a box with its own 300W amp and it plugs into the EQ. All the stuff is Kenwood. The EQ is nearly 30 years old and the deck and amp 20. The speakers are new Infinity Kappas and the woofer is a Perfect that is 20 years old. Still thumping.
The DIY CSS XO is very well done. The 3D printed board and alphabet wiring diagram is super simple. Nice job CSS.
It's pretty slick
Yup, the 1st DIY speaker is a huge learning experience. The instructions are an advantage, read them, it's a great jumping off point. My biggest take away was the size & complexity of the crossover. The strength & rigidity of the cabinet is also a big learning item.
I'm new to the whole audio world spent a lot of time scouring goodwill and eBay for a deal. Well I make a little bit more cash now so I sought out to setup a decent 7.1 system. As a lover of diy I didn't know this existed. More so I'm grateful I stumbled upon this before I spent any real money.
15:20.....love what you said. Nothing more rewarding than knowing the person that made your loudspeaker...it could be you !
I just watched a DIY video where a guy broke down the cost of the drivers and crossovers and enclosure of this speaker system that from the manufacturer costed an insane $6000 to $10,000. He figured that the max it would cost an individual to buy the parts and put them together themselves was no more then $500 and possibly as lose as $300. This made me think, how many of these "high end" companies are using these inexpensive materials to make these very expensive speakers. I can understand some mark up, but when the mark up is as much as 1300%, I'm going to call shinadingans on them. Great video on why DIY is good.
I'm doing it. I've been overwhelmed with research on some bookshelf speakers until I came across the diy option. Plus I'm a control freak and this really appeals to me. I also have a woodworking shop in my garage and a wall loaded with exotic hardwoods. I'm thinking I might order a flat pack and use that as a template/jigs for future speaker cabinets. Keep up the great work Randy!
Woodworker here as well and thought the same. I'm a drummer so I figured some birch, maple, or mahogany would make great speaker boxes, but like drums, these woods introduce tonality. So, I'm wondering if mdf is actually preferred because it is more neutral? I don't know the answer btw but I look at these manufactured speakers and think I could make this so much better.
@@erics.4113 I think a heavy/dense wood sealed properly and braced then ad some no rez would be fine. I was thinking of ash or oak (readily available here and cheap) and filling/sealing to get a smooth finish then sprayed with a white pre-cat lacquer. I started to reconsider the diy speaker. The XL-S Encore with all the upgrades and a sheet of no rez shipped to my door is $930. Once you buy that it's yours whether you like the sound or not and then there's the finishing. I started looking at other speakers in that price range or for a little more and you're looking at some quality stuff and if you don't like the sound chances are you can send it back. I'll probably still get it but I need to stew on it for a while longer
@@toddb7154 if you're not going for a natural wood finish I wonder if the solid wood is beneficial. Like I said I'm not sure, but my guess is that different woods will color the speakers sound. Coming from the drumming background, the type of ply makes massive differences to tonality. Not saying that's good or bad with a speaker, just not sure how significant vs mdf. I'm not familiar with no-rez but my guess is it is something dense that kills resonant frequencies?
I hear you on the other points. There probably is little after-market for DIY at 1k, and you could easily buy 1k speakers and retain much of the value on the second hand market. Maybe you could also source the DIY second hand as well? Someone that wasn't so successful with the build and you could grab the drivers and crossover network and scrap their cabinets?
Much to consider. I did a demo the other day at a local audio spot. I left underwhelmed by numerous bookshelves reaching into the $2k price. Maybe my expectations were off or the equipment stack or maybe I just really want floor stander sound even though I don't have the room for that right now.
Good luck on whatever direction you take. I'm looking for a project to get into so I am seeing the DIY route as a satisfying check box for both the end result and the journey of building them.
@@erics.4113 If you do the diy come back and give an update. I'd love to hear how it worked out for you. I'll do the same
@@toddb7154 appreciate that. I just ordered rp600m klipsch for the sale price of $377 going on. I'm also looking at some ELACs and more amps and gear to experiment with. I'm sure a diy something or other is coming at some point.
very interesting, liked and subscribed. as a retired carpenter/handyman, i have, i imagine, all the woodworking power tools slowly dying in the garage. most of my furniture is flintstone quality. thanks, i'll look into these kits!
I worked at the largest consumer and pro audio distributor in North America and if for example a JBL speaker costs $600 retail dealer cost is $300 and landed cost for the distributor is $150.
Love that you think this as well.
I put elac tweeters in older heybrook
This man has mastered the art of using a lot of words to say very little.
Very nicely put together show.
Seemingly all in one take.
Plain spoken and intelligent.
Bravo! Please carry on!!
I made the XLS Encore but instead of the T26SG Tweeter I used the GR NEO3 Tweeter with the NEO wave guide that I purchased from Parts Express. I have a 1 1/4" front and back baffles and they sound great. A friend of mine that has heard many of the best Book Shelf Speakers in the world said they are the best sounding small Speakers that he has heard.
Love seeing you promote DIY! I am huge into DIY. A couple things I wanted to say in relation to your video. The large manufactures design their drivers and the argument that drivers are specific to the design favors the major manufacture more than just about anyone. Some of the drivers in JBL, KEF, REVEL, Focal. ect are the most advanced in the world and yet are relatively inexpensive for them to produce. I do not DIY to compete with that. Additionally fantastic speakers can be made with fairly modest drivers as these days a "modest" driver is often quite capable. In DIY, the consumer is handling the drivers and crossover parts so there is incentive to make them visually superior and promote the individual parts more to generate sales of said upgraded parts, as we know however a speaker is more than the sum of expensive parts. A visually superior driver may not be sonically superior and many examples of this exist especially now, with contemporary advanced manufacturing drivers may look very simple and yet be fantastic units. They may also cost very low $. That all said, I love DIY for the fun and learning and the hands on experiences. It really is not the total value proposition it once was and yet I still enjoy it (and if not total, there is some good value to be had). It is cool that you have the GR research kit and the CSS kit here as they are known to be excellent examples for DIY. The Wavecore/CSS woofer in particular in the CSS is famous. Of course that is largely due to modeling well into 30hz bass response which can be impressive to experience I am sure. There are other factors though, such as if you are pairing with a sub or two there is less benefit to the expense of the Wavecore/CSSdriver over some less expensive woofers. Anyway the real issue I have is with the "boutique" crossover component claims, I hate to see folks paying for expensive caps and resistors without knowing what they are wading into. I would be curious if you have really researched this? Where you able to complete two truly identically valued crossovers and compare them? Many extremely famous designers, engineers and DIY folks are not on board with fancy crossover parts (even though they could choose them) and of course some are. I don't see you promoting expensive speaker wires, tube connectors and other dubious product, why expensive crossover components? Seems like you could do an episode on exploring these components and how you became sold on them.
It is definitely a waste of time and money to spend extra for crossover components. That's why most speaker companies don't use them.
They get the parts and test them so they get the best match possible. I know people who have built kits and thought they could get better sound buying more expensive caps, resistors, and coils, only to find either no difference or a degradation of it.
Not trying to insult you but sighted listening comparisons is of no value. The brain doesn't do well with sound and memory. The best, most reliable comparison is done double blind and with levels matched and the ability to switch between sources instantaneous.
Speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain with distortion levels in woofers at around 5% which is clearly audible.
One hopes that the marketers of speaker kits puts the same kind of effort into choosing cover parts and drivers.
I have a pair of DIY speakers using Scan Speak Kevlar woofers (7 in.) and Focal tweeters. For bass I got a 12 in Shiva driver from Adore audio. I've had them for almost 30 years and have never had a negative comment.
I found out after a lot of trial and error on my own designs that if one isn't an EE then the odds of designing an outstanding pair of speakers are slim to none.
Kits are terrific if you are good with tools.
My favorite that I ever constructed were from Dynaudio and we're MTM or D'Appolito configuration. Tweeters in the middle with identical midwoofers above and below. Once I was finished and listened to them I just about cried when I had to deliver them. It never hurts to use high quality drivers and Dynaudio are definitely some of the best.
The comments about the Linkwitz designed kits is spot on. Nobody has ever said an unkind word about them. Every review I ever read raved about how open the sound was.
For those who want to try their hand at kit building, I recommend starting with a subwoofer because they are much easier, especially if you use an acoustic suspension type box with the appropriate woofer. Make sure that if you use a plate amp that it has an EQ that can lower the volume on frequencies that tend to peak if you set your sub in a corner. In my room that's 50hz and is 10db higher than the rest of the output. That's fine if you like 50 hz but you're going to miss out on the very lowest frequency sounds. It is also good to remember that the smaller the room the more LF boost you will get which is why you need to try different placements of your sub.
Adire is back in business and still makes some very high quality, affordable drivers.
Follow Nevada's example
Abolish qualified immunity
Thanks!
Thank you so much for supporting the channel!
Years ago, I built a pair of TriTrix MTM TLs. After I built them, I wanted to test them. My brother was with me and had a Jackson Browne Live CD in his car. We put that CD in and played it through the TriTrix. He got a huge grin on his face. He said he was hearing things that he had never heard before. And he listened to the CD at least a hundred times. Not sure what your thoughts are in the TriTrix kit, but I loved them. I sold them because someone I worked with listened to them and offered me 3 times more money than I had in them. I wish I still had them!
Cool video! Yes DIY is the best way to go, I've been doing it for somewhere close to 50 years but never with a kit and I rarely build box speakers anymore. I switched to open baffle in 1994, and active crossovers in the late 80's so I don't do a lot with passive any more. I built my first CBT line array in 2009 (also open baffle) for the center channel speaker in my home theater and will be building open baffle CBT's for the LCR in the new theater. The surrounds in the new theater will use passive crossovers developed using LspCAD but I hope I don't need to do anything else with passive. I use to build analog active which was a pain and expensive having PCB's manufactured but these days I just use miniDSP.
It's a fun hobby and you can definitely get better sound with far less money but it takes time and effort to learn so if you just want better speakers but don't want to invest the time and effort into obtaining the knowledge then a kit will be the best option. If you don't want to build a kit then this video has just given you a solution. I don't know Randy, I just discovered this channel, but if he can assemble it for you then I don't think you will go wrong. I personally don't offer kit building or any other services and don't really have any plan to but I wish all the best to anyone wanting to start such a business so I wish this channel the greatest success!
Excellent summary of the DIY option. Should be a good incentive to others. Very Well done
One of my friends works for them, and his step-dad owns the company. Pretty cool rig, I actually need to get a pair of these soon.
Just now signed on, even though I'm a year late. When shopping for the best bookshelf I could find, (and I listened to six audiophile brands) the one speaker that sounded best in all music categories was the B&W Nautilus 805. Whether of classical piano, orchestral, jazz, fusion, rock or country, these boys shine.
And excellent summarization of the whole DIY speaker concept. I took the plunge with the CSS TD-X and couldn't be happier. CSS obviously put great deal of thought into making the build process as easy as possible and it shows. I grew up building Heath Kit products and honestly this was a beginner level build due a lot to how well thought out the materials and process were. The sound, well to a non-audiophile it's just incredible. Highly recommended.
I've been working on designing and building my own DIY speakers for a bit now, definitely a fun and rewarding hobby but:
Well regarded kits are the way to go unless you want to travel down a deep deep rabbit hole.
Also, as far as I can tell, the SVS Ultra bookshelves use the Peerless GFC 6.5" with an SVS sticker, that's a $55 woofer in a $500/pc bookshelf with cheap crossover components... The margins are very real.
Very few speaker companies actually make their own drivers. Majority of them use ScanSpeak drivers. Wilson Audio anyone?
Going down the rabbit hole is the fun and the journey.😜
Not knocking kits, they are great, especially from these kinds of designers.
Designing and building your own though does feel immensely rewarding.
@@ASSOpid very true. Dali use Peerless driver's, albeit with some wood fibre and pigment in the cones. Otherwise they can be had for £15.😂 Along with a cheap but good looking cabinet and a crossover that wouldn't be out of place in a Christmas cracker.
It's this exact type of thing that led me to build my own.
I agree with all these points. I too Audio DIY speakers and eletronics, its really fun and rewarding the only challage I would stress is access to the tools for the job and using it, this will cost you. ask a friend that's good with wood aesthetics and leave woodwork to somebody else, however before then.. work needs to be invested into loudspeaker/eletronics physics and mathematics and lastly, eletronics this demands tools of varying degrees depending on the application. I own almost all tools expected to build a great a audio system, it took a very very long time to aquire them.
Just down the road is a woodworking shop....small business....wouldn't this guy know how to make a wooden box look good? He's got all the equipment and knows wood. I'm sure, you can find a wood worker guy in every city with a population above 100, 000 people. Doesn't that solve the finish and cut costs a bit?
Just finished a GR research kit and ! That’s not bad! Especially all the headache I’ve had...lol...only divergence is looks
How did you figure out the crossover assembly? Did the instructions include anything better than electronic schematics? (Those things are Greek to me). I watched the GR Research "how to" video and it left me totally confused. The poor camera work made things worse.
My main speakers are a DIY/Self assembled kit from that 'other' company up in Wisconsin. I've had them over twenty years and I have no desire to swap them out...there are other speakers I'd like to try, but I still really enjoy mine. The kit was $900 delivered to CA, and included pre built and finished cabs, and IIRC, with the upgraded x-over. It's the Dynaudio Aries kit and shortly after I got the kit Dynaudio exited the DIY marketplace. I listened to a lot of speakers before the purchase, and after they were built and burned in...IMHO I had the same sound of the comparable retail Dynaudio speaker, but at about 35% of the cost. The biggest difference is in the cabinets. My kit cabs are much more solid, but not nearly as pretty. A very passable oak veneer, but not 'statement furniture'.
IMHO, if you can install a ceiling fan, or put together a Ikea wall unit, you can DIY speakers with a flatpack, and you will have a sound very significantly better than comparable retail speakers .
There are two negatives others mentioned below. Resale. If you are a flipper, stay away unless you are connected to a local audio society. And you can't hear DIY before purchase. But if you want something that "punches way above its price..."
Agreed. Lol. Speaker flippers made me think of people throwing speakers around and it made me laugh.
Note on Resonance in cabinets. Ultra hi end speakers that has that organic sound doesn't hv inert cabinets ie Gamut and less expensive Harbeth as these results in natural sound because inert means a sound like Magico. But these are done on purpose with deliberate resonance in selected frequencies.
I did some speakers designed by Troels and couldn’t be happier with them. Been planning another one of his designs too. Super awesome way to go.
I enjoy your sense of humor.
i know, its great isnt it
I have the Madisound BK12 kit speakers, and they were easy to assemble and they sound great. I have them as my second system, but in the same room as my main system. They're great for playing with low powered / tube amps that my main system speakers don't work with.
But you pay so mich for plywood. Fostex plans are free. And there are better ones. Lok for nagaoka fostex
Randy, 2 questions about your DIY video. What kit is easier to put together? And what kit sounds better to you?
This video needs to be in the HiFi hall of fame. The end is Randy realizing what those of us that have built the mighty Criton Or Encore have also discovered, some, thanks to this video. And I own popular $1500 Wharfedales, Elacs and Klipsch. None of them sound as refined and effortless as the CSS Criton.
Best HiFi money I’ve spent. If you have the means and time, don’t hesitate.
Love the video and applaud your bringing the diy option to audiophiles on a budget. BUT, while every point you made is true these kits are not exactly cheap despite the greater return on investment. For many the cost is still a stretch.. Your first videos gave solid advice to those who might only have a total audio budget of a thousands bucks or less. Theres a lot of competition at that range. Along the way you've taught folks how to listen and what to listen for when evaluating speakers and equipment. Your own growth is evident from following you these past months.. you're a good honest man and if taking your TH-cam/audio path in a new direction I wish nothing but the best. I just hope you still have time for the quality value reviews and shootouts that separate the wheat from the chaff for the more contained consumer.
Have a lot of things in the works, Dean at all price levels. There are some great kits out there too that are very affordable. CSS and GR are the companies that I've concentrated on now but there will be many more to come.
Man I tried and tried and tried over 30 years and I just can’t beat the cost. I really want to make them again but for example if I want a particular bookshelf speaker that costs $1500 I might save $100 when said and done. I think I need better sourcing 😢 now AMPS for sure I can save a TON. You can make an Amp that may cost $4000 retail for 1/4 that easy. Gonna try again 👍
Back in the 70’s I built some SpeakerLab Super 7’s & they sounded great coupled with my dynaco pre amps PAT4 and 5’s & ST150 Amp..
When I see your TH-cam name all squished together, it looks like it says Chapeau dioman. Chapeau being French for hat. I tip my hat to you sir, great video, you've earned another subscriber!
Seriously, holy crap, in like 7 different ways...
So your sub count continues to rise, you said that you want to do this full time, you made several good points and new perspectives on diy speakers, you're willing to build speakers for people (which will definitely get more people interested in the audio world in general as well as diy speakers specifically) and overall you're almost irritating in your apparent ease of adaptation into "being a youtuber". The man crush is real and I'm seriously looking forward to seeing what you do for, hopefully, years to come. I will also definitely be contacting you to build me some speakers later, maybe that'll be my Xmas present to myself. Great job as usual, keep it up and thank you for your service (military and TH-cam) !
Thanks, brother. If I'm being completely transparent I've had a crush on you for a while. I'm actually in your yard right now.
@@cheapaudioman Randy is getting randy
Simply said, great video!! I've been toying with the idea to build my own speakers for a while and this is the kick in my behind much needed to start this project. Thank you!
Check out this vid if you haven’t built em yet
th-cam.com/video/zdkyGDqU7xA/w-d-xo.html
In my younger days I used to read speaker builder magazine. They had a design that used a Sonotube for t body, with a face plate made of MDF . I used peerless drivers in a 3 way design, hand wired crossover w/ air core inductors, solen caps. Parts cost me $400 in 1988. They sounded amazing for something I put together myself. Wish I still had them. Me ex made me sell them to a friend who still has them.
Remember speaker builder
Are we going to see a Saturday shoot out! On these two speakers? I think this next winter I’m going to build a GR Reserch kit. Great video Randy, I really enjoy the DIY and mod stuff. Thanks!
I totally agree that you should do a full on review for each of these diy speakers as well as a shootout on Saturday
yeah I wonder which one sounds better? I gather the Criteon is gonna have more bass.
That wooden devil skull is so cool! Thank you for posting such informative videos.
DIY loudspeakers built from a good kit are obviously a great value. Not to discourage anyone, but their resale on the used market will be cost of materials or a bit less. The last commercial loudspeaker I bought was my college dorm speakers I got in 1972. Much more important than just saving money, DIY means you're MUCH more involved in the experience of your system. A lot of guys buy their audio the same way they do their luxury cars. It's just expensive toys for them. When you DIY, you learn an enormous amount and your experience is something money can't buy.
Even so, many still look at the $30k+ systems and drool, wishing they could own something like that. The truth is they can. Going DIY with the right kit will allow us mere mortals to own a system equal to what only the wealthy can afford. Instead of lusting after that $80,000 MBL or Avalon Acoustics wonder, the Linkwitz LX521 system can be built for as little as $5k. You don't see the LX521 on the used market because they truly are a "forever" loudspeaker. Check it out.
I built a focal 2 way kit. When I was done, they sounded identical to a wilson watt 5 (same drivers),1% tolerance parts in crossover. tThe kit was a minute fraction of the cost of the watt.
Huh never thought about doing this type of project, sounds like fun
Ya see so much corruption everywhere you look nowadays that you feel relieved when you hear of an American company that has passion and emphasizes the quality of materials and the build and design of its product. Thank You CSS and GR and cheapaudioman for giving me a little cheer today
Audio is a hobby and DIY is a hobby. I don't know if combining hobbies is the best route for me to take. I flew r/c for a very long time, loved flying and hated building.
Things have come a long way with the foam stuff from the likes of hobby zone. The only thing you have to do is throw on the wings and the tail and dropping the battery and away you go.
@@arena_rock_man9030 I remember about 30 years ago a company started the kind of foamy, EZ r/c. Extra 230 with an O.S. 28 was a little monster and I didn't have to worry about one of my super Kaos.
My goal in life is to get him to review the Parts Express C-Note speaker kit. It's one of the most common DIY models, but I don't think any notable reviewer has ever reviewed them.
Just had a quick look at the c note.
Very interesting! Not on par with these two but what a great way to start with this hobby! I just may start with a set.
@@todddonaldson2822 I've made a few pairs of them for gifts. They're definitely decent, even after accounting for some parts you have to get that aren't included in the kit.
@@gomibako2517 What parts are not included? Did you leave the exterior bare or?? I’ve seen another vid with a wrap over MDF. Not bad but I’m searching for ideas.
@@todddonaldson2822 - I just checked their listing again. You used to need to buy some binding posts (or terminal cups), speaker wire, and screws. Those are now apparently included in the kit. Some reasonably common optional additions are wire quick disconnects for the speaker connections inside the cabinet, a pair of crossover boards (like part 260-186), two 0.22uF capacitors (like part 027-202) for the 0.22uF capacitor modification (Google it), and acoustic damping material (like part 260-520). There are lots of helpful threads and people on forums like Audio Science Review and Tech Talk if you have questions. As for finishes, I have used primer and spray paint, ExoHyde, and paper backed maple veneer with pressure sensitive adhesive that I finished with wood dye and water based polyurethane. The veneer was the most work by far. ExoHyde was the easiest.
@@todddonaldson2822 I used ExoHyde on my last set of MDF enclosures. If you're into black, or white textured coatings it's great. I used parts # 260-2100, and 260-115.
For capacitors and inductor coils I'd agree with you. Not resistors though.
No. Sorry but no. Never meet anyone who could tell the difference between high end caps/inductors vs cheap ones.
@@ASSOpid Capacitors and inductors do matter, though. They have parasitic capacitance, resistance, and inductances. Not to mention crossover distortion. I would argue the crossover circuit matters more than the individual components though, at long as they're new and of a reputable brand.
I've got a pair of Mirage 490is small towers that I bought new, but at cost, back in 94-95. The socks are wrecked and I can't find replacements. I've been thinking about building a set of speakers as I'm never going to get the deal I got on these again. I was a chef at a restaurant across the street from a high-end audio store and when they were working long hours getting the place open I'd let them in after hours and feed them. Got my whole system pretty much at cost. Winter is coming so maybe a DIY kit is a good option on snowy days.
"It, they, him" lmfao subscribed
Loving the content! Really nice you'll have some coverage of the DIY space. It's a really great option!
I built a triplet of the DIY Sound Group's- Elusive 1099. They have a 10" horn loaded twitter, twin 5" mids, and twin 10" bass drivers, 99dB/1W. Bass response falls off below 80hz, so you need a sub or two. Amazing speaker that really played cleanly up into insane volume levels (120db+). The horn and tweeter combo are really good, did not sound like a typical horn speaker. It's a great home theater option that can be basically, just assembled and finished by the buyer. Far easier today than when I built mine when the design was brand new. Pre-built crossovers and cabinets weren't available then.
DIY isn't really as difficult as many may assume. Plenty of proven designs available from multiple vendors. It's a really fun project, that you can get as crazy with as you like. Really great value if you're willing to put in a little time and work.
I'd love to build another pair of speakers, maybe I'll get a little more involved in the design. I need to look into crossover building and speaker design. Time to start buying some books and checking out design software.
Feel like this was very true years ago, but less true now (particularly when you get into like active ls50s and the sorts). Prebuilt speakers have gotten better, cheaper, and better tested. Also building a cabinet AND finishing it (lots of reviews leave this step out!) is a lot of work and requires tools and time (and either knowledge or willingness to learn). Finishing in particular can be a lot of work to get that flat mirror finish, and a ton of time. Also keep in mind that the resale value will be next to nothing for diy speakers (better with well known kits but less so for less well known kits). I a diy speaker fan but if economics play a role as in price to buy a prebuilt speaker vs (components kit cost + wood cost+ finishing supplies cost + cost of tools if you don't have them + the value of your time x hours to completion), then prebuilt is the way to go. If you value the experience of making the speaker you like, with the cabinet how you like, learning something new, etc then diy is great fun and great return.
Great points: time, skill, and especially resale value$$. If you are looking for performance and don't build it correctly, or the finish doesn't look good, there goes your kit. Especially if you are going up the line, like to the Nx-otica which also needs subs. So now you are in aprox 6k, plus you also have to build them. If down the road you need to sell them, no one may want to buy them, because who knows if you did it right or not, or on the other hand, no one may know who the diy company is. For a teen or someone who has time, I think it's worth the investment at a certain dollar value. Especially if they are into S.T.E.M. or trying to learn new skills.
I have rescued old speakers from curb which had dry rotted drives, mostly woofers. I swapped out the drivers with more modern units and although not worthy of any reference system they product quality good enough for my bedroom.
I saw the title and bam! GR reseach ! But of course!!! I knew that was it!
I built a few sets, and would say it is always cheaper, but you always get exactly what you want.
A good friend of mine that has always been an engineer started his own car audio products under the same deal. He designed everything and then had out of the country people make them to his specs
Can you tell us more about those speakers, how they sound, what amp you need to drive them?
I think he's still making his Amplifier in his shed! So, I guess you'll have to wait a while longer. Goodluck 👍 let me know if you finally see his "DIY" Amplifier. Or, better yet, sounds like. 🤦♂️
I agree. I want to see the review of the sound. Another TH-camr said this speaker with upgraded crossover was better than any other bookshelf speaker for $3k and under. I’d like to hear Randy’s input.
According to Dannie Richie who designed the crossovers for both speakers, the XL-S Encore speakers (shown on the right) are comparable in performance to the $2800/pr Usher Audio BE-718 "Tiny Dancer" model.
The benefit of brand name speakers, especially from a company that manufactures their own drivers, is that they can match each driver pair to get the closest frequency response, impedance, etc..
I've built my share of speakers both from kits and from designs of my own. My current 2.1 system is my own design and I have been using them for 30 years. They have not stopped sounding great and earning compliments.
I have learned that at a given price point, multiple brands sound very similar to each other because of the use of computer modeling.
Surely good quality kits exist, but the same drivers built by a brand name companies are built with matching that's better than most DIYer's can't achieve.
Have you ever used drivers from Focal, Dynaudio, or Scan Speak?
I don't think there are many other brands available that can compare or compete.
If you try to improve the cover of a factory speaker you will likely be disappointed. This is true in kits as well. The designer will specify a particular component or combination of components because they achieve the correct xover point and FR, slope and so on. If you try to "upgrade" by using more expensive parts they won't perform as designed.
Speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain. They have vastly more distortion than any other part of an audio system. They sound different from model to model and brand to brand, often because they are designed to sound different.
If you have time and especially resources you can achieve good sounding speakers from kits but part for part and dollar for dollar it's nearly impossible to improve on what a manufacturer can achieve.
Siegfried Linkwitz' designed kits will, as someone else said, blow your mind. They aren't boxes and give the most open, unboxed sound you're ever likely to hear.
Nice show. I thought about both of these plus a few other. Building the Parts Express Samba MT's right now. It was a tough choice.
Built a pair of MTM's a few years ago. Was at the Valve State of the Art conference in Bremerton and a speaker designer gave me his plans on a sheet of paper for my own personal use. Quite a learning experience since it was not a kit.
I just made my 1st DIY and a enjoyed doing it. I selected Dayton Audio drivers and crossover components. I demo this as well.
What did you get. Tell me more. I tried my hand at doing that too. My results were… not great.
@@cheapaudioman Just small 4inch aluminum cone woofer and 1inch tweeter. I like the low end, but not so satisfied with the tweeter.
The last 5 pairs of floor standing loudspeakers I have owned / and currently own are all DIY (1981, 1988, 1995 and 2 pairs in 2012). That said….
@Cheapaudioman forgot to mention that when a large company like KEF or B&W is making a speaker most of the drivers are (a) custom designed and (b) produced in such large numbers that the per driver cost is very low. In fact even when smaller boutique manufacturers make loudspeakers driver companies like SEAS, Vifa, ScanSpeak, Focal, Morel, Peerless, SB Acoustics, etc (Dynaudio does not sell to DIY anymore) sell drivers to these companies at a fraction of the retail cost published by say a retailer like Madisound. A woofer that lists for $100 on Madisound would be sold by SEAS to a manufacturer for maybe $30 because the manufacturer will commit to purchasing reasonable volumes.
So let’s say a 2.5 way loudspeaker that has a street price of $1000 (usually list price of 1200-1500 depending on brand and positioning) would have cost the dealer about $700 and the distributor about $500. Now the manufacturer has to make the loudspeaker for $400 so it can have some profit. That would mean say $200 for the wood, damping, crossover and labour and maybe $200 on the drivers themselves. For $200 the manufacturer has to get 2 woofers and a tweeter.
These same drivers would cost a DIYer about $600 then add crossovers, cabinets, etc and the DIYer is going to spend $1000 on a similar speaker granted with better built cabinets and better crossover parts.
What the DIYer gains is not necessarily better woofers or tweeters, but more control over cabinet and crossover quality, the ability to finish the cabinet to exactly suit their decor, and the knowledge of what went into their speaker. That’s why I DIY.
I've been making my own speakers for about 25 years. DIY speakers from a kit is like calling Ikea furniture DIY. As you said it's more like assemble it yourself, AIY.
Here is how I do it. I don't mine my own copper or make my own paper pulp to make drivers either. I scrounge drivers from bargain electronics stores, garage sales, thrift stores, or salvage them from damaged speakers that were thrown out. You can sometimes get crossovers that way too. I've repaired driver surrounds by rebuilding them with T-shirts and silicone or urethane. After gathering those critical parts I design my enclosures to suit the electronic parts.
My first speakers were heavy, so they were small speakers built for 6 to 8" drivers. I had been informed by everybody that the walls of the boxes had to be massive to dampen vibrations. But you know, church bells are massive too, but they ring like crazy. I now build light weight speaker enclosures with light weight materials. I dampen their walls with viscoelastic material sandwiched between layers. Look up Green Glue. I made my own a couple of ways. I won't get into those details.
I built a new enclosure for a single found-in-the-trash Optimus Pro 4000 containing a 15" woofer. My "new" speaker weighs 50 pound less than the original with its water damaged particle board enclosure. I rebuilt the 15" woofer surround with cloth from an old T-shirt and black silicone, using a ring made from a garden hose as a form. My "new" speaker sounded amazing, but I needed a pair for stereo. No problem. DIY to the rescue. I then built a matching speaker using the cheapest new drivers, 15" woofer, 5" midrange and piezo electric horn tweeter, I could find at the local electronics parts bargain store. I made high pass, low pass and bandpass "crossovers" from resistors and capacitors. No, I haven't experimented with coils yet. I adjusted the sound by ear to match the sound of the original Radio Shack speaker parts, containing its original crossover, in its new enclosure by varying the resisters and capacitor values. These speakers do not look alike until I put the grills on. I use these speakers with my Yamaha stereo. They sound amazing and costed me about $50 in parts in about 2001 including the leather-look vinyl fabric covering.
I designed and built some wave-guide, sometimes called folded horn (bose style) speakers each with a 6.5" woofer, a tweeter and a single resister to balance the sound by ear. How did I design such a speaker you ask? DIY research online of course. On one of these enclosure I used two sheets of 1/8" tempered hardboard sandwiched with never-hardening floor adhesive. It sounds good, but was heavier that I was shooting for. The other look-alike enclosure has the same drivers and resistor inside, but has walls built with polyisocyanurate foam board with patches of 1/8" tempered hardboard stuck onto the inside with the same sort-of viscoelastic flooring adhesive. I've been using these speakers with my computer for about 6 years. They still sound great.
Now maybe I could take these speakers to some audio engineer to be tested with all kinds of fancy devices and software. No doubt such an engineer could point out that the audio spectrum has some peaks and valleys and are therefor not perfect. All that matters is they reproduce music faithfully and do not introduce any sounds of their own.
Great video, been a fan of Danny's videos over at GR Research for a while. Hope you get a nice side business assembling those kits!
The last time I was this early, Randy hadn't sold his family yet.
It would be very interesting to compare mainstream/ commercial speakers to speakers from diy sound group, like the HT8. They are in the sub $500 price range.
DIYSG HT series please. These are made for home theater, but I have always wondered how they sound to a stereo music enthusiast.
Today you're looking better than ever :)
The thing with the crossover. It's always a matter of whhat you want the speaker to do. In my case for example i paired a Punktkilde AUGWL0016-JN03 with a Morel CAT378.
As a 6,5inch woofer starts to beam already where this tweeter doesn't beam at all i have to cross very low and as the tweeter is already rolling off at those frequencies and the phase is shifting a bit because of the rolloff + the actual source of sound not being as far behind the baffle as on the woofer which makes it harder to get drivers perfectly in phase over the whole frequency range. One could argue that not flush mounting the woofer and only the tweeter being flush mounted will help. Yes the phase alignment will be easier to do yet then there is that massive edge of the woofer basket there for the tweeters sound to reflect off which is bad.
Also that MASSIVE Motor of this woofer that basically should belong to something like a 12inch woofer makes it able to take tons and tons of power and generate a LOT of SPL while still sounding good that paired with having to cross the tweeter very low means i have to take as much work away from the tweeter as possible as crossing low and a lot of SPL means a lot of stress even for this already 28mm not 25mm tweeter. How to do that? Crossing with a steeper Filter which rolls off "faster" and takes a ton of work awax from the tweeter. One could say "just use a bigger tweeter" yes possible yet that brings other problems to the table like cost and worse off axis Response for example. So crossing steeper is the best choice in most cases.
Crossing steeper takes more parts. More parts doesn't mesn bad as in the end all work together as a unit as long as good parts are being used.
For the Inductors in the main part of the woofer crossover i use Air Inductors with 1,4mm thick copper wire from intertechnik. No Voodoo bs nothing fancy just simple and get's the job done without being stressed. I coukd get the same value of an Inductor for cheaper with ferrite core Inductor yet those ferrite cores create distortion which then doesn't allow the drivers to show their full potential.
In the tweeter crossover and Impedance correction circuits ones with ferrite core or thinner wire can be used to save money as those will not take as much power.
As for caps and them changing "Details" in sound. Some caps have a slightly different let's say frequency response to them which causes just randomly swapping caps on a finished speaker to other "better" ones changes to change the sound character of a speaker. Apart from the type of cap there is Voltage. The higher the more abuse it can take. Low Voltage electrolytic caps can be overloaded when a speaker takes a lot of power and even explode (not like fireworks off course) which in my case means i need film caps which can take some beating. An overloaded cap most likely causes sound problems as well. in my case i use Audyn MKT 250volt as the main caps (even in the tweeters Xover which doesn't take much power as i still had the right values around) which is high enaugh to even be used in PA speakers (Audyn is a intertechnik brand as far as i know).
For Impedance correction circuits electrolytic caps are fine because again those bits don't take much power in most cases.
For resistors i mostly use those big white ceramic ones. They are cheap and can be had with a good amount of wattage. Only "downside" is that they have a small bit of inductance which CAN reduce very high frequency output very slightly. In a perfect resistor vs one of those the difference is so small that you can tune it out while developing the crossover super easy and even might not be noticable at all if you don't as the inductance just is that tiny.
So basically if a crossover is made well and with no corners cut on using parts that are not stressed with the job even very high end Mundorf caps vs something cheap shouldn't make a difference as long as the cheap one isn't stressed out.
Parts Express, Madisound, Meniscus, and several others also have kits. Madisound has very high end drivers from Seas and Scan Speak, but I don't know if they use those in any of their kits.
Great. Each to their own I guess. I love my Dali Rubicon 2s. Dali manufacturer there own Speakers, drivers, Tweeters etc. Every thing made in Denmark, not "China." Every speaker who makes it, signs it at the back. I wouldn't swap or change anything about these beautiful bad boys! They fit my system Perfect. You Enjoy your "Super DIY" speakers. Good luck 👍interesting video.
Intiminated? 🤔 great vid. Been trying to find the right speakers, searching sites, reading reviews, I like vintage, but that's just a look the can easily be replicated, but this vid video is hella encouraging.
Started with the HiVi DIY 3.1, which is currently one of the best price to performance wise on Audio Science Review... Upgraded to a Genelec 8260 which likely beats out all currently tested speakers on Audio Science Review.
I haven't heard a DIY kit yet (I fully intend to jump in someday, love the idea even if just for fun), but I can't say I agree with your spiel on driver design. I doubt reputable brands like Martin Logan, Klipsch, KEF etc. aren't engineering virtually every aspect of their best drivers. They employ engineers just like the makers of these kits. The engineers design prototypes, finalize the design, and the company surveys production sites and says "this is what you'll build for us, tell us how much you think you'd need to do so and we'll consider giving you the contact." Just like I imagine the engineers who design the DIY kits would do. Even on that point, though, I'm inclined to argue that the big manufacturers have even more control over driver parameters considering that almost every DIY kit I've seen utilizes off-the-shelf drivers from brands like Dayton Audio (who make excellent drivers btw), HiVi, Tang Band etc. I think any reputable brand will control as much of the process as feasible.
I believe the value of DIY is primarily that you don't indirectly pay for advertising or, of course, assembly. That said, when I factor in the opportunity costs of my time, assembly is probably quite a bit more expensive than the big brands. But, I expect it'll be fun, so that doesn't deter me in the least.
The other reservation I have with claims of DIY superiority is the psychological tendency of people to see things they've built with rose-tinted glasses. They subconsciously weigh their own efforts in the overall evaluation. That's okay--nothing wrong with being proud of your accomplishment; but knowing that silly bit of human psychology, I can't help but question the legitimacy when people build (assemble) a speaker or PC and say it's the best thing ever.
Of course, as I mentioned, I don't really have any ground on which to stand since I've never built or heard these kits, and I don't work in the field. I could be wrong about all my above points, and I have little doubt that you really do generally get a lot for the money (minus the cost of your time, if you count that); but I like to pick apart and question all claims (which is important, given the political climate and media disingenuity over the last decade or more), and the DIY pride, whether it be speakers or computers, is very shaky ground in my eyes. There are certainly pros and cons to both sides, if nothing else can be concluded.
Either way, I'll definitely do one of these kits some day, and a lot of the points in this video make perfect sense to me, and has only made me more excited to buy one :) As always, great video. I love the casual presentation! Never change!
I second your comment. :-)
Absolutely fantastic!
Ron Cmon, did you see the plywood he used. I expected more from you as you visited Randy. :) :) :)
@@ja8020 what do you mean? Nothing wrong with Baltic Birch.
@@Newrecordday2013 no your right Ron BB is very nice and his cabs look great. What I meant was the thickness of the board. Was it 1/4 or 3/8th used? Should be 3/4. 😊
@@ja8020 ah, it’s actually 18mm, so just shy of 3/4”. Should be just fine.
@@Newrecordday2013 Nice one Ron. Great to hear it as it looked thinner in the video and yes with 18mm will be good with No-Res and the good bracing Danny's plan recommend.
Randy, question: why would one choose a two-way DIY over a three-way? Thanks!!
I know this is an old question, but for other viewers: 1. cost of additional drivers, 2. bigger enclosure required to fit additional drivers, 3. interference patterns between drivers, 4. more crossover circuitry. Number 4 introduces not only more cost, but also phase problems and impedance problems. I think a 2-way or 3-way is the best compromise. I would never build one of those towers with a whole array of drivers.Yuck!
GOD is our creator just wanted to put that out there. I do not want to get on a religious debate with anyone are you however I felt compelled just to make that comment because you were lacking that ,one aspect in your conversation !!! Much respect Randy I love your ,channel,may you and your family have a great and blessed holiday coming up. And wishing you the best for the new year of 25 cheers🍺🍺
I just made my own speakers from scrap.75 "oak finished plywood and I ordered a nice 10* woofer and 1.5 tweeter I just ordered the 2way capacitor all put together it was a clean beautiful well professionaly built crossover and I just bought the Sonys bookshelves that everyone raves about which I thought was good until I hooked up these I just shut off all my other speakers that I have running with them and I only want to listen to the ones I built because they so smooth and deep with the ten inch wooden it's not a bookshelves it's a big floor standing speaker and it just blows everything and it's smooth and sounds better more and just beg for more juice and they distorted or anything they wanted more than my receiver could give them but I have a new pioneer one the way so I will push them
It depends where the tubes are in the signal path. Dunno about capacitors. But it does matter where a tube is placed in the signal path to make a difference.