My situation is a little unique I suppose.
I had a pair of $2500 Infinity speakers about ten years ago, when I happened to meet a really gifted speaker designer in Australia.
A decade later, while working for Lenehan Audio I spent well over USD$5k on the components to build my own pair of speakers. According to Mike Lenehan, he would have to sell the speakers I built for at least USD$12k
to make even a meager profit. They aren't strictly DIY, however, I did actually build them myself from component level. While I was building my speakers I took photos, which I have shared in my system page. I truly enjoy seeing other's system pages, regardless of cost, it's interesting and educational.
With my wife's approval I purchased myself a USD$12k power amplifier (I purchased it cheaper, used) which is about the same cost of the speakers.
The rest of my gear, the stands, music source, DAC, interconnects, Puritan power conditioner are all under the USD$12k total.
**Note: Lenehan Audio fine tune all of their speakers with a tuning bay on the back of the speakers, so that the impedance curve, the frequency response and the anti-phase measurements are almost completely matching throughout the frequency sweep in final tuning - I did not do this, Mike Lenehan did it for me.
I had a pair of $2500 Infinity speakers about ten years ago, when I happened to meet a really gifted speaker designer in Australia.
A decade later, while working for Lenehan Audio I spent well over USD$5k on the components to build my own pair of speakers. According to Mike Lenehan, he would have to sell the speakers I built for at least USD$12k
to make even a meager profit. They aren't strictly DIY, however, I did actually build them myself from component level. While I was building my speakers I took photos, which I have shared in my system page. I truly enjoy seeing other's system pages, regardless of cost, it's interesting and educational.
With my wife's approval I purchased myself a USD$12k power amplifier (I purchased it cheaper, used) which is about the same cost of the speakers.
The rest of my gear, the stands, music source, DAC, interconnects, Puritan power conditioner are all under the USD$12k total.
**Note: Lenehan Audio fine tune all of their speakers with a tuning bay on the back of the speakers, so that the impedance curve, the frequency response and the anti-phase measurements are almost completely matching throughout the frequency sweep in final tuning - I did not do this, Mike Lenehan did it for me.