DIY Speaker Kits - Suggestions.

I just built a set of speakers based on plans obtained from audio asylum. Drivers were about $800 and the wood was $200. A cabinet maker cut the pieces up and I glued them together. The speaker is not unlike a transmission line, but more like a horn (rear loaded). Not the easiest to build, but I did have some woodshop experience about 30 years ago.

I would not go with a kit that is essentially a commercial product. You can do better for less. Remember that a commercial speaker has roughly a 1:5 cost ratio more if from a large manufacturer; if the speaker sells for $5000 it cost them $1000 or less to build it, including labor. I would not be surprised if a $5000 speaker had $250 worth of drivers and crossover parts.

My decision to go DIY was based on 20 years of experience with commercial products. I started culling info on DIY for the last 3 or so years. Besides having a great sounding speaker, you learn a lot and are able to tune it the way you like. I urge you to try it.

Maybe TWL will chime in, he encouraged and gave me advice on DIY speaker building.

Try the Single driver, Audio Asylum's High Efficiency forum and the Transmission Line Speakers websites.

My advice is to start simple. It can get very complicated, very quickly.

I have tried many different kinds of speaker designing/building projects over the last 30 years. A good place to start is a basic 2-way. Get your feet wet with basic cabinet design and tuning, crossover design(and tweaking), and learning acoustic principles in relation to speaker systems.

Actually, after trying about every kind of speaker system design known to man, I am personally now using a very simple single-driver system, and am happier than I have ever been with any of my other speakers, whether they were commercial or DIY. Simple can be very good, if it is done right.

Linkwitz Orion is a great choice and right up there among the world's best speakers. See www.linkwitzlab.com. I owned and enjoyed the Orions for about 1 year and thoroughly enjoyed them, coherent, dynamic, great low end, airy high end, easy to place and great looks.

Adaire Audio have some well reviewed loudspeaker kits.
Im going to be ordering a pair of thier KIT-281's here in the next few days.

finally be able to kick my radioshack speakers to the curb.

hahahahha

Sedona, wonderful to meet such a famous person!

My wife and I went hiking and I said, "I would kill for a chair."

Wife says, "Sit there just like everyone else does"
Looking puzzled, she pointed and said, "Sedona Rock."

If you are looking for a place to buy kits, check out www.zalytron.com. I have never dealt with this company, but they have alot of really neat stuff...

1. http://www.northcreekmusic.com

2. http://www.madisound.com

While I'm one of those panel speaker nuts,a friend of mine has a pair of Madisound Cygnets(sic) that are very good for the money.

I would look at www.northcreekmusic.com they have many kits lots of info and will also say Zalytron and madisound . I will be ordering the manifest kit from north creek music early this fall or late summer cant wait . I am looking for someone that has a north creek Manifest speaker or one of the other speaker kits to talk to about the speakers sound ect. . Marc

Great post - everyone thanks for the information! I have been thinking about building my own speakers as well.

I don't have any building experience yet, but another site that isn't listed that I found for kits, drivers and other components is:

http://www.speakercity.com/index.shtml

Todd