DIY Speaker Kits - Suggestions.



1. Anyone have a suggestion, or more importantly, first-hand experience, for/with high-end DIY Speaker Kits that use high-quality drivers in a floor-standing speaker? Fully-assembled kits?
I'm thinking of Scan-Speak, Seas, Eton, Raven, (other drivers?)-- especially if the kits employ a transmission line bass. (Seas/Thor?)

Hopefully, someone has either made a kit or bought one fully assembled that they believe can compete favorably with more commercially available products.

2. Suggestions for a high-end floor-standing speaker from small companies led by respected audio veterans - owners/designers?
My thought is this: although they may produce an excellent product, the company hasn't made a big splash in the audio industry due to lack of marketing and advertising - or for other legitimate reasons. They usually - but not always - sell direct to the consumer.

I can think of: Source Technologies, Carolina Audio, Reimer, Buggtussel. I'm sure there others that someone can recommend.

Any and all recommendations will be appreciated.
Thank You
sedona
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
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
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.
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...
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."
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
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.
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.
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.