Good choices for first time DIY speaker?

I feel that if you want to build speakers for your system from scratch and you never did it before you should do a kit. I bought a mess of Dynaudio driver and proceeded to build one speaker (I wanted to perfect one before building the other). The driver selection, and the crossover points and order as well as the box size and shape, make it almost an endless combination. I am a mechanical engineer and designed a few machines but speaker design took way more time than I thought. I played around with designs for years and never realy enjoyed listening to the music. I looked at several speaker kit companies and felt the North Creek had the best designed crossover. I have been very happy with the speakers and for the money you can't beat them. You will need to make or have the boxes made. The design process is very hard with speaker design. You will need to do alot of playing until you are satisfied. I was never satisfied so I went for the kit.

If you want to design and build your own, the best route is to have a terrific designer computer-model/test the crossover for you. It's not cheap, but I'm hoping it will be worth it.

Parts Express (www.partsexpress.com) offers a selection of books on loudspeaker design and constuction. Here are some catalog order numbers to check out when you access their web site. 500-036, 500-021, 500-018, 500-040, 500-037, 500-042. If you are handy at all, you can assemble a kit, enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, save enough bucks to go out on the town and hear some real music - complete with electronic hums, crowd noise, noise from the ventilation system - supporting the musicians that seem to be at the bottom of hierarchy. Several years ago I built a pair of corner horns from plans - better speakers than 99% of people get to enjoy - and the preference/reference question is settled at this house. There is no pefection in this world ...