Real gratification comes from visualizing a new speaker, designing it, building it and changing it until it sounds as you first imagined it. In 1999 I got the idea of building a fully horn loaded system with the bass provided by folded corner horns back in the corners and mids and highs played by horns out in the room where they would image better with the obvious time discrepancy corrected by a DSP component. It was 2004 before I found a DSP that would do everything I wanted. This was a DEQX preamp/DSP.
In 2004 I began purchasing components, sawing wood, machining and polishing bronze and brass. It took me about a year to get the system up and playing. The SQ was a big disappointment. Since then I have changed bass horns from the bass bins of Klipschorns to Bill Fitzmaurice designed HT Tuba subs. I changed the wide range driver in Oris 150 horns from Lowther PM4As to AER BD3s. I added Fostex t900a bullet super tweeters. I upgraded the DEQX from the PDC 2.6 to a DEQX HDP4. I reprogrammed the DEQX over and over with the final programming done with the assistance of DEQXpert, Larry Owens. Finally by 2017 I had my horn speakers sounding even better than I had imagined they would. This provides real lasting gratification. That gratification is intensified by numerous audiophile friends who have heard my system saying really nice things about it such as, "That is the best I have ever heard that song.
If one has good skills and tools and is tenacious enough to keep trying and trying until you get it right then designing and building your own speakers can result in a product as good as the pros produce. It is like the old Speaker Lab ad from decades ago which stated, "If listening to your stereo is as much fun as going to the circus the listening to your stereo with speakers you built for yourself is as much fun as riding your own elephant to the circus.