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What prevents DIY speakers to become the ultimate?

I am talking about DIY companies (North Creek, Zalytron, GR research and so on)and possible real DIYers.

We can get the best drivers on the market (Scanspeak, Sears and so on) and Ultimate parts (Hoveland, Alphacore and so on).

Why the sounds of DIY is not the ultimate (or at least very closed to the up scale (say..>10K) speaker?

The total brain power (= total # people with good brain)of the DIY speakers may be less than the comercial speakers, but I don't think they are any less stupid either.

The only thing I can think of is the cabinets. Comercial one may have better access to get a better design (computerized and so on), but can't think of any other things.

I know one reason that DIY speakers are not as popular is probably the low resale value, but not sure if it has anything to do with the quality.

Also I have heard a lot about DIY speaker being good or excellent, but never heard the real comparison (i.e. DIY speaker model A is better than Thiel or Dynaudio (an so on) model B or something or at least price-wise. Is it just that they don't have a direct A/B access or just that they are in fact not really that good?

Love to hear more about this.

Ake
ake

Showing 1 response by mhansen

mhansen
14 posts
 
I have been a DIY speaker builder for 20 plus years. I even worked at a small speaker kit company in college, making all of their cabinets. After college I kept building speakers and buying the best parts I could get my hands on. I am a trained cabinet maker and have tried just about all of the differnet types of cabinets and construction styles. I can build a very good "box" Many of them sounded good but none of them great.
Then a few years ago I build a set of Northcreek Rythem's and the whole DIY thing changed in a HUGE way for me. As it turns out the crossover was the key to way my speakers never sounding great. Granted Northcreek cabinet designs are excellent but their crossovers do set them appart.
I have now built many different Northcreek speakers and they all sound GREAT. I have a friend who owns a set of ProAc 3.8's and my Rythem sig. much better (I hope he doesn't read this) . I have another friend who has also built Northcreek speakers after hearing mine.
Also just to give you a refernce point my system is:
Sony AX777es CD/sacd, Ayre V1 & V3 amps, Arc LS25 pre, EAD Sig, processor and Cardas ref. cables.
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