Who has built their own speaker systems

I have. OK, my opinion: Simpler is better, quality of sound goes down as the crossover order goes up. So 1st order is best, but you need drivers that can operate with first order crossovers(not all are good for this). 2nd order would also be a good choice. Whatever you do, don't get much more complex than this. Also, along the lines of simple, if you have a good design to start with, you need none of the other frills(impedence flattening, notch filters, trap circuits, etc.). If you see plans for stuff like that, look elsewhere, the design is flawed from the start. My reference speakers (bought, not made) are WATT/Puppy clones, and there are only TWO crossover components on the sats, a cap and a coil. If you have a good design, that's all you need. Also, making the crossover more complex makes the speaker a MUCH more difficult load for the amp. So, keep this in mind if you like tubes or SET. In order of importance: crossover, box, drivers. You can also argue that the box is number 1, and I won't argue much. Make the box as sturdy as possible. If you're not good at this, have a cabinet maker do it for you. They'll make you a great box for floorstanders for around $350. There are thousands of plans out there from the speaker manufacturers that give you crossover values for their drivers, and they WORK. Often, these values are far away from those you see in the "tables". Throw the tables out, and use the manufacturer's values. Check out $5000 speakers. More often than not, they use tweeters that YOU will pay $25 for(not ScanSpeak Revelators or Dynaudio Esotars, but Vifa or Seas) and coils that you would pass over. Use wirewound resistors, GOOD polypropylene caps, and 12ga OFC coils, and you have better components than the big boys. Most of all, KNOW the kind of sound you like. Do this by listening to manufactured speakers. Example: if you can't stand bright speakers, you probably want soft dome tweeters, and not metal or inverted domes. Don't build speakers that you think are great on paper, only to be disappointed because they don't sound the way YOU like. If you do it right, you can make a $5000 pair of speakers for 25% of that. Another idea, buy your speakers used.

I have built several systems and all have proven better than expected. The last uses 12" NHT's for subwoofers and Dynaudio 13W75 for mid range and Dynaudio 28/2 tweeters for top ends. The subwoofers have separate enclosures (90 liter) and the top ends are housed in 12 liter enclosures. The enclosures were made by Woodstyle (available at Madisound) and are finished in golden oak with black grilles. (They are visually quite appealling.) The subwoofers were lined with 3/4" MDF to give a 1.5 inch thickness and increased rigidity. The crossover is electronic @80 Hz and @4000Hz. Electronic crossovers have fundemental advantages over passive LCR types and eliminate the nightmare of cross-over design. While I have not A-B'd them with other high end speakers in the same room, I have listened to high end Thiele's, Watt Puppys and B&W Nautilus and come away feeling my speaker's sound as good or better. Total cost was less than $1500 including enclosures, drivers and cross-over. My design was inspired by the late Dan Hildebrand's site "A Speaker Project". I went with electronic cross-overs and different high end drivers. Check out Marchand on web for electronic crossovers. Madisound for drivers and enclosures. Zalytron has good deals on drivers as well.

I just completed a BESL dual 10 sub. The inner case is 3/4 inch MDF and the outer case is 3/4 inch Oak. It uses two 10 inch Peerless drivers downfiring in a push pull arrangment and a 3 inch port. The sub is powered by a KG 5230 amp. Here are my thoughts on my new sub: Looks- Much better looking than the production models. It has legs and a nice top and looks like a fat mission end table. My wife gives it a thumbs up. Sound- I had a sunfire hooked up to my system and have listened to several velodynes. No AB test, but I think my sounds just a good as any of the mentioned model. Build- much better case than production models. Very heavy but super solid. Total cost- 700 dollars

Hey fellow audiogoner , Don't BEAT around the BUSH . Say what you think and quit being so vague . Me .

My design ideas are less extreme and perhaps more elegant, but I don't feel the need to be ridiculed by the jerkwads on here that don't know as much about speaker design as I do (which is most all of them). A few of my designs might be good enough to be "world beaters" one day, you never know. The point is, you started this thread as sort of a confessional to say "look what I did tens of years ago...gee, I'm glad I'm past that stage now"...There's entirely too much of that bull dung going on in this hobby already. I just don't look at speaker design that way, and don't feel the need to justify my speaker design philosophies to anyone in a public forum, because the "public" doesn't need to know anyhow. And as far as nano-decible measurements go, the human variable is never absent in gathering this "data", and certainly no one on this forum has their room dialed in enough to make use of such skilled-labor intensive testing/manufacturing. And most assuredly, anyone who can't even hear the full frequency range to begin with (anyone over age 40), has no business commenting on loudspeakers in the first place. I'm a speaker hobbyist and audiophile, and I refuse to apologize for my philosophy to anyone, especially if they think they've "seen it all, heard it all"!

Just curious . Hey Carl ,don't be bashful . I'll admit in the early 70's I obtained a set of plans , ( pages and a full scale orthographic plan (top) view ), for "The Mello Monsters" and built four of them . They were an article, I believe, from an early 60's Popular Electronics monthly magazine . They were a folded horn labyrinth enclosure , supposedly equal to a 16 foot straight horn . They each took a sheet and a half of 4x8 plywood , I used marine grade particle board 3/4 thick . That was some tough board to cut . Used 4 Lafayette 12" woofers , 4 Phillips 5" mid ranges , and 8 Philips dome tweeters- 2 per cabinet . Bought a Lafayette LR-5000 4 channel reciever 40wrms x 4 . I'll have to say it was impressive to hear weird sounds and passages of music that sounded as if one was in the orchestra . I still have a pair in the basement . They can take a small wattage and shake the house and still sound decent . I miss stores like Lafayette , some carried top brand name audio electronics , and you could order them through the mail from their catalog . Who' next ? FBI .

I built some in a crude way decades ago, but more recently wanted to modify an enclosure to hold subwoofers. Dunlavy recommended joining the DIY Loudspeakers list, and I did, and got a discount on the subs I bought and a lot of good advice. You'll be buried in email, but you can delete most of it. I don't have the Web address, but you could do a search and find it. If you can't find it, get back to me and I'll try to find it in my chaotic records. There are a lot of RFEALLY knowledgeable people writing for the list, as well as the usual assortment of flakes (as far as I can tell). Good luck!